Edge (Gentry Boys #7) Read Online Free Page A

sweetheart.  I’ll be around for another hour.” 
    “You need a ride?  I’d be happy to drive you home.” 
    “No, my grandson, Tyler, will be here once he’s done with classes for the day.”  She winked at me. “Maybe you ought to stick around and meet him.  About to graduate with his masters in mechanical engineering, and handsome as his grandpa was.” 
    I smiled.  “I’m sure he is.  I have dinner plans with a friend though.” 
    She raised an eyebrow.  “Boyfriend?” 
    “No.”  I shook my head, feeling my face redden. “None of that.“ 
    Absolutely none of that actually.  I’d barely dated since I broke things off with Caleb last year and moved back to Phoenix. 
    “Just going out with my roommate,” I explained.
    “You’ve told me about her.  Emily, right?”
    “Yup, Emily. She needs some cheering up so I promised her a wild girls’ night out, which probably means we’ll go pick at overpriced salads then grab drinks at some random bar before heading home to our lonely beds.” 
       Phyllis cackled and told me to have a nice time.  I’d already stepped away from her desk with plans to visit the rest room before departing for the day when she called me back.  
    “Roslyn,” she said gently, “beautiful souls like yours always find love.” 
    They were strange words but sometimes Phyllis would blurt out things like that out of nowhere.  Even though it was a cryptic, fortune cookie of thing to say the sentiment touched me anyway.  Since I was a child I’d been told I was beautiful and although I’d always shrunk away from compliments I knew they weren’t all lying.  Besides, I had access to mirrors and could admit that it didn’t hurt to look at my reflection. Phyllis meant something else though. She was talking about being a good person, someone worthy of love.  That kind of struck a chord because I hadn’t had much luck in the love department to date. 
    “I hope you’re right,” I said wryly and blew the kind lady a kiss. 
    The streets of central Phoenix were clogged with rush hour traffic.  I’d turned the car’s air conditioner up full blast but I still felt like I was being roasted in a slow cooker. Even though we were only in the middle of March a heat wave had pushed temps into the triple digits.  I hoped Emily wasn’t in a rush to go out because I needed some shower time to clean off this sheen of city sweat.  
    Emily had once been a casual high school friend.  She’d turned into more than that when she stuck around through scandalous times that chased me until graduation day with snickers of ‘Roe the Ho’ until I couldn’t stand my own name. 
    In the scheme of things though that painful era of gossip and slurs would mean nothing.  It would almost seem worthy of a laugh, if the laugh wasn’t so brittle and raw.
    All that goddamn self-conscious agony.  I had no idea something far worse was coming. 
    A shiver rolled through me as I unlocked my apartment door and stepped into the air conditioned comfort within. Summer was technically months away but the heat kept playing tricks on my brain. Every year when the summer months loomed I became a little more anxious. Summer had been the season when I’d learned how lives can shatter in one senseless moment.  
    Emily wasn’t around yet so I peeled my sticky work clothes off en route to my bedroom and walked straight into the shower.  By the time I was toweling off I could hear that she was now in the kitchen and belting out a song from the Wicked soundtrack.  Emily would be the first to admit that her voice was only mediocre but she sang with such gleeful abandon that technique hardly seemed to matter.  At any rate she wouldn’t get any judgment from me.  I could barely manage to squeak out a tone deaf version of Jingle Bells at the office holiday party. 
    I was rummaging through my closet in search of something to wear when my roommate bounced into my room. Emily never just walked