The Sweetheart Rules Read Free Page B

Charlene’s cell and check on Jackson. She reached for the phone, then drew her hand back. No, she wouldn’t. Diana was trying to practice the art of zenful parenting. Meaning not checking on her troubled teenager every five minutes. He was fine, just fine. Camping with his friend’s family. Home in two days.
    Then her gaze shifted to the envelope on her table and her heart squeezed. A single white envelope, with only a few pieces of paper. She’d never thought her future—and Jackson’s—could come down to a pile of cheap white bond and some handwritten words.
    I want him back.
    That’s all the yellow Post-it said. Four words, no signature, attached to the papers filed with the court. She’d left the Post-it on the table, waiting for someone to say it was a joke, a hoax, that Sean had changed his mind yet again.
    Back? He’d never had his son in the first place. But as Diana thought about the state of her life, and the newly flush state of Sean’s, she knew there was a very real chance a judge could see it otherwise.
    Damn. Her life was a mess. No, it was a freaking implosion. Diana’s hand went to the teakettle, then she shifted and reached into the cabinet over the stove. One lone amber bottle tucked in the corner, the dust thick and caked on the curved surface.
    The craving started low in her gut, then traveled up her throat, pooling want in her mouth. When she closed her eyes, she could taste the rum, its sweet, honeyed flavor sliding down her throat, down—
    Damn. It had been fourteen years, and still there were days when the need for a drink hit her like a Mack truck.
    Her fingers danced over the gold screw top. One twist, that’s all it would take.
    One.
    Twist.
    Just one.
    Go ahead, open it
, whispered that voice in her head that she thought she had silenced the day she decided to be a good mother to her newborn son. The day she had turned her life around, and never looked back. The day she had put that bottle into the cabinet and left it there, half challenge, half reminder.
    Her fingers tightened on the cap, thumb curving around the metal band, the top nestling into the valley of her palm, waiting for a little pressure and one, just one, twist.
    “No.”
    The word echoed in her kitchen. She said it again, and again, until the refusal settled into her bones, and her hand released its grip on the bottle cap. “No,” she said again, softer this time, and put the rum back into the cabinet.
    Another battle won. In a war that never ended.

Two

    Harold Twohig.
    Just the mere mention of the man’s name raised Greta Winslow’s blood pressure twenty points. She took one twirl around the dance floor with the man at the Valentine’s Day party six months ago, and he started acting as if they were engaged or something. The man was like a tick on a bloodhound. Only bigger. Balder. And uglier.
    “And how is the sweetest petunia in the garden today?” Harold said as he strode up to Greta’s table in the cozy dining hall of the Golden Years Retirement Home. His white hair stood straight up today, a stark contrast to his bright red golf shirt. He could have been Where’s Waldo’s disinherited second cousin.
    “Go away,” she grumbled. “You’re giving me indigestion.”
    Harold just grinned and winked, then headed across the room to the lumbering herd of golfers he usually ate with. Bunch of silly old men in mismatched plaid with floppy white hats who had nothing better to do than hit a little ball around on the grass and call it a sport. When Harold sat down, the other men all gave her a wave, Harold’s arm taking the prize for most exuberant.
    Greta let out a long-suffering sigh, then picked up her spoon and scooped up some cardboard masquerading as oatmeal. Pauline and Esther rounded out Greta’s group, the usual morning trio at their favorite table—the one closest to the kitchen doors. She missed Buck Carter, the retired fisherman who had made breakfast an interesting and bawdy event. Ever since