Resounding Kisses by Jessica Gray Read Free Book Online Page A

they’d been dirt poor during her childhood. The memories rose to the surface and she closed her eyes to try and stave them off.
    But they wouldn’t be ignored. She remembered how she’d become responsible for their dinner at the age of six. Her parents would lift her up so she could climb into a trash dumpster of a nearby supermarket. She would dive for food, hoping to find enough to assuage everyone’s hunger for another day.
    The experience had fostered an unyielding will in her to become successful. Never again would she be subject to living on other’s trash.
    She had few memories of her years in Africa, but the one that stuck out in her mind was the idea that girls didn’t count. Her older cousins hadn’t been allowed to go to school because they had to help their mother in the household and take care of the younger siblings. Her male cousins, though, all went to school and they’d had very few chores to do after that, the brunt of the workload falling to the females.
    It was the fate of most of the girls in her village, and although her father had been a teacher, her oldest sister Thalia had suffered the exact same fate. There just wasn’t enough money to send everyone to school. Her mother had to work in the fields, which left Thalia to take care of the younger siblings. Her gut churned with rage at the injustice girls had to endure, not only in her birth country.
    Ivy counted herself lucky her parents had come to the United States when she was so young. She’d been allowed to go to school and she’d always been the best student in her class. All her efforts had paid off with a full ride scholarship to study at Columbia. Her parents would have never been able to afford such an education for her, and taking out several hundred thousand dollars in student loans would have been impossible and foolish.
    She’d worked hard and graduated with honors; then she had entered the work force. She’d thought things would be different here, but they weren’t. Not really. Women still didn’t have the same opportunities for advancement that men had, and they had to work twice as hard to keep up with their male counterparts. It was unfair, no matter which way one looked at it.
    While in law school, she learned the hard way that she had to be better than her male colleagues to see the same success. She’d stopped wearing as much makeup, and had taken to dressing as masculine as possible, just to try and even out the odds. Working in intellectual property rights, a purely male field up until recently, she had adapted the characteristics and persona of a man. She had learned to blend in. To beat them at their own game.
    It was tiring to say the least, and she sighed heavily as the weight of her daily existence dragged her down.
    Bella grinned at her from the other end of the couch “Honey, you need to go for that man. For once, forget that stupid scoring list and just go have some fun. Something tells me he knows how to have fun.”
    “Goodnight,” she murmured, rising from the couch and heading towards her own bedroom. She’d go to sleep and dream about him, and maybe tomorrow she would take Bella’s advice. Maybe.

Chapter 9
    Ter tossed some bills on the high top table and left the bar. Grant waited for him outside. “What’s going on? I saw Ivy leave with her friend like the bats of hell were chasing her.”
    “I have no idea what is going on with that woman. I showed her your text and she got all angry and took off.”
    Grant grinned. “She’s falling for you.”
    Ter shook his head in disbelief. “How do you figure that? She rushed off.”
    Grant gripped his brother’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. “That’s how women react when they’re serious. Especially if they are falling fast and hard.”
    “No way.”
    “No way? Tell me you’re not attracted to her.”
    Ter escaped from his brother’s grip and started walking. “Oh, I’m very attracted to her. That’s the problem. She doesn’t seem