It Takes a Rebel Read Online Free PDF Page B

acquire a taste for the dreadful stuff," her friend said with a grimace. "I still keep a stash of Earl Grey under
    the counter. I'm busy tomorrow, but let's have lunch the day after and you can let me know how it goes with Jack the Attack."
    "Jack the Attack?"
    Lana nodded toward the wall of bookshelves. "Check your college yearbook, bookworm. Goodnight."
    "Here's your spoon."
    Lana grinned. "Keep it."
    Alex was still laughing when the door closed behind her friend, but sobered when Jack Stillman's face rose in her mind to
    taunt her. The man was shaping up to be more of a potential threat than she'd imagined. She walked over to a laden bookshelf
    and removed the yearbook for her freshman year of college. Within seconds, she located the sports section and, as Lana had
    said, it seemed that Jack Stillman had been the man of the hour. Although UK was renowned for all of its team sports programs,
    Jack the Attack had been heralded for single-handedly taking his football team to a prestigious past-season bowl game, and
    winning it.
    Page after page showed Jack in various midmotion poses: catching the football, running past opponents, crossing into the end
    zone. The last page featured Jack in his mud-stained uniform, arm in arm with a casually dressed man who was a taller, wider
    version of himself, behind whose unsuspecting head Jack was holding up two fingers in the universal "jackass" symbol.
    Twenty-two-year-old Jack had the same killer grin, the same mischievous eyes, with piles of dark, unruly hair in a hopelessly
    dated style. Alex smirked as she mentally compared the boy in the picture to the man she'd met this morning. Too bad he was
    such a cliché—a washed-up jock still chasing pompoms.
    Alex snapped the book closed. The ex-football star angle worried her. Her father was already aware of it, she was sure, and
    the fact that he hadn't taken the time to enlighten her probably meant he would bend over backward to work with Stillman just
    to be able to tell the guys at the club about the man's athletic accomplishments.
    Anger burned the walls of her stomach, anger about the old boy's network, anger toward men who shirked their duties but
    advanced to high-ranking corporate positions because they had a low golf handicap and could sweat with male executives in
    the sauna. Subtle discrimination occurred within Tremont's, although she was working judiciously to address disparity within
    the sales and marketing division. And subtle discrimination occurred within her own family. Had she been a son, an athlete,
    she was certain her father would have showered her with attention, would have fostered her career more aggressively. She
    ached for the closeness that she'd once shared with her mother, but that seemed so out of reach with her father.
    She blinked back tears, feeling very alone in the big, high-ceilinged apartment. Fatigue pulled at her shoulders, but the sugar
    she'd ingested pumped through her system. She needed sleep, but her bed, custom made of copper tubing and covered with a
    crisp white duvet, looked sterile and cold in the far corner of the rectangular-shaped loft.
    Alex located her glass of wine and finished it while standing at the sink. Knowing the ritual of preparing for bed sometimes
    helped her insomnia, she moved toward the bedroom corner to undress. After draping the pale blue suit over a chrome valet,
    she dropped her matching underwear into a lacy laundry bag. From the back of her armoire, she withdrew a nappy, yellow
    cotton robe of her mother's and wrapped it around her. After removing her makeup with more vehemence than necessary, she
    walked past her bed and returned to the comfy chair she'd abandoned when Lana arrived, covering her legs with a lightweight
    afghan.
    But she lay awake long after she'd extinguished her mother's light, straining with unexplainable loneliness and frustration,
    stewing over unjust conditions she might never be able to change. Right or wrong, she channeled her hostility