Sleeping Beauty Read Online Free PDF

to the base of her throat, visibly gathering the threads of her usual control. "But I don't like the idea of you going back to that empty cottage," she said fretfully. "I've never understood why you insisted on moving out. It's not as if there isn't more than enough room in this house."
    "I need a place of my own," Anne said, feeling the knot in her stomach tighten. They'd had this argument three years ago when she'd decided to move out. She wasn't going to have it again.
    "I know, I know—you needed your privacy," Olivia said bitterly. "I never have understood why you felt you had to move out just for that. You could have stayed here and had all the privacy you wanted."
    Anne swallowed an hysterical little bubble of laughter, aware that her mother actually believed what she was saying.
    "It's not like I moved very far," she said, bypassing the issue of whether or not she should have moved at all. "The cottage is only a couple of hundred yards away."
    "Far enough. You can't even see it from the house."
    Which was the only reason I agreed to move in there, Anne thought. Despite her assurance about respecting her privacy, her mother wouldn't have thought twice about keeping tabs on any comings and goings at the cottage. Not that there was anything to keep track of Anne admitted silently and with some regret
    When Anne didn't volunteer to pack her things and move back into the family home, Olivia's mouth compressed with irritation. She would have liked to pursue the issue but knew she wouldn't get anywhere with it, just as she hadn't gotten anywhere three years ago. It had been a shock to find her usually malleable daughter suddenly digging in her heels, insisting that it was time she had a place of her own. She'd had to content herself with the knowledge that at least she'd persuaded Anne to move into the ridiculous Victorian confection of a cottage at the bottom of the driveway, rather than getting a place somewhere in town. There was no point in rehashing the subject, particularly not with
    Lisa sitting there, listening to every word. You didn't air family troubles in front of an outsider and, if she had her way, that was exactly what Lisa was going to stay.
    "I still can't believe you talked to a stranger like that," she said fretfully. "As if you were just anyone.''
    As if there had ever been a time, in the last fifteen years, when I've been allowed to forget that Brooke Moore was my sister, Anne thought bitterly. As if she'd ever been able to be "just anyone".
    "He was just someone passing through," was all she said. "I'm sure he's halfway to Chicago or New York or wherever he was originally headed by now."
    "Not New York," Jack said suddenly. "Not unless he had a rocket-powered motorcycle."
    "Could have been nuclear," Lisa said, gamely picking up on his transparent bid to lighten the atmosphere. "I bet you can download plans for a nuclear-powered motorcycle off the Internet."
    "And probably pick up everything you need to make it at the local hardware store."
    "This is hardly a joking matter," Olivia said stiffly, but the moment of crisis had passed and they all knew it.
    Just another warm evening spent in the bosom of her family, Anne thought wryly. She stood up and began gathering the dessert plates. All this because she'd exchanged a few words with a man she would never see again. And wasn't it ridiculous to feel regret at the thought? He would probably have turned out to be a dead bore. Any man who was that good-looking probably had an ego the size of Kansas. Still, she allowed herself a wistful moment to wonder where he was now.
    At that particular moment, Neill was unpacking his duffle bag under the watchful eyes of Claudette Colbert and Bela Lugosi. They stared down at him from their respective posters—Colbert looking sultry and dangerous as Cleopatra, and Lugosi looking like an orthodontist's dream come true as Dracula. It was, he thought, an interesting combination with which to decorate a motel room. But then,