Pride Read Online Free PDF Page A

one might be different?”
    “Did I ever stop to think that the great Kane Geary, who’s made a life’s work of dating his way through town, who gets bored after about ten minutes of anything, might actually be tamed by Beth, of all people? Blond, bland, boring, Beth ?” She finished off the cigarette and pondered the question. “No, I guess the thought never occurred to me.”
    “You underestimate her, Grace. You always have.”
    “And you over estimate her, Kane,” she pointed out. “That’s the part of this I’ve never understood. Why Beth, of all people? She thought you were scum, she was dating Adam, she’s so not your type. Why her?”
    Kane smiled cryptically.
    “Why not?”

    The most memorable moment in my life was the time when I …
    Growing up in a small town, I always believed that someday I would …
    If there’s one thing I know in life, it’s that I …
    Pathetic!
    Beth slumped against the wall of the kitchen, ignoring the sticky grease patches that quickly dampened her polyester uniform. Her college applications were due in a couple weeks, and if she wanted to make up for her horrible SAT scores … She shivered at the memory of filling in all those tiny bubbles as tears spattered against the test booklet. It was bad enough Adam had broken up with her without any warning, had accused her of cheating on him, had tossed her away without a second thought—but she could never forgive him for doing it all the night before the SATs. If he were trying to ruin her life, he’d made a pretty damn good start.
    No, if she didn’t come up with an amazing application essay, something that would blow the mind of any admissions officer who read it, she could kiss her future goodbye.
    “Manning! Table seven’s still waiting for their food!” her manager called. One of the other waitresses, blowing past on her way back to the main dining area, shot her a dirty look: You may think you’re better than us, it said. You’re wrong .
    Without college, she’d have a future, all right—a long and unprosperous life of flipping burgers at the Nifty Fifties diner, smiling pathetically at all her former classmates as they breezed through on spring break before heading back to their real lives in the real world. Not like she had any time to deal with her applications, the magic ticket to a new life—she was working double shifts to pay for this ski trip that Kane was insisting on, and every spare minute was spent at home, babysitting her little brothers. Leave it to me to get busier over winter break, she thought bitterly.
    Beth stood up and tried to muster enough energy to face her customers, still furiously writing and rewriting in her head.
    I’m a boring girl from a boring town, but I make a mean burger and fries….
    “Waitress! We’ve been waiting for our food forever !”
    Beth looked over to table seven—and almost turned on her heel and fled back to the kitchen. Spending her vacation at the diner, mopping up spilled milk shakes, ducking grease spatter, and taking orders from every surly, hygienically challenged customer who walked through the door, was bad enough. This was worse. It was what she hated most about this job: taking orders from her friends.
    Scratch that—her former friends.
    Christie, Nikki, Marcy, and Darcy were all dating guys from the basketball team. Which guys? Beth could never keep track—sometimes, she wondered if they could, either.
    Before she’d started dating Adam, back when she was just another faceless nobody, they’d refused to acknowledge her existence. Oh, they knew her name, all right—the Haven High seniors had been trapped in one building or another together since kindergarten. There were no strangers in a small town. But you would never have known it, not from the blank stares when she crossed their path, from the way they looked right through her, as if she didn’t exist. As if she were nothing.
    Then she’d started dating Adam—captain of the basketball team