Sultry with a Twist Read Online Free PDF Page B

It’s all you ever talked about since we were kids. So what’re you doing back here?”
    “Turns out I didn’t like taking orders.” It wasn’t a complete lie. Luke noticed Trey’s jaw clench, and he got that guilty look on his face, just like every time someone asked that question. Trey had nothing to feel guilty about. Hell, if anything, Luke was to blame for what happened.
    “Well, that’s easy to believe.” June turned to Trey. “Did he tell you how he bossed me around as a kid? Always made me play GI Joe, and never—not even once—played house with me.”
    Trey shook his head. “He’s never mentioned you before.”
    “What?” she asked.
    “I heard about you from some local folks,” Trey explained. “I work on their homes with Luke, but they didn’t say much. Just that Miss Pru had a granddaughter.”
    June’s shoulders rounded forward and she seemed to sink two inches into her chair. Then she gave him that look, wrinkling up her forehead and widening those big, brown eyes. Aw, shit. Somehow that’d hurt her feelings. Why did women try so hard to take offense to every little thing?
    “He never told you we grew up together here, in this house?”
    “Wait,” Trey said, pointing his fork at Luke. “So she’s like your sister?”
    “Jesus Christ, no!” He’d never, ever thought of June as a sister. A best-friend-by-default, and in later years, an object of lust, but never a sister. The incestuous implication made him shiver.
    “Lucas Gallagher, I won’t have the Lord’s name taken in vain!” Pru shot to her feet and shook her bony index finger at his nose. “You’re not too old for the wooden spoon.”
    “Yes, ma’am. Sorry.”
    Trey sat back and rubbed his stomach like he’d filled it too full. “I’m confused.”
    “Well,” June said in a voice sour as a year-old lemon, “I’ll be happy to explain, since Luke never did.” She focused on the striped wallpaper behind his head. “My parents died when I was seven, and I came to live here.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Thanks.” She smiled at Trey and softened a little. “Luke lived on the next farm, and there weren’t any other kids around, so we played together a lot. Then he came to live with Grammy and me when he was twelve. I assume he told you why.”
    Luke pushed back his chair and began clearing the table. “I told him my white trash mama went Christmas shopping and never came back. Is that close enough to the truth for you, Junebug?”
    June’s cheeks flushed, and she pressed her red lips together.
    But Luke never told Trey about his little sister. Abandonment was one thing, but a mother choosing to take one child and discard the other—like a goddamn game of rummy!—was different. Like he was inferior, not worth keeping. Luke had been a spitfire pistol of a twelve-year-old, all skinned elbows and dirty fingernails, snatching cookies, burning through his mama’s patience, and leaving nothing but muddy sneaker prints behind. Mama’d left a note claiming she couldn’t handle being a single parent to both kids, so she took his four-year-old sister and hitchhiked to California to find her deadbeat boyfriend. She’d kept the easy child, and left him without another word.
    “Let me get this.” Pru pulled the butter dish from Luke’s hand. “June and I can clean up later. There’s a melon in the fridge. You three take it on the porch while I make a call.”
    June made a move for the refrigerator, but Trey darted in front of her and insisted on carrying the watermelon outside. Luke wasn’t hungry anymore—thinking about his mama always killed his appetite—but he followed along and pulled a rocker to the porch rail so he could sit back, kick up his feet, and watch the stars. A cool night breeze rustled his hair and tickled the back of his neck. The air was sweet with honeysuckle, which brought back memories of other summer nights when he and June used to eat watermelon out here and spit seeds onto the front lawn.