Her Sexiest Mistake by Jill Shalvis Read Free Book Online

as she felt on the inside.
    She’d lifted a steak knife from Denny’s the day before, which was dull as a plastic butter knife but flashed fairly impressively in the light. It would be good for show, if need be, and hopefully that was all she’d need to do—even the thought of blood made her want to hurl.
    She was eating as cheaply as she could and bathing in public restrooms, which were really gross. People were universal slobs, and if she had to look at one more slimy sink or toilet…
    But she was in the home stretch now, nearly to her aunt Apple’s in Los Angeles, and she patted the dashboard of her beat-up 1989 Dodge Diplomat. “Not much farther,” she promised.
    The car coughed.
    Oh, God. Her biggest fear. “Don’t die on me now,” Hope begged it and patted the dash again. “We’re going to be okay, really we are.”
    Or so she hoped. The problem was Apple didn’t know she was coming, and Momma didn’t know she’d gone.
    Which left Hope in her usual spot—a big mess.
    Unable to read the map and drive at the same time, she pulled off the freeway, not daring to turn off the engine for fear it would never start again. Only she didn’t have much gas left…
    “Please find it,” she whispered to herself, running her finger over the foldout she’d pilfered from a 76 station somewhere in Arizona. She’d felt a stab of guilt until the grimy two-hundred-fifty-pound guy behind the counter looked her over, making her skin crawl like that time she’d gotten ants in her bed after her momma had left out a box of Twinkies.
    When Hope had asked the guy for the key to the restroom, he smiled (missing a front tooth!) and offered to take her himself.
    Ewwww!
    So she said no thanks, left with the map, and then cursed him the whole time she was peeing in the woods.
    Now she unraveled the small scrap of paper that had Apple’s address on it. The ink had gotten smeared. Was that 11732 High Waters Drive or 11735? Five, she decided and hoped she was right. She searched the map for High Waters, feeling a little frantic. “Please find it, please…”
    There.
    She wasn’t too far now. Probably she could get there by nightfall, which was good because she was in the last of her clean clothes. She thought of how surprised and shocked her aunt Apple was going to be, and swallowed the niggling doubts that she should have called ahead.
    And she would have, except for two things. One, her aunt hadn’t called her. Ever. Though she did send birthday cards every year, with increasingly larger checks enclosed.
    Momma said Apple never called because she’d gotten a big head—so big Momma was surprised she even bothered with the cards and money—but Hope figured that Apple was somebody now, and somebodies took care of their own, busy or not.
    Hope didn’t care about phone calls, or even about Apple, really. She just needed out of town, away from the trailer park, away from the stupid boys and mean girls, away from being a nobody.
    Her aunt probably didn’t give a rat’s ass about Hope, either, but that didn’t matter. Apple lived in Los Angeles, the city of angels, the city of hope.
    Surely that was a sign, right? Hope belonged there. She was going to stay with Apple and become a marine biologist and swim with dolphins for the rest of her life.
    And like her aunt, never look back.
    She was going to get better grades, get into Stanford, and then get rich. She’d have a place by the ocean, a new car—“Sorry,” she whispered to the Diplomat and stroked the dash as she sipped from the 7-Eleven Big Gulp she’d used her last bit of change for. She was going to have a real pool, too, not a plastic little thing where she couldn’t get all wet at once. Yeah, she had big dreams, and she would live ’em, assuming she didn’t run into any trouble—
    A hard rap on the window jerked her so hard she nearly came out of her own skin. Soda soaked into her chest and belly and legs, her hand hit the horn—which made her jump again—and