Free Tainted by Brooke Morgan

happens if the car stalls while it’s on the tracks, when the ability to use feet might be crucial.”
    â€œThat hasn’t happened yet,” she smiled over at him. “But if it did, I might jettison the tradition.”
    â€œJettison. I guess with all the reading you do, it’s natural to use a word like jettison.”
    â€œI’m just trying to impress you,” she said, thinking, If this is flirting, maybe I can do it after all . “In a few seconds we’re going to pass the graveyard. You have to hold your breath while we do—when we’ve cleared it, you can make a wish.”
    â€œNo bad luck and a wish. Any more traditions? Do we get out and crawl around the car when we pass the third lamp-post on the left so we can have certain good luck and another wish?”
    â€œThere, look, the graveyard’s coming up. Take a deep breath.”
    â€œWhatever you say.”
    They inhaled together. After they’d passed the last grave, they exhaled together.
    â€œWhew. I should stop smoking.”
    â€œThe cement road stops ahead here, see. And the road to Birch Point begins. That big white building on the left is a Catholic retreat, right at the beginning of the Point. We’re lucky it’s there; if it weren’t I think there’d be a huge development of condos.”
    â€œAnd that ‘No Trespassing’ sign? I assume that means the road is private.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œLook at all these trees. It’s a little paradise here. God—was that a deer I just saw bounding across the road up there?”
    Holly had seen it and was thankful that it hadn’t leaped out in front of the car in the dark. It was so easy to run into one at night and she dreaded the thought of badly hurting an animal, a Bambi, bounding through the woods. Henry had given her a small handgun and taught her how to use it in case she ever ran over one and had to put it out of its misery. The prospect of actually having to use it terrified her; having it in the house, even though she’d hidden it on the top shelf of her bedroom cupboard, was scary enough. She wasn’t about to tell Jack about it: he’d think she was another crazy, gun-toting American.
    â€œThere are tons of deer around here. We have to be careful because they have ticks, and ticks carry Lyme Disease. We have to check constantly to make sure we don’t have a bite with a little red ring around it: that’s one of the signs. It’s a dangerous disease to get.”
    â€œBut how can you possibly get it?”
    â€œIt’s easy, you can get it walking through—”
    â€œNo, I mean you’re all lucked up after the railroad track and you can make a wish that you don’t get it every time you drive by the cemetery. I don’t see how you could possibly catch a disease.”
    â€œDo you ever stop teasing people?”
    â€œI’m English, remember. We don’t talk much and when we do, we tease. And look, there’s yet another ‘No Trespassing, Private Property’ sign. That’s the third I’ve seen in the space of a hundred yards. It has to make you wonder. At what point do they think it will sink in? I mean, if someone isn’t deterred by the first sign, why would they be by a second? Or a third? Is repetition the key to control?”
    â€œI suppose it is a little overzealous.”
    She drove by a wooden sign posted on a tree with the name “Madison” on it. If she’d turned right then and gone on a few hundred yards, she’d be at Billy’s house. For the past five years, she hadn’t had to think about him as she drove up and down the road. The house was empty in the winter, rented out in the summer. Billy was right, though. They were bound to pass each other in their cars or see each other on the beach. She’d have to work out how to deal with him soon. But not yet.
    Jack Dane was silent as they drove the next