Second Chance at the Sugar Shack Read Online Free PDF Page A

standing just feet away from where her mother had been laid in the hard, frozen ground, Matt wouldn’t hesitate to tell her what he thought. She didn’t deserve pity. Why the hell would she even put up the pretense of grieving when he and everyone knew she didn’t give a shit about either of her parents?
    She didn’t deserve the time of day.
    But he respected her mother. Her father. And that changed everything.
    After Katie skipped town, her mother had lent a warm embrace to his wounded soul and become his friend—a surrogate mother for his own who refused to lift her life out of a bottle. In turn, he developed a love and appreciation for both her parents and the incredible role models they’d become for him. For that reason alone Matt felt it necessary to offer his condolences to the girl who’d not only run out on him but her own parents.
    “Your mother was a wonderful woman,” he said, dropping his aviators into place. “We’ll miss her very much.”
    Katie looked up at him. Uncertainty sparked in her eyes. “Thank you.”
    Matt forced himself not to stare at her glossy lips as she spoke, so he scanned the cemetery, the flower-carpeted grave, the departing mourners.
    He found himself entirely too distracted by the woman in front of him who wore a clinging black jacket and a skirt too short for somewhere as off the beaten path as Deer Lick. Or her mother’s funeral. She shifted her weight from one enticing hip to the other and the movement caught his eye.
    “It’s good to see you again, Matt,” she said barely above a husky whisper.
    Ten years melted away as he looked down at her, remembering the last time he’d held her. She’d been naked and warm in his arms and sweet as his Uncle Bob’s huckleberry wine. But those days were gone for good and she’d broken too many hearts along the way.
    “Wish I could say the same.”
    S tunned right down to her pink toenails, Kate watched Matt walk away. All six feet plus of lean, hard muscle sheathed in a khaki uniform.
    She wanted to kick him.
    Okay. So maybe he had a right to have an attitude with her. Maybe she might deserve his animosity just a teeny tiny bit. And maybe he hadn’t gone the wrong-side-of-the-tracks path as she’d imagined. No beer gut. No balding head.
    It was just too bad that he wasn’t nearly as pleasant as that gorgeous face.
    “Katie?” Her father waved her toward him. “Come here, honey. Time to go.”
    As she made her way over to join her father and siblings, taking care not to muddy the red soles of her shoes in the soggy grass, Kate glanced back where Matt remained near her mother’s final resting place. A pretty, petite blond walked up to him and took his hand. He smiled down at her.
    Wife?
    Girlfriend?
    Definitely attached.
    And Kate definitely didn’t care.
    Whatever he did with his life or whomever he did it with didn’t matter to her.
    Her father tucked her beneath his protective arm and as a family—or what was left of them—they all headed toward the Grange a few blocks away. As they walked down the sidewalk, Kate gave a last glance at her mother’s grave. And one more glance at the man who’d been an important part of her young life.
    He, however, didn’t look back.
    S everal hours later, the interior of the Grange remained packed wall to cinder-block wall. The empty casserole dishes and lunchmeat platters that cluttered the banquet table confirmed that Letty Silverthorne had been a popular woman. In the corner the jukebox played Nat King Cole’s Unforgettable . Somewhere in the distance Junior Walker snorted a laugh as he recalled the time Letty had chased a skunk out of her garden, only to be sprayed in the keester before the animal trotted away. “Only good skunk is a dead skunk,” he recalled her saying. Everyone laughed.
    Kate remembered how every October her father would dress in camo, sling a rifle over his shoulder, kiss her mother on the forehead and head out to the forest to slay Bambi or Bullwinkle or