Read Deceived (A Hannah Smith Novel) for Free Online Page A

serious about no strenuous exercise.”
    The man laughed as if we were conspirators, then replied with a suggestion so bawdy I was taken aback—but only for a moment because secretly, in my mind, I had already pictured that very thing happening. Ford, whom I had never heard speak crudely to a woman, or even to a man, had just opened a private door to me, it felt like. Better yet, his intimate thoughts mirrored my own, which encouraged me to speak freely about my own secret wants when and if the chance came. I’m picky about men, I seldom date, so what I felt was new in my experience.
    “Did you just say what I thought you said?” I smiled.
    “You’re offended.”
    “I’m not!” I said. “The doctor ordered you to stay in bed, so someone needs to be handy. And I’ve got some ideas about tonight myself.”
    Because my ears were warm when I put the phone away, I sat stiffly, both hands on the steering wheel. Didn’t risk a glance at Levi, who rode in silence, while I downshifted into second and watched for landmarks. Ahead, opposite a hand-painted
Acreage for Sale
sign, a mailbox gathered weeds at the intersection of a shell road. The box, which looked too small to hold mail-order wigs, had been shotgunned, the pellet holes rimmed with rust. Same with a yellow
Deer Crossing
sign and another that read
Dead End
.
    “Redneck graffiti,” I muttered, turning onto the shell road, then downshifting again. The road was a mess of potholes and ruts. It hadn’t been graded for years—not since I’d brought Loretta to console Mrs. Helms after her son, Mica, had been sentenced to prison for operating a meth lab. Her daughter, Crystal—the sweetest, quietest girl in my fourth-grade class—was already in jail for other drug-related crimes, so Loretta had treated the occasion like a funeral, bringing along a basket of baked goods and a pan of lasagna. My mother’s actual intentions were to convince her childhood friend to move into the village, which Mrs. Helms had done, but she had recently returned to live alone in the family home. No idea why—the bay-front cabin she’d inherited was the nicest in Munchkinville.
    After several hundred yards of zigzagging, I told Levi, “Hold tight!” because we were approaching a hole deep enough to hold water. It hadn’t rained for two weeks, so I expected the truck to bang hard and it did. Levi, still in a trance, seemed not to hear but awoke when his head banged the roof.
    “Ooh-ee!” he said, which is the equivalent of
Ouch!
to a Southern child who had not progressed beyond the age of ten. Then his eyes widened and his head began to swivel, taking in details as if trying to figure out where we were.
    “Tighten that seat belt,” I advised. “We’ve still got a quarter mile to go and there’s another big hole ahead.”
    “No,” he said. “Stop!”
    I couldn’t stop. Water might have killed the engine, so I spun the wheels and worked the clutch until we had cleared the second hole, Levi repeating, “No! . . . No! . . . No!” the whole time.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked, when we’d reached a smooth stretch.
    The poor man was terrified. “Can’t,” he said. “I want to go back.”
    It had taken us twenty minutes to travel a few miles; the sun was now above the trees, which didn’t give me time to waste. “We will,” I said patiently. “Soon as I’m done with my business. We’ll stop at the marina, too, and I’ll buy you a bottle of pop. How’s that sound?”
    “No!” Levi yelled, fighting with his seat belt.
    I reached to comfort him by patting his arm, but that only scared the poor creature more. There was nothing I could do but sit and watch as he kicked open the door and took off, running. Not toward the main road either. He bolted into a thicket of buttonwood trees that signaled the beginning of mangroves where, a hundred years ago, the Helms family had homestead a piece of high ground on what had once been a cattle trail that led to the