Betrayal - By Lee Nichols Page 0,74
the thought of him leaving made me shake.
“Then don’t go.” I pulled him close. He was right. We had to be together. To love each other, no matter what the cost.
He smiled as he ran his hands over me in the moonlight and kissed me. As my eyes closed, I realized he was beginning to feel like someone else. Not the boy I’d spent a night with in New York. He smelled different, looked different, felt different.
And I wondered … could I love this Bennett just as much?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my agents, Nancy Coffey and Joanna Stampfel-Volpe, their assistant, Deirdre Sprague-Rice, and everyone at Bloomsbury, especially my fantastic editor, Caroline Abbey, and publicists, Deb Shapiro, Kate Lied, and Rachel Wasdyke. And thanks to Melissa Senate, who listens to every complaint along the way.
About the Author
Lee Nichols was raised in Santa Barbara, California—the setting of her adult novels Tales of a Drama Queen, Hand-Me-Down, and True Lies of a Drama Queen. The first Haunting Emma novel, Deception, was her YA debut. She attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she studied history and psychology. She now lives in Maine and is married to novelist Joel Naftali.
This ghostly mystery is not over yet.
Read on for a sneak peek at the next
Haunting Emma book:
SURRENDER
I’ve never liked bad boys. On TV shows, when the girl is torn between her sweet best guy friend—who is not-so-secretly in love with her—and the standoffish bad boy, I always root for the best friend.
But standing in Bennett’s attic room, my arms twined around him, I finally saw the appeal. I shouldn’t have been there. Shouldn’t have let Bennett’s drug-stained fingers stroke my neck, shouldn’t have lied to Simon about him. And I definitely shouldn’t have been kissing him when I was supposed to be downstairs with the rest of the team, trying to figure out Neos’s next move.
Yet I barely protested when Bennett nibbled my neck. “I—I should—oh—”
He pinned me with his piercing blue eyes. “Yes?”
“Um …” I licked my lips. “I forgot what I was going to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. Just keep making those little noises.”
I let out a sound I didn’t recognize as he traced my spine with his finger.
“Yeah, like that,” he whispered.
Oh my God. How could I have been so wrong about bad boys? Forget the best friend, I wanted this—the unpredictable charm, the danger, and the heat. Did anything else matter? I closed my eyes and ran my fingers through his hair in the spinning darkness—then stopped when I heard a cough from the doorway.
My eyes snapped open and I caught a glimpse of someone standing at the top of the attic stairs. It was Simon, peering inside.
“Simon!” Bennett and I sprang apart. “Go away!”
“Emma …,” he said. And there was something weird in his tone, something more than just I’ve caught you with your drug-addled boyfriend who shouldn’t be living here.
“What?” I asked. “What’s happened?”
Before he answered, two people stepped into the room. Well-dressed, familiar, and completely unamused.
And Bennett said, “Mom … Dad?”
I’ve always had moments when I wished I could yell “Freeze!” and the world would stop, giving me a chance to think of a great comeback line, retake a test, or cancel the inane grin I just flashed the guy I was crushing on. This was the queen of all those moments.
What were they doing here? Well, yes, it was their house, but did they have to show up this very minute? Why not an hour from now when I’d be done with Bennett? Okay, I’d never be done with Bennett, but at least I might’ve been fully dressed. Instead I was wearing a lacy white tank top, which no parent would deem modest.
As I struggled to put on a sweater, my hand brushed against Emma’s ring on its chain around my neck. I considered whipping it on and disappearing in a cloud of ghostly embarrassment. On the plus side, it would end this terrifying encounter; on the minus side, I’d be deserting Bennett, which seemed really cowardly. And maybe turning into a ghost wasn’t the best way to impress his parents. I mean, as much as I could impress them, given the whole making-out-with-their-son thing.
“I want you to meet Emma,” he told them, as though there were nothing awkward happening. “You’ve probably heard a lot about her.”
“Hi,” I squeaked.
“It’s all true,” he said, with an easy grin.
His parents didn’t smile back. They just stood there, radiating disapproval, which gave me ample time to discover that Bennett got