Whispers of Danger and Love Read Online Free Page A

tree, allow him to haul up her best toy tea set which he promptly smashed in some sort of gravity experiment. A beloved doll served as a hung pirate while he stalked her with a sword made from a cardboard paper roll.
    His laughter proved contagious, his antics irresistible, and she followed him like a faithful puppy in and out of scrapes which grew worse each year that passed. David Larkin, the Pied Piper of the neighborhood. But as she entered high school, he disappeared from the scene and there were four blessed years of trouble free visits. She was growing up and not as interested in boisterous games with a rough boy. Her grandmother said he was away from home.
    In high school, she developed a super crush on a hulking football player. She was thrilled when he asked her to the prom and felt sophisticated in her strapless gown as they headed to someone’s post prom house. The party was wild, the music was loud, and some kids were drinking. There weren’t many students there that she knew, but she was excited to be included. Her new strapless prom dress, a mass of row upon row of delicate blue ruffles and almost the most perfect dress she had ever owned, seemed to be of great interest to her date. He kept rubbing her arm and accidentally dragging her bodice down bit by bit. She tugged it back up, and he would rub it back down. He didn’t appear as cute as she once thought.
    Eventually it dawned on her the party was without chaperones, although there did seem to be several young adults present. When she commented on this fact, her date smirked and invited her for a walk out by the pool where he steered her toward a pool house, a cabana of sorts. As the door opened, she had a sudden premonition she didn’t belong there and started to pull away.
    “Oh no, you don’t,” her date said, laughing and grasping her arm painfully.
    She caught a strong odor of some sort of liquor on his breath, although as far as she knew only a fruit punch had been served.
    “You don’t flake out on me now,” he uttered in her ear with a threatening leer. He gave her a quick shove, and she flew through the door and fell onto a lounge chair. She was grabbing at the aggravating bodice of her strapless gown when he climbed on top of her, smothering her with unwanted kisses. She pushed at his arms, but he seemed to be all octopus. And then it happened. The memory of that night could still cause her pulse to throb with shock.
    She had heard a warrior’s whoop, and her date suddenly flew through the air and landed on his butt with a surprised oomph .
    David Larkin stood over him with his fist raised and a fierce scowl on his handsome face. Was he Jack Sparrow or Tarzan that night? David leaned down and jerked her obnoxious date up by the front of his tux, and then, with his other hand on the seat of the boy’s pants, he duck-walked the cowering young man out the door.
    Cheryl had been too surprised to react. She jumped up, tugging at her bodice, and ran outside after them in time to see her date disappearing into the distance.
    “What did you do!” she screamed at Larkin who stood grinning down at her, his tousled, thick, black hair needing a cut and spilling forward. His chin was covered with a thin bearded growth giving him a rough, ultra-male appearance. She was even more furious at the rapid beat of her betraying heart when he moved closer and touched her cheek, caressing it with a fingertip.
    “Don’t you look pretty, sweet little thing.” He tipped her chin up and gave her a gentle kiss on the lips. Before she could utter a strongly worded protest, he hustled her toward the street and escorted her into a red pick-up truck, tucking her long dress in afterward. German Gestapo, beast, bully.
    “Time you were in bed, little girl. Don’t think you’ll miss that goon. I’ll just see you home.” David had buckled her seat belt and given a satisfied pat to her leg pausing momentarily to caress the silky material. “Nice,” he had