VULTURE (a Stepbrother Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page B

lights to welcome her home and certainly she must’ve realised, the fact hitting her again and again, no husband, either.
    “I can’t,” she muttered. “I thought I could do it, but now that I’m here, I just can’t go in.”
    I nodded from behind her and placed my hands upon her shoulders, but like a scared cat she almost bolted. I withdrew. I hated myself for thinking it, but it’d been a long time I’d had any woman flinch from my touch, and I didn’t like it one bit.
    “It’s OK, you can do this,” I replied and willed her to trust me.
    Taking her hand, this time not letting go when she tried to shake me free, I stepped inside and looked at her, still standing on the outside step.
    “There’s nothing to be afraid of, I promise. I’m right here with you.”
    Her wary green eyes searched mine, deciding what she should do, perhaps trying to detect if I was full of shit or not. But finally she nodded, and her foot moved forward.

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    “ H ere ,” I said, pushing the glass into her hand. “Drink this while I make you dinner.”
    Sara took the drink from my hand and downed it thirstily. I went back to the kitchen and grabbed what I could from her almost bare fridge. I glanced at my watch; it was too late to order in, but she was in luck. Amongst the bottles of condiments there were enough ingredients to make what could pass for a semi-nutritional sandwich.
    When I went back, plate in hand, her head was lowered onto the armrest of the couch. Occasionally her eyelids blinked to let me know she was still awake. I placed the food on the coffee table and crouched down to her, the light from the kitchen illuminating the side of her face. She’d insisted on keeping the living room lights off, and I’d agreed.
    “I forgot to go to the shops,” she muttered after a quick glance at the plate.
    “Shh, it’s ok.”
    My thumb gently smoothed over her forehead as she peered back into nothingness.
    Fuck. I was so out of my depth. I had no clue what I could do to make it better or at least bearable for her. It was clear she didn’t want me holding her; I was already pushing it by stroking back her hair.
    Suddenly she started speaking. A torrent of words falling from her mouth as if they’d been bottled up, desperately waiting for their chance to escape the pressurised canister. “I’ve tried to tell myself that everything’s going to be OK, that I can make a life for myself and go back to the way it used to be, but I know it won’t be the same. Not when Eric’s gone and left me. Left me. It sounds so stupid when I say it like that. As he’s just popped to the corner shop for a bottle of milk and a daily newspaper and decided not to come back.” She paused for a second, then her face twisted with rage. “How could he do this? I just don’t understand how any of this can happen.”
    “You can’t process it all in one night. It’s going to take time,” I soothed as I watched her plump mouth begin to tremble. I opened my arms, the most natural thing I could ever do, inviting her in, and she fell into them, no longer resisting. I ran my hand up her back, wanting to reduce the pain she was feeling.
    “Everything’s going to be fine,” I reassured her, though I cursed myself straightaway for letting myself say the hollow, meaningless words. There was no guarantee that it would all turn out OK, that she’d wake up and life would be a bed of fucking roses.
    “H-how?” she gulped. Breaking away from my hold, she stared up at me as if I had the answers.
    But I couldn’t bring myself to deliver the cold hard truth I was thinking. That she was fucked—a widow past her prime… Granted, she wasn’t much younger than I, but in this day and age, she might as well take up knitting right there and then and be done with it.
    “Don’t worry about it, Sara. Everything’s going to be fine,” I repeated, knowing full well that tomorrow could bring another shit storm to her door. Shit had a way of pilling up in