A Stirring from Salem Read Online Free PDF

nodded, and Chelsea finally smiled. “You know, I’ve never seen Abby so happy. And this news gives me faith that love still exists. Thanks for that, too.”
    She didn’t notice Jackson shift uncomfortably.
    “Her dad wasn’t exactly thrilled with the news, but—”
    “She already told her father?” Jackson asked.
    “Yep, and she told him to stuff it!” Chelsea was actually laughing. “You know, I really did need this. There really is true love in the world!”
    Great, Jackson thought. Getting the ring back is not going to be easy.

Scarlett was doomed to a life of drama from the moment her mother saw her full head of bright red hair. The fact that their last name was O’Hara sealed the deal.
    Originally from Atlanta, Scarlett was in New York at the age of fourteen for the Modeling Association of America International competition when she was discovered while peering into the windows of Tiffany & Co.
    That had been in 1985—the year the first dot-com was registered. When Nelson Mandela was still incarcerated on Robbens Island. When Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie gathered their friends to perform “We Are the World” and the Live Aid concerts took place, all raising millions for the starving in Africa. Back then, Africa had seemed such a distant place…
    Now, so many years later, she was going there.
    “Shit,” she said as she looked at her reflection in the beveled mirror in her suite at the London Hilton on Park Lane.
    Scarlett’s porcelain skin had always been one of her most valuable assets, but it was showing signs of her thirty-nine years. The face she saw in the mirror was not the one she’d seen on the dozens of magazine covers, from Cosmopolitan to Vogue , that she’d graced in more than twenty-five years on the modeling scene. Sure, Photoshop could erase the crow’s feet and fine lines around her pouty lips. But for a woman once deemed “The Look,” that wasn’t much consolation.
    At least Vince Castle was the photographer for this shoot. Scarlett had been his muse since the cover he’d shot of her for The Look had resulted in the magazine skyrocketing to its first sales of more than one million copies. Now they would be shooting the twentieth anniversary edition of that issue, and she was bloody nervous.
    When her agent had told her she’d be sharing the cover and editorial with a new Swedish blonde, eighteen-year-old Brigitta, and stunning, twenty-seven-year-old, milk-chocolate-skinned Nikki Kovacs, Scarlett had thrown one of the screaming fits she’d become famous for. Now she wished she hadn’t. Mimicking the extreme facial expressions from her tirades over the decades, she realized what a toll those expressions had taken.
    “And shit!” she repeated.
    The phone rang. She jumped, startled, and then answered.
    “Yes.”
    “Miss O’Hara, your facial and massage were at eleven,” the clipped British voice said. It was Purity Mind & Body, the spa located in the hotel.
    “Yes?” she repeated.
    “It’s 12:30. We have other guests scheduled at three.”
    “And so?” Scarlett answered with incredulity.
    “Shall we cancel you?”
    “I’ll be five minutes! Do you have any idea who—”
    “We’ll see you then, ma’am,” the voice interrupted.
    Scarlett blanched as she heard a click.
    “Ma’am? Shit,” she muttered under her breath. The entire point of this shoot was to give her a chance for resurgence. She needed to be as relaxed and pampered as possible.
    Wearing nothing but her hotel robe over her still-toned size two frame, she moved into the living room and opened the minibar. Two small bottles of vodka went into her robe pocket, and she dumped a third into a glass of orange juice.
    She looked around her room. The Park Lane Hilton wasn’t the most exclusive hotel in the city. But adjoining it was Whisky Mist, currently the hang for the likes of George Clooney, Jennifer Aniston, Kate Moss, Chloe Green, and the royals. Scarlett liked being in that crowd. She always