Tangled Thing Called Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

answered your phone?”
    The woman with the bubbly voice who’d answered Ben’s phone six days after he’d left. The date was engraved on her heart.
    “Oh—the Benster? I’ll have him phone you back when he gets the chance,” the woman—girl?—told Mazie, obviously trying to suppress a giggle and giving Mazie avision of having interrupted her and Ben in the middle of a passionate encounter. Mazie’s overactive imagination had supplied the details: Champagne. A hot tub on a condo patio with an ocean view. A nineteen-year-old blonde with size-40 breast implants. And a twin sister.
    Now, in her bedroom, Ben’s silence spoke for itself. “I knew it!” Mazie cried, wrenching the blanket up to her neck.
    “Okay.” Ben heaved a sigh. “I went out with a couple of women. Nothing serious. It was casual, okay?”
    Casual. Went out with . The words cut to Mazie’s heart, and the only way she could cope with the fact that he’d rejected her was to act as though she didn’t care. “A couple of women,” she repeated, staring up at Greenland. “Well, that’s your business, I guess. You don’t owe me any explanations. It’s not as though you and I made any promises.”
    Not that promises were any guarantee, Mazie thought. Kip Vonnerjohn, the man she’d fallen in love with at a dewy-eyed twenty-three, had made all kinds of promises. She’d believed the promises. She hadn’t known that promises were something Kip could shrug off as easily as he could peel off his shorts. He’d cheated on her while they were engaged, he’d broken his marriage vows while they were still on their honeymoon, and he’d boinked everything in skirts during their unhappy two-year marriage.
    When Kip had been murdered, with all the evidence pointing to Mazie as his killer, she’d been arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. She’d spent nearly four years behind bars, and then one day a tornado had tossed her over the fence and she’d gone on the lam.
    Running for her life, she’d been live-trapped by Ben Labeck, literally taken captive in his camera van. She’d discovered that Ben had followed her trial and had never been convinced of her guilt. He’d helped her track down the man who had committed the murder, risking his own freedom to do it. What woman could have resisted a tough, brave, totally hot guy playing Sir Lancelot to her Guinevere, clearing her name and freeing her from the dungeon? Not Mazie Maguire. She’d fallen head over heels for Ben Labeck.
    She’d moved in with him when she’d been released from prison. Living together hadn’t worked out very well, though. What she’d needed at the time, Mazie had discovered, was independence. Her own space, time to rediscover who she was. She’drented a small apartment a few blocks from Ben, and they’d continued seeing each other. Seeing each other exclusively, as far as she knew; it was an unspoken agreement between them.
    Mazie had once blurted out that she loved him, but Ben hadn’t said it back.
    That was okay, she’d thought. You couldn’t force someone to love you. But because she loved Ben, she’d wanted him to be happy. If that meant his leaving her, going on to bigger and better things—then that was a sacrifice she had to make for him.
    The sacrifice had nearly killed her. The thought of Ben in another woman’s arms had made her feel so wretched she could barely force herself to get up in the morning. If it hadn’t been for having to take care of Muffin, she might not even have bothered.
    “I stopped answering your messages because I was dumping you. To save you the trouble of dumping me,” Mazie said airily, hoping her voice didn’t betray the agony she’d endured. She’d lost everything else, and all she had left was her pride.
    “Mazie,” Ben said, moving closer. His thigh touched hers, sending an erotic shock all through her body. She willed herself to move away, but her treacherous body turned toward him instead. His hands