Read Online Love, Suburban Style by Wendy Markham - Free Book Online Page A

decides, wondering how long it will take before the resident ghost puts in its first appearance. For all he knows, these people will be gone before dawn.
    At the window before him, the lace curtain stirs in a sudden gust through the open screen.
    Then the still air is shattered by another reverberation of thunder. This time it’s closer.
    Yup, a storm is closing in.
    Sam grabs his keys and heads for the door just in time to hear another loud crash.
    Only this time, it isn’t courtesy of Mother Nature—and this time, it’s followed by a very human curse word.
    He looks to the source and sees the newcomer just inside her black wrought-iron gate. She dropped the box she was carrying.
    Uh-oh. Her mom isn’t going to be very pleased about this. She’s surrounded by shards of broken pottery, which she kicks angrily, with another curse—pretty salty language for a little girl, there.
    “Need help, sweetheart?” Sam calls, stepping out onto his porch.
    She looks up, startled.
    Then she grins, and calls back, “That would be terrific, Honeybunch.”
    That’s when he realizes that she isn’t a little girl at all.
    She’s a woman.
    A petite, curvy, beautiful woman.
    A petite, curvy, beautiful woman whose eyes have just gone from mocking his mistake—he just affectionately called a strange
woman
“sweetheart”!—to wide with sudden recognition.
    “Sam Rooney?”
    He frowns.
    “Sam? Is that you?”
    He nods vigorously. Yup. He’s positive he’s Sam… and he’s also pretty sure he’s never seen this woman before in his life.
    Though she certainly seems to know him.
    Brushing off her red shorts and pulling down the hem of her orange T-shirt, she takes a few steps closer, toward the line of shrubs dividing their property.
    “I don’t believe it… it really
is
you. Hi!”
    “Hello.” His tone is meant to be friendly, but even he can hear that it’s unnaturally formal and fraught with uncertainty. “Uh, how are you?”
    “Not great at the moment…” She laughs, indicating the broken pottery. “But generally speaking, I’ve been okay. How about you? Are you visiting your parents?”
    “My parents?” he echoes, then shakes his head. “No, they, ah, passed away.”
    “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.” She does seem to be genuinely sympathetic. But why? “When did it happen?”
    “Dad died back when I was still in college. Mom died almost two years ago.”
    “I’m so sorry,” she says again. “So then the house…”
    “I live here now.”
    “Really?” She comes closer still.
    Close enough for him to clearly see her features: big green eyes, pert nose, wide—like Julia Roberts’s—mouth, straight white teeth.
    All right, he has no idea who the heck she is, even now.
    So maybe she’s mistaken him for somebody else.
    Then again, she does know that his parents used to live here, so…
    “Are you… ah…”
    “Meg,” she supplies, thinking he’s fishing for her name when what he was going to ask was
Are you sure we’ve met?
    “Meg,” he echoes, nodding. “Right! Meg.”
    Still no clue.
    Meg who?
    “Meg…” He snaps his fingers a few times, as if it’s on the tip of his tongue.
    “Jones,” she says, as thunder claps in the not-so-distant distance.
    “Oh! That’s it. Meg Jones. Now I remember.”
    “Really?” She takes a few steps closer, wearing a strange smile, her hands on her hips. “That’s funny. Because it’s actually not Jones.”
    “It isn’t?”
    She laughs… but frankly, she doesn’t seem all that amused. “I was testing you. You have no idea who I am, do you?”
    Uh-oh.
    “No,” he confesses. “I don’t.”
    “We went to high school together.”
    “
Really?
”
    He wonders why he never dated her. She’s beautiful. Quick-witted. Spirited.
    Definitely his type.
    Or maybe—
    Nah. He definitely
didn’t
date her. He’d remember that.
    “I graduated a year behind you. I’m Meg Addams.”
    “Really?”
    “Really. Ring a bell?”
    “No… but I have a lousy