A Demon in Waiting (Crimson Romance) Read Online Free

tightened.
    He grinned. “Not what you’re thinking, probably. Where I come from, the folks kinda have their own religion. They considered me extraneous, so they tried to put me out a couple of months ago.”
    “What do you mean
tried to
?” She stole a look away from the road and crooked one dark brown eyebrow up at him.
    He scratched the palm of his left hand and stared at the dusty road ahead. “My mother is still there. Will probably never leave, truth be told. Anyhow, she hid me away until I could make other plans. It’s hard not having a formal education. I was only homeschooled up until age thirteen. I don’t exactly have a certificate or anything like that.”
    “Yikes. Does the government even know you exist?”
    “Of course. I’ve got a social security number and birth certificate. The most valuable things I own, I guess.”
    “Identity is important, so, I could see that.”
    She seemed to relax a bit and the set of her lips became less tight, so he decided to keep her talking.
    “So, what’s waiting for you in North Carolina?”
    “That’s home for me. I moved west four years ago after college for an internship that turned into a job. I decided recently it was time to move on.”
    “What do you do?”
    She opened her mouth, closed it, and furrowed her brow again. “That’s hard to explain in simple terms. I always struggle with telling people about it. I’m an art director.”
    He wasn’t familiar with the term, which wasn’t saying much. He hadn’t been in the world that long. It was his first day on the job, really. “What do art directors do?”
    “Uh … in advertising our job is to design the look of a campaign or create new elements to match the existing one. Mostly I do a lot of work in Photoshop, laying out magazine and Internet ads. That kind of thing. Technical stuff.”
    “Oh. And people go to school for that or is it a natural talent kinda thing?”
    It may have been idle chit-chat, but the more she talked, the more he cared. He was interested not only in her, but in all the things in the world he’d been missing out on — and it was a
lot
. If he had only three hours to glean all the interesting tidbits from her he could, he’d make the most of it.
    She sighed. “I did some schooling for design, but you kind of have to have an eye. Whether or not your eye is any good … ” She shrugged. “That’s subjective.”
    “Maybe you’re done something I’ve seen?”
    Her cheeks flushed — a charming reddening that crept down into the neck of her coral-colored tank top and made her look quite a bit younger than she likely was.
    “Probably not. I was a junior art director, and I worked on the stuff that was sort of low priority. Other people did the big-money stuff.”
    “Sounds kind of political.”
    A scoff. “No kidding.” She patted the console with her right hand, feeling around for something and finally wrapped her fingers around her coffee cup.
    “I could never get into coffee,” he said.
    Her eyes widened. “It’s the only vice I have left.”
    “It smells great, but I guess I haven’t had enough of it. We were supposed to abstain from habit-forming excesses, so by the time I got around to trying it I couldn’t get past the bitterness.”
    “Oh!” She perked up a bit and this time when the flush returned to her cheeks it was from her renewed energy and not shame. “Well, the trick is adding enough sugar to sweeten it and giving it a hearty splash of half and half to cut the acid. It’s almost like a dessert that way, but I don’t even want to think of how many calories I’m drinking.” She made an
ugh
face.
    “Don’t tell me you’re watching your weight.”
    “Of course I am. The moment I stop watching it I end up with puffy cheeks, two chins, and a lard ass.”
    “I don’t believe that.” He wasn’t just blowing smoke. She was definitely within the bounds of height-weight proportionate or even a bit thin. Nice curves, though. He’d noticed