Last Dance by Velvet Vaughn

Author:Velvet Vaughn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romantic suspense, romance suspense, romance ebook, romantic suspense series, romance and suspense, romantic suspense novel, suspense and romance, romance suspense series, romantic suspense ebook, romance and suspense series
Publisher: Velvet Vaughn

Chapter 16

Annabelle St. John tugged the cover over her stepfather’s increasingly frail body and clicked the remote to activate the television. She flipped to her guilty pleasure: Dancing With the Celebrities. Her stepfather enjoyed it, too. He used to love taking her mother dancing.

“It looks like it’s going to be a fun season,” Rob said, his thin, reedy voice nothing like the deep robust baritone he used to possess. He was in the end stages of an aggressive cancer that had ravaged his body, leaving him a shell of his former self.

He’d waited a few weeks before he told her about the diagnosis. She wanted to be mad at him for robbing her of that precious time, but she knew he was worried she’d quit her job to take care of him. He was right. She did.

After working her way up the ranks at a top graphic design firm, she was in line for a huge promotion, the type of job she’d been dreaming of since she graduated college. When Rob told her he was sick, she didn’t hesitate to walk into her boss’s office and tender her resignation, effective immediately. Rob needed her. That’s all that mattered.

Annabelle’s Green Beret father had been killed in the line of duty when she was six. She had only vague memories of a big man with a wide smile who doted on her. She remembered thinking her daddy was a giant. He’d been six-five, and to a little girl, that was Goliath dimensions.

Though her mother had been devastated by his death, she’d tried to keep up a brave face in front of Annabelle. Still, she remembered hearing her mom crying at night and going inside to crawl in bed with her. When Annabelle was ten, her mother met Robert Singleton when he was in Portland on a business trip. They fell in love and married, and Annabelle and her mom moved to Los Angeles where he lived.

She’d fallen in love with Rob instantly. He treated her like his own daughter, spoiling her with gifts and showering her with affection. He’d wanted to adopt her, but her mother gently refused, wanting Annabelle to keep her father’s name in his honor. That didn’t stop Rob from treating her like his own.

Rob’s son from his first marriage, Robert Junior, or Robbie, as they called him, was four years older than Annabelle. He lived with his mother, except for the weekends he visited and tormented her. He was the definition of a bully and she dreaded his visits.

When Annabelle was twelve, her entire world shattered. Her mother had been killed by a drunk driver. She wasn’t sure she’d recover from the overwhelming sorrow, but Rob had been her rock. Together, they endured the grief. Since he’d never formally adopted her, he had no responsibility towards her and he could’ve dumped her into foster care. But, as he told her repeatedly, he would never do that to her. He continued to treat her as his daughter and even spoiled her with a brand-new BMW for her sixteenth birthday.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.