Real Romance Read Online Free Page A

desk.
    David leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on his desk, crossing his legs comfortably at the ankles.
    "You can work me like a slave driver eight hours a day, but these forty-five minutes," he said, clutching the thick planner to his chest, "are mine!"
    "All right, big boy," she said, laying a hand on her hip. "What's in there? Honeymoon lingerie, perhaps?" She made a move toward the book.
    "Not so fast," David said, holding her back with an extended hand.
    "It's not..." Caroline's slender shoulders sagged. "Tell me it's not your sister Debbie heading down the aisle yet again."
    "It's not Debbie," he said with a flawless grin.
    "Okay, David," Caroline said with a giant lunge in his direction, "give it here."
    She caught one end of the large book in her hand and tugged.
    "Hey!" he yelped, dropping his feet to the floor, as a sheaf of papers spilled forth. "Give that back!"
    "David, I swear, if there's something pornographic in—"
    Caroline yanked and the planner tumbled to the floor, pages fanning out in wild disarray.
    "What's this?" she asked, nabbing an unfolded brochure off the floor. "A Books & Bistro events calendar?"
    "Oh my God, David," she said, furiously fanning her face with the flyer. "This is worse than I thought! You're actually reading!"

     
    Marie crumpled up another tear-stained tissue and added it to the heap on the floor. In the three years since she'd been promoted to manager, she could count the times she'd called in sick on one hand. And today was one of them.
    Cecil and Diane? How could she have been so blind? And right under her nose!
    And what—if anything—did the mysterious heartthrob David Lake know about all this? A regular Don Juan, he'd said in reference to Cecil. Marie clutched her stomach, fearing she would throw up. How many? Just how many other women had there been, then? Five? Fifteen, twenty? Oh, God.
    Marie stood and rushed to the bathroom where she vomited violently.
    Thank God she wasn't pregnant, she thought, as her bare knees hit the cold tile floor. She rested her head in her hands over the porcelain john, recalling Cecil's recent suggestion that they make a baby.
    "Don't you think it'd be better if we got married first?" was all she had asked.
    He'd stormed out the door, and not come back for five hours—at which time he'd produced a bouquet of limp daisies and a half-hearted apology. "One commitment at a time," was what he'd said.
    It had been a cruel thing to say, knowing how badly Marie wanted a child. For a while, she thought she'd never want to have her own. But, as time moved on and that old biological clock started ticking, she'd begun to change her mind.

     
    After her parents' car accident, she'd practically raised her four younger brothers and sisters. Her mother had died instantly, and her father had become permanently disabled. At age sixteen, Marie had been thrust into the role of running the household, scrounging together nutritious meals on the meager checks from her dad's disability payments.
    Those had been some dreadful days. Coming of age as a woman and yearning for her mother, all the while having to hide that fact because "mother" was precisely what she had to be.
    Marie stood and splashed cold water on her face, feeling better.
    Now, each of her siblings was on his own. Her two sisters married, Johnny engaged, and Mark just enrolled in graduate school. She'd done a good job with them, she supposed. But then again, so had her father. He'd been a rock for the family until he'd died last spring. Always keeping his chin up, despite his paralysis. Never too tired or preoccupied to listen.
    Marie knew her sometimes unruly brothers wouldn't have turned out nearly as well without their father's patient wisdom to guide them. At times, they'd driven Marie so crazy with their teenage antics, that her only refuge had been to escape to her room with a book.
    Reading had seen her through the difficult times. No matter what was going on outside her