Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online Page A

he said, touching her shoulder. He leaned closer and shook her lightly, shocked to notice that the pillow and blanket no longer smelled like him, but like her. “Jane, get up.”
    She blinked at him and rolled over. “Is it time?” she asked, and he nodded.
    He made coffee while she was showering, in case she wanted something in her stomach before they left, but she wanted to go right away. He sat beside her in the pickup and drove in silence, letting all the words he should have been saying clutter the space around him. I’ll miss you , he had planned to tell her. Call if you get a chance. If anything happens, well, you know where I am .
    Jane stared glassy-eyed at the freeway, her hands clenched in her lap. She did not speak until they turned into the parking lot of the police station. At first, her voice was so quiet that Will thought he had heard her incorrectly. “Do you think he’ll like me?”
    Will had expected her to wonder aloud about whether she’d remember her husband the minute she laid eyes on him, or to speculate about where her home was. He had not expected this.
    He didn’t have a chance to answer. A flock of reporters pushed their way toward the truck, snapping flash cameras and calling out questions that tangled with each other in a knot of noise. Jane shrank back against the seat. “Come on,” Will said, sliding his arm around her shoulders. He pulled her toward the driver’s-side door. “Just stick close to me.”
    Who the hell was she? Even if she was this Barrett person, this anthropologist, and even if she’d discovered that hand, this kind of press coverage seemed to be a little overboard. Will guided Jane up the steps and into the main lobby of the station, feeling her warm breath make a circle against his collarbone.
    Standing beside Captain Watkins was Alex Rivers.
    Will dropped his arm from Jane’s shoulders. Alex goddamn Rivers. All these reporters, all these cameras had nothing to do with Jane at all.
    The corner of Will’s mouth tipped up. Jane was married to the number-one movie star in America. And she’d completely forgotten.
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    T HE FIRST THING SHE NOTICED WAS THAT W ILL HAD STEPPED AWAY from her. For a moment she was certain she wouldn’t be able to stand on her own. She was afraid to look up and face all those people, but something was keeping her on her feet and she needed to see what it was.
    She lifted her head and was bound by Alex Rivers’s eyes.
    Taboo .
    â€œCassie?” He took a step forward, and then another one, and she unconsciously stepped closer to Will. “Do you know who I am?”
    Of course she knew him; everyone knew him, he was Alex Rivers , for God’s sake. She nodded, and that’s when she noticed how faulty her perception had become. Alex Rivers’s face kept shimmering in and out, the way the heat rising off asphalt in the summer sometimes makes you see double. One moment, Cassie saw him glossy and larger than life; in the next, he seemed to be nothing more than a man.
    An instant before he reached for her, all of Cassie’s senses seemed to converge upon one another. She could feel the warmth coming from his skin, see the light reflecting off his hair, hear the whispers that wrapped them closer together. She smelled the clean sandalwood of his shaving cream and the light starch of his shirt. Tentatively, she stretched her arms around him, knowing exactly where her fingers would meet the muscles of his back. Anthropology , she thought, the study of how people fit into their world . She closed her eyes and fell into the familiar.
    â€œGod, Cassie, I didn’t know what happened. Herb called me in Scotland.” His breath fell just over her ear. “I love you, pichouette .”
    It was that word that made her pull away. She looked up at him, at this man every woman in America dreamed about, and she took a step back. “Do you have a picture?” she