Pride Read Online Free PDF Page B

coleslaw and onion rings. “I asked you not to come here when I’m working,” she snapped. “It’s distracting.”
    “Your wish is my command—I’m out of here,” Kane promised, a knowing smile fixed on his face. “I just wanted to give you this.”
    He handed her a small box, elegantly wrapped in light silver paper. Beth didn’t know what to say.
    “It’s not my birthday, and—”
    “I just saw it and thought of you,” he explained, resting a hand on her lower back. “Open it.”
    Slightly flushed, Beth carefully pulled off the wrapping paper and lifted the lid of the box. Inside lay a beautiful sky blue scarf. It was exactly the same shade as her eyes.
    “Kane, it’s beautiful!” she exclaimed. She lifted it to her cheek and sighed at the soft caress of the fabric.
    “Is this—?”
    “Cashmere,” he confirmed.
    “But it’s too nice, I couldn’t—”
    “You’ll look beautiful in it,” he assured her, wrapping it softly around her neck. “And this way, you’ll be nice and cozy up in the mountains this weekend.” He raised an eyebrow. “Just in case I’m not enough to keep you warm.”
    Beth laughed and snuggled against him—suddenly, she didn’t care what she was wearing, or how she looked or smelled. She just cared that she had a warm body to lean against, warm lips to kiss.
    “Meet me back here at the end of my shift?” she whispered as they finally broke apart.
    “You can count on me.”
    And she was beginning to wonder if it might just be true.
www.matchmadeinhaven.com
    username: Spitfire
    password: MStevens88
    Friday’s entrée at the Haven High cafeteria: meat loaf

    (Miranda thought this last log-in requirement was a master stroke—how else would the Web site screen out all the perverts and cyberfreaks?) She hit enter, and the final version of her profile popped up on the screen.

User Profile: Spitfire
    Sex: female
    Age: 17
    Height: 5′2″

    (Okay, so she’d added an extra inch and a half—but who knows, maybe she was still growing.)

Favorite color: scarlet
    Favorite food: -----
    If I were an animal, I’d be: an elephant

    (It wasn’t sexy, but had the virtue of being true.)

Best lie I’ve ever told: Mom, you look great today—have you lost weight? And can I have a raise in my allowance?
    Celebrity I most look like: Scarlett Johannson

    (Um … maybe if you squinted? While you were high?)
Three things I can’t live without: 1) my iPod, 2) my best friend, 3) chocolate chip cookies
    I am … always ready to laugh, or to make you laugh. Honest, loyal, fun (and totally willing to hold a grudge on your behalf).
    You are … someone who thinks these questions are as stupid as I do. Someone who knows how to have a good time without making an ass of himself—and if the latter can’t be helped, at least is able to laugh at himself. Someone who knows what the word “latter” means. Basically, you’re smart, funny, confident, and you love that I’m all those things too.

    The confident thing was a lie, of course, but she’d thought it would look good, and might attract the right kind of guy. The kind who wasn’t a desperate freak too pathetic to find his own flesh-and-blood dates. If any of the guys on matchmadeinhaven.com actually fit that profile—Miranda was seriously skeptical.
    But, crazy or not, she’d decided to go for it. What, other than the final shreds of her dignity, did she have to lose?

chapter

3
     

    “Here’s your uniform, and here’s your mop.”
    “My … mop?” Harper took the outstretched polyester hoop skirt, holding it between the tips of two fingers as if afraid of catching its germs. She just stared at the mop, however—no way was she touching that thing, much less pushing it around.
    “What, did you think I was going to start you out as a waitress?” Mr. White, the Nifty Fifties manager, threw his head back and burst into mean-spirited laughter, his double chins jiggling in time with his throaty cackles. Finally he stopped, rubbing