Only His Read Free Page A

both. But I didn’t. I’m here, getting drunk. Leave me alone.”
    Her sisters exchanged a glance. If Nevada put her mind to it, she could probably figure out what they were thinking. After all, they were genetically the same. Butright now all that concerned her were the smells drifting back from Jo’s small kitchen.
    â€œNevada,” Montana began, her voice gentle.
    That was all it took. A single word. Nevada shook her head. Why couldn’t she be like other people and hate her family? At the moment, a good estrangement sounded like the perfect plan.
    â€œFine,” she grumbled. “The interview wasn’t with Mr. Janack, aka Elliot, the father. It was with Tucker.”
    â€œThat’s the guy who was friends with Ethan all those years ago?” Dakota asked. She sounded as if she wasn’t completely sure of her facts. That was reasonable, considering her only encounter with Tucker would have been over a summer, back when they were kids.
    â€œI don’t get it,” Montana said. “He’s in charge now?”
    â€œRunning the whole project,” Nevada said, still watching the door leading to the kitchen.
    â€œWhy is he a problem?” Dakota asked.
    Nevada abandoned her hope for food anytime soon and faced her sisters. “I know Tucker. When I went off to college, Ethan told me to look him up, which I did.”
    â€œOkay,” Montana said, sounding confused. “But isn’t knowing him a good thing?”
    â€œI slept with him. Let me just say, that makes for an awkward interview.”
    Jo appeared with the quesadilla and several napkins. She set herbal tea in front of Dakota and gave a diet soda to Montana. After placing a basket of chips and bowl of salsa in the middle of the table, she left.
    Nevada picked up a slice of the quesadilla and took a bite, ignoring her sisters’ wide-eyed stares.
    â€œNot today,” Montana said in a whisper. “You’re not saying you slept with him today.”
    Nevada finished chewing and swallowed. “No. I didn’t have sex during my interview. It was before. Back in college.”
    She ate some more while her sisters stared at her expectantly. Montana cracked first.
    â€œWhat happened?” she demanded. “You never told us this.”
    Nevada wiped her hands on a napkin, then took a sip of her drink. The buzz was stronger now, which would make exposing her secret easier.
    â€œWhen I left for college, Ethan asked me to look up Tucker. He was working in the area.”
    Although she and her sisters had been extremely close, they’d made the decision to go to three different colleges. The four years apart had given them the chance to solidify their identities, or some such crap, she thought hazily. While it had seemed like a good idea at the time, now she wondered if things would have gone better with one of her sisters around.
    â€œI wasn’t especially interested in spending time with a friend of his,” she continued, “but he kept bugging me, so I did. I called Tucker and we agreed to meet.”
    She still remembered walking into the huge open room in the industrial complex. The ceilings had probably been thirty feet high, with light spilling in from all the windows. There’d been a huge platform in the middle and a beautiful woman wielding a blowtorch. But what had caught Nevada’s attention was the man standing by the platform. The grown-up Tucker was very different from the kid she’d remembered.
    â€œIt was one of those things,” she said, taking another bite of the quesadilla, chewing and swallowing. “I took one look at him and fell head over heels. I didn’t have a chance.”
    Montana leaned toward her. “That’s not a bad thing, right?”
    â€œIt is when the guy in question is madly in love with someone else. He had a girlfriend.” If one could give Cat such a pedestrian title. “I was crazy about him, and he was