Kicks for a Sinner S3 Read Free Page B

and inhaled to expand her chest. Joe flipped the hamburgers. Howdy smiled so broadly he could have caught the flies trying to get into the screened pavilion with his grin.
    Freckles gone, hidden under carefully applied makeup, her blue eyes enhanced with long, darkened lashes and dramatic liner, her lips all pouty and glossy, but did Joe Dean Billodeaux notice? Apparently not. He stuck a finger into his special steak sauce, tasted, then added a few more drops of hot sauce. Being too spicy for the children, Nell always made him serve it on the side. Cassie planned to show her appreciation of his culinary skills by slathering the concoction on her meat as soon as they sat down to eat. Joe said something to the new guy who loped from the pavilion and headed her way. He pulled up in front of her nervous as a shying horse.
    “Joe says dinner is about ready, ma’am.”
    She scowled at him. “Ma’am? We’re exactly the same age.”
    He lowered his blue eyes, but his glance skimmed across her tight sweater on the way. “My grandparents raised me, and they were kind of old-timey. They taught me to address all grown women as ma’am until told otherwise.”
    True, when Nell introduced them with such a hopeful look on her pixie face, Cassie had barely given him a once over, let alone told him to call her by her first name. Instead, she’d flounced off to sit under the oaks even though in January, fair-skinned or not, she hardly needed to sit in the shade to watch the children ride. This guy, Howdy, introduced by his real and not much better name of Howard McCoy, took the hint and tamely followed Joe to the grill. So not an alpha male, the Sinners’ rookie kicker lacked any aggressive attitude at all, it seemed. Cassie wondered how he survived on the football field, but then, all he did there was boot field goals and try to stay out of the way of the real players.
    “Fine! Call me Cassie,” she snapped.
    “Yes, ma’am, I mean Cassie. Dinner is served.” In a boyish gesture, he swiped away the hair hanging in his eyes and reset the baseball cap on his head.
    Having done his butler duty by her, he ambled over to the others to deliver his message again. She would say one thing for Howdy, he did fill out his dark blue jeans very nicely under that ugly shirt—but not any better than Joe. Nell directed the children to tie up their ponies and wash their hands.
    In the pavilion, the twins asked for someone to boost them up to sink level. Howdy tucked one under each arm and raised them to the faucet. The curly-headed little girls took advantage to engage in a splashing game that left him with wet splotches on the front of his red Sinners T-shirt worn under an open green plaid flannel shirt. He looked like a Christmas tree, a wet and dripping Christmas tree. Joe always wore the black version of the Sinners’ shirt and covered it today with a gray hoodie that stretched across his broad shoulders.
    Still, she could tell the other guy exercised more than his legs as the damp T-shirt clung to a smoothly muscled chest. Cassie shook her own curls and turned to grab the seat at the picnic table closest to Joe, who sat at its head in a folding chair. Dean beat her to the spot. Nell took a seat on Joe’s left and slid down the bench to allow Howdy to deposit their daughters between them in case either girl needed help with their food.
    “You two are like hauling a sack full of giggles,” the cowboy said. Jude and Annie giggled some more.
    “You’re very good with children, Howard,” Nell said as she distributed plastic plates, cheerful with a sunflower pattern, on the table covered with a dark green cloth, weighted down with pitchers of iced tea and lemonade. Purposefully, she placed the extra plate on Cassie’s side of the table leaving the kicker no choice but to sit next to her as Tommy had already slipped into the end place. As he slung his long legs over the bench, Cassie lifted Dean and plopped him between them.
    “I haven’t