Read Roundabout Road (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend Book 2) for Free Online Page B

Preacher’s
Bend.” He shoved his plate forward, looking as if only to do something with
hands. “I don’t have to sign a goddamn thing if I don’t want to just to make
your life easier.”
    “Jake!” Her voice had turned into a near plea.
    Jake had always been a sucker for a pretty face, and hers’
was about to fall apart within matter of mere seconds. There would be nothing
pretty about it after that. She wouldn’t get her way. The checked fury in his
tone of voice told her so.
    “No, Little Darlin’. End of story. I don’t think I can
make it any clearer.”
    With deliberate arrogance he reached for another fry
off his plate and acted as if his world hadn’t suddenly crashed in around him,
as hers had done.
    “But you don’t understand,” she sped out. Her eyes
filled with unshed tears.
    “Oh, I understand perfectly, Liddy. I’ve always
understood you. You’re easy to read.” He tossed the uneaten fry back onto his
plate, looking to have lost his appetite. “You want an annulment from me. But
you’re not getting one today. Not from me, not today. And unless I’m brain-dead
. . . not ever!” He slammed his fist in futile anger onto the table, causing Liddy
to jump in her seat.
    “H—ho w did you know?” Again, she chewed on her bottom
lip to hold back the tears.
    “This is Preacher’s Bend, Liddy. Not some Goddamn far
off distant planet, in some far off distant galaxy within no-man’s land. We do
get the newspapers here.” Jake shifted his body to lean over their shared table,
resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his knuckles. “Contrary to
popular belief, and to what you have always thought as my rather low
intelligence level, I do read the papers. All you ever wanted from me was what I
could give you between the silk sheets. I knew this from the very beginning. That
particular talent of mine, along with the many others you’d tried to
gain from me, I very easily put two and two together.”
    Jake once again leaned back in the booth. “From the
moment I set eyes upon you across this restaurant I knew you were here for one
thing, and one thing only. You’re here to get your way.”
    Mr. Giotti took a moment all to himself to let this
sink in. Perhaps to let the fact of her being here, only to get something out
of him, was not, in some way, shape, or form, eating at his soul. Once it could
seep down to the heels of his feet, he continued as if it did not matter a hill
of beans anymore; as if what they’d shared was little more than a mistake.
    “Little Darlin’ I would say for the first time in your
terribly spoiled life . . . you won’t be getting your way.”
    Liddy’s fury turned mutinous. “How dare you?” Her life
hadn’t been spoiling. Rotten maybe. Okay, yes, incredibly rotten. But certainly
not spoilt? She was from the other side of the tracks, for Pete’s sake! You
know? The place where all the married men wandered to late at night, the place
where a good name became a bad one in the blink of an eye, and by the drop of
the pants.
    Yet, so was he. Jake knew exactly what her life had
been like before now. And what she’d done to change this fact. It wasn’t a
pretty picture to look at. In fact, her life in Preacher’s Bend had been downright
ugly. A little domestic abuse; stuck home, with no way out, until she turned
eighteen. A few too many fists to the side of the head while her father far too
intoxicated to notice exactly what he was doing. Or, to whom he’d been doing it
to.
    Now she could claim two dead parents because of her
father’s drinking. Lucky her! 
    He was fully
aware her life had been anything but good. Why would he even say otherwise?
    This was why they’d been so good together. Why she’d
wanted him so badly ten years ago. She finally escaped from the only life she’d
ever known. Liddy became a survivor, dissecting herself from what most would
call pure living hell.
    Then, in the end, she’d thrown it all away by marrying
a womanizer; and