The Rich Shall Inherit Read Online Free PDF Page A

it jumped from the page, and he stared quietly at it for some time. Then, with a smile at the waitress that he knew would melt herheart and send chills through her body, he ordered another espresso and a croissant. But it should have been champagne he was ordering, because Orlando Messenger had just seen the answer to all his problems.
    Even though it was autumn, the California heat bounced off the Ventura Freeway, sending distorting little wiggles of trembling light across Lauren Hunter’s windshield, like ripples in a slow-moving stream. She swung the ancient Ford Mustang along the Encino exit ramp and headed down Ventura Boulevard, reaching automatically for a Kleenex to wipe the sweat from her forehead. A car without air-conditioning in this kind of California weather was the modern-day equivalent of Dante’s
Inferno
, and Lauren knew quite a lot about the
Inferno
—not only had she studied Dante’s work at Redlands High, but she’d been through her own personal version of hell, and sometimes she considered she would have been better off in the simple brimstone-and-fire version … but she had promised herself that she would try never to think of it again; that from now on whenever the events of the past few years came into her mind she would simply force them away. Of course, the psychiatrist had said she shouldn’t repress them, she should let out all the memories and fears. He’d said she should tell her story at the group-encounter sessions the way the others did, but Lauren just couldn’t. It was better nobody knew.
    She turned the car off Ventura, making a quick left into the underground parking lot. Easing herself from the sticky heat of the plastic seat, she smoothed her short skirt over her slender legs. She pulled the shirt that had started out crisp and freshly ironed from her damp breasts, thinking disguestedly that she might as well have been sitting in a sauna. Feeling as limp as if she’d already done a day’s work instead of just beginning, Lauren slammed the car door without bothering to lock it—who would want to steal that old heap anyhow? She doubted they’d get fifty bucks for it. Dispiritedly she walked up the steps from the lot and headed for Denny’s Coffee Shop, where she worked as a waitress.
    She knew she’d been lucky to get the job, but sometimes when she saw the young girls lunching together or just passing time having coffee, wearing cute workout clothes or Guess jeans and Reeboks, it made her even more aware of the difference between them and her. She envied their carefree lack of responsibility andtheir chat about classes and clothes and dates. Her face had once been pert and eager just like theirs, but now these girls would never even consider her as part of their crowd. If they did glance at her, they saw only a worn-looking young woman with tired blue eyes and clean reddish-blond hair skewed back into a knot. Lauren might have been any age between twenty and thirty, but in fact she was only eighteen.
    She washed her face and hands in the ladies’ room and tidied her hair, scarcely bothering to look in the mirror. She knew what she would see and she didn’t like it. There had been times when she’d thought that if it weren’t for Maria, she might have ended it all. But Maria, who could so easily have been said to have wrecked her life, was also her sole joy.
    Lauren smiled as she thought of the baby; she was fourteen months old now and such a pretty little girl with round cheeks and the sweetest expression in her blue eyes, and she already had a cascade of thick dark curls. Of course, they’d told her the baby would have to be adopted or fostered, right away, but once Lauren had seen her and held her, there had been no question of giving her away. She was determined she would be loved. It had meant giving up her chance of college and instead getting whatever work she could, but she knew it would be worth it.
    The cool vent from the air-conditioning relaxed her