Page 4 of Shattered Secrets (Shattered Secrets 1)

“The infamous JoJo.”

Infamous? What did he know about me? Because I sure as hell didn’t know anything about him.

I smiled serenely at my sister. “I didn’t realize you were seeing anyone. He must be too insignificant to have mentioned.”

That only seemed to amuse Kane. No, not Kane. The devil.

Alma practically pushed me into the seat beside him.

He leaned closer. “You know I’m not insignificant, Barn.”

My lips rolled from one side to the other as I struggled to keep in my scream of frustration.

She goes through boyfriends like Kleenex. He’ll be out of her life before I can blink.

Somehow that gave me little consolation. It was Friday of Labor Day weekend. And unless they broke up, I had to suffer through until Tuesday with him.

“Kane is the best lawyer in the city.” Alma clutched his arm like he was God.

He couldn’t be more than mid-twenties. Maybe thirty. There were a million lawyers in New York City. I highly doubted he was the best.

But my sister had a way of seducing men that was truly an art form. Kane seemed to puff up under the praise.

A rush of disappointment came over me. He too had fallen for Alma’s magnetic allure.

Just like every other man. I didn’t know him. But men were all the same. Predictable. Arrogant.

Why Alma couldn’t live without one was beyond me.

Then I thought of Daddy and Grandpa. Somostmen were the same.

And like I’d conjured him up in my mind, my grandfather walked hand in hand with my grandmother up the boardwalk from the beach.

“I told you to put on sunscreen,” Grandpa said, shaking his head.

Grandma Josephine shrugged. “It’s just a little sunburn.”

“That I’ll have to hear about all weekend,” he grumbled.

The chair scraped when I stood. I ran toward my father’s parents, my dress flowing in the wind.

“Hello, my beautiful girl.” Grandpa opened his arms, and I rushed into them.

I inhaled deeply. He smelled like the beach and sandalwood. Every bit of my tension disappeared.

“You always have to hog her attention first.” Grandma Josephine wrestled me away from him. “How are you?”

“Better now, Grandma.”

She rubbed my back and I clutched her like I was seven instead of twenty-seven.

They didn’t care I hadn’t conformed to what society expected of me. That I dressed like I was born a decade or so late in true flower-child nature. That I wanted no part of expanding the shipbuilding empire my great-great-grandfather had started.

I was put on Earth to protect her and the creatures that were lucky enough to exist here.

My grandparents supported me in my quest, unconditionally.

“You’ve been away too long.”

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