Deal to Die For Read Online Free PDF

you,” the reporter said.
    Paige did some quick calculations, figuring that the reporter had just removed her at least two generations from her own peers. But hey, Garbo, Hepburn…and now Nobleman. They could tear down the Hollywood sign, carve their poised likenesses into the side of the mountain in its place.
    “I’ve got some work to do before I enter that company,” she said mildly.
    “Oh, that’s what I
mean
,” the reporter said. “You’re always so together!”
    “Lori…,” Paige began, feeling the onset of a massive headache about to claim her.
    “Jorie,” the reporter corrected her. “Jorie Hubbard.”
    “I’ll tell you something, Jorie.” She paused, her gaze holding on something over the reporter’s shoulder. She was staring now, across the crowded main room, through an elegantly framed archway, into one of the many secluded nooks provided by Albertine, Outré’s famed chef and owner, for the patrons more interested in privacy than in proving their place in the industry pecking order.
    A waiter had drawn aside a curtain that shielded the alcove in order to flambé something for his customers. It was a couple, the young woman—dark-complexioned, her hair twisted into a braid that wound exotically about her neck—facing outward, the man with his back to Paige.
    The light was dim, and Paige would be damned if she was going to fish her glasses out of her purse in front of Jorie Hubbard, but she’d lived with the same man for a half-dozen years, knew the shape of his movements as well as the shape of his nose. When the man in the alcove reached his hand out to stroke the cheek of the woman with the dark braid, pulled her close and kissed her, Paige felt her stomach turn over.
    “What were you going to tell me?” Jorie Hubbard asked.
    Paige blinked. The waiter had withdrawn, the curtain had fallen closed. She turned back to face the reporter. She couldn’t say she was surprised. Not with the way things had been going lately with Paul, but still…having to
see
it…her lover with another woman in the very restaurant…
    “You were going to say something,” the reporter prompted again. She had a pen in her hand, a tiny leather-bound notebook on the table open beside a bowl of chilled summer blossom soup.
    “Yes,” Paige heard herself saying, her eyes still on the swaying curtain.
    “And…” Jorie Hubbard staring at her, a little puzzled now.
    Paige forced her gaze from the curtain, forced herself from what might be going on in there now—sea scallops flying this way, seared duck salad that, all fangs and claws and dark braids in the cactus spine soup…
    “I grew up in Miami,” she said to Jorie Hubbard. “It was a different place back then. A small Southern town, really. I was the most awkward, gangly, unprepossessing kid you ever met.”
    Paige heard the sound of her own voice clearly, was herself impressed with the breezy, carefree tone. Jorie was scribbling furiously, still shaking her head in disbelief.
    Paige’s gaze fell upon the knife that was part of her place setting. There seemed to be a fairly sharp point there. She’d prefer a saber, of course, something she could use to hack down those curtains over there like De Niro had in
White Dungeons
, slicing in half the two thugs hiding behind them in the process, but a steak knife would do. She’d be able to make her point in the alcove, wouldn’t have to face a life sentence.
    “In high school,” she was saying, “I went to this citywide debate tournament?” There. She’d got it, rising inflection, asking the question, Jorie Hubbard nodding encouragement. “No one knew who I was, of course, and there we all were in this big auditorium?” More nodding. Paige picked up the knife. A satisfying heft, but why be surprised? This was Outré, after all, and Albertine was no piker.
    “Anyway,” she continued. “When it came my time to speak, they called my name and I was too scared to answer.”
    “What happened?” Jorie