Lauri Robinson Read Online Free PDF Page A

Louis event front and center, reminded himself what his gambling had done to another woman.
    “I’ll have you know, Sheriff McCrery, I’m a very fine kisser. Many men have told me so.”
    A stone-honed knife couldn’t have sliced him sharper than the thought of her kissing other men. Not even the incident flashing in his mind eased it. Yet her acting abilities were slipping. The apprehension in her eyes said she was lying, and the downward tug on the corners of her lips told him she was waiting for his reassurance. A major part of him wanted to give it, declare she was indeed the best kisser he’d ever met.
    Opening the door, he waved a hand. “They lied.” With a nod, he added, “Good day, Miss Blackwell.”
    No matter how hard Stacy tried, her lungs wouldn’t take in a full breath of air. And her heart, well, it had never beat so hard, so fast. He was suppose to be breathless, not her. Fury, hot and cold at the same time, zipped up her spine. “I’m the best kisser you’ve ever met, Sheriff McCrery, and one day you’ll admit it.”
    She swung around, wishing he were the boards beneath her boots, and stomped out the door.
    His low laugh reverberated down her back, making her grow stiffer and madder with every step. Emma could have him. Matter of fact, the two deserved each other. One was just as irritating as the other. Bald-faced liars. That’s what they were. Emma and the things she said about Pappy and mother, and Jake…
    It was as if all the life drained out of her. Stumbling, she caught herself before going down, but the way her knees wobbled told her she’d better sit. The hat shop door was open, and she barely made it inside, to the little chair next to the mirrored table, before her legs gave out. Her parasol, caught on the narrow doorframe, fluttered in the breeze.
    Stacy took several breaths. Jake McCrery meant nothing to her. He was simply a gamble. The burning in her chest rose into her throat in the form of a fiery moan. Besides, this wasn’t about him. Emma needed to be put in her place. Furthermore, Edward Blackwell—her own father—had suggested she’d been attempting to catch Jake’s eye at the dinner table that evening—and that had stung harder than Emma’s words.
    Nothing could have been further from her mind. Sure, she’d noticed Jake’s handsomeness and had been entertained by his quick wit, but she was being personable. Having dinner with her family, that’s where her excitement had been. She’d always wanted to meet them. Wanted more than a piece of jewelry to prove she was connected to others. In one evening she’d lost it all. Hope and her necklace. Even the next day, after all Emma’s accusations, when she’d packed her belongings and moved to town to wait for Pappy’s return, winning Jake’s affections hadn’t crossed her mind.
    Plopping an elbow on the table, and resting her chin in her palm, she let out a long sigh. That hadn’t happened until almost a month later.
    They’d encountered each other a few times, she and Jake, and she’d admired him from afar, but it wasn’t until the day he’d escorted her out of Ma Belle’s, said her gambling was souring her family’s reputation, that the idea came to life.
    Her lips pinched as a fresh bout of fury grew inside her like a vine around a post. The Blackwell family tainted their own reputation by their uppity ways, and she’d set out to prove she was nothing like them. Only after the almighty sheriff continued to interrupt her games, insisting her father didn’t want her gambling, had she’d added him to the kitty.
    She slapped the tabletop so hard that the mirror shook and hats tumbled off their little hooks. The game wasn’t over and there would be no folding on her part.
    “Oh, goodness, dear, I’m so sorry,” Helen Wilson rushed from the curtain separating the backroom from the rest of the store. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
    Emotions piling up so high her hands shook, Stacy knocked over more