Obsession (Southern Comfort) Read Online Free PDF Page A

family, redolent of gingerbread and good cheer, a happy fire dancing in the antique hearth beneath the handmade stockings her mother had knitted, and felt like gathering everything up and dumping it off the top of Mount Krumpet.
    Her elbow hurt.  Jingle Bells was playing for the fiftieth time that night.  And she’d been marginalized again by her lover.  “I’m not sure he’ll be able to make it.  Something came up.”
    A frown puckered Sadie’s brow.  “He missed Thanksgiving, too.”
    “Well, technically, he didn’t.  He just missed ours.”  Jingle Bells switched to White Christmas and Kathleen thought, shut up, Bing.   “You know he has a huge family too, and he wanted me to go with him. But this was a big year for us, what with you and Maureen’s husband joining the family, and all these babies on the way. And I had deep, deep suspicions about Rogan and Kim –”
    “Wasn’t that wonderful?”  Sadie sighed to herself, in raptures over the way Kathleen’s other brother had proposed to his longtime girlfriend by substituting her napkin ring with a diamond one.
    “It was great.” Kathleen snagged another cheese straw.
    “But I thought you were doing the whole Christmas thing at his parents’ house,” Sadie peeled her eyes away from the cheese straw to say.  “Which means this is the only chance we have to see him.  Come to think of it,” she wrinkled her nose, looking like a bemused angel.  “I don’t think I’ve set eyes on him since… oh.  Oh.  Halloween.  You were wearing that rod of green velvet curtains with the pattern pieces cut out. And Anthony was supposed to be Scarlett O’Hara – which was a fantastic idea, by the way – complete with green velvet dress.  But Anthony was late. And when he finally showed up, he wasn’t in costume.”
    The cheese straw turned to dust in her mouth.  Kathleen had spent that whole night as a bad joke without a punch line.
    “He got caught up doing surveillance.  No big deal.”
    “Well, that’s charitable of you.”
    “Anthony’s a good guy, Sadie.”
    “ Anthony’s a great guy.”  Sadie leaned forward, just a little.  “So why are you so unhappy?”
    “Who said I’m unhappy?”
    “Kathleen –”  
    “Here.”  Kathleen was spared from having to hear the rest of what she already suspected was true when her brother Declan came up to the bar, carelessly efficient and cantankerous as ever, to plunk a glass down in front of her.  “Real eggnog, not that crap Maureen is passing out. Don’t say I never gave you anything.  Hot cider for you,” he said as he slid a mug in front of his wife.  “No alcohol for the little guy until he can hold a beer by himself.”
    “He?”  Kathleen arched a brow at her brother, who dipped his goateed chin in a nod before grabbing a couple cheese straws.
    “It’s a boy,” he said as he munched. “Declan, the next generation.”
    “We don’t know that,” Sadie said reassuringly when she saw Kathleen’s look of horror.
    “Hell we don’t.”  He came around the end of the bar to wrap his arms around Sadie, one hand straying down to pat her still flat belly. “Maureen and Tate are having girls, so God sent me to provide reinforcements.”    
    Kathleen turned her disgust on his wife.  “How do you not smother him in his sleep?”
    “Well, I would.”  Sadie snuggled back against him, and Kathleen felt a pang of jealousy, immediately followed by guilt.  “But the Smithsonian pays so well when they borrow him for their caveman exhibit.”
    Unfazed, Declan angled his dark head toward the door.  “Doctor Hopeless is here.”
    Still coming back from that pang – she was happy for the two of them, damn it – Kathleen wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.  “Doctor Hopeless?”
    “I think he means Justin,” Sadie expla ined and Declan muttered “Some detective you are.”
    “What was that all about?” she said to Sadie after Dec dropped a kiss on her blonde head