The Ghost and Miss Demure Read Free Page B

could continue their relationship—if she was willing to finish editing his crummy paper for the Quarterly Historical Re-view , and if she kept her mouth shut about him stealing her work. After all, wasn’t he her official supervisor? Most of her thoughts had only come to fruition because of his expert guidance, he’d insisted. She should be grateful that he was providing her with this learning experience.
    The pain she’d felt was not in her heart, but in her head. Years of blinding scales had been scraped from her eyes like barnacles off a hull. The painful therapy had worked, too. She finally saw the reason for the emotional pressure F. Christian had been applying for the last six weeks. Those long-stemmed roses and dinner invitations weren’t the result of a late-blooming, soul-searing passion for his scholarly assistant; no, his daddy, F.-fucking Christian Merriweather Senior, had again started leaning on his son and heir to publish something, to start making a name for himself that wasn’t purchased with family money. Junior soul sucker had chosen her to be his savior.
    He’d been using her for her research. The thought was disheartening. Karo felt emasculated, or whatever it was they did to women to take away their femaleness. She was unsexed. Didn’t anyone want to use her for her body? Why was it alwaysfor her brains? She supposed she should be down on her knees that very instant, thanking the Lord that she had noticed the hair plugs and hidden emotional insecurity and hadn’t completely succumbed to F. Christian’s fine wine and blandishments when the pressure got intense, but she was stuck in her worn seat for another ten miles and would have to content herself with simply reminding herself of the bright side of the situation until she reached some place suitable for kneeling.
    There was little of anything bright in the torrent outside, she saw, cracking her window a bit more, hoping to clear the fog from her windows. This storm was very weird. If she didn’t know such a thing was impossible, she would swear that she was being deliberately herded toward the woods. But that was just silly. Yes, she’d had some bad luck lately, but that didn’t mean the forces of nature were arrayed against her. Okay, so she’d imagine something bright and shiny until something real came along.
    Well…there always was the shining fact that even if she’d stayed in the apprentice program, she would never have been promoted out of it. After all, a move to get rid of an assistant who could actually write when he, himself, couldn’t string two coherent sentences together would hardly benefit F. Christian—and he was the only one who could recommend her promotion. But that wasn’t much of a silver lining. In fact, the thought made her angrier than anything else about the situation. Trifling with her affections was bad. Trifling with her job was…Words failed. Herparents hadn’t taught her enough vile terminology to cover a situation like this.
    Driving Route 5 through a bad storm was a semi-insane act, but escaping the city limits cheered Karo considerably. On some level, she was actually enjoying her rage. Her perkiness quotient was nowhere near her mother’s natural level, but she was feeling better with every mile she put behind her and those burned bridges. So what if the wind was screaming like damned souls denied the joys of paradise? It seemed reasonable to her that the storm would howl with sympathy.
    Yes, she had made the right decision. There was no reason why working at this new job couldn’t be an exciting if somewhat lonely opportunity. And as for the lack of company on the job…well, if she got lonesome and felt her IQ begin to slip around her new boss, she would go out and buy a hamster or a dog. Animals were very loving, and they didn’t care if you had brains instead of big blonde hair and bigger boobs. And even with vet bills, they couldn’t possibly be as expensive as changing careers.
    Also,