Designed for Love Read Free Page A

tumultuous
relationship he had with them kept her from ringing their phone in the middle
of the night, begging for some way to reach him.
          Instead,
she’d called Becky. Becky had come from Penn State and had stayed with her the following weekend.
          A
jazz melody filled the car, and it took Chelsi a moment to realize it was her
phone ringing.
          “Do
you plan to grace us with your presence, Chelsi?” Peter Densa, her boss and
head designer of Densa Fashions spoke before she could say hello.
          Oh,
God. She was late.
          “Peter,
I’m getting set up now.” Scrambling around, she grabbed her two bags from the
passenger seat and jogged to her door and unlocked it. “Sorry, I was hungry so
I ran—”
          “Starvation
creates better designs.” He cut her off, giving her the line he used when
anyone said they were taking a food break. Even as an ex-runway model, Peter
was still fit. All of his workers knew he ate healthy but rarely skipped meals,
even if it was just a pack of natural trail mix.
          She
laughed as she deposited her bags on the counter because her table was covered.
“I could die from it, too. Then how would you get my magnificent creations I’d
suffered for?” She wiggled the wireless mouse beside her computer to get it out
of sleep mode. “They’d be here scattered around my corpse.”
          “Trust
me. I’d find a way to get in there for them. You just make sure you’re wearing
that nasty little crushed silk gold dress when you go down,” he admonished her.
          She
logged into the site. Her image popped up as she joined the other members of
the four man team, and she said, “So this outfit won’t do, Peter?” She executed
a sexy pouty and opened her eyes wide to appear innocent as she played with the
loose strands of her hair.
          “Hell
no!” Peter reeled back on his screen as if struck.
          “Good
Lord, you look awful.” Manuel added as his gaze scrolled around the top right
screen on her monitor as if he were trying to calculate all of her fashion faux
pas.
          “I
can see why you have to be creative at home alone, ma chérie .” Pierre ’s French accent played around his
words as he shook his head in the bottom left of her screen.
    She
laughed at all their comments.
          “I
would not be caught dead in that outfit and alive…” Peter’s voice trailed away
and so did her humor.
          She
had been caught in it—by a man from her past.

 
     
    Chapter Two
     
     
          Vin
stared down at the information in the notes section of his cell phone. He’d
entered it almost a week ago and had been battling with himself on what he
should do with it. Part of him believed it would be best just to delete the information
from his phone. He couldn’t go back in time. A larger part of him urged him to
call Zeth, his best friend, a forensic specialist who worked for the police
department.
          Zeth
could take the information Vin had and give him what he really wanted—a phone
number for Chelsi Halifax.
          Chelsi
hadn’t really confirmed she had moved back to Charlotte, but the license plate
on the car she drove away in had North Carolina tags. He’d keyed the information
into his phone as soon as he was seated in the limo: I-337446.
          The
combination was so ingrained in his head from looking at it since he’d seen her
at the store, he had it memorized and only pulled it up on his phone as a
formality.
          It
had been a shock to see her that day. Even unkempt she’d been a beautiful sight
to him. A welcome vision. Her face was uninhibited by make-up, leaving her
beautiful reddish brown skin looking soft and supple. She looked as innocent
and sweet as she did the day he’d seen her in their ninth grade English class.
That first year she’d worn her hair in a high ponytail, no bangs or curls. That
was when he’d fallen in love with