Bad Read Free

had woken up this morning with a mission. He was going to buy Heather Gannis an incredibly sexy, absurdly expensive new dress. No matter what the cost.
    Yeah, the mission was sort of cheesy. Yeah, it was the kind of thing that only happened in those lame teen movies that seemed to come out every single week, the ones with titles like,
You Go, Girl!
or,
That’s So Five Minutes Ago!
But under the circumstances, a little PG-13 teen fun was just fine. Heather needed a pick-me-up in the same way Ed needed . . . well, best not to go there.
    Her sister, Phoebe, was barely clinging to life after a bout with anorexia. Heather had just broken up with her old boyfriend, Sam Moon (not that Ed was particularly upset about
that,
of course), and on a more practical level, Ed was one of the few people outside of her immediate family who knew that the Gannis family was currently broke. Heather’s life was shit. No doubt about it.
    â€œOne more second,” Heather called.
    â€œOkay.” Simone glanced nervously in Ed’s direction. “Would you and your, uh, friend like something to drink?” she asked the closed door. “Perrier? Evian?”
    â€œNothing for me, thanks,” Heather answered.
    Ed resisted the urge to snort. Naturally, thesaleswoman assumed that Heather was just a “friend.” She couldn’t conceive that a girl who looked like Heather could possibly want to go out with a guy in a wheelchair. Then again, sometimes it was hard for Ed to believe that, too. Two months ago he would have said that he and Heather had as much of a chance of getting back together as Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson.
    â€œYou know, she’s my sister, actually,” he announced to Simone. “We were twins joined at birth. After the operation, she ended up with the spinal cord.”
    The woman’s eyes narrowed, but she smiled politely. And he had to hand it to her; that was a better reaction than most people could muster. Definitely. Most people either looked sick or simply ran off. Oh, yes. He knew all about people running off. Like Heather herself. She had done just that two years ago—right after the accident. And the fact that she had been completely in love with him
before
the accident didn’t matter. Nope. As soon as Heather saw Ed in the wheelchair, she’d disappeared. Not literally, of course. She’d been right there, in his face, every single day at school, but Ed simply had to watch her from the sidelines.
    But that was the past. He wouldn’t allow himself to get bitter over it. Because one day a few weeks ago Ed had glimpsed the
old
Heather. It was literallyas if she’d stepped out of a fog. Gone were all the hang-ups and hangers-on, those “FOHs,” as Gaia Moore liked to call them. And then, after a few very bizarre and clumsy encounters—particularly one involving a strange and impulsive make-out session in a storage room at the Plaza Hotel—they suddenly found themselves falling back into their old relationship. And not a moment too soon. Because before that, Ed had been driving himself crazy with daily fantasies starring . . . well, none other than the FOH hater herself: Gaia Moore.
    But there was no point in thinking about
her.
Especially not now.
    Luckily, the dressing-room door happened to burst open at that second.
    â€œTa-da!” Heather exclaimed, strolling out into the shop.
    Ed blinked. “Uh . . . wow,” he mumbled.
Brilliant compliment there, Fargo.
But it was by far the best he could manage, seeing as he was about to start drooling at any second. Heather’s shiny dark hair tumbled over the straps of the red dress, and the neckline plunged low, revealing a hint of cleavage . The bottom barely cleared her knees. Ed’s eyes roved up and down her body, eventually settling on her hips. The red fabric clung to them quite nicely.
    Heather smiled, pivoting in front of a mirror. “Itake it that means you like it,” she