Nine Inches of Snow and the Ebony Princess Read Free Page A

you are to order me around?”
    If she really knew him the way she thought she did, she wouldn’t ask the question. And she would never have dared to strike him. “It’s up to you.” David tightened his grip just enough to get his message across, but not enough to cause any real pain, and just barely holding in a growl.
    Philomena grew still beneath his grip, seemed to sense he was on the edge. “Fine. You have my cooperation.”
    Once he released her, she whirled on him, pointing her forefinger like a weapon. “I’ll make you sorry you ever crossed me, David Healey. That’s a promise.”
    “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to live up to my earlier name-calling by putting a curse on me.”
    “Mock me if you wish.” Philomena turned on her heels and pushed the doors open before tossing a glower over her shoulder.

    16
    Gracie C. McKeever
    “But you and your precious ebony princess will never be. I will see to this.”

    Nine Inches of Snow and the Ebony Princess
    17

Chapter 2

    Philomena decided she wouldn’t cry. She had spent the better part of her life shedding tears over one slight or another, over one man or another. She would not spend her time or energy so unproductively. There were better ways to let David know he had irrevocably hurt her: revenge.
    She glanced at her face in the rearview mirror—the flawless ivory complexion, the green eyes, the long, blonde hair framing her finely sculpted face—searching for one flaw that could have caused David’s sudden defection, searching for something that certainly wasn’t there.
    Philomena caught movement out the corner of her eyes and followed when David exited the hospital through the emergency exit, most assuredly in search of her hussy of a stepdaughter.
    Always proactive, she had quickly taken steps to ensure the little lovebirds didn’t see each other again tonight, immediately dismissing her stepdaughter and sending her home. That took care of the immediate problem, but there was still the matter of Philomena’s wounded pride.
    She swallowed against the bitter taste in her mouth while she watched David, so handsome and regal in his evening wear and long wool overcoat, the epitome of class and money, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a symbol of everything she had ever come to covet and loathe over the years.
    Why would he choose that wretch of a girl over her?
    She was perfect, far prettier and with much more class than any Aziza Lopez. She had done everything in her power to ensure her 18
    Gracie C. McKeever
    irresistibility to the male species as soon as she could afford to leave her old life as Phyllis Lipinski behind and become Philomena VanWizer.
    Philomena frowned at the memory of her own wretched past, but quickly changed her expression to neutral, if not quite happy.
    She did not want to get wrinkles, after all. She spent entirely too much money to maintain a standard of physical perfection deserving her station and would not lose everything she’d worked so hard for now.
    Most of her life, Philomena had been a misfit, rejected by the mainstream, the popular kids, because she didn’t have the right clothes, the right shape, the right look .
    She’d buried herself in her studies, wallowing in her geekiness, convinced smarts would get her what she wanted until she realized that brains and personality would only get her so far with a man. If she really wanted to catch a man’s eye, wanted to snag her prince charming, she needed to act and look the part. She needed to be the entire package.
    With the help of a boob job (an eighteenth birthday present to herself), liposuction (a twenty-first birthday present to herself), contacts, and a dye job, she’d become ultimate trophy-wife material and was ripe for the picking when Aziza’s father came along.
    She had gone through all that work and all that money, and for what? For David to dump her for a buxom and overly curvaceous younger woman at the first sign of