My Immortal Read Online Free PDF Page A

missing too?”
    Damien didn’t sound worried, just mildly curious. Marley found herself disliking him, even as she acknowledged she was being unfair. If he didn’t know Lizzie, he had no reason to feel the same concern that she did. “No, her son is fine. He’s with family.”
    “That’s good.” As he spoke, he glanced down at her chest, she was sure of it. She hadn’t imagined that, and he actually lingered, really studying her breasts in her tight T-shirt, making her shift her feet in discomfort. It was absolutely the wrong time for him to behave like that, and even worse was that her own body reacted positively to the attention. Marley bit her lip and shifted her purse in front of her chest.
    “Do you have a child, Marley?”
    The way he said it, his faintly accented voice hypnotic, his eyes caressing, made her cheeks grown warm. It was none of his business, but she found herself answering. “No. I’m a teacher, first grade.”
    He laughed softly, the sound unexpected and not pleasant. “That doesn’t surprise me in the least.”
    It sounded rude; it felt humiliating. Maybe he meant nothing by it, but all she could hear was a good-looking man saying it was totally obvious to him that she would be a spinster teacher, a dried-up cliché, a woman afraid of herself and her own sexuality. That wasn’t true at all. She hadn’t found a man she really connected with, that she could love, and that was nothing to be embarrassed about.
    Which didn’t explain why her cheeks got hot and she fought the urge to explain herself. “Look, will you just call me if you find anything out about Lizzie?”
    “Of course. Give me your card and I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
    “I don’t have a card.” She’d just told him she was a grade school teacher. She didn’t walk around passing out pencil-border business cards. That was not in the budget. “Do you have some paper?” She started digging in her purse for a pen.
    “Just come into the house and I’ll put your numbers in my PDA.”
    “Okay, thanks,” she started to say, but he was already walking away, moving across the lawn in the opposite direction of the house. She scrambled down the steps and followed him, wondering where he was going.
    In a second it became apparent he was headed to the round, white towerlike structure. The pigeonnier , she had to assume. He opened the door and stepped inside, not really waiting for her. Marley hesitated in the doorway. The round room was a living area, complete with a thick couch slip-covered in white cotton, blue pillows tossed on it, and, set at a prominent angle from the one window, a modern steel desk with a laptop computer. The walls were stark white painted bricks, and the décor was sleek, focusing on texture instead of color. Except for a very prominent piece of art, framed in gold, its somber blues and grays a splash of cloudy color on the otherwise blank wall.
    Damien tossed his MP3 player down on the desk and lifted a PDA out of its charger. “Phone number? Cell? E-mail?”
    She rattled off the necessary info and watched him quickly and efficiently enter it. He glanced over at her, dark eyes expressionless. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name is?”
    “Marley. Marley Turner. My sister is Elizabeth Turner.” Not that she believed for one minute this man could help her. He said he didn’t know who Lizzie was—and he didn’t really care.
    But she was too worried not to push a little harder. “Do you think someone might remember her?”
    He studied her for a second, then shook his head slowly. “Maybe, but to be completely honest, I doubt it. People don’t come to my parties to remember anyone or anything. They’re here to forget, to hide in the dark with total strangers.”
    There were so many questions she could ask. Like why did he encourage that kind of behavior in his own house? What was he hiding from? And what could anyone possibly achieve or gain or forget by having sex with strangers