Dangerous Alterations Read Online Free PDF

front passenger seat, turned in her direction.
    “Baby? You there?”
    Tori waved at his voice like a pesky firefly as she narrowed her eyes still farther and continued to observe the flurry of activity getting in and out of the station wagon. A station wagon that looked an awful lot like—
    “Margaret Louise,” she gasped as the three separate forms she could make out in and around the car took on decidedly familiar features …
    There was Rose’s hunched body …
    Leona returning to the car from the potty break that no doubt meant Paris was near …
    Margaret Louise filling the front seat in what appeared to be a lime green workout suit …
    “Margaret, who?”
    And, of course, Jeff in her ear.
    Shaking her head against the reality that those were her friends, she forced her attention onto the one person she wished she could forget. “I’m sorry, Jeff. I was distracted there for a moment. I’ll meet you at the curb outside baggage claim in ten minutes.”
    “Make it five. I can’t wait to see you.”
    She looked again at the threesome across the parking lot, their efforts at being sneaky pathetic at best. “Actually, make it fifteen .” Closing the phone with a flip of her hand, Tori turned the key in the ignition and headed straight for the blurry-turned-crimson faces on the other side of the lot.
    With a quick crank of her hand, she popped her head out the side window. “What on earth are the three of you doing here of all places?”
    Rose coughed and looked at the ground.
    Leona shifted from one stylish pump to the other.
    Margaret Louise stepped out of the car, looked down at the binoculars tethered to her neck, and pointed at her twin sister. “It was Leona’s idea.”
    Tori pinned Leona with her eyes. “Is that true?”
    Red-faced, Leona looked around wildly. “Frankly, dear, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only reason I’m here is to reminisce about an encounter I had in this very spot with a pilot I met during a trip to Bali.”
    Rose rolled her eyes then muttered something under her breath.
    Leona turned a penetrating glare of her own on the elderly woman. “Is something wrong, you old goat?”
    “I’d rather be an old goat than a common, everyday streetwalker.”
    A gasp escaped Leona’s mouth. “Streetwalker?”
    “Though most streetwalkers prefer motel rooms, I believe.”
    Leona bit the second and louder gasp off with her teeth. “Rose Winters, you take that back!”
    “When you take back old goat !”
    Margaret Louise stepped in front of the unexpected sideshow and shrugged her hefty shoulders. “I’ve been wantin’ to talk to you ’bout somethin’, Victoria, and now seemed as good a time as any.”
    She pointed at the binoculars. “Planning on birdwatching after we talk?”
    The woman released a loud sigh. “Okay, okay. I give up. We heard what you’re doin’ and we reckon it’s got to be hard. Milo or not, that man broke your heart and seein’ him again has got to be like stickin’ your hand in a light socket and havin’ someone flip the switch. So, we just wanted to be here in case you needed reinforcements.”
    “Reinforcements?” she echoed as a lump sprang up in her throat.
    “That’s what I said,” Margaret Louise bellowed as the roar of a jet threatened to drown out her words. “Make you soup when you’re sick, fight off the wolves when they’re circlin’, hold your hand when your knees are a-clackin’, help dig the hole when you’re spittin’ mad … that’s what friends do.”
    Tori laughed away the urge to cry. “And the three of you have done all of those things at some time or another over the past eighteen months and I’m grateful. Truly.”
    “We ain’t dug a hole for you yet,” Margaret Louise reminded. “Though, dependin’ on how today goes, that might be fixin’ to change, I imagine.”
    The roar of the jet dissipated overhead. “I’m not sure I follow.”
    Rose peeked around Margaret Louise. “You need a hole to