Read Once Around for Free Online Page A

George or whatever the hell his name was would be ten times the father he could ever be.
    He even believed it for a while. By the time he got smart and started looki ng for his daughter, it was too late. Sarah had disappeared behind Karen's chain of marriages and name changes, and Rafe's limited resources hadn't been able to keep pace.
    Karen wanted more than the endless Montana winters they 'd both grown up with. She wanted more than life on, a failing piece of land in the middle of nowhere. She said she wanted, more for their daughter. Montana winters were as harsh and unforgiving as the land. Karen was a young, vibrant woman who yearned for bright lights and excitement and fun. And he let her go.
    So what makes you better than that Chamberlain bastard?
    That was an easy one.
    Nothing.
    Chamberlain walked out on his wife and kid. Rafe had let himself be pushed out. And maybe, if he was being honest with himself, there was a part of him that had been glad to go. He was tired of the fighting, tired of sleeping on the couch every, night because his wife didn't want him in her bed. She curled herself around the baby and shut him out as if he'd never existed. After a while, he wasn't sure he did.
    He didn 't miss Karen. He missed the idea of her. He missed knowing there was someone who gave a damn if he lived or died. Not that Karen had ever cared, but he'd been able to convince himself that she did, and for a while that was enough.
    Hard to do that when you came home every night to an empty house.
    Two empty houses if you counted Miriam's.
    He polished off the last of the fries as he hung a right onto the dirt road that led to the main house. Miriam was down in Florida , where she spent most of her year. The main house was closed and empty except for the front rooms and the kitchen. Ginny, the housekeeper, came in three mornings a week, but the place still looked more like an abandoned warehouse than a home. Miriam was the one who brought it to life.
    He went in through the back door and whistled for Jinx. A second later he heard the faint tinkling of a bell , then, a few more seconds later, the huge black-and-white cat was rubbing herself against his ankles. Miriam used to take the cat down to Florida with her, but now that Jinx was old and infirm, the vet suggested she'd be better off where she was.
    " I should find her another home," Miriam had fretted before she left for Florida a few weeks ago. "You do enough for me, Rafael. I'm not about to turn you into a pet-sitter."
    Rafe had mumbled something about letting the old cat live out her days where she was most comfortable, which had led to a sharp laugh from Miriam, who was pushing ninety and not about to do any such thing herself.
    He checked the front rooms , listened for strange noises, then headed up the sloping backyard toward his house. Jinx shadowed every step he made. He had a few scars from a tangle with Jinx back in the old days, but they'd reached an accommodation that suited them both. Neither one of them liked being alone.
    The old carriage house was set deep in the woods , and if you looked hard from the back door you could catch a glimpse of the Delaware River. The garage, a more recent addition, faced the main building. These days it was filled with furniture Miriam no longer wanted or needed. He'd been working on replacing bad siding on his house and the garage for six months now and, from the looks of things, he had another six months' work ahead of him. Six months . .. six years. It didn't much matter. One thing he had was time.
    You 'd think he'd be used to being alone after all these years, but, he wasn't. There was, still that moment after he opened the front door when he thought he heard the sound of music floating out from the kitchen, when he actually believed there was somebody waiting for him. Somebody like Molly Chamberlain, maybe, with that cascade of autumn hair and huge blue eyes and lush body pressed against his chest—
    " Get over it," he