Read Online Desperate Measures by Fern Michaels - Free Book Online Page B

good-bye, and yes I’ll call once a week and I’ll be home for the holidays and thank you again, sir, for being so kind to me.
    At the last minute, though, he couldn’t just stick out his hand. Instead he wrapped his arms around his uncle, who immediately stiffened.
    His eyes burning, Pete stepped back and muttered something that sounded like, “Thank you for this opportunity, I’ll make you proud of me.” He felt something being pushed into his hand. A bank book. Now he was going to have to say thank you all over again. He nodded, muttered the words, and climbed behind the wheel. At the gatehouse he looked at the numbers stamped inside: $25,000.
    He was on his way.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Where did the years go? Pete wondered. He craned his neck, his eyes searching the busy library. One minute he was settling into his dorm, and the next he was graduating. One deep breath later he was in law school, and now he was in his final year. He’d take the bar and go out into the world to make his fortune. If Leo had anything to do with it, it would be a fortune.
    Pete was in Harvard’s main library waiting for his best buddy in the whole world. Waiting for the person who’d made him stick with the law, giving up her own precious free time to tutor him, encouraging him, cursing him, cajoling and anything else she could think of to make him want to finish.
    â€œI hate quitters,” she’d said once. Hell, he hated quitters too. Her methods worked, which was why he was here, waiting for her. He knew he’d pass the bar, that wasn’t what was bothering him. Annie Gabriel was what was bothering him. How was he going to make it on the outside without Annie pushing and shoving him? Which didn’t say a whole hell of a lot for him. Was he so weak he needed a woman to prod him along?
    Oh, he hated the law! Maybe practicing would be better than school, though.
    Ruth Ann Gabriel, Annie to her friends, was one of a kind. Not only was she graduating from this prestigious law school at the top of the class, she’d passed the CPA exam the first time out, all four parts. She’d ace the bar too. She was petite, blond, pretty in a plain sort of way, and she was so goddamn fearless, he wanted to shake her and tell her what the world was really like. The only time he’d ever seen anything closely resembling fear in her eyes was when she talked about all the financial aid she was going to have to pay back. “It will take half my pay for ten years to pay it all off,” she’d said.
    When they separated on graduation day, he was going back to New York to work at Leo’s law firm. Annie had a job offer in Boston with a decent firm. Pete had asked Leo if he could use her in his office, and Leo had come back with such a generous offer it made his head spin. When he presented the offer to Annie, however, she’d looked at him with such pity in her eyes, he’d cringed. “If I can’t make it on my own,” she said, “then this isn’t where I belong. Thanks for the offer, though.” And that had been the end of that.
    Pete was certain there was no one in the world who was kinder, gentler, more piss-assed obnoxious than Annie Gabriel, and he loved her. “We’re not going to get involved,” she’d said early on. “I have things to do, places to go. Relationships get in the way. I need to see what I’m made of.” She’d gone on to say, “And a sexual relationship always ruins a friendship.”
    Once he’d hit on Annie after a moot court session. They’d gone back to her room and opened a bottle of wine. She drank most of it and was tipsy when he was ready to leave. She’d leaned against him and whispered, “I love you so much, Pete Sorenson.” He’d kissed her, clumsily at first, and then ... she’d pushed him away and said, “Go home, Pete.” He’d tried to kiss her again, but she clamped