Free My Heart Can't Tell You No by M.K. Heffner Page A

watching her eat,” Sarah explained with a tired voice.
    “Her weight? What’s wrong with her weight? She looks fine!”
    “She was starting to pick up a few pounds last winter and Jack wouldn’t let her live it down.”
    “But she’s not fat!” Joe insisted.
    “Well, she’s . . . changing. That’s all. She’ll be fine,” Sarah reassured him. “You just happened to look at her the wrong way, at the wrong time.”
    “Where’d she go? I better go apologize.” Joe got up from the table and glanced across the creek at the crowd of boys swinging from a Tarzan rope.
    “Over on the swing with the gang from Tenth Street,” Lew told him, still finding the situation amusing. “Maybe you better go over there and save those young guys before she takes out her wrath on them.”
    Joe crossed the bridge, feeling a surge of anger burst within him when he saw four boys aged anywhere from fifteen to seventeen years, standing among the group of younger children. They were all waiting for their turn at the thirty-foot long rope that swung precariously from a half-dead tree over the creek.
    “Here, I’ll get it for ya.” One of the older boys handed the rope to Maddie.
    By the time Joe reached the small crowd, Maddie was on the full arc of the swing, the rush of air lifting the bib of her overalls away from her body and exposing breasts covered with the minimum of cloth. It was evident that she was unaware of it as she came back to land on the bank with an agility she hadn’t displayed with her uncle.
    “Where’s your shirt?!” Joe growled as he grabbed her arm and pulled her up the bank.
    “O-over there. Why?” Her eyes were huge as he picked up the discarded T-shirt, glanced across the creek to the party, then pulled her up the fifteen-foot-high dike and down the other side. “It was hot, so I took it off! I have a tube top on underneath!”
    “Put it on!” He threw the shirt at her.
    “No!” She turned and started running back up the dike, but he ran after her, the steep incline and the thick grass making their chase a slippery one. As he grabbed her ankle to stop her, his feet slipped out from beneath him and he landed on her legs, his face falling barely an inch from the partially exposed flesh of her small well-rounded bottom. The sight itself made his muscles tighten immediately. He had a sudden urge to bite that firm mound—instead, he turned her struggling body around and pulled her down next to him. “Leave me go! Lewis took his shirt off and you didn’t yell at him!”
    “Lewis is a goddamned boy! Jesus, are you that stupid?” His insult hit its mark as fire flared in her eyes.
    “You go straight to hell, ya big horse!” She started to rise but he pushed her back down and pressed his leg over her thighs as he held firmly onto her shoulders, refusing to let her go back to the older boys until she was dressed properly.
    “Put your T-shirt on.”
    “No! Ya can’t see anything! My bib’s covering me!” Her angry struggles brought her hip in contact with his groin, sending a jolt through him as he held her beneath him. Her continued struggling was confusing him mentally and physically. Each time her hip bumped him he could feel himself harden more and more, but he refused to let her up.
    “You can see everything,” he said quietly through gritted teeth. “Why do you think those boys were watching you so closely? When you go on the rope, the air pushes everything open and you can see—everything.”
    Her struggling stopped as her eyes widened in horror and her hands moved to cover the bib of her jeans. “Everything?” she asked in a small voice.
    “Everything.”
    “Let me up! My God! I’m gonna kill the bastards!” Anger flared in her eyes as she tried to get up and run over the dike and give her all to carry out her threat.
    “Maddie. For God’s sake stay still!” he moaned as her continued movements against him were driving him nearly senseless, making her look at him strangely