Believe in Me: A Rosewood Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

the time she arrived at Nonie’s?
    Their kiss finished, Travis grabbed one of the carrot sticks Margot had been slicing and bit off a piece. “Hi, Jordan.”
    She swallowed the olives and returned his smile. “Hello, Travis.”
    “You ready for the big lunch with Mrs. Harrison?”
    “I guess. Margot’s been giving me a pep talk.”
    “Not a pep talk. Just the facts. Doesn’t Jordan look beautiful?”
    “She always looks beautiful. That’s a fact, too,” he grinned.
    Admittedly, it was wonderful to be told you were beautiful by a man as handsome and sexy as Travis Maher, but she knew his words were generated more by kindness than anything else.
    “You two are becoming regular walking encyclopedias, just bursting with nifty facts,” she said wryly. “Have you and Miriam banded together to form a PR club dedicated to me?”
    “No surprise that Miriam thinks you’re amazing when she sees firsthand how you’re raising the kids. The girl’s sharp,” Travis said.
    “I think Andy wants to ask her out,” Margot told them. Andy was one of the stable hands who worked for Rosewood.
    “He should go for it. Miriam’s wonderful. Loads of fun. The kids simply adore her. I’m so grateful Ellie suggested she work for us part-time while she gets her degree.” Jordan checked her watch. She still had a few more minutes before she had to leave. Arriving too early would be interpreted as being overeager, which in Nonie Harrison’s world would smack of desperation. “So you’re okay with my borrowing the Rover?”
    “Absolutely. We’ve got loads to do this afternoon. Andsince Jade drove to school, I don’t have to worry about picking her up, I only have to worry that she’ll take a detour and stop at Screaming Susie’s.” Margot had nearly fainted from shock the afternoon Jade came home with kelly green hair, the outrageous color acquired at a punk barbershop located in a strip mall on Route 50. Two weeks later Jade switched to fire-engine red and, as if that weren’t enough, allowed the “butchers”—as Margot called them—to hack her long hair into a ragged mop around her ears.
    “She’ll run out of color options soon.” Travis leaned a jeans-clad hip against the counter and took a sip of the coffee he’d poured himself. “She’s gone through practically every color in the rainbow.”
    “I wouldn’t put it past Jade to go toxic Day-Glo,” Margot said. “Most girls would kill to have hair like hers.”
    “After what she’s been dealing with at school, with the girls still freezing her out and the guys all trailing after her with their tongues hanging to the floor, I’m surprised she’s
only
waging a chemical attack on her hair,” Jordan said.
    Margot shuddered. “Man, I am so glad I’m not seventeen. Of course Jade has it worse than your average obstinate, know-it-all, reckless teen.”
    That was sadly true. Jade possessed all the complications and contradictions of a bright, beautiful teen on the cusp of womanhood, plus a couple hundred more.
    Their half-sister had been through hell in the last eighteen months, her world shattered when their father, RJ, and her mother, Nicole, died after the plane their father was piloting crashed into the Chesapeake. Merely days afterward, Jade was dealt another blow when the lawyer for the estate informed her that her parents had neglected to provide her with a guardian. Margot had immediately stepped up and offered to assume responsibility for Jade, but their relationship had been far from easy during the first few months. And Jade’s troubles certainly hadn’t ended there.
    In jaw-droppingly short order, she’d intentionally gottenherself expelled from her elite boarding school in Massachusetts, forcing Margot to move back home to Rosewood with her. Jade had doubtless believed that being back at home and attending high school in Warburg would make her happier. Things didn’t quite work out that way. At Warburg High, a clique of girls turned against her