If Looks Could Kill Read Online Free Page B

were with us, that she was glad you were there. She told me I should look out after you.”
    He wasn’t staring at her, though, as if he wanted to look after her. He was, in fact, staring at her as if she were a demon straight out of hell, as if he wished she would get as far away as possible from the beloved body of his wife.
    Madison stared at him in return. “I have no idea what she meant,” she lied. “I’m sorry, Kyle. I’m so, so sorry.”
    â€œYou have no idea?” he repeated. And his voice was deep, rumbling with a strange anger. “What kind of a witch are you, Madison?” she thought she heard him whisper. And she saw his hands, folded prayer-fashion over the coffin now, tighten. Tighten with power and anger. Then he stretched his fingers out, as if aware of his terrible tension. He stared at them, handsome face taut with grief, blue eyes glittering. His hands slowly began to clench again, as if he would like to wind them around her neck, as if he, too, wondered if she couldn’t somehow be responsible….
    â€œNo!” Madison whispered beneath her breath, then hurried from his side. She forced herself to go through the funeral and over to Kyle’s house, where friends and family gathered after the service. When she said goodbye to Kyle and Roger, who stood at his side, she said it with a new sense of finality.
    Madison immediately changed her major from criminology to communications. She’d always avoided acting, because of her mother, and writing because of her father, but she discovered she had a flair for photography, and though she had avoided modeling because of Lainie, she found herself giving in to friends in the school of photography who needed help putting together portfolios for job interviews.
    On a spring break trip to Las Vegas, she married Darryl. Nine months later to the day, she gave birth to Carrie Anne Hart.
    Darryl went to work for an engineering firm in Fort Lauderdale. Madison did runway modeling and an occasional photographic shoot while being a mom and working on her own photography.
    Two and a half years after their marriage, Darryl came home to find Madison in tears. He wanted to know what was wrong. There was nothing wrong, she said. She was wrong. Their marriage was wrong. He was wonderful, but she didn’t love him the way that she should.
    Well, he wasn’t so wonderful, he told her. Then he admitted to having an affair with one of his file clerks.
    Madison wasn’t sure why she was so furious, when she was appalled at herself for never having really loved Darryl. He wanted to patch things back together. He was so contrite that it was terrible.
    In the end, oddly enough, they managed to part as friends. Good friends.
    But Darryl accepted a job offer in the D.C. area. He needed to start over; she understood.
    When all three of them could manage it conveniently, Madison saw to it that Carrie Anne went to stay with her father for a few days to a week. On those occasions, Madison began to accept more and more modeling jobs. While she was off on location in the Keys on one of them, she and some of the other models got a little giddy on a drink the bartenders were calling a Storm Front. She was surprised to find herself singing on stage with the hotel’s poolside band, and even more surprised to discover that she was good.
    She was alarmed when one of the photographers showed her a few of the pictures he had taken while she was performing.
    She looked exactly as Lainie had looked before her death. Long, thick auburn hair, large, bright blue eyes. She was taller, about five-foot-eight, but her face was Lainie’s classic oval, her nose, her mouth…just like Lainie’s. She had loved her mother, even though she hadn’t wanted to grow up to be her, wild, headstrong, going through husbands like toilet paper, heedless of the feelings of others….
    Joey King, leader of the hotel band, wanted her to take a job