Family Skeletons Read Free Page A

I—”
    “It’s okay. We can talk over coffee. I think I
mastered that old percolator in the kitchen.”
    “Never mind. I brought a new coffee maker with me.
It’s still in the trunk. I’ll go get it.”
    She barely caught the curious look he gave her as
she left.
    Outside, when she caught her frowning reflection in
the car window, she forced her expression to clear. No sense wondering what he
was doing here. Just ask him.
    While she was filling the glass coffee pot in the
kitchen, the upstairs toilet flushed and the flow of water reduced to a
dribble. Talk about poor water pressure. She turned the spigot off, waited a
beat, then turned it back on and filled the pot.
    Corday still hadn’t shown when she poured the fresh
brew into a cup. He was either deliberately giving her time or he was the
slowest creature on two legs she’d ever met.
    Then he showed, dressed in tan slacks with a sharp
crease and a button-down, pinstriped shirt. And clean-shaven. No wonder he’d
taken so long. She pointed to the mug she’d placed next to the coffee maker. He
filled it and sat at the table across from her. They stared at each other.
    “Well.” He cleared his throat. “How did you get the
electricity on?”
    She squinted. “Huh?” There had to be more important
considerations to discuss than that one.
    “Evidently you’ve moved beyond trespassing. I
suppose the correct term for you would be squatter.”
    Her spine straightened. “I’m not a squatter.”
    “When I saw signs of someone living here I
immediately thought of you, and I surmised you’d been scared off when you met
me.” His tone was calm, matter-of-fact, not accusatory. “This is the only place
I could’ve been going to.”
    “I am not a squatter!”
    He was remarkably unruffled. Being met at his
bedroom door in his underwear by a strange woman armed with a baseball bat had
thrown him for only a quick second.
    “And I need to see identification before I’m going
to believe you’re closer to thirty than fifteen,” he went on. “Even in this
light, it looks like I might have a runaway teen on my hands, and that puts me
in deep trouble.”
    “You’re in deep trouble, all right. You’re pissing
me off, buddy.”
    His facial muscles tightened.
    “You want proof?” She raised her chin in challenge.
“In case you didn’t catch it, I knew your name before you told me. Thanks to
good old Franklin Corday, a long lost uncle you probably didn’t even know you
had, you now share ownership of Corday Cove with his equally notorious
daughter, Laurel. Your cousin, twelve or twenty times removed. Now how is a... squatter ...going
to know that?”
    She took a deep breath and blew it out in a noisy
rush. “You want some history to go along with that? After their divorce,
Franklin’s wife won a judgment on their daughter’s behalf, stipulating that at
his death Corday Cove would go to, and I quote, ‘surviving blood kin, including
offspring, Laurel Frances Corday.’ It was that poorly written, and it gave him
an out. He searched until he found another heir—you—just so he could stiff his
daughter and her mother one last time.” She paused, then added, her voice
dripping scorn, “You really lucked out, buddy.”
    “My name is Jonathan, not buddy.” Temper was
beginning to show around the edges of that unemotional armor. Cold, controlled,
but temper nonetheless. “And speaking of names, I still don’t know yours.”
    “Sunny.” She clipped off the word, giving him no
more information than she had to. Her temper was a whole lot warmer than his,
and she was glad to see his appear. She’d been as much miffed by the casual way
he’d labeled her a trespasser as by the label itself.
    “Sonny?” His brow wrinkled. “As in sonny boy?”
    “No. I’m not someone’s male child. Apparently you
haven’t caught on to that yet either. Sunny, as in sunshine.”
    He gave her a long look. “There is nothing
whatsoever about you that reminds me of