Nine Perfect Strangers Read Online Free PDF

It’s, ah, twenty past three, twenty-five past three, and I’m … here! The intercom doesn’t seem to be working even though I’ve followed all the instructions. The teeny-tiny instructions. I’d appreciate it if you could just open the gate? Let me in?” Her message finished on a rising note of hysteria, which she regretted. She put the phone down on the seat next to her and studied the gate.
    Nothing. She would give it twenty minutes and then she was throwing in the towel.
    Her phone rang and she snatched it up without looking at the screen.
    â€œHi there!” she said cheerfully, to show how understanding and patient she really was and to make up for the sarcastic “teeny-tiny” comment.
    â€œFrances?” It was Alain, her literary agent. “You don’t sound like you.”
    Frances sighed. “I was expecting someone else. I’m doing that health retreat I told you about, but I can’t even get through the front gate. Their intercom isn’t working.”
    â€œHow incompetent! How unsatisfactory !” Alain was easily and often enraged by poor service. “You should turn around and come back home. It’s not alternative , is it? Remember those poor people who died in that sweat lodge? They all thought they were becoming enlightened when in reality they were being cooked.”
    â€œThis place is pretty mainstream. Hot springs and massages and art therapy. Maybe some gentle fasting.”
    â€œGentle fasting.” Alain snorted. “Eat when you’re hungry. That’s a privilege , you know, to eat when you’re hungry, when there are people starving in this world.”
    â€œWell, that’s the point—we’re not starving in this part of the world,” said Frances. She looked at the wrapper for the Kit Kat bar sitting in the console of her car. “We’re eating too much processed food. So that’s why us privileged people need to detox—”
    â€œOh my Lord, she’s falling for it. She’s drunk the Kool-Aid! Detoxing is a myth , darling, it’s been debunked! Your liver does it for you. Or maybe it’s your kidneys. It’s all taken care of somehow.”
    â€œ Anyway ,” said Frances. She had a feeling he was procrastinating.
    â€œAnyway,” said Alain. “You sound like you’ve got a cold, Frances.” He seemed quite anguished about her cold.
    â€œI do have a very bad, persistent, possibly permanent cold,” said Frances. She coughed to demonstrate. “You’d be proud of me. I’ve been taking a lot of very powerful drugs. My heart is going at a million miles per hour.”
    â€œThat’s the ticket,” said Alain.
    There was a pause.
    â€œAlain?” she prompted, but she knew, she already knew exactly what he was going to say.
    â€œI’m afraid I am not the bearer of good news,” said Alain.
    â€œI see.”
    She sucked in her stomach, ready to take it like a man, or at least like a romance novelist capable of reading her own royalty statements.
    â€œWell, as you know, darling,” began Alain.
    But Frances couldn’t bear to hear him hedging, trying to soften the blow with compliments.
    â€œThey don’t want the new book, do they?” she said.
    â€œThey don’t want the new book,” said Alain sadly. “I’m so sorry. I think it’s a beautiful book, I really do, it’s just the current environment, and romance has taken the worst hit, it won’t be forever, romance always comes back, it’s a blip , but—”
    â€œSo you’ll sell it to someone else,” interrupted Frances. “Sell it to Timmy.”
    There was another pause.
    â€œThe thing is,” said Alain, “I didn’t tell you this, but I slipped the manuscript to Timmy a few weeks back, because I did have a tiny fear this might happen and obviously an offer from Timmy before we had anything on the