Envy by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online

courtesy of sending him a rejection notice.
    It had also occurred to him that the partial manuscript had never reached her desk, that mailroom staff had misdirected it or hurled it into a Dumpster within minutes of its delivery.
    #Few of the major publishing houses even ###61
    had slush piles anymore. Manuscripts either got in through literary agents or they didn't get in at all.
    If his pages had survived that first selection process, a junior editor who was paid to cull material from slush piles could have deep-sixed the _Envy prologue before it ever got to her office.
    In any case, he'd almost convinced himself that this plan was a bust and that it would be necessary to plot another.
    That was yesterday. Just went to show what a difference a day could make. Apparently the pages _had made it to her desk, and she _had read them, because today she _had tried to contact him.
    Maris Matherly-Reade. The deputy had
    misspelled all three of her names. Parker hoped he was more adept at taking down telephone numbers.
    Business, she had told Deputy Dwight
    Harris when he had asked why she was looking for P.M.E. She had business to discuss. Which could mean good news for Parker. Or bad. Or something in between.
    She could be calling to say that his writing stunk and how dare he presume to send her prestigious publishing house such unsolicited shit. Or maybe she would take a softer approach and say that he had talent but that his material didn't fit their present publishing needs, and wish him luck at placing his book with another house.
    But those responses usually came in the form of rejection letters, written in language firm enough to discourage another submission but with enough encouragement to keep the rejected writer from jumping off the nearest bridge.
    Ms. Matherly-Reed didn't know where
    to address such a letter to him, however. He'd made certain that she couldn't reach him by mail. So if her intention had been to reject _Envy, he probably would never have heard from her at all.
    Instead, she had tried to track him down. From that, he deduced her response must be favorable.
    But it wasn't yet time to ice down the champagne. It was a little early to award himself a gold star for being such a clever boy. Before he got too carried away, he forced himself to keep his heartbeat regular, his breathing normal, and his head clear. Success or failure hinged not on what he'd done up to this point but on what he
    #did next. #########################63
    So instead of celebrating this milestone, he had stared for hours out this window into the rainy moonless night. While the calm surf swept the
    shoreline, he weighed his options. While his distant neighbors on St. Anne slept, or watched late-night TV, or made love under their summer-weight bedcovers, Parker Evans plotted.
    It helped that he already knew the ending to this story. Not once did he consider changing the outcome from his original plot. He never considered letting Maris Matherly-Reed's attempt to reach him go unacknowledged, never thought about dropping this thing here and now.
    No, he'd come this far, he was committed to seeing it all the way through the denouement. But between here and there, he couldn't make a single misstep. Each chapter had to be carefully thought out, with no mistakes allowed. It had to be the perfect plot.
    And if his resolve to finish it ever faltered, he had only to remember how fucking long it had taken him to reach this point in the saga. Six months.
    Well ... six months and fourteen years.
    Maris groped for the ringing telephone. She squinted the lighted clock on her nightstand into focus. Five-twenty-three. In the morning.
    Who--
    Then panic brought her wide awake. Was this that dreaded, inevitable phone call notifying her that her father had suffered a coronary, stroke, fall, or worse?
    Anxiously she clutched the receiver.
    "Hello?"
    "Maris Matherly-Reed?"
    "Speaking."
    "Where do you get off screwing around with my life?"
    She was taken completely