Whose Bride Is She Anyway Read Online Free PDF Page A

pretended she was disinterested and bored. Henry’s eyeballs were not responding with the usual pop. He never once looked up from those damn papers.
    He was gay.
    Okay, scratch the big seduction scene. No amount of cleavage and booty was going to catch this guy’s attention. She’d have to rely on her brain, not something that was foreign to Tara. Not by a long shot, but to a degree, she rather took personal pleasure in her newly acquired looks, and wasn’t above using them for personal gain. She remembered a time when she’d scorned the pretty girls for using their looks to get what they wanted. If she’d only known the benefits she would reap as a result. Tara took a quick peek at her thighs to make sure they weren’t splitting the seams of the jeans she’d poured herself into.
    No, she reminded herself, that didn’t happen anymore. She could wear her clothes as tight as she liked and it made no difference, nothing was ever going to bulge on her body again if she could help it.
    By all things Richard Simmons, I do solemnly swear.
    Henry Abernathy’s chair creaked as he tilted it back and fired his first words since she’d entered the room. The hum of the video camera droned in the background. “You do know the show requires the jury foreman to know Kelsey Little, right?”
    Tara nodded and took in his gaze solemnly.
Oy
    “So, Tara, tell me how well you know Kelsey Little.”
    Well enough to know I hate her guts, how’s that?
“We didn’t talk on the phone every night, but we hung out in school.” Not a total lie, Tara soothed herself. They did
hang
out. At least in the same science class when they’d passed papers to one another. She sat behind Kelsey every day for a year, that
sort of
constituted hanging out, right?
    “Were you on the cheerleading squad with her?” Henry tapped his pen on the desk in front of him.
    Click, click, click.
    Tara tried to keep from visibly cringing. The cheerleading squad…
    Hah! Yeah, that was me on the top of that pyramid, all thighs and cellulite.
    “No, I wasn’t a cheerleader.”
    Remember, less is more
.
Just say as little as possible about your relationship with Kelsey and you might skate through this unscathed.
    “So, exactly what was your relationship with Kelsey? ”
Did Henry seem a bit skeptical here? Well, shit. How did you define their relationship?
    Tormentor and the tormented? Hunter and the hunted?
    Tara battled another cringe as a bead of sweat popped out on her forehead.
    Play it cool
. It wouldn’t look good to have sweat marks under her armpits. “We hung out together, went to a party or two. Did the girl-thing.” ‘Nuff said.
    “Hung out together?” Henry drawled. “Were you a close personal friend?”
    Define close.
“We were friendly enough for me to know what she likes in a guy. ” Tara followed that statement up with a smile, a slow, upward tilt of her freshly glossed lips. It was, after all, the truth. She
did
know what Kelsey liked in a man. It wasn’t a difficult task. Low on brain fuel, big on six-pack abs; hold the grammatically complete sentences, if you don’t mind.
    “What makes you think you’re qualified to pick a potential husband for Kelsey? ”
    Tara almost snorted. She wasn’t qualified to pick her nose, let alone a husband for Kelsey. That’s what would make this fun. She tried to keep her expression composed.
    She cocked her head in thought and pondered how to answer. “Well, Kelsey and I had very similar tastes in high school, in guys anyway. We liked a lot of the same things. I want the best for her. I want her to have the man of her dreams.”
    And a good dose of universal, televised humiliation.
Her stomach lurched. Damn, there was that pang of guilt again, sucking up all of her revenge energy.
    Henry didn’t look too impressed with her answer. His blank stare mirrored her own. Okay, she was tired of this stupid, inane crap and her mind kept wandering to the guy in the damn hall. It was time to show Henry that