Love Me Sweet (A Bell Harbor Novel) Read Online Free Page A

pulled out a bottle of wine. She wished it had a screw top so she could open it right now and guzzle it straight from the rim.
    “Hmm, let’s think,” Melody answered. “Fifty-six-year-old rocker trying to make a musical comeback versus his three hot daughters. Who do you think is going to make for better reality television?”
    “But the show was supposed to be about Dad’s career.”
    The eye roll was implied in Melody’s tone. “No it wasn’t. The show was always supposed to be about us. Why do you think they named it Pop Rocks ? He’s not a Pop without us daughters. Geez. No wonder they never call you the smart one.”
    They never did call her the smart one.
    And it pissed her off.
    Everybody thought Roxanne was the smart one. Melody was the musical one. Go figure. And Delaney? Well, somebody had to be cast as the ditzy baby of the family. The unpredictable wild child. That wasn’t her, though. She wasn’t that wild, and she wasn’t that ditzy, but carefully selected editing from the first season had certainly painted her that way. And then of course there was The Scandal.
    “I don’t want to do the show anymore. I’ve had enough . . . exposure. It was sort of fun the first season but then Boyd went and ruined everything. He completely humiliated me.”
    Boyd—as in Boydell Hampton—the preacher’s son with the baby face and the mile-wide naughty streak. The kind of guy who talked poetically about being a missionary but who was really far more interested in exploring the missionary position. And every other position he could think of. Their fling had been as brief and fiery as one of his daddy’s sermons, but that had been ages ago. She didn’t even remember who had broken up with whom. First they were together, then they weren’t, but she hadn’t thought of him in ages.
    Not until last month when Mount Lascivious erupted by way of a grainy, low-quality video. She didn’t know he’d ever recorded them in the act, but there she was, her head bobbing up and down over Boydell Hampton’s junk. Somehow that video had found its way into the media machine—the machine that regularly fed and shred celebrities’ lives with remorseless impunity—and the next thing she knew, headlines like “Delaney Masterson Masters the Son of a Minister” popped up and waved around as frantically as Boyd’s erection.
    In the last four weeks, Delaney’s name had become every late-night comedian’s favorite punch line.
    Melody’s voice over the phone was determined and calm. “We can sue him, Lane. The lawyers are looking into it. Tony thinks we have a strong case.”
    “No!” Delaney gasped. She opened a drawer, looking for a corkscrew. That wine wasn’t going to open itself. “I don’t want Tony the lawyer looking into it. I don’t want to go to court. That will only keep this in the news that much longer.”
    “So you’re just going to do nothing but sit on your ass inside some igloo in Michigan? That’s crazy.”
    “No, I’m not just sitting on my ass. I’ve decided to use this time to better myself.”
    “Better yourself?” If disbelief had a ringtone, it sounded just like that.
    Delaney’s jaw tightened. “Yes, I had a lot of time to think about things while I was driving across the country, and I realized I don’t know how to do much other than accessorize . So, if I’m going to have all this time to myself, I should make the most of it, maybe try to develop some skills that are outside of my comfort zone.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, for starters, I’m learning how to knit.”
    Melody’s burst of laughter was not encouraging. “Knitting? That’s outside your comfort zone, you crazy risk taker?”
    “Shut up. You’re missing my point. I just want to try some new things, and maybe find a way to offer something useful and tangible to the world. I found a place online where I can donate knitted baby hats for newborns.”
    Delaney could have run a 5K in the time it took for her sister