Seducing Liselle
Authors: Marie E. Blossom
Evernight Publishing
Copyright© 2013 Marie E. Blossom
ISBN:
978-1-77130-321-7
Cover
Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor: JS
Cook
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING:
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is
illegal.
No part of this book may be
used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a
work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
For Lisa O.: thanks for the inspiration!
SEDUCING
LISELLE
Marie
E. Blossom
Copyright
© 2013
Chapter One
John parked the truck, frowning as the
rattle of the engine told him that something was going to cost him a lot of
money, probably
very
soon. He hoped the noise it
wasn’t the transmission, he’d replaced that five years ago, but you never knew
with a truck this old. It used to belong to his Grandpa and he refused to give
up on it. He couldn’t toss it away like so much scrap metal.
He got out and slammed the door shut,
leaning against the cold metal as he tried to talk himself into going inside.
His old wound throbbed and he looked at the sky. It was definitely going to
snow tonight. He stretched, wincing as the scar on his shoulder gave a deep
thrum of protest. He ignored it, like he always did, but what he couldn’t
ignore was the sound of angry female voices piercing the frigid January air. He
wasn’t sure what kind of trouble his niece had gotten into this time, but his
four older sisters seemed pretty bent out of shape over it. He stared at the house,
wondering when the hell this had become his life. Facing down a bunch of tribal
leaders in Afghanistan hadn’t been this stressful, but then, a roomful of
pissed-off females was more dangerous by far, particularly when you were
related to them. He sighed as the door opened and a woman stepped outside. Time
to man up and pretend he wasn’t scared of a group of women half his size.
“John! What are you doing, standing out
there in the cold? Get your butt in here and tell Jean she’s being an idiot,”
his sister Julie called from the porch. She was the closest to him in age,
forty-three to his forty-one. He sighed again, this time loud enough for her to
hear. When she glared at him, he bit back a grin. She was cute when she was
irritated with him.
“What did your daughter do this time?” he
asked.
Julie huffed. “Your niece got a tattoo.
And I don’t know why Jean cares.”
John laughed.
“Um,
because she’s Jean?”
He crunched across the leftover snow and bounded up
the porch steps.
“She didn’t go
batshit
when you got your nipples pierced,” Julie said, indignantly. “I even showed her
pictures!”
“I was overseas, where she couldn’t yell
at me. And besides, I took them out again.” John scooped her up, amazed once
again at how small his sister was compared to his six feet. Was she even over
five feet tall? “Are you shrinking?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, no.
I am not shrinking. I’m barefoot and you’re enormous.” She swatted
at his head.
“It’s freezing out here and you don’t have
any shoes on? You’re going to get frostbite.” John picked her up and clomped to
the front door. “Get the screen, would you?”
“Put me down, you Neanderthal!” She yanked
on his ear.
“
Ow
! Stop that.”
He juggled his sister and the screen door, trying not to drop her.
“Put me down.” Her fingers headed for the
ticklish spot behind his left arm.
“Shit, Julie, you fight dirty,” he
groused, dropping her abruptly, but not before he managed to get in a tickle
himself. She shrieked and he guffawed, foot jammed into the screen door, his
sister digging her sharp fingers into his waist. “Cut it out, woman!” He
grabbed her hands and leaned down to give her cheek a raspberry when the inner
door abruptly opened. They both froze as a burst of warm air wafted over them.
John sniffed.
Mmm
, pot roast.
“Are you two quite finished out here?”
Janet asked. Of the five of them, she was the oldest, forty-nine years old and
correspondingly mother-
ish
.
“Hi Janet,” he said feebly.
She rolled her eyes at him and hugged him.
“Where have you been hiding? It’s been a whole week since I’ve seen you.”
He hugged her back, closing his eyes and
letting himself just feel. Janet always managed to calm him down, even when he
was at his most agitated. He credited her with helping him adjust to being back
in the States when he’d gotten his medical discharge. “I was working, you know
that.”
She squeezed him harder and let go. “You
couldn’t spare one night to come to dinner?” She pulled him inside and jerked
her head at her youngest sister. Julie meekly slunk inside, looking like she
was sixteen instead of in her forties.
“I had to finish up the detail work on
that house out near Hershey,” he protested. “Do you know how long it takes to
do crown molding?”
She shook her head and shut the door,
locking it against the cold. The foyer behind her was brightly lit and he let
his eyes rove over the house he grew up in: wooden steps with the old
bannister
that he’d refinished last year, the pile of coats
on the rack near the door. He smiled wryly, wondering how the hell his sisters
and niece Beth managed to live together without killing each other. He’d go mad
if he had to sleep in this house.
“Tell me again why you all live here? And
where is everybody? I could’ve sworn I heard you fighting,” he said, just to be
irritating.
Janet smacked him on the arm. “We live
here because it’s easier to take care of one monster-sized house than four
small ones, idiot. And I made them go to the kitchen before the roast burned.
Arguing in the foyer is just stupid. And I didn’t hear you complaining about
having to live here when you came home two years ago.”
He grimaced good-naturedly, remembering
how comforting it had been to sleep in his childhood room when he’d been
recovering from the injury that had led to his discharge. He couldn’t argue
with that.
“Bionic Uncle John!”
Beth came running into the foyer and threw herself into his arms. “
Wanna
see my tattoo?”
He hugged the sixteen-year old close,
grinning at her nickname. She thought his shoulder implant was cool. He loved
that she took what he regarded as a horrible, career-ending injury, and made
him feel … well, not good about it, but maybe okay. He looked at the small
design etched into her skin. “It’s very pretty,” he said, wondering what the
hell it was supposed to be. It looked like words, kind of? Or maybe the tattoo
artist slipped and this was the result. No wonder Jean was so
torqued
up about it.
“Oh please, you don’t even know what it
is,” Beth complained. She pulled her arm back.
“Okay,” he said, trying to buy time. “What
is it?” he asked sheepishly. He squinted. It didn’t help. “I like the color?”
he tried, but she just rolled her eyes.
“It’s a
Fus
Ro
Dah
tattoo,” she said.
“
Fus
Ro
Dah
?”
What the hell
was that?
She rolled her eyes again and he wondered
how she managed to avoid getting a headache when she did that. She rolled her
eyes a lot.
“It’s a
Skyrim
meme. It’s a shout meaning ‘force’ and you can use it to kill dragons. Also,
the
vids
on the internet are hilarious.”
“You got a video game meme inked on your
body?” He blinked. “No wonder Jean is freaking out,” he muttered.
She huffed and dragged him down the hall.
“She’s not freaking out over this, jeez.”
He followed his niece, hoping he’d managed
to stomp off most of the snow on his boots. If he left puddles on the hardwood
Jenn
would kill him.
“That’s not what your mother told me,” he
said, poking Beth in the head.
She batted at his hand. “Well, she’s
clueless, like usual. Jean is freaking out because my Dad’s sister is coming by
this afternoon to meet me. Apparently, she had no idea me and mom existed.”
He stopped short. Julie ran into him,
muttering about stupid men under her breath. John didn’t know if she meant him
or her late, unlamented husband, and he didn’t care. Janet stopped, too, eyeing
Beth as if she’d just pulled out a live grenade and waved it around. He figured
she must have tried to convince the girl to approach the subject more
carefully, but well, Beth was young. Teenagers weren’t known for their tact.
“Your father has a
sister?” He very carefully did not modify the ‘father’ part of his question
with
asshole, deadbeat, loser
, but he wanted to. Oh, did he want to. But
no, he was an adult and he had to set an example. “And she’s coming here?” he
asked. His appetite had abruptly vanished despite the delectable smells coming
from the kitchen.