Kicks for a Sinner S3 Read Free

gotten the future wrong. More Billodeaux babies were on the way for sure, and Nell couldn’t stop them from coming.
     

TWO
     
    Cassie Thomas sat beneath one of the massive live oaks dotting Joe’s ranch and watched the redheaded boy she’d given birth to as a teenager six years ago circle the riding ring on a pinto pony named Boo. She could stand another typical Billodeaux family weekend with a smile on her face as long as she managed to be close to Joe.
    Sure, as a kid recovering from leukemia, she’d had a crush on his former wide receiver, Connor Riley, a really good guy devoted to his wife, Stevie. Who could compete with tall, blonde Stevie Dodd, glamorous sports photographer? That couple didn’t want children interfering with their fabulous lives. At least, they had none so far. But Joe married Nell only so he could make a home for his illegitimate son, Dean, and then convinced Nell to adopt her Tommy.
    Tommy could not have better parents, she granted. Once Joe Dean Billodeaux settled down, he’d done so with the same kind of concentration and joy he brought to the game of football. His teammates often called him Daddy Joe, but barely over thirty and hardly an old man Cassie still found him so very attractive. His love of children made him even more desirable in her eyes.
    Nell, being a child psychologist unable to have children in the normal way, did love her Tommy as well as Dean and the twin girls produced from her sister’s eggs and Joe’s sperm, but she had to be the organizer and the disciplinarian because Joe preferred to have fun with the kids whenever he spent time at home. And Nell had been beyond kind to her, always allowing Cassie to be part of Tommy’s life.
    She did feel some qualms about trying to lure Joe away from Nell, but she could offer the quarterback so much more. Coming from a family with eleven offspring and outstanding fertility, she could give him as many children as he wanted. She’d overheard Nell again today tell Joe she thought they had a big enough family and to shut up about those little frozen babies. The dispute had been going on for some time, the first wedge in their marriage. As a Catholic exactly like Joe, Cassie understood how he felt while Nell obviously did not.
    When she first decided to follow in Nell’s footsteps and become a child psychologist, she gave her reasons as a desire to be closer to Tommy and to help other foolish girls lured into sex with older men, then abandoned as Bijou had done to her in Arizona. Okay, Nell had saved her and lost one of her newly implanted babies in the process, but she’d given Nell her son in reparation. That made them even.
    As she grew up, Joe became the attraction, a perfect match for her with their mutual love of horses. Nell could barely ride no matter how often her husband took her out on long excursions. Sometimes, Cassie watched the children for them until they returned with Nell always looking disheveled as if she’d fallen from her mount a few times. Joe said Cassie sat a horse tighter than a cocklebur.
    Since Bijou and all through college, she’d given herself to no other man, saving herself for Joe, she believed. Nell, she knew from a few frank conversations between only the two of them, had been with at least four men before marrying Joe, maybe more. Of course, Joe probably had been with hundreds of bed partners back when he prided himself on womanizing, but that’s the way God created young men. He’d settled down now and deserved someone younger and fresher than Nell. Once Joe divorced his wife, she and he could take Tommy and Dean, leaving Nell with the girls so she wouldn’t be all alone. They’d all remain friends like Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Bruce Willis. She did love reading about situations like that in the tabloids, her secret guilty pleasure.
    “Lookit, Mama Nell! Lookit, Mama Cassie!”
    Tommy dropped his knotted reins over the horn, stood up in his saddle, and raised his arms toward a chilly