Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) Read Online Free PDF Page A

stomach that began to spread. She drank again before she finally spoke.
    “The other reasons, did they have something to do with the paper mill?”
    His gaze was considering. “I don't think it's any secret that I never wanted to work there.”
    “What about now, with your father gone? Will you be taking his place?”
    “It seems to be expected.”
    “Not by everyone,” she said dryly. “Keith was hoping you would stay away. You know he stepped up to assistant manager while his brother has been filling in as manager?”
    Reid nodded. “Gordon hasn't said anything about either of them keeping the jobs.”
    “He wouldn't. Keith's brother is nothing if not diplomatic.”
    “Smooth,” he agreed.
    “A good businessman, of course,” she said in grudging tones. “I expect he's waiting to see what you decide.”
    Cammie had never cared for Gordon Hutton. He seemed to think his doormat of a wife was perfection in the species, and he'd always done his best to tell Keith how to handle her, too, so she'd fit the same mold. At times, when Cammie was especially outspoken, it seemed to her that Gordon could barely restrain himself from demonstrating his ideas.
    “Keith used to be a good kid,” Reid said, “back when we played football together. Lizbeth wrote me about you two getting married. And when you separated.”
    His assessment of Keith was generous; Cammie remembered those football games well. Her husband had played tailback to Reid's quarterback. Keith was fast and slick, but he was also a grandstanding jerk who had done his best to steal the glory.
    “Lizbeth?” she asked, her voice tentative.
    Reid indicated the buttery-rich pound cake that neither of them had touched. “Cook and housekeeper for the Sayers these thirty years, the closest thing to a mother I had after my own died. She kept me up to date on everything worth knowing in Greenley.”
    Cammie knew whom he meant, had seen her around town. Lizbeth was a statuesque black woman with long hair she wore braided around her head, and skin the tobacco-gold shade of brown known as bright by those of African blood. She glanced at Reid, to find him watching her closely.
    He looked away, rubbing his fingers along the handle of his cup. His voice neutral, he said, “So what happened?”
    “With the marriage?” A small, derisive smile curled her full mouth. “It was a mistake from the beginning. Keith and I started going together my last year at college. Everybody seemed to think we were the perfect couple. One day he gave me a ring, and I couldn't think of a good reason not to take it. The next thing I knew, I was brushing rice out of my hair and popping birth control pills.”
    Cammie gave Reid a quick look, but his expression had not changed. There was more to the story, of course. She sometimes felt as if she had lived for years in limbo, waiting for her life to begin. Marrying Keith had been a feeble attempt to jump-start it. It hadn't worked, which was not entirely Keith's fault.
    She went on, “Then I found out that I was expected to melt quietly into the background and never be seen or heard again.”
    “And you didn't do that.” It was a statement rather than a question.
    “Our fights over it have become town legends. Keith's skin is thicker than yours.” She hadn't intended to refer to that again; it must be the brandy loosening her tongue, she thought, and hurried on to cover the lapse. “But what about you? How is it you never married?”
    He moved his shoulders as if the muscles of his neck were tight. “I did. In Colorado, just after I left the army. It lasted exactly a month.”
    “A whole month?”
    He acknowledged the irony with a grim smile. “I tried to warn her that the Ranger training I'd been through, the uses it was put to in Central America and the Caribbean, was designed to dehumanize, to turn men into animals that act on instinct. She thought she could change all that. We had been married two weeks when she came up behind me in