Love Spell Read Online Free

Ashworth? This is Lindsay Sullivan of Sullivan and Self Private Investigators. I was wondering…”
     
    A half hour, and seven, short phone calls later, Lindsay had come up blank. She checked to see if the free, local ad she’d put out last week had received any hits. The page’s view count was dismal, and there had been no click-throughs. Then again, she had a hunch about what to expect when resorting to one of the painfully few “no-cost” options. When she had checked them out, her detective sense smelled something fishy about all but one of them, and even that ad firm didn’t look encouraging. She supposed she could go door to door, but that was hardly professional.
    An image popped into her mind of a hulking man with the word “Bills” tattooed across his chest. He was beating on a little nerdy guy wearing a t-shirt with the logo “Lindsay’s Bank Account” on it. She felt sorry for the nerd.
    “God,” she whispered, looking up at the sky, “I know I don’t pray much, and I’m probably not a top priority for you, what with world hunger and all those other problems, but would you mind helping me out a bit? Maybe, send me a case? Or two?”
    No answer. She wasn’t sure she had expected it. But who knew? Maybe God had an answering machine as well, and had to sort through billions of prayers one at a time. No, He would have a proper staff to handle His secretarial work. He probably didn’t have a lease either. Maybe she should have gone to school to be a goddess. Did they even have schools for such a thing? Either way, being a supernatural being would certainly be an adventure.
    The urge to use the ladies’ room brought her back to earth. Lindsay made her way around her desk. In a rare, clumsy moment, her foot snagged a teetering pile of boxes. She yelped as a half dozen of them crashed down, spilling their contents all over the floor. She groaned.
    “Well, it’s not as though I was doing anything else right now.” She excused herself to freshen up. She’d deal with the mess in a moment.
     
    9:30 rolled around before Lindsay declared the disaster “conquered.”  She looked at the rearranged stack with satisfaction before turning back to her desk. An unexpected upshot of her little accident was that she had unearthed some of her old high school paraphernalia. Maybe a little mental break would help clear her mind and bring in some fresh ideas. She put her old notebooks aside and went straight for the yearbooks.
    Freshman year. The picture above her name made her shudder. Had her hair really been that ratty? And those freckles? Ugh. As if being strawberry blond hadn’t been bad enough. Then there was the acne. She slammed the book shut.
    Sophomore year. Her family had moved to a different town and gave her a fresh start. The acne was mostly gone by then, but she wasn’t sure if braces made such a good replacement. She’d straightened her hair, but what was with the little poof of bangs on the right side of her head? Why had she been so hideous back when guys were still worth thinking about? She wondered if there was some sort of “reverse plastic surgery” to make a girl look a tad disgusting to keep them away now. No, she still had her dignity, and Mom would never pop to cover a nose job designed to make her look like a toucan.
    She looked through the yearbook signatures she’d gotten from various friends; she was surprised at how few there were. She slightly regretted her plan to skip her ten-year reunion when it came up, but she had her reasons. As she started to close the book, the pages flopped down to reveal the seniors. A face stopped her cold. That lazy, blond hair over those gray-blue eyes that she used to think shined for her. There was that familiar, half grin that never quite left his lips, and seemed to get wider when he saw her. It was almost a shame that she’d scribbled a big, black X over his picture; it was the only one of him she had. No amount of scribbling would ever erase