Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros Read Free Book Online Page B

copy to everybody he met. His easygoing charm and pride in his only daughter’s accomplishments were so irresistible that he usually ended up selling two.
    She picked up the framed photo sitting on the corner of her desk. It was a grainy Polaroid she had taken of her parents in happier times when they probably weren’t much older than she was now. They were standing on Carolina Beach against a backdrop of sand and sea. Her dad had one burly arm draped over her mother’s shoulders. He was grinning at the camera like a mischievous nine-year-old while her mother laughed up at him, her eyes hidden by a pair of oversize sunglasses and her long brown hair dancing in the wind. The hint of sadness that usually haunted her smile had vanished, if only for the instant it had taken for Abby to freeze that moment in time.
    Abby hadn’t realized until after her dad’s death that there were hardly any pictures of the three of them together. One of them had always been holding the camera. She gently returned the photo to its place, her smile a wistful echo of her mother’s.
    She supposed this was what came of pouring your heart out to a total stranger. Mooning over old photos while listening to the lonely wail of a saxophone, two cats your only company.
    She closed the screen of her laptop with a decisive click. Bantering and “flirting” with Mark through Direct Messages had seemed harmless enough, but making a date to take their relationship to the next level felt more than a little disingenuous.
    She glanced at her Far Side desk calendar. It was only Monday. She had four days to decide whether or not she was going to make an appearance at the appointed time or stand up her cyberdate in favor of a real man, one who might be able to offer her more than just words on a screen.
    She had four days to forget all about Mark Baynard.

Chapter Five
    I met a man online.”
    Abby’s announcement might not have been so dramatic if it hadn’t been gasped out in what sounded like her dying breath. Fortunately her friend Margo was accustomed to her wheezing so she didn’t whip out her BlackBerry and start dialing 911 or leap off her own treadmill and go running for the gym defibrillator.
    Using the towel draped around her neck to wipe the sweat from her eyes, Abby glanced down at the treadmill’s digital readout. She groaned, finding it hard to believe she’d only been slogging along for seventeen minutes when it felt more like seventeen hours. She much preferred taking a long, leisurely stroll in the park or Partying Off the Pounds while Richard Simmons shouted that she was born to be a star. She had always hated to run unless something was chasing her—preferably a hungry bear.
    She shot Margo a resentful glance. Margo had the long, lean muscles and regal posture of an Amazonian queen. She ran with her head straight up, her cocoa-colored eyes fixed on some invisible kingdom she had yet to conquer.
    Margo didn’t even sweat. She gleamed.
    If Abby didn’t love her so much, she would have hated her.
    “So I met a man online,” she repeated. “I know that probably sounds pathetic.”
    “Not coming from a budding agoraphobic,” Margo replied. Although her pace was twice as fast as Abby’s and her beautifully toned arms were pumping like a pair of well-oiled pistons, she was still perfectly capable of carrying on a normal conversation, placing a stock order on the headset of her BlackBerry, or singing the opening aria from La Traviata . “Unless you’re into those guys who deliver Chinese food, where else would you meet a man? You hardly ever leave your apartment except to go to Starbucks and visit your mom in the nursing home.”
    “Hey! I get out! I met you at the gym here today, didn’t I?”
    “And how many times have you turned me down for lunch in the past three months?”
    “I told you I was sorry about that. I’ve been extremely busy lately.”
    Margo cocked one perfectly waxed eyebrow in her direction, her expression