Dirty Sexy Alphas (Twenty Book Box Set) - Hannah Ford Page 0,265

I’d always suspected him to be.

As we broke off the kiss, I happened to glance to my right.

Sitting not five feet away from us at one of the outside tables, all alone, was my old editor from Crush. Kait was sitting and nursing a drink, an open magazine in front of her. She looked pale and angry, her face pinched beneath her fancy sunglasses.

She had clearly spotted us, but went back to looking at her magazine and pretending she didn’t.

Leo squeezed my hand and pulled me to the bar to place our orders. “Did you see who was sitting out there?” I said under my breath.

Leo nodded as he paid for our smoothies. “I saw.”

“I want to give her a piece of my mind.”

He laughed. “Don’t even bother.”

“But she needs to know that what she did was wrong.”

“Sophie, just look at her. She’s sitting at this restaurant, drinking all by herself. She looks completely miserable. And now she sees us here together and knows that we’re happy and none of the bullshit she tried had any effect on us at all. Do you realize how much it sucks to be her right now?”

I thought about it and realized he was right. “Let’s get those smoothies to go, just the same,” I told him. “I’d rather have them on the ride back. Just you and me. Together.”

“Your wish is my command,” Leo replied, bowing slightly.

A few minutes later, we were walking to the car and getting inside, and already, as he started the engine and pulled away from the curb—we’d begun discussing the film script again. “I’m telling you, she would never do that,” I said, shaking my head as I sipped my smoothie.

Leo started to tell me why my idea for the script was wrong and his was still right, when it suddenly occurred to me that we’d walked right past Kait as we’d left the restaurant. And I’d completely forgotten about her. She’d just slipped my mind, as if she’d never really existed.

And I realized that it was because, in a way, she hadn’t.

Her brand of anger and bitterness was like smoke, dissipating in the wind, and now we were driving with the windows down and my hair was blowing in the warm breeze and I was truly happy.

Nothing else existed but me and Leo and the life we’d dared to create together.

I took another sip of my drink and listened to Leo talk, loving the sound of his voice and reminding myself to never let this feeling slip away.

THE END

STOLEN

By Ella London

Part I

Stolen (Book One)

by Ella London

Chapter 1

She looked just like the other tourists, and that was the whole point.

A few days of blending in, a few days away from reality—and even if the weather didn’t cooperate. The last couple of days, there had been a tropical storm, but Harper didn’t mind.

Lying in the hammock she’d read and napped and sipped on fruity umbrella drinks.

There were other people on the island of course, but she was staying in one of the more private spots, a cute bungalow that sat over the crystal clear waters of Huahine Island, sheltered by large palm trees. She had her own small white sanded beach and earlier that week, Carl had come and given her private snorkeling lessons in the cove just outside her room.

Private snorkeling lessons; a luxury she shouldn’t have been indulging in, given her quickly dwindling resources.

And yes, she felt guilty for even being there, especially when her father and mother had booked the trip for all of them to go on together.

The trip had been planned before.

Before the destruction of everything that had seemed so real, before Harper had realized that her world was a lie, a house of cards that had come crashing down so fast that it still made her breathless with panic sometimes.

Not long ago, a trip like this would have seemed almost ordinary to Harper. Her father had often taken the family on fancy, extravagant vacations. But those days were over and they weren’t coming back.

Still, the trip was booked and non-refundable, and so Harper had decided to come at the last minute, all by her lonesome. She’d needed the time away from Boston—time to hopefully clear her head before things got even worse…

Harper sighed and took a deep breath.

Not going to think about it right now, she told herself.

Here there were no front-page headlines to avoid, no catcalls from people driving by her parents’ home, no disgusted glares when people saw the last name