Price of Angels

Price of Angels Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Price of Angels Read Online Free PDF
Author: Lauren Gilley
Carly said, nodding, her mind made up now. “You go take a hot bath, watch crap TV, go to bed early. I took all that vacation time last month; I’m glad to close up tonight.”
                  “I really should–”
                  “Go home, is what you should do. Go, shoo.” She made a waving motion that left Holly smiling.
                  “Thank you.” Holly was exhausted, if she let herself think about it. Maybe that’s why Michael’s refusal was so devastating: she was just too tired to handle it right now.
                  On impulse, she pulled the other girl into a fast hug. “Thank you,” she repeated. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
                  Carly snorted, like she knew. As Holly went to punch out, Carly called after her. “And don’t you waste one tear on that weirdo loser. There’s a million other guys better than him. You deserve better.”
                  When her back was turned, Holly felt her mouth twist in a wry grimace. Carly, if only you knew , she thought. I don’t deserve anyone .
                  The owner, Jeff, wasn’t in tonight, so there was no one to protest her punching out early and stowing her apron in her cubby. Her jacket was one she’d bought at a secondhand store here in Knoxville, her first week in town, with a crumpled wad of cash. It was brown leather, with zippered pockets and feminine darts at the waist, a collar that snapped across her throat if she chose to fasten it there. Very appropriate for a waitress trying to make friends with a biker, she thought. But it was hopelessly little protection against this December cold snap; the wind cut right through it. She pulled it on and zipped it up, as she stood in the break room, because that was all she had. At Target, she’d bought a child-size pair of cheap red cotton gloves, and she tugged them on too, along with her five dollar matching red scarf, which she knotted tightly under her chin.
                  She left Bell Bar via the rear door, the one that fed into the alley, and the coldness outside snatched the breath from her lungs, squeezed tight at her sinuses and gave her an instant headache.
                  The alley was narrow and more than a little slimy. The one good thing about the cold was that it had pushed back the normally strong stench of the dumpsters. The overhead security lamp offered precious little in the way of light, and the shadows lay thick across the asphalt, most of them human-shaped and misleading.
                  Holly was glad she hadn’t walked to work. In the small grubby lot behind Bell Bar, her car waited.
                  It wasn’t hers, per se, but she’d been slick enough to swipe it, the day she left home. Her old home. And she’d had the thoughtfulness to have it repainted. She didn’t like to dwell on that particular transaction, was just glad for the halfway decent coat of new black paint on the old, formerly red Chevelle.
                  Her keys made the familiar jangle as she unlocked the door. She scanned the shadows of the lot, the spots of deep dark between the other cars as she opened the door and slid inside. Thump – she locked the door the second it was shut. The engine turned over with a conspicuous growl that was too loud. Nothing to be done for it. The thing was a classic – 1967 – and it was a deep-throated, proud machine.
                  It was a short drive to her apartment, and an even shorter walk to the door. She rented a room on the third floor of an old converted Victorian estate, the manse carved up into four units, plus her attic loft. The driveway was a wide circular pass that went all the way around the house, passing in front of the carriage house where she had a storage locker, and out on the other side, leaving plenty of parking room for the five
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