Nobody's Angel (26 page)

Josh dragged his cell phone out of his pocket and hit dial. The call was answered almost immediately. “She’s staying,” he reported. Upstairs a door slammed and he grinned.

“Looks like forever,” he responded to the question on the other end. He jerked the phone away from his ear and scowled into it. “Shit, Ma, don’t scream like that.”

Wondering what happens to Josh next?
Keep reading for an excerpt from

 

NOBODY’S FOOL
,

 

the next Willow Park Romance
by Sarah Hegger.

 

Available in
Fall, 2015
from Kensington Books!

The sign above the glass door scrolled out
SCANTS
in hot-pink neon, blinked twice, and started again.

“Bugger.” Holly yanked her clinging sweatshirt away from her body. You should never ask how much worse a thing could get, because Murphy’s Law went right ahead and showed you. She squared her shoulders and braced for hell. Good thing she had her bloody passport with her, she was about to enter another galaxy.

The door flew open and the clamor from the bar roared out onto the sidewalk where she stood. A couple of girls brushed past her, giggling as they hurled themselves into the preening frenzy. On the other side of the window, a mass of beautiful bodies circled each other. She was way, way out of her element. There was nothing for it, though. According to his doorman, Josh Hunter was in there.

As Holly stepped over the threshold, the noise crashed into her. It was the manic melody of singles bars everywhere; the clink, the chatter, the bass rumble of male voices juxtaposed against the higher pitches of women. Underscoring the babble, the throb of amplifier and subwoofer ground out an elemental jungle beat and quickened the blood.

Welcome to the mating ground of genus Homo sapiens. What a bunch of posers. Exactly where you would expect to find someone like Josh Hunter. Proof she and Joshua were an entirely different species. She’d suspected as much in high school. The evidence was now incontrovertible.

Her phone buzzed in her hand and Holly checked the screen.

Emma, again. This made it the fifth call in the last hour. What a pity Emma hadn’t panicked four days ago when Portia first went missing.

“Yes.” She had to stick one finger in her ear to hear what her sister said.

“Did you find her?”

“I just arrived in Chicago.”

“What have you been doing?” Emma wailed loud enough to rise above the storm of noise around her.

“Driving.” Holly clenched her hand into a fist by her side. Did Emma expect her to hop on her bloody broomstick?

Only this morning, she’d discovered Portia missing. Emma, Portia’s twin, had broken down and confessed Portia left four whole days ago for Chicago. Not only was their younger sister gone, she’d left London, Ontario, without her medication. The sheer stupidity of it made Holly want to growl.

“Did you find Joshua Hunter?” Emma persisted. “Portia spoke about him when she called.”

“Yes, you told me already.” Holly cursed her height as she levered herself onto her toes to see over the heads in front of her. “I’m looking for him now.”

She had no idea if she would even recognize Josh Hunter anymore. A lot could have changed in the years since they’d gone to high school together. Maybe he’d grown another head, to admire the one he already had.

“She didn’t sound good.” Emma’s voice quivered. “You have to find her, Holly.”

“I know I do.” Holly almost snarled.

Four days and Emma hadn’t said a word. Holly could barely get her head around it. A phone call from Portia, flying perilously high and prattling about Josh Hunter, had sent Emma scurrying for Holly and help. “I have to go.” She hung up while Emma was still talking.

The name of her high school nemesis had knocked Holly off balance for a moment. It was not a name she’d wanted to hear again. She shook it off. It couldn’t be helped. The most important thing was finding Portia and she’d make a deal with the devil if she must.

In his school days, Josh had lived in Willow Park and it seemed the most logical place for Holly to start. Their house had been down the street from Holly’s and she’d guessed it was where Portia had run into him. She’d been hanging on to the secret hope of Portia standing on the sidewalk, gazing wistfully at the old family home. If you could call a house you’d only lived in for two years an old family home.

Holly dodged a weaving waitress and stopped to avoid a collision.

The two women in front of her spotted each other and squealed like a pair of happy piglets.

Holly waited for the cheek-kissing ritual to end.

Cheek kissing gave way to feverish chatter and Holly finally pushed past. She was on a mission.

Why had Portia gone searching for Josh Hunter? Holly wobbled on her tiptoes and tried to see past the mass of bobbing heads. It was one of the questions she would ask her sister when she caught up with her. And catch up with Portia, she would.

She’d been standing outside the house in Willow Park earlier, wondering where to go next, when the door to the house opened and luck stepped out—trailing spangles and a cloud of perfume. God knows how, but the woman had been thrilled to see her. Holly was still hard put to recall anyone called Brooke from her days in Willow Park. Fortunately, Brooke of the sequins and Christian Dior had remembered Holly and her sisters clearly. And better yet, had been able to tell her the name of the upscale condo on the Gold Coast where Josh now lived.

Brooke went on to say yes, she had seen Holly’s sister. Portia had been by a couple of days ago, also looking for Josh. Brooke confirmed Emma’s report that Josh and Portia had found each other and were briefly spotted together. Here, Brooke had given a dramatic pause and treated Holly to an abbreviated version of Josh’s infamy. Most of it went over her head, but the gist was women and more women and when was he going to settle down.

Holly ran for cover between Brooke’s pause and an invocation to God for Josh to stop breaking his mother’s heart and get married already. So, same old Josh Hunter.

Holly had located the condo building easily enough and a bit of creative truth-bending with the doorman had her standing on the sidewalk outside Scants, exactly the sort of place she would rather chew her arm off than enter.

The crowd in front of her parted and, oh, sweet Mother of God, there he was.

She would have known him anywhere. Like she would know if someone had shoved their fist in her gut.

He’d barely changed since high school except to get even hotter and more chiseled and more—whatever. Holly huffed in irritation.

Low blood sugar was her problem. She’d been driving all day, having a shit fit about Portia the entire way and steeling herself to come into contact with Joshua Hunter. So she’d forgotten to eat and the peanuts on the bar were calling her name. That’s all it was.

She sidled past a blonde cackling over the top of her designer blue martini. Holly dragged her eyes away from the peanuts and eased closer to Joshua. There was no need to tell him the whole story. She’d tell him only what was strictly necessary and nothing more. Right now, she was leaning toward
“I see you’re still a prick. Where’s my sister?”
She was willing to concede, however, this might be the blood sugar talking, and probably not the most constructive of beginnings.

Holly managed to wedge herself between two thirtysomething suits who paid no attention to the short woman in the tatty sweatshirt with the whack-job hair, but carried on posturing at each other, simultaneously scanning smartphones that jittered and hummed away at them.

From here she had an even better view of him.

Of all the people who had lived in Willow Park when Holly and her family did, Portia had chosen him.
Why?

He stood with one hand propped against the bar and spoke to another man whose back was to her. The dim lighting in the bar played peek-a-boo with the finely chiseled lines of his face. His eyes were shadowed, but they were blue. Blue as the inside of an iris, blue as a pansy, blue enough to break a girl’s heart and make her want to come back for more.

“Excuse me.” One of the suits deigned to look down from his lofty height and notice her jammed between him and his companion. He smoothly sidestepped her and Holly was closer to Josh and the mouth you wanted to suck on.

He wrapped his lips around the neck of his beer bottle. If his face were any less hewn his mouth would make him look girly. As it was, its full, sensuous sweep made an irresistible counterpoint to the aquiline strength of the rest of his features.

This was so screwed up. Why couldn’t Portia have chosen someone else to cling-wrap herself to?

Josh laughed at something his companion said. It was a broad slash of white teeth across his tanned face; a heart-stopping affair of crinkling eyes and deep, sexy brackets on either side of his mouth. God, she didn’t want to have to make nice with him.

He looked up and Holly was trapped. His glance narrowed in on her like a Scud missile.

There was music and the earth moved.

Maybe it wasn’t her blood sugar after all.

Born British and raised in South Africa,
Sarah Hegger
suffers from an incurable case of wanderlust. Her match? A Canadian engineer, whose marriage proposal she accepted six short weeks after they first met. Together they’ve made homes in seven different cities across three different continents (and back again once or twice). If only it made her multilingual, but the best she can manage is idiosyncratic English, fluent Afrikaans, conversant Russian, pigeon Portuguese, even worse Zulu, and enough French to get herself into trouble.

Mimicking her globetrotting adventures, Sarah’s career path began as a gainfully employed actress, drifted into public relations, settled a moment in advertising, and eventually took root in the fertile soil of her first love, writing. She also moonlights as a wife and mother.

She currently lives in Draper, Utah, with her teenage daughters, two golden retrievers, and aforementioned husband. Part footloose buccaneer, part quixotic observer of life, Sarah has a restless heart that is most content when she is reading or writing books.

ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

 

Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018

 

Copyright © 2015 by Sarah Hegger

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

 

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

 

 

Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

ISBN: 978-1-4201-3739-2

 

First Electronic Edition: April 2015
eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-3740-8
eISBN-10: 1-4201-3740-9