Old Enough To Know Better Read Online Free PDF

this room for its floor to ceiling, four walled Rogues’ Gallery that was rife with pictures of friends and family, which naturally included several of herself and Clint. She threw her plate away, put the milk back that Finn had probably left out, and took a deep breath knowing she was going to have to convince Jane that she wasn’t ducking out of the party early just to go home and sulk.
    But Jane was surprisingly easy to convince, only because she was sitting on her new fiancée, Ted’s, lap, and she was at least two sheets to the wind, and much more interested in French kissing Ted than worrying about whether or not Cat was mooning over her dead husband.  Cat, for one, was glad to see that her friend was having a good time and was truly happy, and also that she wasn’t going to have to go through the third degree just to get to her car, and also that it was easy to concentrate on Jane’s adolescent antics and she could forget all the pictures around her of herself and her wonderful husband during much happier times.

 
    Chapter Three
     
    Slipping away carefully, she hadn’t expected to run into him again, but there he was, standing by the front door as if he’d appointed himself the doorman . . . or as if he was waiting for her, she thought fleetingly, dismissing the idea immediately as ridiculous.
    “Have you had anything to drink, Catherine?  Do you need a ride home?” he asked solicitously, although she sensed an underlying note in his tone that she refused to acknowledge, preferring, instead, to fly by him with a fake smile plastered on her face.
    “No, thank you, I rarely drink anymore.”  She flashed him what she hoped was a sufficiently pleasant smile, wrapped her coat around her, and ducked out the door. She knew she should have exchanged more pleasantries, she knew she was acting like an idiot in just needing to get out of that place, and frankly, to get away from a young man who hadn’t said or done anything that wasn’t simply kind and thoughtful towards her.
    But he put her on edge, somehow, made her aware of herself in a way she hadn’t been in a while, and she didn’t like it.  Not at all.  Nope.  Didn’t like it.  Not in the least.  Not her. 
    She refused to examine why her heart was beating so quickly, and her palms – and other areas of her person – were growing moist – and she was panting slightly.
    But she definitely didn’t like the way he made her feel.  Definitely.
    It was strange to hear him call her by her first name.  Her friends were relatively strict, old fashioned parents, and their children never called their parents’ friends by their first names, ever. She had been Mrs. Taylor to Finn until the day she’d seen him off to college with Jane, and the few times she’d seen him when he’d come home since then.  Cat wondered how she’d suddenly been promoted – or was she being downgraded? – to Catherine?
    And no one ever called her Catherine, except for Clint, and only very occasionally, when he was very unhappy with her, and then he’d usually used it in conjunction with the rest of her full name and that particular tone that, even just remembering, gave her butterflies in her stomach, as in, “Catherine Elizabeth Taylor, I want to see you front and center in the bedroom, right now.”  Still, he never yelled it, but that was almost worse.
    As she got into her black cherry Nissan 370Z – one of her very few indulgences since Clint had died – she could see that Finn was still standing in the doorway, watching her.  She managed a small wave as she backed out, but laid a little rubber heading towards her sanctuary – the house they’d bought clear on the other side of the Island.
    It was a smallish place that did nothing to reflect their net worth, but then, they didn’t need to flaunt what they had, they had only to make themselves comfortable, and since they didn’t have anyone else – including children or grandchildren to consider – they