One Track Mind Read Online Free PDF Page A

older man? She called Clyde, her throat tight, and told him Kane Ledger was here and wanted to be shown around. “Yes,” she said uncomfortably. “ That Kane Ledger. I’ll send him to you.”
    She closed her phone. “He’s out by the scoreboard,” she told Kane.
    “Fine. You want me to keep quiet about the offer?” Kane asked, standing by the door.
    “Please. He’ll know soon enough,” she said and sighed. If the offer was for the asking price, she’d have no choice but to take it. Then the bank would know, the title company would know, her whole staff would know and the news would be all over town in minutes.
    When Kane left the office, she made herself look carefully at the contract, which seemed to contain the best of all possible offers. But her temples pounded, and her lungs burned as if she’d run a long and grueling way.
    When Kane had first appeared, it was as if he’d forced most of the oxygen out of the room and now it came seeping back. Slowly her breathing became almost normal again.
    But she still didn’t feel normal. Her heart beat too hard, her stomach fluttered in a way she’d forgotten it could flutter. She felt as if she’d opened more than a physical door when she’d answered Kane’s knock.
    She’d opened a door that seemed almost supernatural in its power. There, beyond it, was a lost world, the past, as clear and vibrant and vital as if it were happening for the first time.
     

    S HE REMEMBERED that first time, that summer day when she’d been sixteen…She and her parents and older brother livedin the big, beautiful house on McCorkle Avenue. Her father, Andrew Jackson Simmons, was one of the most influential men in town, his speedway one of the most prosperous businesses.
    The Victorian house in Queen Anne style had an elaborate porch and small second-story balcony with a delicate spindle-work frieze extending round it. There was a similar balcony in the back, between Lori’s bedroom and that of her brother. A.J.
    The lawn was slightly more than two acres and meticulously landscaped, with Lori’s mother’s prize rose garden near the patio, and beyond the roses, flowering shrubs and an octagonal swimming pool.
    It was summer vacation, a warm but mildly breezy Saturday, and the rest of Lori’s family had gone to the speedway to watch a qualifying race. Lori had opted to stay home and read by the pool.
    She loved being outdoors, but with her red hair, she never tanned, only burned or added to her freckles, so she sat in a lounge chair under a big green-and-white striped umbrella. She wore a modest two-piece green bathing suit that she hated, but it was the closest that her mother was going to let her get to a bikini.
    She had a gauzy white cover-up she wore unbuttoned and white flip-flops for padding to the pool for her very short dips to cool off. Her hair was heaped atop her head to keep it from getting wet, but the breeze had loosened long tendrils that danced on her cheeks and the nape of her neck and played games with her oversized sunglasses.
    But Lori sat, happy to be alone at home as only a sixteen-year-old could be, and feeling quite grown-up. And she was reading a quite grown-up book, one her parents probably wouldn’t want her to read. She’d secretly borrowed it from her Aunt Aileen’s private library. If Aileen noticed frequently that books would disappear then reappear from her shelves, she never mentioned it.
    Lori was paging solemnly through the book, when theback gate opened. She barely looked up. Her mother had told her that old Mr. Merkle, the man who owned the lawn service, would be over to tend the rose garden sometime this afternoon. So Lori paid him no attention, for Mr. Merkle liked plants better than people and never talked if he could help it.
    Except, from the corner of her eye, she noticed the figure heading toward the garden shed moved too fast to be Mr. Merkle. She stole a furtive look over the top of her sunglasses and was unpleasantly surprised to