Son of a Gun Read Online Free PDF Page B

table.”
“Do I just follow the directions on the can of formula?” Carolina asked.
“Yes. And you can’t imagine how I appreciate this.”
Unexpected tears began to well at the back of her eyes. Simple acts of kindness and words of faith had become foreign to her. Now they were warming her heart and making her feel guilty at the same time.
Grandma Pearl left the table and joined them at the counter. “Don’t you think you should call your aunt?”
“I will once I’ve fed Belle. She’s not actually expecting me until tomorrow, but when the weather forecast said snow in Dallas tonight, I decided to come up a day early. I’d planned to make it before dark, but the Friday afternoon traffic was much worse than I’d expected.”
“Is that blood on your arm?” Sybil asked.
Emma had tried to position the rebozo so that no one would notice the blood, but there was no hiding the fact now.
“I scratched my arm while climbing through the fence,” she said. “I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned about.”
“It looks like you lost a lot of blood to me,” Sybil said. “You better let someone take a look at it.”
“It’s okay, really.”
“It needs to be checked,” Damien said, the authority in his voice leaving little room for argument.
“Okay,” she agreed. “As soon as I finish feeding Belle.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t wait that long,” Carolina said. “You may still be losing blood. Sybil and I can handle feeding Belle or at least get started at it while Damien checks your injury. There’s a fully stocked first-aid kit in the hall bathroom.”
“Tague, how about taking care of King for me?” Damien asked. “I left her just outside the back door.”
“No problem. I’ll tuck her in for the night.”
Reluctantly, Emma unwound Belle from the folds of cloth so that she could hand the baby to Carolina. Placing Belle in Carolina’s hands made her uneasy, though Carolina surely knew more about tending to a baby’s needs than Emma did.
What she knew about babies could be composed in a tweet.
A tweet. It had been months since she’d even thought about that social form of communication. Caudillo had made sure she hadn’t had access to the internet, a phone or anything else that could have connected her to the outside world.
He, on the other hand, came and went freely on his yacht and small plane as if he were your ordinary multibillionaire CEO.
When Emma looked up, her nerves tightened to coiled steel. The look in Damien’s eyes said he had more on his mind than first aid.
He hadn’t given her away, but he was not fooled by her performance. She’d be lucky if he didn’t call the sheriff and have her picked up before he bandaged her arm.

Chapter Three
     
Emma followed Damien down the hallway to the sounds of Carolina crooning to Belle behind them.
She glanced around the room. Heavy wooden bookshelves lined two walls, and bulbs of blooming paper-white narcissus rested on a wide window ledge. The drapes were open, revealing a glimpse of falling snow.
Emma suspected it was Carolina’s taste that spilled so gracefully over the decor—soft, earthy colors, intricate moldings, paintings of hunting dogs on the walls. Silver-framed family pictures were scattered like valuable trinkets among the books.
Damien motioned her to an overstuffed armchair in a muted plaid that sat near the window next to a beautifully crafted antique end table. She rearranged the throw pillows and settled into the chair, certain her web of lies was going to spin out of control at any minute.
“There’s no use for you to bother with this,” she said. “If you’ll point me to the bathroom and give me a Band-Aid and a tube of antiseptic, I can take care of it myself.”
“Remove the shawl.”
Damien’s tone suggested he was used to being in control, or perhaps he was just tired of playing rescuer. She yanked impatiently at the wrap, tightening instead of loosening the knot that had secured Belle.
“Let me help you with