Read Online Before I Do Amazon by Barbara Freethy - Free Book Online Page A

even an unknown he was sleeping with."
    "Sounds like a hell of a guy."
    "It took me far to long to see that he was not a good person and he was never in love with me. I was just one of many women he liked. I actually found him in bed with another dancer—a friend. It was heart-breaking." She could still remember the pain and sense of betrayal she'd felt at that moment. "I thought that was the worst of it, but it wasn't."
    "What else happened?"
    "While my personal life was spinning out of control, my professional life also ran into problems. The production lost one of the stars three weeks before the opening to a serious illness. The investors got worried. One of them pulled his money out. The producers were scrambling to replace those funds. They wanted to put on a special showcase to generate excitement in the musical and sell more tickets for opening night. Carter had a lot of pressure on him, and he put that pressure onto me."
    She swallowed a knot in her throat, then forced herself to continue. She'd gone this far, she might as finish the story. "There was a scene that involved a staircase and some scaffolding. In the rehearsal, I told Carter that I didn't think the structure was stable. He basically told me to suck it up and do the dance or he'd find someone to replace me. I saw the ruthless determination in his eyes. So I sucked it up, and I did the dance. Thirty seconds before the end of the number, the scaffolding collapsed, and I fell ten feet to the stage. I broke my leg in two places."
    Nick drew in a quick breath. "Isabella, I'm sorry."
    "I had to have surgery and months of rehab. Dancing was out of the question. So I went back to the studio and I started to teach."
    "How long ago was that?"
    "A year and a half."
    "So you're fully recovered now?"
    She nodded. "Yes, but I missed my window of opportunity. I'm old for a dancer now. I don't know that I could compete anymore, even if I wanted to, and I don't want to. I'm done with that part of my life. I'm going to run my own studio now, help other dancer reach their dreams." She let out a breath. "That's the whole story."
    "What happened to Carter and the production after your injury?"
    "It was shut down. Theater people can be very superstitious. No one wanted to touch the show. Carter went on to direct something else. The producers went on to produce something else. Time moved on."
    "Why wasn't there a lawsuit?"
    "The producers paid my medical bills. I had a lawyer for a while, but there was no indisputable evidence that the scaffolding had collapsed. There was an argument that I'd tripped and fallen, and with that fall, the structure had come down."
    "It doesn't sound like you had a good lawyer."
    "Probably not, but to be honest I just wanted to move on, too. The Tylers had been good to me. I didn't want to hurt them. I didn't want to put them out of business."
    "And Carter? Did you forgive him?"
    "I've really tried to forgive him for my fall. I don't believe that he honestly thought anything was wrong with the scaffolding when he sent me up there to dance. He should have listened to me, and he didn't, but he also didn't put the scaffolding together."
    "But you told him it was unstable, and he shut you down."
    "That's true. That's why forgiveness has been difficult. But I don't want to waste my life hating Carter for anything that he did, because that would just keep the pain fresh, and I need it to go away, not linger. I can't change what happened. I can only go forward. I'm fine now. I have a good life. The past is the past."
    She was relieved to see a waiter with their food. She needed to put some pancakes into her churning stomach and turn the conversation in another direction.
    "This looks amazing," she said. "I don't know where to start, waffles, pancakes, eggs?"
    Nick smiled. "Start wherever you like. I'm sure we can get more if we run out of food."
    "I don't think we'll run out. This is a feast." She popped a piece of bacon into her mouth. It was perfectly