Kicks for a Sinner S3 Read Free Page A

blue January sky. The patient Boo continued on around the ring at a steady pace. Dean shot by Tom riding his chestnut half-Arabian, Drummer Boy, and obscuring his brother’s feat in a cloud of dust.
    The twins on older ponies cried out, “Mom, make Deanie stop that!” Despite being very young, all the Billodeaux children rode better than their mother.
    “Dean, you come over here at once,” Nell commanded from her seat on a fence rail.
    Cassie uncurled her long legs. Foolishly, she’d worn heels high enough to make Nell seem like a dwarf beside her and skinny jeans so tight the word “comfort” could not have squeezed into them. Now, she hobbled across the rough lawn to the ring where Dean’s chewing out progressed.
    “You saw Tommy showing us his trick. How unkind and dangerous to try to upstage him. What if he had fallen and gotten hurt? Then how would you feel? I think you owe your brother an apology,” Nell chastised.
    Dean hung his head a little and glanced sideways at Tommy who had come to a stop beside him. “Sorry, bro. It’s just Drummer Boy is so much faster and bigger than Boo. He likes to run.”
    “S’okay, Dean. I’m glad I don’t have to ride a girlie horse anymore since you let me have Boo. Besides, I didn’t fall off. Daddy says I’m like a tick on a long-eared dog when it comes to riding.” Tommy’s happy grin squinched all his freckles together and crinkled the corners of his dark brown Billodeaux eyes. Cassie preferred to think his ability to stay on a horse came from her, not Bijou, the former bull rider.
    “Poor Buttercup, you learned your lessons on her,” Nell said with some disapproval.
    “Cowboys don’t ride horses with names like Buttercup, Mama Nell. Do they, Mama Cassie?”
    Cassie’s heart filled with warmth as she answered her natural-born son. “No, they don’t.”
    “Come on, Deanie. Let’s race.” Tommy took an illegal head start on his short-legged pony. Dish-faced Drummer Boy caught up in one stride.
    Nell shouted to the little girls to pull to the side. “Watch out for your brothers!”
    Cassie stayed back from the rails and the dust. She smoothed the pastel blue cashmere sweater over her chest and took a quick peek toward the barbecue pavilion—where Joe manned the grill—to see if he noticed how great she looked in her latest purchase guaranteed to draw the male eye. It fit snugly over a seamless Victoria’s Secret bra that made her breasts look like perfect globes and shoved all she had into a deep cleavage in the v-neck of the garment. A small gold crucifix dangling exactly the right amount above this display pointed the way.
    As a grad student and teaching assistant her income really did not stretch to include such luxuries. Their cost swelled her credit card bills, swamping her with growing interest payments. Oh well, Joe would take care of that someday—if he ever noticed she’d grown up. His eyes stayed on the burgers, hotdogs, and steaks he supervised on the grill. But that guy standing next to Joe, that Howdy they were trying to push on her, did see and went all wide-eyed, a wonder he didn’t have to blot the drool from his lips with a napkin. How could Nell possibly think she would ever go for another cowboy type after Bijou?
    Cassie twisted a strawberry blonde curl around her finger. Toning down her bright red hair at a fancy salon had cost, but the results did please men. Many had told her so, but they didn’t count. She’d let her hair grow long and trained it into smooth curls. She might have been a mixed-up kid when she first met Joe, but she did remember that before Nell he’d preferred busty blondes and redheads who flipped their hair over their shoulders to show off their breasts. The tabloids once featured plenty of pictures of the quarterback with exactly that kind of woman. She kept an album of them. Even without the miracle bra, her boobs were way bigger than Nell’s round little tits. Cassie flipped her hair over her shoulders