Highly Charged! Read Online Free PDF Page B

vandalism could steal that warmth in her heart when she walked through this place.
    â€œChloe hinted there were people in her life who wouldn’t want her missing diaries to be published.”
    â€œWhy?” Brad shook his head. “Do you know what’s in them?”
    â€œChloe said those years had been too special for herto share with the world yet, but that one day her story would finally be revealed.” Nikki had been over and over her final conversations with the older woman before her death, never making full sense of the bits and pieces she’d heard since the hints at a young romance had been at odds with the later diaries’ depiction of a wild and sexually adventurous decade from her mid-twenties to late thirties. “She was in and out of consciousness the last few days of her life. I sat with her whenever I wasn’t on campus because she did so much for me through the years—cheered on my writing, gave me exclusive interviews to nail down a doctorate that was a shoo-in for publication. So I wanted to do whatever I could for her at the end since her family was less than supportive.”
    Nikki liked to think she and Chloe had been family to each other. Her chest tightened to think about how fortunate she was to have had Chloe in her life—someone who cared when her dissertation committee gave her a hard time or her short-lived relationship with a history professor burned out. Nikki’s own parents were in the mountains of Peru the last time they’d contacted her—four months ago to email condolences on Chloe’s death.
    â€œShe didn’t have any kids, did she?” Brad glanced toward the bushes at the edge of the property where lightning bugs blinked on and off.
    Clearing her throat, she dragged her eyes away from him and focused on the lightning bugs.
    â€œNo kids. At least, she doesn’t acknowledge any. A rumor persists that she had children living overseas since she spent many years in Europe after World War II. But I don’t believe it for a second. She was far too loving aperson to distance herself from any blood relative. The gossip is just another bit of the drama from a life lived unconventionally. Her books were part of the fuel for the women’s movement with the way they embraced a more sexually free lifestyle.”
    She couldn’t begin to explain all the convoluted drama of Chloe’s life. Chloe’s sensual memoirs accounted for her popularity as much as her novels. She’d chronicled many passionate encounters using carefully hidden identities to protect the people those relationships were based on. The edited diaries—at least five of the seven—had already been published with names changed to protect the innocent. But Chloe had promised her fans that after her death, all seven of the diaries—in their original forms—would be available to her readers.
    â€œSo when you say her family wasn’t supportive, who are we talking about? Siblings?”
    She sensed a methodical mind at work as Brad formulated a picture of Chloe’s family. Better to focus on his brain than the appealing lure of his physique. Beneath the table, their feet vied for rights to the same real estate, occasionally bumping or brushing against each other. She felt edgy from those small touches, twitchy from the desire to lay her hand in the center of that broad, hard chest. With an effort, she recalled his question.
    â€œTwo stepbrothers—Harold and Norman Ralston. She didn’t know her real father, and her mother married her stepfather when Chloe was three years old.” Nikki had cringed at the stories Chloe had told about her early life—stories that would have landed her in child protective services today. “Then the mother abandoned the family when Chloe was eight, leaving her to be raisedby the stepfather’s revolving girlfriends in a household with no blood relatives.”
    In addition to all the