Almost Home. Debbie Macomber

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ “how do you think I feel seeing myself in your movies? All the dumb things we’ve done? Everything stupid I’ve said in my life since we were kids streaming out of some actress’s mouth?”

      “Think of it as being famous without the fame. You’re never mobbed by paparazzi, are you? There’s something to be said for that, sweetie. And you don’t need to hire bodyguards.”

      I grunted and tugged at the eyeholes in my hat. Brenda and I wrote wild, crazy, thrilling, romantic stories, sometimes with talking animals, when we were kids. She went on to write screenplays, and I went on to be a children’s book writer and illustrator. Who knew we’d end up clinging to a roof?

      We moved onto the skylight a smidgen more when the Man-eater stood up.

      “Can’t he see the piranha beneath the makeup?” I asked.

      “Nope. He’s a man. All he can see is the negligee and bra cup.”

      “Men are beasts.” I growled for effect, slashing the air with my claws. Brenda growled back at me, gnashed her teeth.

      It was at that beastly second that I heard a crack beneath my hands, then another one.

      My face froze in terror.

      “Oh no. Move slowly,” Brenda panted. “Slowly.”

      I felt the crack beneath my knees. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. This couldn’t be happening. The skylight was not breaking, was it? What was I doing on top of a skylight anyhow?

      I watched the alarm in Brenda’s eyes grow to free-flowing fright as another crack ripped through the night. My mouth went dry as stone, and my body started to shake.

      “Back up, Chalese!”

      I tried, I did, but panic turned my bones to liquid.

      Another crack. As Brenda and I locked mortified gazes, the skylight shattered completely, the noise deafening, and we went smashing through it, our fall broken by Snaky Stephen’s butcher-block counter below.

      Brenda swore. I screamed. Then she screamed. I swore.

      We landed hard, on our knees, but I did not hear any bones crack, any heads splitting open, any limbs disengaging. A piece of glass conked me on the head and splintered.

      I groaned. Brenda moaned.

      I heard the Man-eater screeching and Stephen yelling “What the hell? What the hell?”

      Perhaps he wouldn’t recognize us with our black-knit hats on? Our black leather biker jackets? Our leather pants?

      The Man-eater was still at it with her high-pitched, earsplitting howls.

      I turned to Brenda and whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”

      “Ya think, Sherlock?” she whispered back.

      We scrambled off the counter, averting our covered faces, hoping we could slink right out of that house. I’d pay Mervin Tunnel to come in and clean up the mess tomorrow. He’d keep his mouth shut; he owed me a favor anyhow.

      We had almost limped our way to the kitchen door, glass trailing in our wake, when I heard Stephen say, incredulously, “Chalese, is that you?”

      Crashing through a skylight like a drunken angel was not the worst part of my week.

      Stepping on the scale and noting that, yes, all by myself, I had bravely packed on an extra fifteen pounds was not the worst, either. Nor were the two zits on my cheek, as the zits will undoubtedly complement my hot flashes.

      Resisting pressure from Gina Martinez, my friend the pet communicator, who was pestering me to stage a “pet rescue” of a horse she was convinced was “depressed and anxious,” was not on my list for Most Terrible Part of the Week.

      Knowing that my next children’s book was already late and I was nowhere close to being done with it had my nerves hyperventilating, but it had not made the list.

      Also not on the list was Brenda’s dance on top of a bar in town singing the Pretty Woman theme song. That I went up there with her does not need to be mentioned, except it was one more humiliating thing in my life that I have done, especially since I cannot sing.

      The worst part of my week was when the reporter arrived.

      It was the morning after the skylight incident. I limped out of my car after collapsing on the sofa at Christie’s for the night, and Aiden Bridger was there, at my yellow house, on my white front porch, one of my slobbery dogs, Mrs. Zebra, in his lap. I was dressed all in black, with a truly pounding hangover and scrapes on my face that made it appear I’d been attacked by a temperamental rat. My long, black, curling hair resembled a dead pelt on my head.

      He had that gorgeous, roughed-up, been-around-the-block appearance. He was super tall, a human skyscraper with a lanky build and longish thick brown curls, and I knew that he was gonna be a problem, and not simply because my body about lost all its breath as I took him in. He was … all man. A manly man. A manly muscled man.

      “Hello. You must be Chalese.” He stood up, and Mrs. Zebra rolled off his lap and whined. She has no loyalty. If I was ever robbed, she would slobber on the robber. “I’m Aiden Bridger from the Washington Review.”

      I knew who he was. Oh boy, did I know who he was.

      With one look at him, I knew I was toast, too.

      Why? Not because he was cursedly, dangerously hot, but because that he-man reporter could blow my quiet, private life to Kingdom Come. Everyone would know who I was now, and who I was in my other life, and the scandal would be revived again, the shame, the humiliation, and I’d have to deal with all the other bubbling, sordid, sad memories and secrets.

      That, definitely, was the worst part of my week.

      And, somehow, the best.

      Chapter Two

      “I’ve told you I don’t want to talk to you.”

      I grimaced as I limped up the porch steps and tried to glare at him without salivating. Why did he have to be so yummy-rugged and full of such glorious testosterone? That wasn’t fair.

      “Yes, I know.” For a few long seconds Aiden stared right at me. His eyes were greenish, and he had long lusty eyelashes. The corners of his mouth tilted up, then back down again.

      “What happened? Were you in an accident?”

      “No.”

      “Did you fall?”

      Pause. “Not really.” I glanced away from those bright eyes and reminded myself that men are cagey, deceptive beasts and hairy vermin.

      “Did someone hurt you?”

      I did not miss the outrage in his tone, the beginning of incredulous fury. My heart didn’t miss it, either, but I told my heart to shut up.

      “No, no man would ever hit me, because they know I’d flatten them into a kidney-smeared СКАЧАТЬ