Love Slave for Two: Reckoning [Love Slave for Two 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read Online Free PDF Page A

for the three of them since Clay’s divorce from Emily. And sometimes, as she did tonight, Karen joined them as well.
    They were happy to hear Nevvie’s news about her twins. After dinner, Laurie volunteered to get the boys bathed and ready for bed for Nevvie. The rest of them sat around the kitchen table after the dishes were done and put away.
    “Grandma,” Elle started, “can we ask a favor?”
    Peggy smiled. “How much, sugar?”
    Danny grimly smiled. “No, Grandma. Mom’s selling the house. We don’t have enough room at our place for our stuff. She told us if we don’t have it all out by Friday night, she’ll throw it out. She’s having an open house on Sunday. Can we borrow space in the storage shed for a couple of months? Once we sort through everything, what we want to keep we’ll take to a storage unit.”
    After Clay and Em’s divorce, the three of them had banded together and gotten an apartment close to town. Danny and Elle were in their last semester of college.
    “Sure, sugar. Of course y’all can.” She tilted her head. “Clay, you all right?”
    He let out a sigh. “Yeah, just another one of those things.”
    Elle frowned. “Don’t you even think about feeling sorry for her, Dad. I can’t believe you put up with her as long as you did. She treated you like crap.”
    “Danielle,” Peggy admonished, “you watch your mouth, young lady.”
    “I’m sorry, Grandma, but you don’t know what she was like at home.” She looked at her brother, who nodded. “She expected total perfection out of us, like if we screwed up or got a bad grade, it made her look bad. I love Mom, but I’m not ashamed to admit I can’t stand being around her. Even before everything happened, I told her I thought it would be a good idea if we all go to family counseling.”
    “How’d that go over?” Peggy asked.
    “It didn’t. She started yelling at me that there was nothing wrong with her, that the three of us were ‘godless heathens.’” She used air quotes around the phrase. “She’s gone around the bend.”
    Clay reached over and patted his daughter’s hand. “She’s your mother,” he quietly said. “I know she’s not the easiest person to get along with, but she does love you. You need to respect her.”
    That’s when Danny let out a snort. “That’s a laugh. She never respected you. Or us. Elle’s right. She’s nuts.”
    “Why’s she selling the house?” Nevvie asked.
    Clay didn’t answer. Danny answered for him. “She’s moving into an apartment close to her church. She wants to donate the money from the sale to them. I’m telling you, she’s whacked. Last time she told me she wanted me to go to church with her and I said no, she treated me like I’d taken a dump on a Bible or something.”
    Karen let out a laugh. “Yeah, that sounds like your mom.”
    “Clay, why didn’t you tell us all of this years ago?” Peggy gently asked. “That things were getting so bad with her?”
    He shrugged. “I loved her. No, she wasn’t the easiest woman to live with, but she had a good heart and meant well. Most of the time.” He shook his head. “It was a year or so before…the incident, when things really got bad.”
    Nevvie didn’t need clarification. She knew he meant when Emily tried to get Adam taken away from them by the state of Florida.
    “That’s when she turned into a different person,” he said. “And that all happened after she started going to that new church. Suddenly, she was all…churchy. I never had a problem living with her before that, but it’s like she suddenly took off on this wild tangent. It consumed her life. She just about gave up all of her old friends and hung out only with people from church. She was there nearly every night for service or classes or prayer sessions or whatever. Then, when she pulled that stunt, I gave her an ultimatum. That either she quit that church and apologize to everyone in this family for what she did, or I was gone.”
    When