(Blood and Bone, #1) Blood and Bone
Read (Blood and Bone, #1) Blood and Bone Online
Authors: Tara Brown
BOOKS BY TARA BROWN ALSO WRITING AS T. L. BROWN, A. E. WATSON, ERIN LEIGH, AND SOPHIE STARR
The Devil’s Roses
Cursed
Bane
Witch
Hyde
Death
Blackwater
Midnight Coven
Redeemers
The Born Trilogy
Born
Born to Fight
Reborn
The Blood Trail Chronicles
Vengeance
Vanquished
The Single Lady Spy Series
The End of Me
The End of Games
The Light Series
The Light of the World
The Four Horsemen
The End of Days
Imaginations
Imaginations
Duplicities
The Lonely
The Lonely
Lost Boy
The Seventh Day
My Side
The Long Way Home
First Kiss
Sunder
In the Fading Light
For Love or Money
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Tara Brown
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
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Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477829509
ISBN-10: 1477829504
Cover design by Kerrie Robertson
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014958169
CONTENTS
2. LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
1. MISTAKEN IDENTITY
S
amantha! Sam! Hey, wait up! Samantha Barnes! Wait!”
My footsteps quicken as I sigh, annoyed at the guy who is shouting behind me. It’s amazing his voice has carried through the crowd on the street for as long as it has. It’s also amazing he hasn’t caught Samantha Barnes yet, whoever she is.
I have to assume it’s one of two scenarios—either he’s slow as molasses on a cold day or she’s a gazelle and is way ahead of him.
“SAM!
“SAM!
“SAM, WAIT!”
Finally, I turn back to tell him he needs to run a lot faster or give up the chase, but the guy shouting is looking at me. “Sam, seriously, how fast do you walk?” He huffs and puffs like he might blow down the store next to me. He’s slight, sort of a teaspoon of a man. He looks like he’s going to take a knee or maybe just pass out altogether. His slim face is red and flushed.
I glance behind me, noticing no one else is stopped.
“I was running—for three blocks!” he gasps. He points and wheezes, “I knew—it was—you—whew! You walk—fast!” He has a slight overbite and spit on his bottom lip from the huffing and puffing. My nose wrinkles involuntarily at the heinous sight of the spit bubble.
I’m lost on whether or not he’ll wipe it away or if I’ll have to stare at it whilst he gets me mixed up with whomever he is looking for.
“You—walk so—fast.” His breathing is still labored, and his face seems to be getting redder. For a small guy, he’s awfully out of shape. After a moment, he runs his hands over his face, wiping away the sweat from his brow, and yet leaving behind the spit.
Lovely.
He does a huge sigh before speaking with the labored gasps. “I knew it was you when I saw you at Menchie’s. How are you? It’s been so long. Since what—second year, right?”
I shake my head, still mesmerized by the spit. Surely he feels it. Should I pull out a tissue and wipe it for him? How is it so bubbled and frothy?
He sighs. “It’s me, Ronald Armstrong. We were at Berkeley together a few years ago.” I cock an eyebrow, about to tell him he is mistaken, but he assumes it is an answer to his remark. “I suppose you’re right, it wasn’t a few years ago. Jesus, it was twelve years ago. That’s right, you missed the reunion. I didn’t go either. I saw your name on the list of people not attending.”
I am drawing a huge blank. I never attended Berkeley, and I have never met him.
He smiles wide, flashing that overbite. “The year you left in the middle of the second semester, I heard you went FBI. You still with them?”
I nearly laugh, right in his frothy spit bubbler. “No.” Whoever Sam is, she is clearly smarter than I ever was. I offer him a weak
smile. “I’m really sorry, but I never went to Berkeley. I never went to college. You must have the wrong person.”
His eyes narrow, and I can see the wheels turning, but he doesn’t believe me. He relives every moment that in his mind we have spent together and then shakes his head. “No, I remember you. You sat in front of me. We weren’t exactly friends, but I remember you. Is this an FBI thing?”
“Sorry. No.”
“We always called you Sam, and you were really smart, sort of an activist, if I recall.”
I shake my head again. “Jane. My name is Jane.” My yogurt is melting, but I can’t eat it while I stare at the white frothy spit bubble on his thin lower lip. I ponder the possibility that he will run after me if I just bolt and eat my yogurt in an alley.
He pauses a second as if processing the statement before he chuckles, rolling his eyes. “Oh shit. You’re messing with me. Jesus, you almost had me too. You look so serious. Man, I forgot what a joker you were. That’s crazy. Jane! Good one.” He uses his hands to make movements like his head has exploded. He has thin fingers. They bother me.
He laughs, and something about him does seem familiar. But I think it’s more that he has one of those faces—those rat faces that seem very similar. He points. “So how have you been?”
I give up and play along. “Good, and you?” I hope it will go faster and I can just get this over with.
“Good.” He nods, finally wiping his lips on his sleeve and saving me from the horror of the white spit. “Great, really good. I got a resident position in France, actually. I’m heading there in a few weeks. It’s just outside of Paris. They even have a residence for me so I can live for free while I finish my PhD. I’m so glad I switched my major. It means longer in school, but this opportunity is just such an affirmation that I made the right choice. Such a score.”
He might as well be speaking German.
I nod along. “Wow, that’s amazing.” Is it? I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t give a shit. I just want to eat my frozen yogurt before it’s no longer frozen.
He laughs. “Yeah. I feel pretty lucky. What are you doing?”
“I work in a shop.” I point. “Just around the corner. I’m late, actually, from my coffee break. It was nice to see you—”
He smiles. “Ronald.”
“Of course. Have a nice day and enjoy France.”
“You want to get a coffee and catch up sometime?”
I shake my head. “I have to get back to work.”
He looks like he might say something but he doesn’t. He waves and watches me walking backward, desperate to escape him. His eyes bother me. Something about it all bothers me.
I turn and disappear into the crowd, taking the sneaky way back to work, and end up being really late from my break. The rest of the day sort of flies by. I don’t even know where it goes, just that I look up and it’s over. I close the shop and head home.
But Samantha Barnes never leaves my head.
Who is this doppelgänger I apparently have? And why in the gods did she attend Berkeley?
Unless, of course, she’s actually an activist, then Berkeley makes perfect sense.
I round the corner home, lost in thought. Derek has the door open for me before I even stand a chance at turning the knob. “There she is, the most beautiful girl in the world.” He smiles, but I scoff because between the two of us, it’s more likely he’s the most beautiful one. And a doctor to boot. Why he’s with me is the mystery. He pulls me in, breathing an entire lungful before kissing the side of my face. “God, I love you.”
I don’t know how I got this lucky. I don’t know why a magical man like him would ever have picked me.
Truth be told, I don’t remember when we met.
I don’t remember why it was me who got lucky with a man like him. That time is on the other side of my brain, the side I cannot reach.
He sweeps me into his arms, nearly crushing me, and murmurs, “Was it a great day?”
I nod against his soft cheek, staring at the open door to our house as a scent wafts out at me. “Did you make chicken Parm?”
“Of course. I always aim to please, milady.” He pulls me back, offering one of those smiles I’ve seen make the girls at work melt. I don’t melt, but I know if I were a normal girl I would. If any boy in the whole world could make me melt, it would be him. His eyes are dazzling green, with a hint of gray that only shows depending on his moods. It’s the strangest color combination. His smile is sexy and lopsided because he has a larger incisor on the left than the right, making one side of his lips stick out a little. I like the fang-like tooth, though. It makes him look like a vampire in the right light. I have no idea why I find that sexy.
Clearly I was a freak before I lost my mind in the fog. He dips and kisses me again, pressing our faces and bodies up against one another.