The Siren Read Online Free PDF Page B

will—breaking up.”
    Wesley plucked at a loose thread in the battered armchair.
    “But they love each other? Why wouldn’t they belong together?”
    Nora released a wistful sigh. “Spoken like a nineteen-year-old.”
    “I like happy endings. Is that a crime?”
    “It’s just unrealistic. You don’t think two people can break up and still be happy eventually?”
    Wesley paused. He tended to act before thinking, but he always thought before he spoke. She studied him while he pondered her question. Gorgeous kid. He drove her up the wall with those big brown eyes of his and sweetly handsome face. For the millionth time since asking him to move in with her she wondered what the hell she’d been thinking by dragging this innocent into her world.
    “You left him,” Wesley finally said. Him…Søren.
    “Yeah,” she said, biting her bottom lip, a habit Søren had been trying to break her of for eighteen years. “I did.”
    “Are you happy without him?” Wesley turned his eyes back to her.
    “Some days, yes. Then some days it’s like I just got my arm blown off. But this book isn’t about Søren.”
    “Can I read it?”
    “Not a chance. Maybe when it’s rewritten. Or maybe…”
    Nora grinned at him, and Wesley suddenly looked nervous.
    She got out of her chair and sat on the edge of her desk and put a foot on each arm of his chair.
    “Let’s play a game,” she said leaning in close. Wesley sat up straight and pressed back into the chair. “I’ll trade you my book for your body.”
    “I’m your intern. This counts as sexual harassment.”
    “Being sexually harassed is in your job description, remember?”
    Wesley shifted in the chair. She loved how jumpy she still made him even after over a year in the same house. A sandy-blond lock of hair fell over his forehead. She reached out to brush it back.
    Wesley ducked under her leg before she could touch him and stood just out of reach.
    “Coward,” she teased.
    Wesley started to say something but they both froze at the blaring ring that echoed from the vicinity of her desk.
    The smile that had been in Wesley’s eyes vanished as Nora dug out a sleek red cell phone from under a pile of papers.
    “ La Maîtresse speaking,” she answered.
    “The book,” Wesley mouthed. His eyes pleaded with her.
    With the phone still at her ear Nora walked up to Wesley. She moved so close he started stepping back. She took another step toward him, and he took another step back.
    “Go do your homework, junior,” she said, and Wesley gave her the closest thing to a mean look he had.
    “You have homework, too,” he reminded her.
    “I’m not a biochemistry major at a fucking brutal liberal arts college. Scoot. The grown-ups are talking now.”
    She shut the door in his face.
    “Talk, Kingsley,” she said into the phone. “This better be good.”
    * * *
    “Working late as usual, I see.”
    Zach glanced up from his notes on Nora’s book and found J.P. standing outside his office with a newspaper under his arm. He checked his watch.
    “After eight already?” Zach asked, shocked by his sudden immunity to the passage of time. “Good Lord.”
    “Must be reading something good.” J.P. entered Zach’s office and sat down.
    “Possibly. Here—listen to this.” Zach opened her manuscript to a marked page and read aloud.
    It is a pleasure to watch her work. From my desk in the office I need only to move my chair six inches to the right and I can see the kitchen’s reflection in the hall mirror with such clarity that I feel like a ghost in the room.
    This is what I see—Caroline, who at twenty still retains the coltish legs of a much younger girl, pushes a stool to the counter. It wobbles nervously under her knees as she kneels on it with a steadying breath. She opens the cabinet that houses my wineglasses, my deliberately mismatched collection, all of which are older than her and one or two which are older than this adolescent country. She takes them one by one from