The Virgin and the Vengeful Groom Read Online Free

on the side of his neck, or if they did, they were discreet about it. He’d worn khakis and a black T-shirt, something to blend in with the Saturday-afternoon crowd. His hair had grown shaggy since he’d left the hospital. The gray seemed more pronounced, but all in all, there was nothing about him that should spook a lady writer.
    After rethinking his initial plan to confront and demand, he opted for diplomacy. A brief, polite explanation, followed by an offer to repay whatever she’d laid out, after which he would collect his property and leave.
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    â€œI hate this, I really do,” Lily told herself as she shoved her lucky roller ball pen in her purse, dropped her purse in her tote and let herself out the door. No matter howmany signings she did, she always got butterflies. What if nobody came? What if she had to sit there for two hours, trying to appear friendly and approachable when she felt like hiding in the rest room? What if no one showed up? What if they did, but not one single book sold?
    It could happen. Once, in the early days of her career, before all the mergers had done away with the small distributors, she had spent two hellish hours in a huge discount store at 6:00 p.m. on a Friday, before towering stacks of her third paperback novel. Four sales reps, all young, all built like football players, had lined up behind her, arms crossed over their chests. Not a single person approached her table. When she’d taken a rest room break halfway through the ordeal, she’d overheard one woman wondering who she was and another one saying, “I don’t know, but she must be important, she’s got all those bodyguards with her.”
    After all the those slimy phone calls she’d been getting from some creep who got his jollies by talking dirty to women, not to mention the fact that someone—the same creep, she was sure of it—had actually been inside her apartment, she almost wished she did have a few bodyguards. Not that she couldn’t handle herself in a pinch, but all the same… Deep breath, Lily. You can do this. You’ve done it a dozen times before. This is only one teeny little bookstore, not a five-city tour.
    It was still hard to believe—sometimes, even now, she had to pinch herself—but people took her at face value. The bookstore manager had baked cookies and brought a lace tablecloth from her own home. Lily was so touched she felt like weeping. Nerves did that to her, and her own had been stretched to the breaking point. Her best friend, who was also her agent, had urged her to get out of town until the police could do their job. Instead, she had doneas they suggested and changed her unlisted number, changed the lock on her door and had a chain installed.
    That had hurt. One of the things she loved most about her apartment was that it was in such a safe neighborhood, half the time when residents visited someone else in the building, they left their doors unlocked. And while she had never quite gone that far, she’d never felt threatened. Until now.
    At least here in broad daylight, in a busy mall bookstore, she should be safe.
    There were already several people glancing this way, looking as if they might be coming over. The woman with two children—the teenage girls with the pierced eyebrows. The man in the black T-shirt…
    Mercy. She would willingly go back to “clinch covers” if he would agree to pose. What was there about dangerous-looking men? she wondered. Men with dark, slashing eyebrows, shaggy, sun-streaked hair, unsmiling mouths and lean, hawkish features?
    Hawkish features? Lily, my girl, you sound like a writer.
    Then there was the way he moved, as if he had ball bearing joints. She could imagine a dancer moving that way, or a hunter silently gliding through the forest. Odds were this man was no dancer. There was no shotgun in evidence, which meant he probably wasn’t on safari, either. He could be one of those