Read Her Summer with the Marine: A Donovan Brothers Novel (Entangled Bliss) for Free Online

it’d be almost like you were down the hall.”
    “Makes sense.” Having Ashley remind her of how easily she could do this filled her with confidence as she brushed away her tears. Ashley playfully punched her arm. “Running an ad campaign sounds like it would be tons of fun, and a great distraction while you deal with your dad.”
    “I guess.” She bumped her shoulder into Ashley’s. “When did you get so smart?”
    “I’m a mom. I have to be smart. It’s like a rule or something.”
    Ellie laughed and started the car. She dropped Ashley off at her house with a promise to call that night, and drove back to McDermott’s.
    When the business phone rang three hours later, she was scrubbing the toilet in the apartment above the funeral home. If she would be living here, the place would be clean.
    Pulling off her yellow gloves, she raced to the wall phone in the kitchen and lifted the receiver, fighting the wish that it was a customer because, though she might need the money, she refused to start hoping for people to die.
    “McDermott’s Funeral Home.”
    “I have the new offer. I can be in your office in ten minutes.”
    She sank to one of the chairs around the old glass kitchen table. It didn’t seem right to just say no thanks over the phone. She might not trust Finn, but she did have her own reputation to maintain. She was an honest person who did business face-to-face. Surely she could survive the ten minutes it would take to tell him no.
    “Okay.”
    …
    Finn drove the Range Rover over to McDermott’s, the offer in a manila envelope on the passenger’s-side seat. After he parked in front of the funeral home, he grabbed the envelope and shoved open the door.
    Walking up the steps and across the wide front porch of the beautiful yellow Victorian, he had to admit McDermott’s was a homier establishment than his new, polished, somewhat sleek building. But he’d done that deliberately. He knew sooner or later he’d get McDermott’s and, once he moved his establishment over, he could rent out the modern building and create a second cash flow stream, one not dependent on people dying. Running a funeral home was a fulfilling service to the community, but a businessman couldn’t be totally selfless. He had to make a living. A second stream of income gave him breathing room.
    Confident and totally in control of his hormones, he opened the front door and stepped inside. As warm and friendly as the outside, the plush sofas, Oriental rugs, and hardwood floors greeted him.
    “Ellie?”
    “In the office.”
    He took the four or five steps toward her voice but paused just before he reached the door, twisting to the left and right, unlocking his spine. Loose, comfortable, he entered.
    “I heard you visited your dad today.” He smiled.
    Dressed in the same jeans and tank top she’d worn that morning, Ellie looked more like a California girl ready to zip off to a coffee shop than a business proprietor. Leaning back in her dad’s big chair, with her legs crossed and her tank top riding the curve of her waist and hugging the swell of her breasts, she instantly transported him back nine years, to that night in the backseat of his old Buick, when her usually sleek red hair was as sexily disheveled as it was right now and her jeans had been tossed to the front seat. He could almost feel the velvet of her thighs—
    Crap. Two seconds in her company and he was already thinking about “that night.”
    Shoving the thought out of his brain, he asked, “How was he?”
    She caught his gaze. “Lucid. We had a very nice, important talk.”
    He lowered himself to the chair. “That’s good.”
    “Yes. Especially since we both recognize there might not be many more good talks.”
    His heart tugged a bit for her. If anything ever happened to his mom, he’d be devastated. “Even though this benefits me, I truly am sorry about your dad. Sorry for how hard it’s going to be for you.”
    She pressed her lips together and