Sophia's Dilemma Read online

  “Good boy for knocking, Jase,” she told him, pulling him into the room so she could sit on the edge of the bed and deal with his haphazard dressing.

  “I’m a good boy,” he repeated as his older sister redid his buttons and persuaded him to step out of his shorts and back in again.

  “You’ve almost finished a whole term at big school,” Calli said softly, stroking his white blonde hair back from his forehead. He nodded, his face innocently proud, before snuggling in for a cuddle, his five year old hands reaching around his sister’s slender waist for a moment.

  “Can I have my Easter egg now?” he asked with a cheeky grin and Calli smiled. “Good Friday is the day after tomorrow, so only four more sleeps to go.”

  Jase nodded, understanding completely, but knowing with that childish optimism it was worth a try. “Will you do my buckles please?” he asked her, looking up with his bright blue eyes. “Mummy does them too tight and it hurts me.”

  Calli nodded and smiled as he skipped off to get them, singing to himself. She loved her brothers, especially Jase, but clashed unbearably with eight year old Sadie. Her younger sister was a lot like Marcia. Calli and her mother both regularly sparked like an electrical storm, frequently causing significant damage to their surroundings. It was of little surprise that from the start, Calli turned her nose up at the blonde baby girl Marcia proudly presented. The fireworks began as soon as Sadie was able to let out that irritating whine.

  “Get breakfast, Calli!” Marcia’s blonde head popped through the open door, her first greeting of the day being a frustrated, sharply issued order, without even a smile to soften her words.

  Calli nodded once, unwilling to get into a familiar argument. Both women knew she wouldn’t eat before leaving. Her stomach wouldn’t wake up until half way through history in the third period, just in time for lunch. The doctor said she had to put weight on, but it was difficult when hunger evaded her for most of the day. The gluten free food which cost her parents an absolute fortune had a peculiar texture to it and resembled cardboard. The cereal was like something left at the bottom of a hay bale when you lifted it off the ground and her taste buds were only fooled during the first few bites.

  Marcia grunted in frustration and whirled around on her heels, her full figure disappearing down the hallway. Calli relaxed and exhaled slowly. Marcia frightened her. The anti-depressants she had recently been shoving down her throat mellowed her a little more. She was less given to the loud and never ending lectures, mostly directed at Calli for some minor misdemeanor. It was good when Danny lived at home. He pulled faces behind her back and made Calli laugh, often getting her into even more trouble, but the sound of his whispers and that smirk which never failed to set her off giggling seemed like a distant memory now.

  Calli bit her strawberry coloured lip to stifle the emotional pain. Danny died two years ago, his lithe, cyclist’s body crushed by a passing truck which turned across him on his way home from school. Everything for a while after that was a dull blur in Calli’s mind; his mangled bicycle and his creased, blood stained uniform, neatly folded by a medic’s careful hands and dropped off by the police. His loss left a raw, open wound in Calli’s soul; a cavernous insatiable pit of nothingness, which threatened constantly to suck her in and hold her there interminably. She hadn’t dealt with it, because she had no idea where to start.

  “Mum’s angry,” Jase announced, puffing back into the bedroom and shutting the door carelessly behind him. He hopped from foot to foot looking nervous and Calli instinctively reached out for his soft body and pulled it into hers. “Next door’s doggie did another poop in our front garden. Dad’s just trodden in it putting the bins out.”

  Calli rolled her eyes. Marcia detested the family next door with a passion, turning all of her unresolved grief in their direction without reservation. Their house towered above Calli’s, and it was as though the shadow cast by their structure, reminded Marcia of the spectre of doom over her whole existence. She found fault in everything they did, which was awkward, as Calli shared most of her classes with the oldest son of the family. If their dog had defecated on the lawn, which she doubted as she hadn’t seen or heard it for over six months, Marcia would never let it rest.

  “Can you walk me, Calli Walli?” Jase begged as his sister did up the last buckle and sat up again, a look of reluctance in her face.

  “It makes me late, Jase,” she replied, her head already shaking out a determined no and tears formed in his eyes.

  “Pleeeeeeease?” he whimpered, “Mum’s being scary. I want you to take me. I’ll walk as fast as fast can be, I promise and I won’t do messing abouts on the way. I won’t.”

  “No, Jase,” Calli said firmly. “You haven’t eaten breakfast yet or cleaned your teeth and we would have to leave right now.”

  Jase’s eyes bulged excitedly in his head and he nodded frantically like a maniacal head-banger from the 1980’s. “Had toast,” he beamed victoriously and Calli saw the jam stain on his clean shirt.”

  “Teeth!” Her face was stern as she pointed towards the bathroom.

  As Jase pelted noisily down the hallway, Calli noticed the flash of metal on her desk as the rays of the sun, already streaming in through her bedroom window, licked gently at the razor blade. Her father had put the bins out for collection by the sound of it and she didn’t want the blade lounging in one of the house bins for a week because of Jase. She considered putting it in her pocket and binning it at school, but if she were discovered in possession of it, wrong conclusions would be drawn. It wasn’t worth the hassle. Callister Rhodes already had something of a ‘reputation.'

  Pulling out her desk drawer, Calli found the battered little tin where she kept her treasures and dropped it in with a gentle plink. Jase could never get the lid off with his tiny finger joints straining and his little thumbs slipping on the surface. It would be safe there.

  From the Author

  I hope you’ve enjoyed this latest novel about Dane and Sophia. I’d be really grateful if you could leave me a review at the retailer where you purchased this novel. You can follow this LINK to do that.

  Reviews help authors to reach a wider audience and validate their work in the writing world and I do read all comments and reviews.

  The next book in the series is A Trail of Lies. You can check that out HERE.

  It looks at the fate of another couple, Calli and Declan and what happens when they run away together. Dane and Sophia, Calli and Declan are together in the fourth novel in this series, Gone Phishing.

  Other books by this writer:

  The Hana Du Rose Mysteries

  Logan Du Rose

  About Hana - FREE HERE

  Hana Du Rose

  Du Rose Legacy

  The New Du Rose Matriarch

  One Heartbeat

  The Du Rose Prophecy

  Du Rose Sons

  Du Rose Family Ties

  The boxed set is available containing the first 4 novels HERE

  Novels for teens/young adults:

  Free from the Tracks -FREE HERE

  Sophia’s Dilemma

  A Trail of Lies – FREE to subscribers

  Gone Phishing

  UK based mystery/romances:

  Artifact

  Demons on Her Shoulder

  The Calculated Risk Series, based in UK

  The Actuary - FREE HERE

  The Actuary’s Wife

  The Actuary in Trouble

  New Zealand Soccer Referee Series

  All Saints

  Small Town New Zealand Romance Series

  Deleilah

  Take a look at all K T Bowes’ novels HERE

  About the Author

  K T Bowes is married with three grown up children and one teenager. Originally from England, her family moved to New Zealand in 2006, where they settled in the Central North Island. She lives in the country and shares her property with a crazy horse and a very temperamental cat. K T Bowes is interested in the supernatural and atte
nds a Hamilton church. She has jumped out of planes and fallen off horses but having realised that she no longer bounces, sticks to road running.

  She wrote the first teen book, Free From the Tracks and persuaded her daughter to trial it, under duress at a chapter a day. A few hours later, she returned and excitedly pestered for a sequel, which is the book you have just read. A Trail of Lies is the third in the series. All her novels have been on the bestseller lists in their categories. Free From the Tracks and Sophia’s Dilemma have five star awards from Readers’ Favorite and A Trail of Lies has the Readers’ Favorite five stars and an Authors’ Cave five star seal of approval. It was also voted best in the romance genre for 2014 in Authors’ Cave. Gone Phishing is the fourth in the series.

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  Copyright Notice

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author. This work is the intellectual property of the author writing as K T Bowes.