True Love, Inc. by Jackie Braun

Author:Jackie Braun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Maddie stumbled to her desk, then sat. She stared at the paperwork before her, determined to work, but it blurred hopelessly with her tears. She swiped them away, mindless of what that might do to the meager amount of mascara she wore, but more tears followed stubbornly on their heels.

Cameron doesn’t want me.

She squeezed her eyes shut, hearing again the anger and accusation in his tone. Of course, he wouldn’t want someone like her. She’d been a fool to think, even for that one out-of-control moment, that he might. But what man would, especially if he could see the entirety of her scarred body, or knew the full truth about her personal failings?

She thought she had accepted that she would pass the rest of her life alone. That finding a special someone for other people was as close as she deserved to come to experiencing such excitement herself. But as she traced a finger over her lips, Maddie knew it would be harder now to sit on life’s sidelines. The kiss had packed the quick heat of a blowtorch and had allowed, just for an instant, hope to rise blindly from the ashes of her past. But some things could not be resurrected. Maddie knew this better than anyone.

Three weeks passed before Maddie worked up the nerve to contact Cameron. She had needed the time and the distance to get her thoughts in order before facing him again, even over the telephone. The brilliant plan she’d come up with was to pretend that the interlude in her office hadn’t happened. Barring that, she would treat it as the unrepeatable mistake Cameron considered it, for that’s all it had been. Cameron was lonely, and he’d been out of sorts after his disastrous first date. As for Maddie, she couldn’t find an excuse.

What she did find, however, was another date for Cameron. Before dialing his number, she flipped open the file and stared at the black-and-white photograph. The face that stared back was lovely, and nothing at all like Cameron’s description of his ideal woman, but Maddie had gone on instinct in picking pretty Peggy Modean. The woman was slim and petite with a short cap of dark hair and an acre-wide smile. She was a real estate agent by trade, and a little closer to thirty than she was to twenty-five, but her diminutive stature and pixie features made her look barely old enough to drive.

Peggy liked kids, even volunteered at Munson Medical Center in the children’s ward. She could play a baby grand with the training of a concert pianist, but she preferred banging out up-tempo tunes on a battered upright during open-mike night at the Patty James Pub. She had a lovely voice, melodious even in speech. She was an attentive listener, an avid sports fan and her sense of humor leaned toward the ridiculous. She liked The Three Stooges, for heaven’s sake. What man could resist a woman who could tolerate that bumbling trio?

Peggy knew wine, and enjoyed traveling to vineyards both in the United States and abroad.

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