Long Time Coming Read Online Free

the final time, I'll drive," he concluded emphatically.
    Marnie would have rebelled, but he had a death grip on her arm as they went downstairs. It would have been foolish to engage in a tug-of-war she couldn't possibly win.
    Then, too, she reasoned that he was due an explanation. Her dignity was tinged with hauteur, but she went peaceably
    "Lock your door," Law told her. "Don't you have a burglar alarm system?"
    "No."
    "You should. This is a large house with lots of ways for a thief to break in."
    He ushered her through her front door and down the sidewalk to his waiting Porsche.
    Once she was situated in the passenger seat, he went around the low, long hood and slid behind the steering wheel.
    "Where to?"
    She gave him the name of the street along with the expressway exit to take. Within minutes they were speeding down the inside lane of the freeway Marnie gripped the edge of her seat. He drove as though he were strapped inside a rocket. It didn't help her nerves to notice that his eyes spent more time on her than on the road.
    Having tolerated that keen stare for as long as she could, she demanded, "What are you staring at?"
    "You. You're so tiny. You don't look like you could carry a child. And" – he shook his head in bafflement – "it confounds me that I don't remember sleeping with you."
    His eyes dropped to her mouth, then to the slender column of her neck, then to her chest, finally to her lap. His intensity made her feel naked. She was tempted to cover herself with her hands.
    "I must've been real drunk," he said roughly. "Otherwise I think I would remember having sex with you."
    "I've never had … I've never slept with you." She kept her head straight and stared through the tinted windshield, finding it unnerving to make eye contact with him and thinking that at least one of them should be watching the road. "David isn't my son."
    "Then—"
    "He's my sister's child. You and she…" She shrugged awkwardly and gave him a quick glance and a tepid smile. "It's the next exit. You'd better get in the other lane."
    He did, whipping in front of a bakery truck. The driver sat on his horn and shouted an obscenity. The stop sign at the bottom of the ramp hardly gave Law pause before he took the turn in third gear.
    "Your sister supposedly got pregnant by me, right?"
    "Not supposedly. She did. It was a summer romance."
    "What summer?"
    "You had just graduated from the Naval Academy and were about to go on active duty."
    He instantly became defensive and belligerent. "How do you know David's mine?" She shot him a withering glance. "Okay, okay he looks like me a little, I'll admit. But that doesn't prove anything."
    "I don't have to prove it," she retorted. "It makes no difference to me whether you believe it or not. Turn right at the corner."
    He impatiently waited for the signal light to change, then went through it like a bronco out of the chute. "There's the rest home," she said gratefully when they were still a block away. It would take him at least that far to reduce his speed enough to turn into the drive.
    "You can drop me at that side door. I've got a key so I can let myself in to see her at any time."
    It was a small church-supported facility with lovely grounds and a highly qualified staff.
    Mrs. Hibbs's stroke hadn't left her completely paralyzed but disabled enough to require round-the-clock nursing. Moving her out of the house had been a heartbreaking decision for Marnie, especially knowing that her mother would never leave the rest home alive.
    It had been even more difficult for Marnie to admit how much strain had been relieved when her mother left the house. For the last several years she had become increasingly bitter and impossible to please.
    When Law brought his car to a stop at the private side entrance, Marnie opened the door and placed one foot on the pavement. She spoke to him over her shoulder.
    "I don't know who sent you those letters telling you about David, but they did not come from me. I never