Playing Dirty Read Online Free Page A

too much glue before it heldtogether. And then you had to handle most of it on your own because of him screwing up our after-graduation plans—”
    Yeah, getting shipped off to the fat farm didn’t help hasten the process, she thought wryly. Which, okay, was more her mother’s fault than Cade’s. But screw that—the truth was, if she hadn’t been so flattened by his betrayal, something her mother hadn’t even seemed to notice, she would have dug in until she’d won that battle. So, for all intents and purposes, it was his fault.
    She tuned back in to hear Poppy continue, “So I suppose that I, at least, am a little afraid for you. You worked like a demon to build yourself back up, and I just don’t want to see all your hard work go down the drain because of Buttface Gallari.”
    “Neither do I. And I won’t let it. I will never forgive him, Poppy— ever . But I’m through running away from him. Because you’re right, I did work too hard building myself back up to keep doing that. I’m not surprised you might have reservations about my ability to handle myself—”
    “I don’t! You’ll go down in the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar annals for your counterattack on Gallari during the worst moment of your life. You more than proved you can handle yourself.”
    “Since then, though, I’ve been more reactive than proactive whenever I’ve run into him. So maybe I feel I have something to prove—to myself, if no one else. It doesn’t help that I looked in the mirror this morning and had a ‘fat’ moment.”
    “Dammit, Av,” Jane said. “When are you going to let those go? You’ve been a size twelve for twelve years.”
    “Which you like to remind me would be a size fourteen if I’d buy my clothing at the less spendy storeswhere most women shop.” She knew her friend was only teasing when she said that, but she couldn’t honestly deny Jane was right.
    “Please.” The brunette made a rude noise. “You know I only say that because I’m jealous you have big boobs. I wanna have big girl boobs some day.” She gestured at Ava’s emerald-green cashmere sweater and the black pencil skirt she’d tucked it into. “Look at you!”
    She glanced down at herself. “I know. Does this make me look rotund?”
    “Oh, for God’s sake, Spencer, snap out of it!” Poppy gave her a get-over-yourself glare. “As Janie said, you’ve maintained your killer bod for pretty much your entire adult life. And you know men trip all over themselves when you walk by. It’s not because you’re fat, girlfriend.”
    “Okay. Sorry.” She shook out her hands and picked up her coffee cup—then merely held it for a moment as she gave her friends a rueful smile. “I backslid for a minute there. Jeez. I’ve been down Insecurity Road so many times it likely has a butt-shaped rut etched in it. But I’m good now.”
    “It’s that damn Gallari, showing up out of the blue and shaking you up.”
    She shrugged. Seeing him again had contributed for sure, but it was really the telephone conversation she’d had with her mother earlier in which Jacqueline had made her usual crack about Ava’s weight. Why was her mom always so sure that she could do better, diet herself thinner? Never mind that she was a busty, hippy, big-boned girl who could starve herself into an early grave and still not die a sylphlike woman.
    Well, she mostly knew her worth. She also knewshe’d earned it for more than shedding thirty-nine pounds.
    She knocked back a sip of coffee, set her cup on the table and, hands flat on either side of the mug, leaned into them in her intense need to make her friends understand why she’d agreed to do the last thing they’d expect from her. “Look, I’m not exactly raring to play personal concierge to Cade myself. But it’s work I can do with my eyes closed and he’ll pay me a weekly bundle for it, plus a huge bonus if the documentary comes in on time and on budget.”
    “Even if he’s on the up-and-up, how on earth are