The Santangelos by Jackie Collins Read Free Book Online Page A

dress and how enticing she smelled.
    Calm down, he told himself. You’re simply being Mr. Good Guy . Nothing’s going on here .
    Once they reached the door of her suite, he once again attempted to say good-bye. Nadia was having none of it. “Please, Bobby,” she pleaded. “Can you come in for a moment and check out the closet and bathroom? I know I sound crazy, but anyone could be hiding.”
    “You’re kidding?”
    “It was a frightening experience, the thing that happened to me—I fear I’ll never get over it.”
    Checking his watch, Bobby realized that it was past eleven. He’d already been gone for half an hour, and if he didn’t get back soon, M.J. would definitely accuse him of getting laid. That’s all he needed.
    Tomorrow morning he’d tell Denver what happened, and how innocent it all was. She’d understand; she always did.
    Reluctantly, he entered Nadia’s suite, dutifully checking out the bathroom and opening the closet doors. By the time he was finished, she was standing in the living room proffering him a drink.
    “What’s this?” he asked.
    “Vodka,” she said boldly. “For luck. For love. For the future of our loved ones. And,” she added quietly, “for me to thank you so very much. If my fianc é was here, he would thank you too.”
    She picked up her own glass and clinked it with his.
    One drink. What could it hurt?

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    Hyton Abbey was Athena’s family’s ancestral home. Located several miles from Windsor Castle, it was a magnificent if somewhat crumbling country estate. Half of the abbey was open to the public on weekends, while the rest of the time Athena’s esteemed parents, Lord and Lady Hyton-Smythe, lived there in solitary splendor. Well, not exactly splendor, because money was extremely tight—currently they were down to employing a measly four servants to take care of the rambling abbey, which boasted fourteen bedrooms, numerous bathrooms, and a couple of random ghosts.
    The first time Max visited, she’d had an “encounter,” which had totally freaked her out. She was washing her hands in one of the downstairs powder rooms when she’d sensed someone standing behind her while fingertips played tag on her shoulders. Startled, she’d spun around, only to find that there was no one there. Running from the room, she’d bumped straight into Lord Henry Hyton-Smythe, who’d chuckled when she’d told him what had happened.
    “No worries, child,” he’d boomed with a rakish leer. “We have a couple of resident ghosts here. They’ll do you no harm, although I must say, they certainly enjoy frightening our guests.”
    Max was speechless. Ghosts! Why hadn’t Athena warned her?
    That evening while they were all sitting in the dining room, the entire Hyton-Smythe family had enjoyed a hearty laugh at her expense.
    “I wonder if it was Great-aunt Sephora. Or perhaps it was the stable boy,” Athena giggled. “The story is that Sephora stabbed him with a pitchfork back in the eighteen hundreds, and they’ve both been hanging around ever since.”
    “I bet it was the stable boy,” Tim, Athena’s brother, intoned, his thin face lighting up. “Nothing he likes better than watching a pretty girl pee!”
    Lady Harriet Hyton-Smythe roused herself from a half-drunken stupor, her dangly silver earrings clinking below her droopy earlobes. “Stop being so disgusting,” she slurred. “Max is a guest in our home.”
    Athena was totally into spending weekends at the abbey with her family. They were an eccentric group—her brother, Tim, was a cross-dresser who refused to admit he was gay. Lady Harriet started drinking in the morning and was never finished until she slumped her way up to bed past midnight. Lord Henry spent most of his time checking out his gun collection, going hunting with his cronies, and ogling the prettiest tourists who visited to take the tour.
    Sometimes Max considered not going with Athena for the weekend, instead opting to hang out by herself