Wish You Were Here Read Online Free PDF Page A

about Matthew Hartley, does he?”
    Piper ’s back went stick-straight and her eyes widened. “No! Oh, God, no. I can’t talk to him about boys. He’d lock me in my room forever. He’d homeschool me.”
    “ Right.” Freya adjusted herself on her toes; squatting wasn’t comfortable, but there was no way her satin ass was touching that dirty wooden dock. “So, this Matthew Hartley. He’s cute?”
    Piper nodded. “Really cute.”
    “ And he likes you, too?”
    Even in the waning sunlight, Freya could see Piper ’s cheeks flush. “I don’t know.”
    “ Well, let me tell you something about boys, Piper, which you’ll figure out sooner or later but I say the sooner the better.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Boys are stupid.”
    Piper ’s eyes widened. “Oh, not Matthew. He’s really smart. He’s on the honor roll and everything.”
    “ No, I don’t mean school-stupid,” Freya said. “They’re girl-stupid, and I’m sorry to tell you, it never gets any better. And the thing is, the ones who are girl-smart are only that way because they want to get in your pants, so they’re no good, either. Basically, we’re all screwed.”
    Piper ’s face suddenly froze up hard, and Freya realized what she’d said.
    “ Maybe I didn’t say that right. What I mean is—”
    “ Yeah, explain,” a voice cut in from behind her. “I didn’t quite catch all of that.”
    Freya swiveled around to see the dark form of Nate Brody standing on the dock, his arms crossed over his chest and his face taut. She felt like a kid getting caught after curfew, and she didn’t like the feeling. She stood up and held her hand out to pull Piper up to standing. Nate glanced past Freya at Piper.
    “ Since when do you ride down to the lake without telling me?”
    “ I was with an adult.”
    “ She’s not an adult,” Nate said.
    “ Pardon me?” Freya said.
    Nate gave her a dull look, then shifted his glance back to his daughter. “She’s a guest. Guests are not babysitters.”
    “ I’m not a baby!” Piper shouted, but instantly shifted a little behind Freya as she caught her father’s dark look.
    “ C’mon, Nate—” Freya started but, on catching an intense look of warning from Nate, thought better of it and shut up.
    “ Piper,” Nate said, his voice hard and even, “you get on that bike and go back to the house. Now .”
    Piper slid out from behind Freya and stamped down the dock toward her bike. Nate watched her go, obviously waiting to unload on Freya until Piper was out of earshot.
    Panic built in Freya’s gut as they waited; how the hell was she going to fix this to the point where negotiations could start? The worst part—she was better than this. She’d been better than this when she’d first started working for her father as a freakin’ intern.
    What the hell had happened to her?
    Piper rode out of sight, and Nate turned on Freya, his eyes dark. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    “ Look, just let me explain—”
    “ You don’t have kids, do you?”
    Anger rose, pushing the panic aside, and her jaw clenched tight against it. “No, but—”
    He advanced on her, his voice rising. “Maybe you don’t understand how these things work, but you don’t just run off with someone else’s kid without telling them.”
    “ Hey ,” Freya said, advancing on him in turn. “First of all, I didn’t come looking for your kid. She asked me to ride bikes, and for all I knew, she got your permission first. And maybe I don’t know much about kids, but I’ll tell you one thing—if it was my kid, I’d listen to her so that she didn’t have to grab some random stranger just to have someone to talk to.”
    Never get personal. Always be friendly. Freya swallowed as she remembered the two most basic rules of negotiation. Less than twelve hours, and she’d managed to violate both of them with Nate Brody. If someone under her had ever screwed a deal up that badly that fast, she’d fire her on the