Playing Dead in Dixie Read Online Free PDF Page A

clear that people were more interested in what was in her bra than in her brain.  "Knock yourself out."
    His eyes darkened.  "You could save us both a lot of trouble if you just came clean."
    She crossed her legs, noting with satisfaction his gaze following the slow, deliberate movement, settling on the creamy expanse of thigh exposed as her skirt slid back toward her lap.  "But it's so much more fun this way.  Don't you think?"
    He looked up sharply, his lips tightening. "Not sure I'd use the word 'fun.'"  He straightened up, taking a step back, and she knew she'd won this round.
    She tugged the hem of her skirt back down to her knee and looked up at him with an innocent half-smile.  The spark of anger behind his dark eyes assured her she'd struck her mark.
    "I've got to head out."
    "J.B.'s waiting?"
    His brow wrinkled.
    "Bonnie said you were taking supper to J.B.  A friend?"
    He shook his head.  "My dad."
    There was a story behind the sudden current of sadness that drifted through his expression.  If small towns down here below the Mason-Dixon Line were like small towns up north, she'd hear that story before long.
    It was one advantage she had over Wes Hollingsworth, she reflected.  What secrets he had, she'd uncover a whole lot sooner than he'd uncover hers.  Especially if he was looking for someone named Carly Devlin.
     
     
    "YOU SHOULD HAVE COME with me to Aunt Bonnie's."  Wes placed a glass of iced tea on the table at his father's elbow.
    J.B. made a growly noise and fumbled with his fork.  Ten years after the stroke, he still hadn't quite mastered eating left-handed.  His right hand had long ago curled into a useless claw, thanks to his refusal of any physical therapy.
    "It's dead," he insisted whenever Wes tried to get him to try to exercises the therapist suggested to re-stimulate his paralyzed hand.  In a room at the back of the house, a couple of boxes full of peg boards, marbles, squeeze toys, all the things the therapist had suggested might help him relearn to use his crippled hand, lay covered with dust, untouched for years.
    J.B. had learned to walk again out of sheer pride, hating the walker they'd given him at the hospital.  But he'd never conquered the rolling, unsteady gait that came from having one leg neither fully dead nor fully alive.
    Wes turned a chair around and straddled it, facing his father.  "Ardelean Guthrie asked about you.  She told me to be sure you got a piece of her pecan pie."
    J.B. grunted and shoveled a spoonful of squash casserole into his mouth.
    "You remember Miss Ardelean's pie.  You used to buy a slice every time the Ladies' Auxiliary had a bake sale."  Wes tried to keep impatience from spilling into his voice.  "She says Ludlow asked you to go with him to the V.F.W. meeting next Saturday but you wouldn't go."
    "Bunch of old farts pretending they're war heroes."
    "Most of them were, J.B."  Anger eclipsed impatience.  "You damned well know it."
    "You gonna jaw me to death or let me eat in peace?"
    Sucking a deep breath through his nose, Wes pushed back from the table and crossed to the stove in two angry strides.  He replaced the aluminum foil over the dishes of food Aunt Bonnie had sent with him.  Over the last few days, as word of Steve's death spread, neighbors and friends had dropped by casseroles and cold plates, cooked hams and meat loaves, more than Bonnie and Floyd would ever get through, even with their unexpected guest joining them for meals.
    He carried the dishes to his father's refrigerator, trying to put Carly Devlin's creamy, well-toned thigh out of his mind. The little wretch had known exactly what she was doing, pulling that sexy leg-crossing maneuver.  God knows what other tricks she had in her arsenal.
    He glanced at his watch.  Nearly five.  He hadn't planned to go to the station today because of the funeral.  But that was before Carly Devlin had sashayed her way into his cousin's wake.
    The least he could do for Bonnie and Floyd was