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FREE ROMANCE STORIES BELOW ANNOUNCEMENT

Read-a-romance.com officially launched September 1, 08.   For the time being, we hope to add one free online romance story every week, so it’ll take us a while to populate the site with a variety of romantic reads.  However, our ultimate goal is to provide two or three free stories a week.

We’re actively seeking stories from a variety of romance genres, so whether you read western, historical, contemporary, young adult and so forth, we hope to have something here for you to read soon.

Please note this is an all ages site, so our free romance stories will be appropriate for even the youngest of readers.

Thanks for visiting.  Please come back!

L-J Greene

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Later that night, M woke to the wretched wailing of a five-year-old.  Oh, no.  Had Alicia gotten worse?  She’d still been cranky a little too warm when they put her to bed, but M had assumed the crisis had passed.

Hopping out of bed, M was halfway down the hall before she stopped to think about what she wore.  Oh, well.  It wasn’t like she was running through someone else’s home wearing sexy lingerie.  Her pyjamas—cotton boxers with a matching camisole top—were just practical summertime sleepwear. They covered her.  Mostly.  So what if the last time she’d retied the satin ribbons holding up the top with a little too much give, allowing it to hang lower than normal.

Right now, worry about Alicia superseded everything.

M reached Alicia’s room feeling breathless, despite the short distance.  Her pounding heart hiccupped and stuttered when she found the room empty.

Listening for a moment, she hesitated.  Alicia must be in Jonathan’s room.  Since none of the rooms in this wing past Alicia’s had been on her first night’s guided tour, going any farther was verboten.

Screw it.

M headed down the hall, falling Alicia’s mournful wailing.

But her confidence waned as she approached what she expected to be Jonathan’s room.  The taking a deep breath, she clutched the door frame with one hand and stuck her head inside.

Only to be greeted, once again, with the sight of him lying supine, an arm around his weeping sister.  This time however, he lay in bare chested splendour.

Oh my.  He wasn’t too hairy. A light dusting of curls decorated an awesome pair of pecs, then narrowed and arrowed down to…ah, the waistband of a low slung pair a cotton pyjama pants.

Look away!  Look away!  This is about Alicia.  Alicia!  Remember her?

M rapped her knuckles lightly on the wood, hers eyes now trained on his face.  Which was only slightly less dangerous that looking—where she’d been looking!  When he turned his head toward her, she asked, “What’s wrong?  Did she get worse?  Should we do something more?”

He started to say something, then refrained.  He just shook his head instead.

The pain, the sadness, on his face made her want to cry right along with his sister.

The move caught Alicia’s attention and she rolled away from her brother and looked toward M.

M dug her fingers into the door frame.  She wanted to run across the room and put her arms around both of them.  Give them comfort.  Take some for herself. But she stood her ground.

“Hey, sweetie.  What’s wrong?  Are you feeling worse?”

“I want my daddy!  But Summer took him away an’ he’s never comin’ baa-ack!”

And just like that, M wanted to run again.  Only this time she needed to run away from them.  On some level she knew she had to stop feeling responsible for the sins and shortcomings of her family, but when she had the pain they’d caused staring her in the face, it wasn’t so easy.

She let her hand fall away from the door, then wrapped both arms around herself.  Her eyes swam, and she sniffed.  “I’m sorry.  Both of you. I’m so sorry.”

Finally giving in to instinct, she turned and ran.  Away from those sad faces.  Away from their tears.  For a moment she considered going back to her room, but vetoed the idea.  Instead, she headed down the grand staircase.  She needed to go out back and hear the water.  Feel the air.  Watch the moon.  And wish that all the gravitational pulls of the universe could take this burden away.

Jonathan finally found her about fifteen minute later.  He should have checked out here first, since it hadn’t taken him long to figure out this place offered her some kind of solace.

He walked over and dropped down beside her at the poolside.  Rolled up the legs of his pyjama pants, dropped his feet in the water, and aligned himself as he lay back, shoulder to shoulder with her.

He wanted to reach out and take one of her hands, but she’d clamped them tight on her stomach as he walked toward her.  “Hey.”

A moment of silence, then a ragged, “Hey.”

“She knows it’s not your fault.  We both know that.”

She heaved out a sigh.  “I know.  But…”

He moved a bit closer and butted her shoulder with his.  “There is no but.  You are not to blame.”

She turned her head and looked at him, her lower lip clenched between her teeth.  “But they’re my family.  What if… what if deep down I’m just like them?  Maybe I’m some sort of time bomb just waiting to go off.”

He watched as she sat up, pulled her legs out of the water, then wrapped her arms around them.  All he wanted to do was drag her back down.  Down into his arms.  Okay, that was a lie.  He wanted to do more than that, but for all that he kept his emotions behinds bars, he wasn’t some sort of insensitive clod.

He let her have her space.

“You’re what?  Late twenties, early thirties?  Have you ever gone “off” before?  Ever married a rich old guy for his money?  Ever driven drunk?  Shall I go on?”

Her hair, that amazing hair, lifted and floated around her as she shook her head.  “No.  I’ve never done anything like that.”

Speaking past his clenched teeth, and asked his next questions.  “Ever hurt a child?  Played mind games with them?”

This time M rounded on him.  “No!  How could you even ask that?”

“Hey, I’m just repeating your initial question.  What if you’re just like them?  Just like her.  I think you just answered that for yourself.  Rather vehemently, I might add.”

He watched as she digested that.

What had she been through in her life?  He planned to find out.  Very soon.  Because… because he’d finally stopped fighting with himself and admitted the truth.  Em…otional?  He chuckled silently.  No, that would have to be his moniker henceforth.

Em McCallister was his type.  The woman for him.  He’d been fooled by the packaging at first, but his eyes could see clearly now.  He wasn’t sure when it had happened but he supposed it was when he let his heart have free rein.  Stopped trying to rule every decision, every action, with logic.  Cold, unfeeling logic.

With the layer of ice burned away by the stoked fires of his heart, Em…brace, and all the qualities that made her special, became clear.

Strength.  Courage.  Compassion.  Empathy.

He’d been comparing her with Daphne and finding her wanting.  Sure, each time he did it he found a little less fault in her, but he’d been tenaciously hanging on to his own dictate of a wife of a certain standard.  As if growing up with certain social privileges made someone a better person.  Better wife material.

Maybe the time had come for him to start coming to terms with some of the events of his childhood.  Events he’d never told anyone about, even his father.  How could he?  Instead, he’d let them shape his life, his choices.

To the point where me could have made the biggest mistake of his life.

Installment 39 Coming Soon!

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Thanks to Nan Donahue for sharing one of her manuscripts.