Texas Thunder Read Online Free PDF Page B

he’d dealt with his own share of heartache.
    As if.
    Brett had no idea what it meant to sacrifice for someone else. He had money, a career, his freedom.
    Especially his freedom.
    She’d always envied that.
    Then and now.
    She pushed aside the notion. There was nothing to envy. She was this close. A heartbeat away from the rest of her life and nothing—not even a monstrous tax bill—was going to stand in her way. She had a portfolio she’d been building over the years, filled with all of the pictures she’d taken and all of the stories she’d written, and while most of it was out of date, she’d done a few recent pieces for the Rebel Yell in her free time. She’d covered Sam Hardy’s retirement party last year and the local eighth grade car wash back in the fall. Hardly front-page news, but it still showed her skill. Enough to land an entry-level job at a bigger paper should she ever get around to sending out tear sheets and some zip drives.
    She would. It was just a matter of time. Once she had everything under control here, she would get her work out to every major newspaper in the great state of Texas, and then it was adios Rebel.
    â€œListen,” his deep voice slid into her ears. “I just want to say—”
    â€œBrett Andrew Sawyer,” Ivy’s voice rang out, cutting him off midsentence. “Why, it’s been ages since I’ve seen you!” She motioned to him. “Get on over here and give your great-aunt Ivy some sugar.”
    â€œJust a second,” he called out as Callie took the momentary distraction to reach down and gather up her stuff. “Here, let me—”
    â€œI’ve got it. Really.” She snatched up her bags and purse and then scrambled for her cell before he could lend a hand. “You go on.” She sidestepped him and pushed through the doorway. The bell tinkled in her wake, and just like that, the run-in was over.
    Without her reciting the revenge speech she’d worked up a long, long time ago after he’d abandoned her down by the creek postprom and she’d been stuck making a two-mile trek to the nearest house in her first pair of sky-high pumps.
    You blew it, buddy. Now you suck. Your truck sucks. Your dog even sucks.
    But then she wasn’t twenty pounds lighter, which she most definitely was in her best revenge fantasy. Nor was she a prime-time anchor for CNN. And she certainly wasn’t dressed to the nines in a killer red dress and three-inch heels.
    No, now wasn’t the time for The Speech, and so it was actually a blessing that she hadn’t thought to lay into him.
    She would have. She’d have given him the chewing out he so rightly deserved, the one she’d never had a chance to deliver, but he’d just been so … close. And she was so tired and, well, that alone explained everything.
    That, and the fact that she hadn’t had an actual date in two years. And sex? Well, that came in at a whopping six years.
    Six years of deprivation could make any woman forget how much she hated someone, even when faced with said someone, who just happened to be the most conniving, coldhearted womanizer to ever walk the face of the earth.
    Her mind traveled back to the church and the gigantic plant he’d pulled from his front seat.
    Okay, so maybe he wasn’t that coldhearted.
    Before she could dwell on the unsettling thought, her phone buzzed. She hauled open the truck door, tossed her bags inside, and retrieved her cell.
    â€œI’m climbing into the truck right now,” she told Brandy when she finally managed to answer. “Be right there.”
    She hit the END button and settled behind the wheel. Keying the ignition, she let the engine idle and reached for a box of Hostess.
    Cardboard ripped and paper crinkled and soon the first bite exploded in her mouth and … ahh. The morsel wasn’t half as decadent as the jumbo chocolate nirvana cupcakes that her