Frostbitten: The Complete Series Read Online Free PDF Page B

year—never letting up.
    Finally, Penelope agreed. She figured, “If he is this determined to have me, then he must really love me.” They got married soon after.
    Things only went downhill from there.
    Once the chase was over, Eric quickly lost interest. He quickly got bored of “the married life”, and so did Penelope. Penelope took off to travel alone and Eric took off for more photo shoots in Japan and elsewhere. But as a married man, he wasn’t getting the female attention he was so used to. With a ring around his finger, women began to look the other way. Fearing that his glory days were behind him, he quickly filed for divorce—before Penelope was even home from her travels.
    Fortunately, it was a happy breakup. Neither Penelope nor Eric really wanted to be married in the first place.
    But Eric soon realized that his sudden fall from grace had nothing to do with the ring around his finger. Even with the ring gone, women passed him by without a simple smile. Eric wasn’t the pretty-boy teenager anymore—he was an adult. Sure, he was a very handsome adult, but women have other expectations from fully-grown men—they want maturity, ambition and chivalry. Eric wasn’t any of those things.
    Soon after the divorce, Eric’s agency dropped him as a model, and he found himself moving back to his hometown of Snowbrooke. He’d always thought that he would be a career model, like his famous mother. Seeing as that was no longer the case, he didn’t know what to do. He had no education and no ambition. The only time that he felt any satisfaction was when women were admiring him.
    So he took a bartending job at the local university bar–The Winter’s Den.
    Despite being divorced to Andrew’s sister, Eric remained close friends with Andrew. As a matter of fact, he was Andrew’s only friend. Andrew even still referred to him as “my brother in law”.

    Hanna stood by the door to the small bar, watching as Eric flirted with her classmate. Then, she looked over at the rest of her class, who had just sat down at one of the small tables across the little bar. She began to walk over to take the final seat, but Brittany, with her mixed drink in hand, beat her to it.
    She stood awkwardly in the middle of the desolate bar.
    “Hey,” Eric said.
    Hanna turned and looked at the man. “Hi.”
    “Are you just here by yourself?” he asked.
    Hanna looked back over at the group. “I’m with them,” she said sheepishly.
    Eric looked over. “Sorry—that’s the biggest table we have.”
    “It’s okay.”
    “Can I get you a drink?”
    “No thank you.”
    “I can make you something special.”
    “That’s okay, thank you.”
    “Tea—Coffee?”
    Hanna smiled. “Really—I’m okay.”
    “Water?”
    Hanna looked at the persistent bartender for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll have a water.”
    “One water, coming right up.”
    Hanna looked up at the little television, playing above the bar. It was playing highlights from some recent hockey game. She looked back at her classmates, and then decided to sit down alone at the bar. She stared up at the looping hockey highlights, not actually watching.
    Instead, she was receding into her own thoughts.

CHAPTER FIVE
HANNA WILKINSON
    She wanted to leave. As she was used to, she didn’t fit in with anyone. She didn’t have anything to contribute to their conversation, and she felt as though she’d only been invited out of polite necessity. The only reason she came was because she didn’t want everyone to think that she was a weirdo—a freak.
    She didn’t want people to think of her like some weird girl who sat in the back of the class, away from everyone else—even though that was exactly who she knew she was.
    She anxiously sipped her water and continued to stare at the television—waiting for a good moment to slip away.
    “It’s Hanna, right?” a voice said behind her.
    She turned around and looked up. Connor was standing above her, smiling.
    “Yeah,”