Lahat ng Kabanata ng Illegal Use of Hands: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

She was speechless. A king bed with a red satin comforter and piles of pillows sat against a wall of the one-room cabin. Red and white flowers in large clusters filled two vases, and candles decked nearly every surface."My God!" She could only stare, trying to take everything in. "Who did all this?""Arnie and Josie set it up three years ago. They rent it out for Valentine's Day, anniversaries, events like that. Starting next Monday, they'll do one run every afternoon and one every evening. Arnie was kind enough to pull it all together right away for me.""Does anyone get to stay overnight?"He winked at her. "That comes later.""It's so…so…so....""Romantic?" he finished, teasing."And then some.""Don't move," he said. "I'll be right back."She was still trying to process everything when he returned to place a large wicker basket on the small dining table. When he lifted the lid, she saw that it held two bottles of wine, glasses, and a square box of chocolates."They didn'

The women at the magazine were in an absolute tizzy. No one came right out and said it, but Stacy could tell by the tone of their comments they all wondered how she had managed to snag the hunky football player. Kurt showed up every day for a week to check out her desk and see whatever new gift she might be displaying. His efforts to rekindle whatever had been going on between them actually made her laugh. What had she ever seen in him, anyway? She'd taken great pleasure in brushing him off with a smile, turning down every invitation until he finally gave up, only doing it with very bad grace.The whole whatever-this-was with Max gave her a sense of power she'd never enjoyed before. Amazing that a man who could have nearly any woman he wanted chose her. And if she could believe him, he did it because he really wanted to be much more than friends. Had hidden that desire all this time.If she could believe him.She couldn't help harboring that secret fear he'd wake up one morning, rea

Max rose before six in the morning, having slept uneasily. He couldn't shake the feeling the sword of doom was about strike him. Those damn pictures. If only he'd been able to push the woman away, but she'd been worse than a vulture. As soon as the clock hit a decent time, he planned to call Tony Warren and ask him to help. You just never knew when a picture would show up on someone's phone and make its way out into cyberspace. Unfortunately, he didn't think the Warrens would be taking any calls before noon today.He downed two cups of coffee while he watched the clock. Valentine's Day. He had big plans for Stacy, along with a special event tonight, before the magazine party. Maybe that was why he was so nervous. By eight o'clock, he was ready to jump out of his skin. Showered and dressed, he hurried down to the bakery in the nearby strip center and bought the cinnamon rolls she told him she had a real obsession for. At eight forty-five, he rang her bell, excitement at the upcoming da

Part Two: Unnecessary Roughness"Did you see this? Are you actually looking at this?"Ryan McCabe leaned back in his chair, aviator shades covering his eyes, and wished his agent, Walt Alston, would disappear. And take his tablet with its vicious headlines with him.They were sitting on the back patio of Ryan's home on Davis Islands, an archipelagos formed by two small islands at the mouth of Hillsborough Bay and minutes from Tampa's bustling downtown area. The rest of the property sloped down to the bay, a scene that up until today had given him a great deal of pleasure. Today he was wondering how many of the pleasure boats cruising past his house were doing so with their sole purpose being to get a glimpse of a headline-busting football player."Ryan?" Walt's voice increased in volume and frustration. "Will you please open your eyes and take a look at the mess you made?"Ryan lifted his shades enough to see the words leaping off the screen.Shit. No, double shit.RUNNING BACK

Ryan stretched and blinked his eyes open, squinting. No wonder. Sunlight was pouring in the window over the bed. Apparently he'd forgotten to close the curtains last night. By the time he got to the cottage on Pelican Lane, all he'd wanted to do was strip off his clothes and fall into bed.He lay there, letting his body wake up, revisiting the circumstances of the trip down here. He had to give Walt credit for this. He'd pulled this off like a real superspy. Ryan had certainly felt like he was in a covert ops movie. At five o'clock in the afternoon, a black windowless van had rolled up his driveway and into his garage. The same van had made a trip earlier in the day so the assholes camped out in the street would write it off as nothing newsworthy. But, on the last trip, it delivered Rich McClellan, who Walt referred to as the fake Ryan Calhoun. Then they'd hustled Ryan himself, along with his suitcases, into the van and rolled out of the garage and into the street with the paparazzi