Forever Branded (Billionaire Love Series #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

secret.
    That wasn’t so bad. I could live with that.
    Besides, Grace was a wise woman and I definitely needed a friend to help me sort this all out, now that Beau had walked back into the picture.
    “Okay,” I conceded. “I’ll tell you the story. But are you sure you want to hear it?”
    She gave me a comforting smile. “Of course, sugar. I want to hear it all.”
    I took a deep breath as my foot bounced up and down nervously. “It happened my senior year of high school. I had just turned eighteen....”
    It didn’t take long before the words began tumbling out as though they had been locked away in an overstuffed closet for too long as my mind wandered back to another time.
    It was the early nineties, my dark hair-sprayed bangs were a mile high, and I had just gotten my braces off. I sat nervously at one of the round tables in my high school library, picking at the loose laminate around the edge.
    I was nervous and uncomfortable. I was supposed to meet Beau Shepard and tutor him in English. He was a cocky jock who ran with his jerk posse.
    I really had no desire to spend any time with him.
    But my favorite teacher, Ms. Sprite, in all her wisdom, had asked me to do this favor one day after class. “Marla, I need you to do something for me.”
    “What?” I asked, figuring she wanted me to help with some volunteer project.
    “I want you to help Beau Shepard get up to speed on his Jane Eyre paper.”
    Her request immediately filled me with dread and it took everything in me not to roll my eyes. “Really, Ms. Sprite?”
    “Yeah, really, Marla,” she said as she stopped writing on the blackboard.
    “I don’t know if I’m cut out to be a tutor,” I explained half-heartedly, watching chalk dust float through the air.
    “Since when do you not want to help someone out, Marla?”
    This touched a nerve. “It's not that I won't help...I just ...I just...”
    “Just what?”  
    I wasn’t able to come up with a legitimate excuse. “I don't know,” I admitted lamely.
    She glanced at me with motherly concern crossing her pixyish face. “This will be good for you. I know it's been tough for you since your mom died. You've been taking care of Emma and being a mom to her. But this will give you a chance to do something different. There's more to Beau than what you see on the surface. I think this could be good for both of you.”
    That was a curious thing to say. What did she know that I didn’t?
    “Why would you say that?”
    “No reason. I just believe in giving somebody a chance, that’s all. Our first impressions aren’t always right.”
    Oh great, she was giving me the ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ defense. I was such a sucker for believing the best about people.
    “Isn’t there anybody else?” I asked in a last ditch effort to avoid saying yes.
    “Marla, if I had anybody else in mind, I would be talking to them.”
    I studied her kind, determined face, knowing I wouldn’t win this battle. “Oh, all right,” I reluctantly agreed, knowing I would probably regret it.
    And that’s why I found myself chipping away at the black flecks of laminate on the table in the library.
    I still couldn’t believe I had agreed to meet Beau. I’d seen him briefly in the hall as I walked toward the library. A giggly girl was standing against a locker, looking like she was his prey of the moment, as he hung over her.
    Yuck.
    I wanted to say, “You know he’s just using you, don’t you?”
    But I held my tongue and walked by, rolling my eyes.
    I had fourth period Honors English with Beau. What he was doing in Honors English, I had no idea. He never seemed to take it seriously or care about what went on in class.
    I looked at the big black rimmed clock on the wall in the library. It was already three ten.
    Five more minutes and I was taking off.
    At three fifteen on the dot, I swiped my folder off the table as he came waltzing in, looking like the cat’s meow.
    With a grin a mile wide on his face, and acid