Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros Read Free Book Online Page A

watched GILMORE GIRLS you’ll think I’m gay instead of just an insomniac who watches too much TV.
    Abby_Donovan: Since we’ve been talking Witness Protection, how about Goodnight Uncle Junior?
    MarkBaynard: Goodnight Carmela
    Abby_Donovan: Goodnight Tony
    MarkBaynard: Goodnight Meadow
    Abby_Donovan: Goodnight Silvio
    MarkBaynard: Goodnight Adriana
    Abby_Donovan: Goodnight Big … um … Goodnight Salvatore
    MarkBaynard: Goodnight Tweetheart …
“Goodnight, Tweetheart,” Abby whispered, putting her Mac-Book to sleep with a stroke of her fingertip.
    Her hands lingered over the keyboard. Despite the smoky warmth of Steve Tyrell’s voice crooning “For All We Know” from her iPod dock speakers, she suddenly felt very alone. How could Mark be halfway across the world when she would have sworn he’d been in this room with her only seconds ago?
    She dragged her gaze away from the computer screen to gaze out the window. While she had been tweeting, the clouds that had been hanging over the city since early that morning had finally decided to deliver on their promise of rain. On Fifth Avenue far below, brightly colored umbrellas were springing open like something out of a child’s pop-up book. Twilight was still hours away, but the cabbies had flicked on their headlights, bathing the slick streets converging on Grand Army Plaza in a shimmering wash of silver. On the far side of the plaza, the wind tossed the tender green leaves crowning the park’s ancient oaks.
    In spite of the melancholy gloom of the afternoon, Abby could almost feel the seductive warmth of the sun against her face. Could almost see herself standing on a stone terrace with vineyards stretched out below her as far as the eye could see. Could almost smell the ripening grapes hanging lush and heavy on the vines.
    She turned, her floral sundress rippling around her ankles, only to find a man standing at the edge of the terrace. Though his face was in shadow, she somehow knew he was smiling and that his smile held the unspoken promise that she would never again be as lonely as she had been before she turned to find him standing there.
    Willow Tum-Tum bounded into her lap, jerking Abby out of her ridiculous daydream. Sighing, she stroked her fingers through Willow’s thick, soft ruff, coaxing an adoring purr from the cat’s throat. If she didn’t rein in her imagination soon, she was going to have to turn her hand to writing the romance novels she secretly loved to read in the bathtub.
    She should have never let herself be drawn into this situation. Wasn’t social media notorious for establishing a sense of false intimacy? How else to explain the way she’d been blurting out intimate details about her life, her career, and her past to a man she’d never met, a man she probably never would meet?
    She wouldn’t have dared tell her editor about the fear that paralyzed her every time she sat down at her computer to finish Chapter Five of her new book. And no one, not even her best friend, knew how adrift she’d felt since her father died.
    Her dad had always been her biggest cheerleader. He might have played the role of big, tough army guy for his troops, but he never missed a chance to help her with her homework or braid her hair before bedtime. If she was in a school play, he was always front and center in the first row of the auditorium, beaming with pride as she lisped out her lines or pirouetted across the stage dressed as Pocahontas or a Thanksgiving pumpkin.
    She still remembered calling him late one night when she was writing her book and tearfully telling him she was having trouble with a scene because the heroine’s dad in the book was dying and she couldn’t bear to write a dead dad scene.
    He had thought about it for a minute, then said, “That’s okay, honey. Go ahead and finish me off. Everybody’s gotta go sometime.”
    After Time Out of Mind had been published, he had loaded down his car trunk with boxes of books and tried to sell a