April Fool Bride Read Free Page A

strings attached. She could have a perfectly
fine life with an allowance doled out month after month by the
trustee of her father's estate. Her stepmother Constance. As
distasteful as that was, she could live with it.
    The faces of the women and children who were
depending on her rose in her mind. Yes, she could have a fine life,
but what about them? She'd made a promise. She'd worked hard to be
the kind of woman who kept her promises. The kind of woman with
integrity.
    "Earth to Maddie?"
    Startled, Maddie looked up, into his dark
blue eyes. Rational and calm, she reminded herself. "Sorry. I was
lost in thought for a moment."
    Jake sipped his coffee and waited.
    "In the photograph of you in Paris, who's the
woman?" Maddie asked.
    Jake smiled. "She's none of your
business."
    Maddie blushed. She shouldn't have given in
to her curiosity. Was the woman his lover? Jake had always had
girls chasing him. She should have known that it wouldn't be any
different now that he was a man. If anything he was more appealing
than ever. Or maybe it was that she was now a woman and saw him
with a woman's eyes instead of the eyes of a teenage girl desperate
to give him all the love her lonely heart possessed. She had no
right to be jealous, but that didn't make the envy vanish. If he
was involved, that could complicate matters. But wouldn't Graciella
have said something if Jake wasn't available?
    Jake drummed his fingers on the table. "I've
got a busy day planned. If you've got something on your mind other
than talking about the good old days, then get to it."
    The scorn in his voice brought her crashing
back. "Right. I have something I'd like to discuss with you." The
good old days. To her, they had been good when she was with him.
She'd been fourteen when she'd fallen in love with him that rainy
afternoon. She'd been weeping. Jake had held her. Her father had
died the month before, and she'd learned that Constance planned to
ship her to boarding school. No one in the world cared about her
except for Jake and Graciella, and now she was to be ripped from
them. She'd made Jake promise that he would always be her
friend.
    Resolutely, she shoved the memory away. "I
heard you lost your job. I want to offer you an employment
opportunity. It's a bit unorthodox but very lucrative."
    Jake yawned and stretched lazily as if bored.
"Employment opportunity? That sounds like every job scam on the
internet." He sipped his coffee. "I think I'll pass."
    "But you haven't heard what it is. I can
offer a salary commensurate with what you earned in the past."
    Jake frowned. "Really. You know how much I
earned in the past?"
    "Well, not exactly, but your mom gave me a
ballpark idea so I don't think you'll be insulted by the
salary."
    "You discussed this with my mom?" Jake
studied her over the rim of his mug.
    The intensity of his gaze disconcerted her.
"Well, not exactly. Not in so many details." A year or so ago,
Graciella had joked about getting Jake to rescue her in exactly
this way. With that seed planted, Maddie hadn't been able to think
about anything else. "We talked in the most general terms. You know
she has always kept me posted on what you're doing."
    She could tell that surprised him.
    "I had no idea you and Mom were still close.
She never mentions you now."
    Once, she and Jake had been close too. He'd
been her best friend, rescuing her from countless scrapes, and
keeping her beneath Constance's radar. That rainy day she'd been
weeping in his arms, she hadn't been able to see past a bleak,
lonely future. Jake's arms made her feel safe. Then, in the next
instant, everything had changed. At least for her. She'd looked
into his eyes and realized that what she felt for Graciella's son
went beyond friendship. Even though she was only fourteen,
intuition told her she was in love with Jake Becker. Somehow she
knew, even then, that the love she felt was one she'd carry to the
grave. Just as she knew that seventeen-year-old Jake did not feel
the same way. She knew