Read While You Were Writing: Watkin's Pond, Book 2 for Free Online Page A

that story with just anyone.” Her voice seemed to be getting stronger, finding solid ground in her complaint. He mentally chalked a point up to her for changing the tone of the discussion from emotionally charged to logical. That she’d picked up, this quickly, that he’d prefer logic to emotional outbursts suggested she was paying attention and capable of learning.
    “Duly noted.” But not a valid reason for her to welch on her own agreement.
    Her sigh translated to mean she understood he wasn’t accepting less than an answer. She stood and began helping him clean up and he continued to wait her out.
    “I don’t know if you will understand this, but normal children make friends. Preston was my best friend. He taught me to climb trees. He taught me to ride a bike. When we got old enough, he taught me to kiss.” The tremble to her voice said more about emotions she wasn’t expressing than the words themselves did.
    Silence stretched out, the word kiss lingering on the air between them like some forbidden promise. Radcliffe shook his head, wishing he could shake the romantic notions she wakened away. “So, childhood friend becomes first boyfriend? A story of first love being the deepest and all that?”
    She made a soft noise that sounded like agreement before plugging the sink and turning the water on.
    “When he got sick, we’d already been engaged for a year. We were young, so young, and it made sense to get married. Anyway, they said cancer.” She swallowed and went silent again. Her hands stayed busy, as if she could wash the memories down the drain with the pasta sauce.
    “I’m sorry.” He didn’t say more, didn’t press for more answers. Survivor’s guilt…her love and he got sick and died. Horrible, tragic…
    And whatever romantic notions he had about her were probably in vain. He couldn’t compete with a ghost.
    He couldn’t even banish his own.

Chapter Five
    Skittles were her go-to junk comfort food. She only liked the grape ones, but in a pinch orange or cherry would do. She never ate the green ones or the yellow, leaving a trail of uneaten Skittles in her past to mark life’s little bumps in the road.
    Tonight? She cracked open a big bag, poured them into a bowl, and thumbed her tablet awake. Radcliffe wakened emotions she didn’t care to think about with his question about Preston. Remembering him—no, wiser to focus on her project than to linger on the past and things she couldn’t change. “So, Mister Mystery, you think you can get under my skin and out-research me? Bring it, dude, bring it.”
    Searching his name, ignoring the bookmarks she’d created in her earlier research of him, she reread through article after article, trying to see if there was something she’d missed. Ones that skimmed over him, glossed over his less than stellar personality, and otherwise told her nothing she didn’t already know. Chewing two candies at once, she flopped backwards and closed her eyes.
    Sitting back up, she opened her favorite online bookstore and searched his name. She’d promised to read two of his books anyway… Picking the first two that populated under bestselling, she purchased them and then opened the browser back up.
    Assuming he was from this area, or at least his family might have been, she searched for the local newspapers—and there turned out to only be one. God love small towns…
    And then reached blindly for more candy when she found the marriage announcement. “Holy shit, the ogre had a bride.”
    Another five minutes of searching gained her a picture of his wife—stunning. No other word would describe Mrs. Lila McQueen with her porcelain doll face and athletic little body. Apparently the happy couple met at school in California, a lifetime away from the small town he now lived in.
    No pictures of her downstairs…no pictures of anyone that wasn’t a thousand years old. Plus, she’d accidentally eaten a yellow candy.
    Spitting it into the nearby garbage can, Sheri