Child of Her Dreams by Joan Kilby

Author:Joan Kilby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2002-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

DAMN! Why couldn’t he have caught her reading War and Peace? Not that she’d ever even cracked that doorstop of a book. Oh, God, and he’d seen her algebra text! If he ever figured out why she was studying high school math she’d just die.

Her embarrassment flipped to anger as she recalled his lecture on the real explanation for her near-death experience. Lifting her chin, she drew her tote bag over her shoulder. You can’t convince a skeptic, she told herself, ignoring the little voice that insisted Ben was different. That he should have understood, or at least accepted.

He always seemed to comment on her looks, whether it was to knock her profession and its emphasis on image or to tell her she was lovely. What would happen when her face grew old and wrinkled and lost its appeal? No matter how many beauty treatments she undertook or how rigorously she watched her diet, she would age. Just like everyone else. Who would want her then? Not the men she met at Cannes or Saint Moritz. They would go on to someone younger, someone new.

Ben was the kind of man who would love a woman for who she was inside. But he didn’t take Geena seriously. If only he could see beyond the superficial to the real Geena. Why couldn’t he notice some of her positive qualities? She was beginning to realize Mom was right; she did have a talent for helping people. As a doctor, Ben should be tuned in to that sort of thing.

By the time she got to Greta’s house, she’d almost convinced herself that Ben’s opinion didn’t matter to her. She forgot all about Ben when Greta opened the door holding a Barbie doll. Malibu Barbie.

Greta folded the doll protectively between her hands. “Don’t stand there. Come in.”

“I just came to drop off my algebra assignment….”

But Greta had already disappeared into a room to the left of the foyer. Geena followed, intensely curious. As a teenager, going into a teacher’s house would have been unthinkable; even now, it was pretty mind-blowing.

She stepped into the living room and blinked. On the far wall was a glass-fronted cabinet displaying shelf upon shelf of Barbie dolls. Mesmerized, Geena walked to the cabinet. A representative of every Barbie doll ever made seemed to be in that case—Cowboy Barbie, Nurse Barbie, Firefighter Barbie—they were all there. The dolls were lined up four and five deep, jostling each other with their wide shoulders, each jabbing the one in front with her pointy breasts.

“Wow,” she breathed, turning to Greta. “Did you collect all these?”

“I started when I was nine and I’ve never stopped,” Greta said from her seat by the coffee table. She had five or six Barbies out and was packing them into a Barbie carrying case. “You’re a little late, so I don’t have much time right now. I’m on my way to a meeting of the Barbie Club. I’m newly elected president of my chapter,” she added with a trace of pride.

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