A Rare Chance Read Online Free PDF

the man in the moon.
    Maybe he should follow Gabriella Starr instead of Pete Darrow.
    Cam slammed down his cereal bowl. “Maybe you should forget this mess and paint the damned bathroom.”
    He got dressed and went out. Spring had finally arrived in Boston, with not even a hint of winter in the breeze off the Charles River. He breathed deeply. But it didn’t work. Gabriella Starr’s dark eyes were still there, filled with conflicting emotions that both intrigued and worried him. Never mind the brass-tacks suit, she was a woman who could easily get in over her head with a guy like Pete Darrow.
    But she wouldn’t want to admit it. Cam would bet his Red Sox season tickets on that one. Gabriella Starr wouldn’t want to need help. She would want to keep right on thinking she could take on the whole world on her own terms.
    Cam understood. He used to think the same way. Only he’d learned. Sometimes you got in over your head. Sometimes you needed help. Sometimes the world got you by the short hairs and all you could do was stick to your principles.
    He started up the brick sidewalk toward Charles Street, still with no clear plan. But more and more he was thinking it might be a wise idea to find out a little more about one dark-eyed, dark-haired Gabriella Starr.
    Â 
    For the first time in her year at TJR Associates, Gabriella didn’t feel comfortable in her third-floor office. Joshua and Titus Reading had selected a nineteenth-century brick waterfront building for their offices, one they had saved from the wrecking crane. Just five stories tall, it had served originally as headquarters to an import-export firm that sent clipper ships out around Cape Horn and made a lot of Boston Brahmins rich. Gabriella’s office had a view out across Boston Harbor, sparkling in the spring sun. The furnishings were all period pieces, tasteful and soothing, with an antique Persian carpet in deep shades of green. She had added a botanical print of pink lady slippers for her wall and always kept a vase of fresh orchids on her desk.
    She sighed, gazing at today’s purple miltonias. Scag had picked them out. He’d shown up at her apartment at seven o’clock to work in her rooftop greenhouse. The condition of her orchids, he said, had given him nightmares. She’d offered to pay him. He’d only glared at her.
    Well, she’d pay him anyway. She’d never known Tony Scagliotti to turn down hard cash.
    â€œGabriella? Are you listening?”
    She blinked, snapping out of her daze. Titus Reading had stopped in her office to talk to her about a project in a historic riverfront building in Concord they were considering, but she couldn’t keep her mind on what he was saying. She manufactured a weak smile. “I’m sorry. I must be on slow-start this morning.”
    Titus acknowledged her apology with a slight nod. He was as tall as his younger brother, but broader through the shoulders, darker, with little of Joshua’s easy charm and amiability. There was a twelve-year difference in their ages. At forty-six, Titus was the father of two teenagers, a smart and decent man who’d overlooked Gabriella’s two-year hiatus with her notorious father.
    She remembered sitting in his office, still pale from her ordeal in a Peruvian prison. She and Scag had been arrested and jailed for trespassing, a situation he had only made worse by arguing with the landowner and lecturing the authorities on international law protecting rare and endangered orchids. Titus had chosen to view her adventures with her father as an asset rather than a career liability. He’d been willing to consider her education, her pre—Scag experience, her determination to apply her energy and skills to a stable career. She’d gotten the lure of her father’s chaotic life out of her system and wouldn’t likely succumb to it again. As a result, she knew more about herself than did most