Heartbreaker by Laurie Paige Read Free Book Online Page A

variety of ballets. Pure fluff, but audiences love it.”
    He liked her sharing this little insight with him, as if he, too, were an insider to the workings of the art form.
    After she departed in that fluid, effortless manner she had, he dictated a report on her condition. The computer printed it out. After reading it over, he placed it in an envelope, put a stamp in the corner and stuck it in his pocket. He’d been asked for the report by Friday. The ballet director should get it tomorrow if he mailed it tonight.
    Taking the letter with him, he walked the two blocks to his condo. His pad was on the fourteenth floor, a nifty but rather plain two-bedroom penthouse that was convenient to the office, the hospital and the gym where he worked out while in Houston.
    No one had ever spent the night there with him, except his nineteen-year-old niece, Janis.
    Ironically the youngster was also avid about ballet and wanted to come to Houston to study dance, but her dad, who was his brother and some twenty years older than himself, was against the idea. Her parents wanted her to stay at the University of Hawaii.
    Jim and his wife lived in Hawaii, and they naturally wanted their daughter close. Michael could identify with that, even though he’d never had a close family life himself.
    For a moment, nostalgia rolled over him. Recalling his evening at Matt’s house with Susan and the other couples, he considered the camaraderie of the Carson brothers. It was one of the things that he’d noticed about the whole family when they had all showed up in mutual support of their father during his bypass surgery.
    A nice family, he concluded, made even nicer by the addition of Josie and Rose and the expected babies.
    Changing his direction, he decided to go to the gym for an hour and work off the restless energy that plagued him. Oh, one other thing. He dropped the envelope into the mailbox on the corner next to the gym.
    There. The grisly deed was done.
    He smiled grimly. Now it would be a race betweenwho would finish him off first: Susan Wainwright or Carmine Mercado. He was personally betting on Susan.
    Â 
    â€œTell him Susan Wainwright is here,” Susan told the polite but implacable doorman who wouldn’t let her go farther than the lobby of the expensive condos.
    She glared at the polished pink granite tiles on the floor and the wall housing the elevator. She knew that Michael lived on the top floor.
    The penthouse, where he seduced unsuspecting women, she added with vicious sarcasm.
    â€œUh, he says you’re to go right up,” the doorman finally told her, hanging up the phone.
    The man briskly opened the elevator, saw her inside and punched a button on the panel before stepping back into the lobby and watching as the doors slid closed.
    Susan crossed her arms while she rose with smooth speed to the fourteenth floor. When the doors slid open, she stepped out into a large granite foyer with flowers and palm trees, illuminated by a skylight. Chaises and padded chairs were placed at strategic points, making the space seem like a formal living room. Four penthouses opened off the foyer.
    Michael stood at one solid oak door. “Welcome to my humble home,” he said, a half smile on his lips. He gave a little bow.
    â€œHuh” was her reply to his mock graciousness.She sailed inside when he stepped back and waved her in.
    She stopped abruptly. The lights of the city were laid out at her feet, a banquet of sparkling jewels wrapping around the living room in a breathtaking sweep through floor-to-ceiling windows that lined two sides of the elegant room. She had only to stoop and grab a pocketful of riches.
    â€œBeautiful, isn’t it?” he said softly behind her.
    She became aware of his body heat along her back. When she stepped forward, then turned, she found his eyes on her.
    Pain, sharp and hungry, speared through her.
    It seemed unfair to find all this loveliness, to find him, at this moment