Sweet as Sin Read Online Free PDF Page B

Fool! This is what you get when you let your hormones do the thinking for you.
    Livvy whirled around and marched into the living room. She’d spent most of the night kissing him. Still, they’d managed to talk for hours, seated on the wooden picnic table, sharing words and light caresses. She wasn’t sure which she’d enjoyed more. When the first brush of dew made her shiver, John had kissed her goodnight, a scorching kiss that left her breathless and eager for more. She’d had multiple erotic dreams about 42
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    him all night. Well, he could just stay there, in dreamland, far away from the reality of her bed.
    The pages of the pastry magazine blurred under the haze of her anger. She’d learned to swallow many things in life but that was just one thing she couldn’t stomach. She’d shared her toys, her clothes and her house but there was no way in hell she could ever share a man. Not even a man she wanted for only a few nights.
    Her father’s first girlfriend, or at least the first one she’d known about, had also had black hair. It had stood out against the white of his car and the blue of the sky that frosty November morning.
    Her mother, lips thinned into a tight line, had snapped “Get in the car” and jerked the seatbelt tighter across her little sister’s lap.
    Andy whimpered, the boys fought for the
    window seat, and Livvy stood frozen. “Mom, who is th—?”
    “I said get in the car!”
    Livvy couldn’t tear her gaze away from the motel parking lot across the street from the grocery store. They were laughing, kissing, and looked so happy. She had never seen her parents act that way. Her father never turned his head, never looked across the street to see his wife blocking the car window from her younger
    children. But Livvy saw it all, and a childish Inez Kelley
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    innocence died with a shutting of a motel room door.
    Nothing was said on the way home. Her
    mother grabbed the grocery bags and Livvy herded her brothers and sister inside the quiet house. She stripped off their coats, found cartoons on the television and promised to bring them some cookies if they behaved.
    She tiptoed into the kitchen. Her mother stood staring out the window, ignoring the paper sacks of defrosting frozen dinners and marked-down meats. Livvy put the groceries away, filled the cookie jar and took a handful into the living room.
    Her mother hadn’t moved when she returned.
    “Mom?”
    “He’s a good man…most times. He stood by
    me when I got pregnant with you, and he loves you all. It’s been hard but he’d eat dirt before you kids went without.”
    Just to fill space, to have something to do with her shaking hands, Livvy dumped potatoes in the sink and scrubbed the skins clean. She started dicing them into a pot until she couldn’t see for the tears blurring her eyes.
    “Are you…are you getting a divorce?”
    Her mother sucked back a sob. “And do what?
    Live on welfare? Get a job waiting tables? Giving half my paycheck to some daycare to raise you 44
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    kids? No. Never you mind what you saw. It doesn’t mean anything. Never does.”
    But it had meant something that time. That time, when her parents’ loud voices filled the hall after bedtime, she knew why they argued. Pulling the blankets higher on her brothers and looking into their round faces, she made a promise to herself. She would never stand in a kitchen and stare out a window while her man was with someone else. She would never be so dependent on someone else that she turned her head when he came home smelling of perfume. No child of hers would ever lie in bed and listen to her mother’s crying.
    John could go fuck himself and that little bitch on his deck but he’d never fuck her.
    When the phone rang, she snagged it and
    barked out a greeting.
    “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
    “Hey, Leo, no, I was just watching TV.” Livvy used the lie to cover her shaking voice.
    “Well, change the channel if it ticks you off