Читать книгу Dad By Choice - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 9

THE SOUND OF HER OWN heavy breathing filled her head. Her heart was racing so hard, it felt as if it were on the verge of vibrating out of her chest.

At the end of the alley she stopped running.

As her breathing steadied, she felt a satisfied smile begin to form on her lips, twisting them upward, until anyone seeing her would have ventured to say she looked positively jubilant.

And downright wicked.

But there was no one to see her. Luck had been with her when her patience and her temper had both snapped.

Luck, so much a part of the world she had originally come from, had not been more than a fleeting visitor. Nice to know it was on her side for a change.

A sense of triumph began to take hold. There’d been no one to witness what she had done to claim what was so rightfully hers.

Not hers by any standards passed down through the courts with its legal mumbo jumbo, but that didn’t really matter. It was hers nonetheless. She deserved it. Had earned it. Earned it through all those months of careful planning and plotting. Of empty smiles and emptier promises, of befriending people she secretly hated. And now, finally, it was almost hers.

So close, so close.

Sucking in a huge gulp of air to banish the last of the tiny white pinpricks of light dancing before her eyes, Janelle Maitland Jones hurried back to where the key to her future had been left unprotected on the steps of Maitland Maternity Clinic.

Her smile deepened, but never reached her eyes. Maitland Maternity. How fitting. How damn, ironically fitting.

She almost laughed out loud.

Suddenly, the sound of voices began to mix with the faint buzzing in her head. Raised voices, laced with excitement, all talking at once. Janelle glanced over her shoulder down the alley.

Had someone seen her drag that insufferable bitch’s body back there, after all? Had they seen what she’d done?

But the voices weren’t coming from the alley. They were coming from the direction of the clinic.

Janelle froze in her tracks, horror spilling over her like black tar, smothering her smugness.

Reporters and camera crews had materialized from nowhere, swarming around the back entrance to the clinic. Blocking her view. Blocking off more than her path.

Biting off a vicious curse, she faded into a doorway at the edge of the alley as frustration threatened to overpower her. Caught halfway between heaven and hell, she was completely cut off from her triumph.

Cut off from the money.

So far, so far…