Blogger Bundle Volume I: Dear Author Selects Unusual Heroines

by Jo Leigh, Kathleen O'Reilly, Kay David

  “I’m going home, Mom.”

  “Well, good. Don’t forget to eat something. You’re looking much too thin.”

  AMANDA STARED at her computer, finishing up the last of the Northcott mediation. Another miraculous settlement. She looked up at the clock—10:00 p.m. She hated the nights alone worst of all. The intercom sounded insistently, as if someone was leaning on it.

  Quickly, she went to the door and pressed the button, hoping no one was hurt.

  “Amanda. Let me up.”

  The sound of his voice made her shake. “Joe?”

  “Please.”

  She needed to be strong. “Why?”

  “Amanda, we need to talk.”

  She leaned her head wearily against the door. “I don’t think I want to see you.”

  “It’s important.” He sounded so urgent.

  That just made her mad. “So important that’s it’s taken you two months to think of it?”

  “No. Amanda?”

  “Amanda?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got to talk to you. I love you.”

  “That’s not fair, Joe.”

  “Will you buzz me up? Please?”

  She pressed the button, unlocked the door and then waited, absolutely refusing to get her hopes up.

  He burst through the door.

  “What’s going on Joe? Why are you here?”

  Joe motioned for her to sit down on the couch, his eyes animated. “To talk to you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I think we should try again.”

  Amanda couldn’t control the wild jump in her heart. However, she was wiser now. “And with our successful track record, why do you think this time will be better?” She closed her eyes. Please, God.

  “I finally figured it out.”

  That opened her eyes. “What?”

  He started to pace around the room. All the restless energy was forcing him to move. “Amanda, when I grew up my parents measured a man by how much he made, how successful he was. A lot of people do that, me included. I figured you’d see me as second best and I couldn’t understand how you, who have your life so together, could ever be happy with that. For you, I wanted to be first, I wanted to be the best.”

  He knelt in front of her. “I owe you an apology. You’re not like that.”

  Hope was a wondrous thing and she shook her head. “No. You could’ve just asked me that.”

  He took her hand. “I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  “And you’d believe it now?” she asked carefully.

  When he smiled up at her, she already knew the answer. For the first time in his life, Joe Barrington believed in himself.

  “Yes. Amanda?”

  The lump in her throat prevented speech. She nodded.

  “Will you marry me? I can’t live without you.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  He looked so serious, so earnest, so in love. “Yeah.”

  It had been so long since she had touched him. She got down on the carpet next to him. “Good.”

  “It’s not going to be easy, Amanda.” He lowered his head.

  “I know,” she answered, scooting in closer.

  “There’ll have to be lots of compromises.” He kissed her neck. “And sacrifices.” He moved her robe aside.

  She buried her hands in his hair while his lips played on her skin. “And negotiations.”

  He eased her down to the carpet. “Second thing we do is paint all the walls.”

  “What’s the first?”

  His laugh was slow and smoky. “Let me show you.”

  Epilogue

  IN EARLY SPRING, the flowers started blooming all over the city. In windowsills, in parks, outside stoops. For Amanda it was her favorite time of year. After all, she was going to be an April bride. She should have been looking over the latest malpractice claim that the firm had picked up, but instead she was thumbing through a bridal magazine.

  Oh, well.

  “Hey.”

  And there, in the doorway to her office—grinning rather foolishly—stood her fiancé.

  Fiancé. She liked the way that sounded. “What are you doing here? You coming to take me back to Shakespeare’s Garden?”

  His eyes darkened, sending a sharp thrill down her spine. “Maybe later.” Then he shook his head. “You’re distracting me.”

  “From what?”

  “We have to celebrate.”

  “Why?” Her mouth flew open. “You got your license, didn’t you? You rat! Why didn’t you say anything?”

  He laughed, and it made her feel wonderful to hear him like that. “No. I’ve got a few more hours in the air, and I swear, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Well,” he said, shutting the door behind him, quite firmly. There was such a brazen gleam in his eyes that she didn’t even need to ask.

  Oh, my.

  “Joe, we shouldn’t,” she said with absolutely no enthusiasm.

  “Amanda, we should,” he replied, walking behind her desk.

  She was easily convinced. “Well, maybe we should.” She held up a hand. “Wait. First, what are we celebrating?”

  He kissed her neck, his afternoon stubble rough and decadent, and then he pressed his mouth against her ear, whispering softly in a way that never failed to thrill her. “60 Minutes called.”

  Obsession

  By Kay David

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  Santa Cruz, Bolivia

  TWO YEARS, three months, seven days.

  Staring out the smudged and dirty window of her taxi, the cobbled streets and crowded sidewalks passing by in a blur, Emma Toussaint wondered if the day would ever come when she would stop keeping track of time. When she would no longer look at a calendar and automatically calculate the number of weeks that had passed since her life—as she had known it—had ended. She doubted it would. Adding up the days was as natural to her now as breathing.

  She tried not to dwell on the situation, but in moments like these, when she had to do something she didn’t really want to do, her past came back full force, and it was impossible to ignore. All that occupied her mind was what she no longer had.

  Her family. Her home. The life she’d worked so hard to create.

  As if he was deliberately trying to distract her, the driver plunged the vehicle into the melee of the First Ring, the taxi’s bumper barely missing the fender of the ancient truck in front of them. The city streets were laid out in a series of concentric circles, and the congestion never ended. Emma grabbed for the door handle, then realized too late it was missing. With a swoosh, she slid across the cracked leather seat to the other side.

  She shook her head and held on to her purse a little tighter. The taxis in Santa Cruz were like everything else in this part of South America. Rundown and just getting by. For as long as she’d been in Bolivia, two years now, the whole country had seemed on the edge of collapse—a state with which she could easily sympathize.

  The beat-up Toyota she was in whipped out of the traffic circle and merged onto Avenida de Ventura, the main street of Santa Cruz. It was after eight in the evening and the area was still crowded and noisy, exhaust and smoke hanging over the thoroughfare in a dirty brown cloud. Most of the cars packed around her were ancient and filthy, with gaping cavities in the passenger-side dashboard. She’d been here four months before her Spanish had been good enough to ask about the disconcerting holes
. She’d learned then that the vehicles had come from Japan where they’d been right-hand drives. Ripping out the steering wheels, exporters adapted the cars, then shipped them to Bolivia. The autos had spent the prime of their lives in another country and had come here on the downswing.

  Just like most of the people.

  The driver barreled past four stop signs, honking, then blasting straight into the intersections without hesitating. A block later, he jerked the car to a stop at a light he couldn’t ignore.

  Thinking of the party she was going to at the Taminaca Bar—dreading the party she was going to—Emma turned her attention away from the traffic and gazed out the side window. Quickly she realized her mistake and looked the other way, but not quickly enough. Her brain registered what she didn’t want to see, and her heart swelled with sympathy and pain.

  The Quechua Indian woman who stood on the corner, every day, rain or shine, cold or hot, was there. Emma went down this street, Ayacucho, on her way to work, and she always saw her. She could see the India begging from her office window, as well.

  The poor woman couldn’t have been much older than thirty, but she looked twice that. Her skin was like leather, toughened by daily exposure to the sun and wind. She wore a short-brimmed felt hat—the green one today, not the brown. Underneath it, her black hair hung in two thick plaits, which fell well past her waist. The strands were threaded with gray—from the dust or simply premature aging, Emma couldn’t tell. The rest of her outfit was the same; it never changed from one day to the next, except that she sometimes wore long pants beneath the four skirts she wore. Also three blouses, a vest, endless petticoats—more layers of clothing than Emma could generally count. And then there was the aguayo. Using every color of the rainbow, the fragile shawl was frayed and torn, mended so much Emma was continually shocked to see it still in one piece. As usual, the woman had knotted it behind her neck and then slung it diagonally across her chest. Each village wove a different pattern; if you recognized the design, you could tell where the owner came from.

  Holding her breath, Emma looked at the aguayo.

  The child was there, bundled up so tightly inside the rag it couldn’t move anything but its eyes. Two black dots stared back at Emma from beneath a thatch of equally dark hair. A smudge of something white was on the baby’s cheek.

  A physical catch formed inside Emma’s throat, closing it down as tightly as if fingers were wrapped around her neck and squeezing. She struggled against the sensation and tried to swallow, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. She almost wished someone was trying to strangle her. Then her brain would shut down, too, and she wouldn’t have to think anymore.

  That wouldn’t happen, though. Emma had seen the Quechua too many times and had hoped for that same kind of relief without it coming. There was always a child in the aguayo. Sometimes older, sometimes younger, but always there was a child. And seeing it always affected her just this way.

  Without meaning to, Emma found herself leaning toward the car window, her palm flat against the glass, her fingers spread, almost as if she was reaching out for the baby. The pain in her chest spread in a wider circle and hampered her ability to think—but not to remember.

  Sarah had been eight months old when Emma had left the States, just about the age of the child in the serape. Her eyes had been brown, too, and the fuzz on her head dark and curly. Almost five, Jake had looked more like Emma. Lighter eyes. Blond hair. When she’d brought Sarah home from the hospital, Jake had wanted to hold her. As usual, Todd had protested, but Emma had ignored her husband and carefully situated the little boy on the couch. She’d then lowered the infant into his arms, and when she’d stood up and looked at those precious children, the image had burned itself in her heart. She hadn’t understood, beyond the obvious, why it had fixed itself so firmly in her mind at that time. But then again, maybe she had. On a subconscious level, she’d been waiting for disaster for years. Todd had married her and brought her into his life, one completely different from her own, and it’d felt too good to be true right from the very beginning. Not to worry about money. Not to ever think twice about food, shelter or whatever else her children needed. Then everything had changed horribly, almost overnight.

  The light went from red to green and the taxi roared down the street, the tiny dirty child and its begging mother falling behind. Emma turned and stared out the back window, but the glass was covered with grit and she couldn’t see them. Her heart shuddering, she faced the front once more, then tilted her head against the splintered leather seat and closed her eyes.

  Two years, three months, seven days.

  RAUL SANTOS leaned against the bar and sipped his cold Paceña, the bitter bite of the beer as it rolled over his tongue and filled his mouth such a pleasure he could hardly believe it. All his senses were heightened. The feel of the wood against his back, the scent of the flowers sitting on a nearby table, even the painting over the mirror by the liquor bottles. The colors looked brighter than they should have, the images more real. The Taminaca Bar in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, was so far removed, so incredibly different, from where he’d been six months ago, it was unnerving.

  It almost seemed as if the past five years had happened to someone else.

  Almost.

  He drained the beer, set the empty bottle on the bar and nodded for another, his thoughts turning harder. Those years had happened to someone else. The young idealistic Raul Santos he had been before he’d been sent to prison was a completely different person from the man resting against the bar now. They shared the same name, but that was all. His mind, his body, his very soul had been taken out, torn into pieces and reassembled into something totally opposite.

  Raul’s gaze roved the bar. It was an open-air place, but elegant, with white tablecloths and candlesticks. A blue pool, surrounded by hibiscus plants with enormous red and yellow blossoms, sparkled on the other side from where he stood. At each end of the pool, hammocks were suspended between palm trees. They swayed gently in the evening breeze, and the chatter of wild birds, contained in several cages along the walkway, filled the relative quiet. The place was beginning to fill with women in tight dresses and men in dark suits, arriving one after another. Someone started some salsa music and the pulsing beat drowned out the birds.

  At the opposite end of the polished wooden bar, the bartender uncapped two more Paceñas for a black-jacketed cocktail waitress. Without turning her head, she eyed Raul. He eyed her back, his body responding before he could even think twice. There was something about South American women, he thought. The long black hair, the curvaceous bodies, the way they held themselves. He’d traveled to Buenos Aires once—in his other life—and the women there had been the same. Incredible. As she swished away, Raul stared at her backside and wondered if it was something they learned or if it was simply in their genes.

  He turned to pick up his drink, and the bartender was waiting, wiping a white rag over the mahogany expanse between them. The man nodded toward the doorway leading out to the interior of the hotel. “Esa es la señorita. Allá.”

  The bartender’s Spanish was different from the Spanish Raul had learned as a child in Texas, but not that different. He turned and looked. The woman he’d been waiting for stood on the threshold.

  He palmed the bolivianos he’d tucked under his drink earlier and pushed the bills toward the bartender. Afraid he might miss her, Raul had wanted a second pair of eyes looking for the banker. “Muchas gracias, señor.”

  “De nada.” The man’s dark eyes gleamed. “La señorita—es muy bonita, ¿no? Buena suerte, señor…”

  Good luck? Raul nodded his thanks at the man’s sentiment, but he didn’t need it. He made his own luck.

  Turning away, Raul focused on the woman. Emma Toussaint. He’d seen her before, of course, but each time he found himself surprised by her appearance. The tall thin blonde hadn’t been what he had expected, although he wasn’t able to explain exactly why. Tonight she wore a sleeveless black dress, straight and severe with
a scarf tucked into the neckline. She’d probably read in a magazine somewhere that the square of silk would make the dress into a cocktail outfit. She’d been wrong to think so. It still looked like a banker’s dress. No nonsense. Businesslike. Boring.

  His eyes went to her face. The first time he’d seen her, he’d decided her features were too interesting to be called pretty. Her cheekbones were so high they shadowed the strong-looking jaw beneath, and her nose was too straight and bladelike for conventional beauty. Her hair, falling straight to her shoulders, was glossy and smooth, her eyes hazel and cool. Only her lips seemed out of place. Full, lush and a red that had to be natural, they looked as if they were made to be tasted.

  There was something about her, something elusive he couldn’t put a name to. She wore a hint of uncertainty, a slight hesitation in the way she held her shoulders. It wasn’t a detail anyone else would have noticed, but Raul had spent the past few years looking for people’s weak spots. He’d learned the skill because his life had depended on it. Now it was second nature.

  As he watched, Reina Alvarado came up and greeted Emma. Kisses were exchanged and they began a conversation. The other woman was as conservatively dressed as Emma, but clearly a local. With dark hair and features, she had a fuller figure and gestured wildly as she spoke. She tottered on four-inch heels, too, a definite South American fashion trend. They were friends, he already knew, very good friends, and Emma obviously felt comfortable around her, some of the tension easing from her body as they talked.

  He picked up his drink, biding his time. He wasn’t in a hurry. He’d do this like he did everything now—on his terms. Finishing the beer, he ordered another. The alcohol didn’t affect him.

  The noise level of the party went up, and within the hour the music was all but impossible to hear above the chattering guests. Raul caught snippets of conversation, some in Portuguese, some in English, most in Spanish. He knew no one there, but several people spoke to him, made party conversation. Bolivians were friendly, courteous people, curious about Americans and always ready to talk business or simply converse. He found himself involved in more discussions than he would have liked. It made it harder to keep Emma Toussaint in his sights.