To Have and to Kill Read Free

to Terri when she, Vin, and the kids took a rare vacation to visit relatives in Sarasota, Florida. The sidewalk in front of a local fudge shop was always crowded with people craning their necks to watch as the molten mixtures of chocolate, sugar, milk, and butter were poured from shiny copper pots onto huge white marble slabs. The fudge maker, clad in an immaculate uniform, folded and spread the mixture back and forth, back and forth, as it gradually cooled and was shaped into long bars of candy. Viewers were mesmerized, and Terri noticed most of them ended up going into the shop to buy. Terri added the picture window to her plan.
    When Piper and Robert were both in school full-time, Terri got a job at the Hillwood Bakery. She worked the counter for eight years while perfecting her skills. When the owner decided he wanted to retire, Terri and Vin Donovan took out a loan, purchased the business, and Terri got her chance to implement her long list of ideas.
    Now Terri, her curly hair covered with a net, squinted as she worked at her table. The sun streaming through the window caused a bothersome glare, to which she found herself becoming more and more sensitive over the last months. She picked up her pair of light-yellow-tinted glasses, positioned them over her prescription ones, and tried to concentrate.
    She was terrified that all she had worked for could be coming to an end.

Chapter 4
    A disheveled man wearing a torn jacket, filthy pants, and woolen gloves with the fingertips cut off sat huddled over a heating grate in the sidewalk.
    Piper took a $5 bill from her wallet and handed it to him. “Merry Christmas,” she said. “Food. Promise me you’ll use it for food.”
    The man didn’t say a word but gave Piper a wide grin revealing several missing teeth.
    The biting winter wind pounded against Piper’s body as she kept her head down and continued trudging up Ninth Avenue. Christmas wreaths and colored lights draped storefronts and restaurant windows. The sidewalk was crowded with workers and shoppers rushing to buy presents or meet friends and business associates for holiday luncheons. Piper was thrilled to be part of the latter group. She always loved spending time with Glenna.
    Piper knew that by the end of their lunch, memories of the lackluster audition would be replaced by whatever Glenna had to say. Rejection was a regular part of any actor’s life, and Piper had become quite adept at moving on. The disappointments still hurt, and there were days when tears were inevitable, but after years of never understanding what she had done wrong, Piper had found ways to prevent the sting of it from intruding on her social life.
    To Piper, this was it. There was simply nothing that made her happier than acting or rehearsing or watching other actors. She had gotten a college degree because her parents had insisted, but Piper had wished away those four years. All she had ever wanted to do was act . . . and fall in love.
    That goal was eluding her so far. After six months, she was still explaining to some people that she wasn’t getting married after all. The broken engagement, not of her doing, had left her reeling but philosophical. Better to be done with the relationship before proceeding to a wedding ceremony and a couple of kids.
    Secretly, Piper worried that this was becoming a most unfortunate pattern. During high school and college, she had lived for each new episode of Sex and the City and eagerly awaited her time to pursue love in Carrie Bradshaw’s magical metropolis. Now, Piper had plenty of material for a season’s worth of episodes.
    Before her ex-fiancé, Gordon, there was Bill, the guy she’d gone out with for over a year only to find out that he was engaged to somebody else; and Jeffrey, the one who watched and commented on everything she ate, reminding her in no uncertain terms that, if they were to marry, weight gain would be grounds for divorce; and Tom, the one who was happiest when his mother