Read Fireside for Free Online

evening gown fell to the floor in an expensive shimmer of sequins and silk. The strapless bra had been engineered for performance, not comfort, and she peeled it off with a sigh of relief. She had nothing on her bottom half. With a gown as clingy as the one she’d worn last night, a girl had to go commando.
    “Are the towels in the linen closet?” she called to her mother.
    “That’s right, dear.” Her mother said something else, but the drum of running water drowned it out.
    Kim walked down the hall toward the linen closet.
    A strange man in a trench coat stood there, staring straight at her. He was older, with iron-gray hair and a tough-guy demeanor—and he had absolutely no business being in her mother’s house.
    Panic rolled up her spine, culminating in a scream. At the same moment, she clutched the sweatshirt tighter around her and desperately stretched the hem downward.
    “Aw, jeez, hey, didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said.
    Kim tried not to hyperventilate. “Stay back,” she said in a quiet, she hoped calming voice. Mom, she thought. She had to keep him away from her mother. Kim usually had mace or pepper spray on her, but of course last night, her purse-size aerosol had been confiscated by the TSA. “The valuables are downstairs,” she said. “Take whatever you want. Just…leave.” She gestured at the stairs, keenly aware that every movement gave him a peep show.
    The intruder turned out his hands, palms up. “You must be Kimberly,” he said. “Penny talks about you all the time.”
    Penny? The housebreaker had a nickname for her mother?
    Kim’s heart constricted when her mother came out into the hall, an expectant look on her face. “I thought I heard voices out here—Oh.”
    “If you lay a hand on either of us,” Kim warned, “I’ll hurt you, I swear, I will.” She did know self-defense, though she didn’t relish the idea of performing the moves nearly naked.
    Her mother gave a laugh. “Dear, this is Mr. Carminucci.”
    “Dino,” he said. “Call me Dino.”
    He smiled, which made him resemble that Italian crooner, Tony Somebody. Bennett. Tony Bennett. Kim felt so disoriented she could barely say a word. Caught up in the surreal moment, she offered a halfhearted smile while trying to make sense of his presence here, in the second-story hallway of her mother’s house. He really did look a lot like Tony Bennett, right down to the warm brown eyes and iron-gray waves of hair. He was gazing at Kim’s mother as though he might burst into song at any moment. Penny. No one called her mother Penny.
    “Dino is one of our guests,” her mother said easily. “You’ll meet everyone else at dinner.”
    Guests? Everyone else? Kim didn’t bother hiding her confusion. “Um, it was nice to meet you, but…” She let her voice trail off and gestured vaguely toward her room. She thought about the sign on the car. Suspicion reared up in her.

    “Kimberly just arrived for a nice stay,” her mother explained to the stranger. “She came in from L.A. on the redeye.”
    “Then I imagine you must be ready for a rest, Kimberley. See you later, ladies.” Whistling lightly, he headed for the stairs.
    Kim grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled her back into the bedroom. “We need to talk.”
    Penelope’s smile was tinged with irony. “Indeed, we do. I’ve thought the same thing for the past, oh, fifteen years.”
    Ouch. Well, maybe now they would finally get the chance.
    “I drew you a nice warm bubble bath,” Penelope continued. “We can have our talk while you bathe.”
    Kim was too tired to do anything but surrender. Within minutes, she was in the adjoining bathroom in the deep, claw-footed tub, surrounded by a froth of lavender-scented bubbles. It felt so comforting that her eyes filled with tears. She quickly blinked them away.
    Seated on a vanity stool nearby, her mother regarded her fondly. “It’s nice to have you home, Kimberly.”
    “If it’s so nice to have me home, why