Free Scandal in Copper Lake by Marilyn Pappano Page A

expecting the worst of me…” She let the smile form fully. He still wasn’t convinced. It was apparent in the way he looked at her, the very air around him. And she still didn’t owe him an answer, but she decided to give him one anyway.
    “Your father’s death wasn’t even an inconvenience in your life. My mother’s death changed my entire life. She was my life. I lost her. I lost my home.” She brushed her hair back before settling both hands on the tabletop. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had a great life. Instead of one mother, I had a dozen—Mama Odette, Auntie Lueena and Auntie Charise and their daughters. They taught me everything I needed to know about being a girl, a woman, a Duquesne. They explained the visions to me. They helped me develop my sight.They were there when I went on my first date, when I graduated from high school, when I had my first client, when I suffered my first broken heart.”
    Not that it had been much of a break. She’d been seventeen, left for an older woman of twenty, and for two weeks she’d stayed in her room and cried as if she were vying for the title of drama queen of the universe. Her first day back at work at the diner, a handsome construction worker had flirted with her, and within another two weeks, she’d hardly been able to remember her ex-boyfriend’s face.
    “They were great mothers,” she said quietly.
    “But they weren’t your mother.”
    She was touched that he grasped the difference. “I don’t remember much about living here. I know I must have been very happy, because I know how un happy I was when I first went to Savannah. Mama and I must have sat at this table for our meals. She must have tucked me into bed at night, and I must have crawled into bed with her when the storms came. We lived our lives in this house, just the two of us, but I don’t remember.”
    “What does it matter?”
    Spoken like someone who’d never had a doubt about his history, himself.
    Silently she nudged the plate of cookies in his direction. When he shook his head, she took it to the kitchen counter, covered it once more with plastic wrap, then glanced at him over her shoulder. “It matters. It matters to me, and it especially matters to Mama Odette.”

Chapter 4
    I n his job, Robbie made a lot of decisions based on whatever sketchy information he had: whether a client was being truthful, whether he could create reasonable doubt in a jury’s minds, whether he could trust the story a witness was telling him. Instinct said Anamaria wasn’t being entirely truthful.
    But he didn’t know whether it was real instinct or if, as she’d said, he’d come expecting the worst of her. He was a lawyer. He’d seen the worst of a lot of people. He’d come by his distrust honestly.
    Truthfully, though, it didn’t matter whether he believed her. Distrust alone wasn’t going to keep him away from her. It wasn’t going to keep him out of her bed.
    She was leaning against the kitchen counter, hands resting on the chipped laminated top. She could go to church or appear in court in that outfit, but it still struck him as damn sexy. The skirt was neither tight nor short, but it made himfocus all too much on the curves underneath it—the flat belly, the rounded hips, the long muscled thighs. The T-shirt was substantial enough to reveal only a hint of the bra underneath, and it fitted no more snugly than the skirt, but it was enticing all the same. Soft, but not as soft as the skin it covered. Concealing, on a body that should be revealed.
    He turned his chair to face her, then hooked his arms over the ladderback. “Why does it matter to Mama Odette?”
    Anamaria shrugged. “Mama wasn’t her only daughter, but she was her favorite. She wants to know about the last days of her baby’s life. According to the doctors, she’s in the last days of her life. It’s made her sentimental. Wistful.”
    He hadn’t been raised by his grandmother. He probably hadn’t seen her more than once