Midnight Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page B

but that was the way families worked, wasn’t it? When you reached out for a helping hand, it was there.
    His family hadn’t been like that, his old man would have been more liable to knock Joe down than extend a helping hand but Joe was no dummy. He’d seen how good families worked and it was like a little miracle.
    Where was her family? Who cared for her? Why was she so isolated?
    He burned with questions he wanted to ask her.
Who are you?
What happened to you?
Where are your people?
    “You can come over anytime you want,” he blurted. “Poker game or not. You play?”
    She smiled and shook her head. “I’d lose every cent I had if I played poker. I don’t have much of a poker face and I can’t keep the cards straight in my head. Clearly, you can.”
    Oh, yeah. After a day or two, he’d be kicked out of any casino in the country for card counting.
    “You can sit beside me and be my good luck charm,” he said and she closed up. Bam. Just like that. Face as blank as that of a doll.
    “I don’t bring anyone good luck,” she said softly.
    Well, fuck. If a beautiful classy woman considered herself a jinx, what could he say?
    They were back home. He walked her up to her front door. He opened his mouth to say something, anything—
do you want to come over for the lunch you cooked for me?
Do you want to go for a drive?
Do you want to go to bed with me?—
but before he could put his foot in it, she smiled at him, thanked him again and disappeared into her house.
    Joe was left staring at the wooden door that was exactly like his until he snapped out of it and entered his own house. He had some paperwork to get through—he had to read through a contract ASI had signed with a local bank and which would be his first job for them at the first of the month—and he had some laundry to do.
    What he did was head for the shower. He needed a long, cold one after his walk with the most beautiful woman in the world, Isabel Lawton.
    But first, he had to check his email. There might be another contract for him to look at.
    He shucked off his parka and sweater and boots and socks, standing barefoot in front of the keyboard.
    There was an email from Jacko— We’re on for tomorrow! Metal’s bringing beer.
    So—poker night tomorrow was confirmed.
    And another email from an address he didn’t recognize. In the subject line: READ ME. It smelled of spam but if it had passed his spam filter, it was worth a look.
    He clicked it open and felt his face tighten as he stared at the message.
    PROTECT ISABEL
    * * *
     
    Do you want to come over and watch while we play poker?
    Oh, God
yes.
Isabel had had to bite her lips to keep from saying that. She’d lied a little. The guys
did
make a lot of noise but she just lapped it up. Sometimes she sat in a chair close to the living room window that faced his house and listened to the rumble of deep male voices, closing her eyes and imagining she was home again, with Jack teasing their father, the twins, Teddy and Rob, chiming in.
    Joe and his friends swore like the sailors they were. She heard more four-letter words in one evening than she normally did in a year. They were profane and funny and something else. There was affection there as they called each other names. It was absolutely unmistakable. Affection and fraternity. The kind of affection and fraternity that had existed among the Delvauxes.
    The men were all close friends, a tight and unbreakable union, like her family had been.
    And just like that, it took her. The room swirled and her head went light and her knees wobbled. She sat down heavily, still in her coat and boots, and bent her head low between her knees. In the very beginning, when thoughts of her family made her dizzy, she’d have to head as fast as she could to the bathroom, where she’d vomit the contents of her stomach together with her misery into the toilet bowl.
    Maybe it was a mark of progress that she no longer vomited, but just felt dizzy. She sat, head bowed low,