Sweeter Than Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page B

have the decency to drop dead.
    George held out a hand. “How you doing? George Harper.”
    David swallowed the bile in his throat and took the man’s hand. “David Hunt.”
    “Nice to meet you.” George turned back to Ellis’s daughter and pressed a hand to the small of her back. “Let’s go. We’ll be late.”
    Somehow David watched her go without snatching her back and away from Harper. Maria shot David a last, furtive glance over her shoulder, then let Harper steer her into the foyer. Stomach roiling, David followed them, hovering just out of sight inside the doorway and listening for whatever sounds of Maria his hungry ears could absorb.
    “Is that what you’re wearing, baby?” Harper asked her in a low voice.
    . long, tense pause followed and then Maria spoke. “What’s wrong with this?”
    “I was hoping you’d wear that strapless dress. I want everyone to see how beautiful you are. You know I need to make a good impression tonight. Can you change for me?”
    Outraged, David listened and prayed Maria would flatten Harper where he stood for making such a ridiculous request. But then, unbelievably, there was a swatting sound—did that jackass have the nerve to smack her on the butt?—and Maria spoke.
    “Okay,” she said tightly.
    David couldn’t believe it.
    Maria went upstairs while David seethed in impotent silence. Ellis came out of his office, saw George, and took him back to his office to show him his new driver. David went out to the foyer to wait at the base of the curved staircase for Maria.
    She came right back, this time wearing a strapless black dress that was off the charts in the sexiness department. He couldn’t begin to imagine how all those delicious, velvety-brown curves managed to stay restrained, but they did. Maria looked heart-stopping, a trophy beyond any man’s wildest dreams. And if anyone bothered to look beyond the hair, the face and the body—something George Harper obviously never did—they’d also see that she looked self-conscious and miserable.
    Seeing David at the bottom of the stairs, she seemed to shrink, and crossed her arms over her chest as she descended. Something on his face must have made her think she needed to defend herself.
    “I just thought I’d change—” she began.
    Though he had no right whatsoever to speak his mind, David’s indignation made it impossible for him to keep his lips together and his big fat mouth shut. He saw Maria’s future, as if someone had handed him a crystal ball: her youth, her desire to please, her strong father, her overbearing, older boyfriend who ignored her feelings every chance he got. If she spent too much more time around those two men, they’d swallow her whole and burp up her bones. There was no way David could stand silently by and let Maria disappear.
    “Don’t let him treat you like that,” he told her in a low, urgent voice he hardly recognized as his own. “You’respecial. If he doesn’t know how lucky he is to be with you, then he’s an even bigger punk than I think he is.”
    She seemed dazed, as if she didn’t know what to make of all his fervor. Her mouth opened, but her voice was on a five-second delay. “Everyone thinks I’m the lucky one,” Maria said finally. “They keep saying how rich and smart George is—”
    “George,” he said, unable to keep the hostility out of his voice over being forced to say the man’s name, “wants a doll he can show off.”
    Her eyes widened. “Don’t all men want dolls?”
    “I don’t.”
    Their gazes locked and held, and so many things pulsed between them that he couldn’t begin to analyze them all. Understanding. Knowledge. Longing. Passion. Unthinkingly, he took a step closer to her—he had to becloser to her—but then they heard the laughing, approaching voices of Ellis and Harper, and another beautiful moment was spoiled.
    But as David watched her leave for her date, he knew that something powerful had been born tonight—something