Seduced by a Dangerous Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

drink?” Rob wanted to know.  
    “Not if Henry’s your boss.”
    “Christ. What a mess.” He wiped his hand over his face and stood slowly. “Think I’ll go to the gym instead. Gonna make myself a peanut butter sandwich. Want one?”
    I started to shake my head, then bolted to my feet and started looking for my keys. “I didn’t get the groceries. I’ll go now.”
    “No biggie. I’ll do it after the gym. Keep gas prices low.”
    That each of my excursions involved Henry or one of his henchmen following me in a separate vehicle had become a curdled joke, but I laughed anyway.  
    Feeling guilty as hell, I decided to clean up while Rob was gone, starting by straightening up the hill of shoes just inside the entrance. Next I sorted through the heap of mail on the small dining room table. It was mostly Rob’s. Now that I didn’t have any utilities, I hardly received anything.
    As I was thinking that Rob needed to transfer more of his bills to online pay, I came across a light blue envelope addressed to me. It had been buried down toward the bottom of the pile.  
    I peeled up the flap and immediately recognized the handwriting. Veronica. She had been my best friend for ages, but then she’d moved a few towns over. At first we had visited each other frequently, but as she got more wrapped up in her new life, and as I got more wrapped up in my own insanity, we had drifted apart. I hadn’t talked to her in a couple of months—before all the drama with Henry and Corbin.  
    Veronica was indirectly responsible for my first meeting with Corbin. I had spotted him in a greeting card store while I was looking for a discounted Halloween prop like one she owned.
    Thinking of that night made me wonder what had happened to the eavesdropping device I’d used to get his name. All my gadgets were packed away in Rob’s garage, but because I hadn’t done the packing—hadn’t even planned on moving—I had no idea which box they were in. Or boxes. For all I knew, they’d gotten strewn everywhere.  
    My dearest Audrey , the letter started. That made me smile. Veronica was more likely to address me as whore or bitch than dearest. I missed her like crazy.
    The letter was her attempt at a formal invitation to a party the weekend before. Frowning, I checked the postmark date on the envelope and realized that the letter had been forwarded from my old apartment.
    Knowing Veronica, the party had been wild. I ran up to my bedroom and found my phone. I’d lost her number when I’d destroyed the other phone, but lucky for me, she had included her contact information in the invitation. All part of the formality.
    “Hello?” she answered, circumspect.
    “It’s me!” I was so excited to hear her voice that my heart threatened to explode.
    “Audrey? You’re on my shit list! I’ve been trying to call you.”
    “I upgraded my phone and then broke the new one,” I said. Broke it by throwing it into a water fountain to keep it out of Henry’s clutches. It had died nobly.  
    “So why didn’t you power up the old phone?” Even though she had an enviably feminine voice, she managed to imbue it with enough scorn and condescension to make any boot camp drill sergeant green with envy. But I knew she was the nicest person ever, so I wasn’t worried.
    “Dumped it once everything was transferred over,” I said with a sigh. “Lesson learned. I moved, by the way. Only saw your invite today.”
    “Moved? The city condemned that rathole?”
    “Well…” I didn’t want to tell her I’d lost my job. That would only lead to more questions than I could stomach at the moment. I glanced around at my bright bedroom. “I upgraded to a very nice condo. It’s even got curtains and sheers. White lace, if you can believe that.”
    “Bitch, where the hell have you been? You could have gotten my number.”
    I could practically see her, her warm brown eyes angry but hurt, her purple-tipped fingers raking through her Goth-black straight hair,