Free The Promise He Made Her by Tara Taylor Quinn Page A

money the most,” he said. Shaking his head at the whole situation as he stopped at a red light and rang off.
    Lucy was staring at him. Probably because he was talking, and not to her.
    He stared back.
    Until Bloom honked behind him. The light had turned green.
    Half a mile from home, he glanced at his passenger again. “Do you have any idea how it makes me feel, telling her I live in a run-down shack compared to that place she owns?” Or that, outside it, all he could afford was a dingy motel room?
    The girl didn’t seem to understand the magnitude of his humiliation.
    Or maybe she just didn’t get why it mattered.
    For that matter, neither did he.
    * * *
    A T S AM ’ S INSTRUCTION , Bloom stayed in her Jaguar while he left the dog whining in his car and checked out the place.
    He was back out in no time. Which made the dog turn in circles on the front seat and paw at the door. It wanted out. Or him. Sam told her to go inside. As soon as she’d closed the screen door behind her, she heard his car door open and close. The huge dog was loose, and Bloom suddenly felt twice protected.
    The kitchen had come fully stocked. She’d investigated the night before and had planned a week’s worth of meals from everything she’d found. So maybe the spinach salad could be a complement to something filling enough for a man.
    The dog barked. She nearly dropped the pound of ground beef she’d been reaching for, and, glancing out the window, saw Sam throwing a stick he must have found in the woods. Watched as the big red dog bounded after it, landing both front paws on it before picking it up with its mouth and running it back to him.
    Sam wasn’t an ounce overweight, but he was a big guy... Lean and muscled in all the right places.
    Right. She looked away. Found the package in her hand. Sam was a meat kind of guy. She had one meat dish in her repertoire. Meat loaf. Her mother used to make it at least once a week. It had been her father’s favorite. And Bloom’s, too. Something they had had in common. Back then she hadn’t been able to discern why that meant so much to her—to be like either of her parents.
    Back then she hadn’t known that there’d been an invisible wall between them. One erected when she was two and made her first long-distance phone call without help. Her parents had been astonished. And then frightened at what that meant. They were common folks of average intelligence, living simple lives. Seeking no more than a good farmer could expect when he shared a moderate-size farm with his brother.
    They went to church socials. Liked to watch game shows on television. They went to bed early and were up before the roosters crowed.
    All things, they’d determined, that would be a waste for a genius child. She was meant to be more.
    More what, she still wasn’t sure.
    But one thing she knew: more, in their eyes, meant more than they could handle. With them her potential would be wasted, and to good farming people, waste of any kind was criminal.
    When she was four they’d had her tested.
    And when she was six, they’d pulled her out of local school.
    Bloom had hated that. She hadn’t said anything, though. Mostly because her mother had been so adamant, certain it was the right thing to do. Bloom, like most girls, adored her mother and trusted her to know what was right.
    She still loved her mother’s meat loaf.
    And Ken had insisted that any time they had meat he’d cook it on the grill. He never even so much as scrambled an egg in the kitchen, but he fancied himself grill master of the universe.
    Smiling at the ridiculous verbiage she’d just come up with, she pulled out onions, Worcestershire sauce, bread crumbs, oatmeal, ketchup, barbecue sauce, brown sugar and one egg. Her mother had also added a can of green beans, but Ken had put his foot down at that, challenging her to find a single recipe for meat loaf that called for green