Kiss Me That Way: A Cottonbloom Novel Read Online Free PDF

jokey, his voice veered sharply aggressive.
    “Something like that. Let me get your brace.” She was back in less than two minutes and strapped the brace on his knee, checking the fit. “You can get dressed. I’ll tell Ms. June to work you into my schedule tomorrow. Any objections?”
    She raised her eyebrows as if she expected him to protest. Honestly, with the fit he’d thrown in their waiting room when he realized what Sawyer was up to, Cade surprised himself by saying, “None at all.”
    “Good. Wear athletic gear. Unless you want to be traipsing around in your undies.” She winked before backing out of the door.
    The flirty tease in her voice and eyes was more intimate than mere acquaintances and certainly didn’t register as sisterly. In fact, the entire encounter held an intensity and intimacy he usually did his best to avoid. A vibrant energy swirled around her like a tornado, and when the door closed he was left reeling in the aftermath, mentally and emotionally.
    By the time he’d dressed, made an appointment, and limped out the door with the borrowed cane from his uncle Delmar, Monroe was nowhere to be seen. Why wouldn’t she have a hot date—she was a beautiful woman—and what gave him the right to care?
    She was a sliver of his past. A weak, scared kid who’d needed a champion. Her mother had liked to troll through the bars on the Louisiana side of the river, and he’d made it his business to know who she was hooking up with. A word or fist dropped here or there had kept a few scumbags looking for something easy away. Once Sam Landry married and moved away Cade had relaxed his vigilance. Yet even then, he’d continued his monthly treks upriver to make sure Monroe was safe.
    She’d rarely crossed his mind during his busy days over the last decade. The work ethic he’d developed by necessity in his youth had carried into life away from Cottonbloom. Yet something about all the nights they’d shared talking under the full moon had drawn him back to Cottonbloom more times than he could count in his dreams. He always woke restless and yearning for something he couldn’t name.
    Testing the knee brace, he walked down the street toward the stream that acted as the state line and had effectively segregated the town. In his grandparents’ day, Cottonbloom had been one town, sharing a school system and town center. A disagreement involving fishing and harvesting rights had split the old guard of city leaders and broken the town across the river. The south side became Cottonbloom Parish, Louisiana, and the north side remained part of Mississippi.
    Monroe’s practice was on the Mississippi side of Cottonbloom, full of doctors, lawyers, and professors. His home lay on the Louisiana side, full of blue-collar middle-class workers—factory men, mechanics, fishermen.
    Besides the two-lane steel bridge for cars, a wooden bridge for foot traffic had been erected since he’d last been home. Black graffiti marred the side, but a riot of flowers decorated the Louisiana riverbank. His heart swelled. His mother had loved her flowers. The wilder the better. Their front garden had been a colorful chaos of blooms.
    He limped across the bridge. Clear and fast-moving, the stream bisected their town and then turned southwest, flowing through Cottonbloom Parish and eventually intersecting the Mississippi River.
    The row of brick storefronts facing the river from the Louisiana side were of the antique and gently used clothes variety, whereas the shops on the Mississippi side were higher-end boutiques and specialty shops. Each side had called their road River Street, making mail delivery a crapshoot. The smell from Rufus’s Meat and Three had his stomach jumping. He’d dined in five-star restaurants around the country, but none of their chefs came close to matching Rufus’s magic with a smoker.
    Tally’s gym lay on a street perpendicular from the river and directly off River Street. Starting with traditional aerobics and