Somebody Like You Read Online Free PDF Page A

darkness. “Who are you . . . you look exactly like . . . like . . .” Her voice was high. Frail.
    “I know this is a shock. I didn’t know Sam hadn’t told you about me—”
    “Stop talking. Now.” She reached behind her back and then positioned her arm beside her right leg. “I don’t know who you are or why you look like Sam, but I’m telling you this: I have a gun and I know how to use it. Get out of here.”
    “Let me explain.” A sharp metallic click stopped Stephen before he could find a way to unravel who he was from who Haley thought he was.
    “I’ve released the safety on my gun.” Haley took another step back, raising her arms so he could see the gun pointed halfway between his feet and his knees. “Leave. Now.”
    She was either bluffing or ready to put a hole in him.
    Stephen lifted his hands in the universal sign of surrender. “I’m going.” He shifted his position in the direction of his Mustang, her eyes tracking him. “Just one thing.”
    She turned, her aim straight and sure, as he moved right, one slow step at a time, giving her a wide berth. But she didn’t respond to his statement.
    “I left my, uh, business card tucked in your screen door. Will you at least think about calling me so we can talk?”
    Silence followed him as he rounded the front of his car. Opened the driver’s-side door. Ducked his head and climbed inside, the chill of the Colorado night air following him into the car. He knew Sam’s widow watched him, could almost feel the heat of her eyes trained on him through the car windows—could almost hear the measured pace of her breathing, until he slid behind the wheel and shut the door. Locked it. She remained still as he started the engine and backed out of the driveway. In the rearview mirror as he pulled away, Stephen saw her walk toward the house, shoulders hunched, arms crossed over her waist.
    Wait a minute.
    There was something eluding him . . . something not right, beyond the fact that Sam’s widow had just threatened to shoot him. He hadn’t expected a warm “Where have you been all these years?” welcome, but he hadn’t imagined being threatened by a pistol-packing mama either.
    Mama.
    Sam’s widow was pregnant.
    The few moments that Haley Ames clung to him something had felt . . . odd about their one-sided embrace. She was tall. Slender. And yet the woman had a belly. There was no other way to say it. Not a “What have you been eating since Sam died?” kind of weight gain . . . but a firm tummy that indicated pregnancy. Not that Stephen knew a lot about pregnant women. But holding Haley reminded him of hugging his stepmother, Gina, when she’d been pregnant with his half brother, Pete.
    What do I do now, God?
    Stephen’s hand clenched and unclenched around the cool steering wheel. He resisted the urge to slow down, pull the car into the next driveway, turn around, and head back to Haley’s house. And then what? Knock on the door, wait for her to answer, and hope she didn’t shoot him before he asked her—what? When is the baby due?
    He’d get settled in his hotel room. Regroup. Pray. And maybe figure out a way to approach his armed and angry sister-in-law tomorrow.

    Sam did not have a brother.
    He didn’t. He would have told her. Husbands and wives told each other things like that, didn’t they?
    As if she had any right to hold Sam to a standard of honesty.
    Haley curled up under a white and gray rugby-striped blanket in the middle of the faded blue corduroy couch that she and Sam had bought off Craigslist, clutching her cell phone to her chest. In the background, John Wayne discovered Maureen O’Hara hiding in his family’s cottage. How many hours of movies had filled the backdrop of her life since Sam had died? What had once helped her deal with Sam’s back-to-back deployments—fill the empty apartment with a movie . . . and another . . . and another—was now a daily ritual. Anything for background