Break On Through by Ridgway Christie

Author:Ridgway, Christie [Ridgway, Christie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary romance
Publisher: Christie Ridgway
Published: 2015-01-12T23:00:00+00:00

From his place beside her perched on the top of a picnic table, Reed glanced at Cleo, saw that she continued to stare at her children playing on the equipment at a suburban park ten miles outside their neighborhood. Upon getting that phone call, she’d raced into jeans and a T-shirt. Shoved her feet into a pair of flip flops.

He wasn’t sure she’d even realized he’d climbed into her car, riding shotgun on her short trip to the local elementary school. When she’d gone inside, he’d hung out in the parking lot. Upon her return a half-hour later, this time with the kids and their backpacks in tow, she’d blinked as if she was surprised to see him.

Eli had looked wary and Obie just like the bouncy little kid he was. He’d told Reed that his mom was taking them out of school early as a special treat and they were getting ice cream before lunch.

The expression on his big brother’s face revealed there was more to the story.

Now, post strawberry and chocolate cones, the kids were running off the sugar rush.

He opened his mouth, but Cleo beat him to start the conversation. “Why are you here?”

Christ, did he have to explain? “I heard morning ice cream. Irresistible.”

“I mean, why did you get in the car in first place?”

Because her response to that call indicated there was some kind of trouble. And minutes before she’d answered it, he’d been buried deep in her body. Everyone knew he was aloof and detached, but he’d smelled of her sex at that moment. His conscience wouldn’t allow her to go off alone wearing that expression of almost-panic.

“Reed?”

He shrugged. “What any man would do.”

She choked out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.

The noise seemed to wring his previously hard, inflexible heart. His hand rubbed at the pain in his chest and the truth was, if he was any closer to home, he might have run there to escape it.

“You should tell someone what’s going on,” he heard himself say.

“You?”

Not him. He liked his imaginary world where the monsters were ones he made up and that he could vanquish when he liked. Real life didn’t work that way and he didn’t want to be sucked into a drama that involved nervous children and bruised women.

Squeezing shut his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. But the memory of those photos of her wouldn’t go away. Like the dangling legs, the small shoes, they’d been branded on his psyche.

“What happened today?” he asked.

Her hands were tightly entwined with each other, the knuckles white. Their grip was too tight. Reaching over, he worked at the knot of fingers. Once one hand was free, he brought it to his thigh and covered it with his. “You’re cold,” he said, which spoke to her emotional state, because the outside temperature was near eighty.

And yet her skin was icy. Nothing like the flushed warmth of her limbs when they’d been together in bed. “Do you have a sweater in

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