Free The Liar by Nora Roberts Page A

“You get off your feet now.”
    “I’m feeling fine. Even better now.” She wrapped her arms around Shelby, swayed with the hug. “It’s so good to see you. We’ve got pitchers of tea outside, and plenty of beer. And four bottles of champagne—your mama has decreed it’s for the ladies only, as none of the men here can appreciate it.”
    “Sounds about right. I’ll start with the tea.” Shelby hadn’t caught her breath, not yet, but decided she’d catch it later. “Gilly, you just look wonderful.”
    Hair as sunny as Clay’s was dark, slicked back in a pretty tail to leave her face—round with pregnancy—unframed. Eyes of cornflower blue sparkled.
    “Really wonderful. Are you doing good?”
    “I’m doing great. Five weeks and two days to go.”
    Shelby made her way outside, onto the wide back porch, looking over the big backyard with its vegetable patch already sprouting, kids clambering over a swing set, a grill smoking, picnic tables lined up like soldiers with balloons tied to chairs.
    Her father stood at the grill—the general—in one of his silly aprons. This one suggested you kiss his grits.
    She was in his arms in seconds. She wouldn’t break down, she told herself. She just wouldn’t spoil it. “Hey, Daddy.”
    “Hey, Shelby.”
    He bent from his six feet, two inches, kissed the top of her head. Handsome and fit, a marathon runner for pleasure, a country doctor by trade, he held her close.
    “You’re too thin.”
    “Mama said she’d fix that.”
    “Then she will.” He drew her back. “The doctor says food, drink, plenty of sleep and pampering. That’ll be twenty dollars.”
    “Put it on my bill.”
    “That’s what they all say. Go, get that drink. I’ve got ribs to finish.”
    As she stepped back, she was caught in a round-the-back bear hug. She recognized the wonderful prickle of whiskers, wriggled around and hugged. “Grandpa.”
    “I was just saying to Vi the other day, ‘Vi, something’s missing around here. Can’t quite put my finger on it.’ Now I got it. It was you.”
    She reached up, rubbed her palm over the stone-gray whiskers, looked up into his merry blue eyes. “I’m glad you found me.” She laid her head against his barrel of a chest. “It looks like a carnival here. Everything full of fun and color.”
    “It’s time you came back to the carnival. You fixing to stay?”
    “Jack,” Clayton muttered.
    “I’ve been ordered not to ask questions.” Those merry eyes could turn pugnacious in a finger snap—and did. “But I’m damned if I won’t ask my own granddaughter if she’s fixing to stay home this time.”
    “It’s all right, Daddy, and yeah, I’m fixing to stay.”
    “Good. Now Vi’s giving me the hard eye ’cause I’m keeping you from her. At your six,” he said, and turned her around.
    There she was, Viola MacNee Donahue, in a bright blue dress, her Titan hair in a sassy curling wedge, big movie star sunglasses tipped down her nose, and her eyes bold and blue over them.
    She didn’t look like anyone’s granny, Shelby thought, but called out to her as she flew over the lawn.
    “Granny.”
    Viola dropped her hands from her hips, threw out her arms.
    “About damn time, but I guess you saved the best for last.”
    “Granny. You’re so beautiful.”
    “Aren’t you lucky to look just like me? Or like I did some forty years back. It’s the MacNee blood, and good skin care. That little angel of yours has the same.”
    Shelby turned her head, smiled as she saw Callie with cousins, rolling on the grass with a couple of young dogs. “She’s my heart and soul.”
    “I know it.”
    “I should’ve—”
    “Should’ves are a waste. We’re going to take a little walk,” she said when Shelby’s eyes filled. “Take a look at your daddy’s vegetable patch. Best tomatoes in the Ridge. You put the worry aside now. Just put it aside.”
    “There’s too much of it, Granny. More than I can say right now.”
    “Worry doesn’t get