Wayward Dreams by Gail McFarland Read Free Book Online Page A

her—not for real. “Did you ever love her?”
    â€œWhat kind of question is that?” KPayne rolled his shoulders and shoved the phone into his pocket. “You want me to bitch up and whine about her? Ain’t gonna happen. What we had, we had for the moment. Now, the moment is gone.”
    The wire snare holding the cork in place twisted and lifted, then the foil curled easily beneath Alin’s fingers. “That why you threw her out?”
    â€œI don’t need her anymore. I’ve got the contracts, a way to clean the money, and a life that doesn’t include her.” KPayne shrugged indifferently. “All she was doing was blocking the right one.”
    Alin’s head bobbed slowly. “So it’s just business. You never loved her.”
    â€œJust business,” Payne agreed. “Besides, women are like busses; there’s one every five minutes. And as long as this one takes me to my money, she’ll be worth the ride.”
    * * *
    Anger burning low, Bianca sat on the foot of the bed because her legs wouldn’t hold her. Looking around, she figured that the room’s dusty blue drapes, green and blue tweed carpeting, and brown plastic laminated furniture was meant to be soothing, but they made her nervous.
    This was the closest thing she had to a home, and when her money ran out, even this would be gone. KPayne was threatening her with a deadline she couldn’t possibly meet, and warning her that she’d better not miss it. Anger rippled hot and fast beneath her skin, sloughing self-pity in the process. And what could he do, if she did? Sue her?
    Installment payments were going to have to do.
    She blew out hard and lifted a hand to her hair. What am I going to do with this mess? She gathered the tangled tresses into a ponytail and looped stray locks around the bunched hair and tucked them under. Catching sight of herself in the dresser mirror, she added the beauty salon to the list of places she wouldn’t be going anytime soon.
    I hate this! I hate that I put myself here, and I hate that I don’t know how to get out of it. But I can’t just sit here and cry. So that leaves me with…what?
    A chance to call my sister…
    Wishing for an alternative didn’t seem to help. No matter how she twisted it, calling Julia seemed to be the only answer—even if she wasn’t ready for it. Suddenly, a shower seemed like a good idea, and a way to postpone the inevitable.
    Standing under the spray of hot water, it never occurred to Bianca to wonder when she had made the decision to call her sister—she only knew that she would. Scrubbing her skin with liquid motel soap and reflecting on her relationship to the sister she had forsaken in better times, she wondered if life could get any harder.
    Not that their life had been all that hard, but…well, some folk would call it hard. Having your military father die in the Gulf War on your fifteenth birthday, and then having your mother marry another military man just after you’d blown out the candles on your sixteenth birthday cake was a lot. But then to have your mother die in a stupid boating accident less than a year after that, leaving you and your younger sister with a step-dad who wasn’t interested in expanding his fathering skills was enough to leave a girl with just a few abandonment issues.
    Bianca admitted to having a few issues, but none of them was worth dwelling on.
    After high school, smart enough to know when she was at the end of her resources, Bianca had taken her decent grades to NYU, modeled part-time, and snared the interest of an NFL player. Knowing big money when she smelled it, she figured out how to make him happy and quickly determined that her skills lay in shopping well and looking good.
    Nine months younger, Julia, the smart sister, had packed up her issues and taken them to the University of Chicago. She’d buried them deep in her heart and pursued