Tangled Thing Called Love Read Online Free PDF

laugh and she didn’t want to laugh. He wasn’t going to charm his way back into her heart through her funny bone.
    “I like your room,” Ben whispered. “This is where you slept when you were a girl?” He moved even closer. He must have showered; she could smell the soap he’d used. He was bare-chested beneath the robe, and she could glimpse the smiley-face boxers she’d given him for Valentine’s Day.
    “You need to leave. Gran doesn’t allow unmarried couples to share beds. Besides, the boys’ bedroom is next door. And Sam sleepwalks.”
    “I’m not leaving until you talk to me. Whoa—I can’t believe I just said that. It’s the woman’s job to say ‘We need to talk.’ If my buds ever find out they won’t let me watch football with them anymore.”
    “Gee—it must be so hard to be a guy. Kind of like being a gorilla, only less humanlike.”
    “Can I sit on your bed? It’s cold on the floor and my knees hurt. I’ve got sensitive knees, you know.”
    Mazie bit on her comforter to stifle a giggle. She absolutely was not going to laugh.
    “Oh, for Pete’s sake—you’re such a sissy.”
    Taking this as an invitation, Ben hopped up. He did not sit on her bed—he scooched out a space for himself beneath the sheets, forcing Mazie to move over so her body would have zero contact with his body. He leaned back against the headboard, clasping his hands behind his head. “Much better.”
    “You’re taking up three quarters of the bed,” Mazie grumbled.
    “Okay—straight to the point. What happened, Mazie? All of a sudden you just stopped responding to my e-mails and wouldn’t take my calls.”
    What, exactly, had happened?
    Six weeks ago Bonaparte Labeck had been offered a job as a camera technician with a Los Angeles television station at a salary twice what he was earning in Milwaukee.
    “The guys at the L.A. station want me to go out and talk to them,” he’d told Mazie.
    “You should go,” Mazie said. “Opportunities like this don’t come every day.” Ben Labeck was a first-rate talent stuck at a third-rate TV station. She’d been happy for him. At least she’d pretended to be, because this was something he really deserved and she was determined not to rain on his parade.
    “I’ll listen to their offer and be back in two days,” Ben had promised the day he’d flown off to California. “We’ll talk about it when I get back.”
    He’d phoned Mazie that night, midnight her time, ten o’clock on the coast. “Pack your bags and come out,” he said, sounding happy. “They want me to start tomorrow.”
    “I can’t get away just like that.” She forced a laugh she didn’t feel. “I have a job, remember? And a dog?”
    “Well, quit your job. And bring Muffin with you. You can come as soon as I’ve found an apartment out here.”
    Ben had called twice a day at first. They’d talked and texted and emailed. Then as Ben became busier, his calls came once a day, and then every other day. The emails dwindled. He was caught up in his new job, in meeting new people, Mazie figured. Meeting new female people, she was sure, all of them sophisticated and sexy. Probably going to parties every night. Probably going to other women’s beds every night.
    “I imagined you meeting all these beautiful starlets,” Mazie began, “and I was just this dull person back home, this obligation, like the people you send Christmas cards to even though you can’t remember who they are.”
    Ben laughed. “Starlets—ha. I was working sixteen hours a day, trying to keep my head above water. The technology on the coast is miles ahead of what I was used to. Everything was computers. I had to learn a whole new program; the manual was four hundred pages long. I honestly didn’t know if I could keep up.”
    Feeling her reserve about to crack, Mazie folded her arms across her chest. “They couldn’t have had you working sixteen hours a day, every single day. What about weekends? And who was that woman who