Free Driven By The Hero (Hero Romance 1) by Kalena Lyons Page A

telling me your name first?”
    Jack chuckled, and threw her his key card. “For now, Laura? Just call me… ‘Mark.’”
    TO BE CONTINUED…
     
     
     
     
    SECRETS EXPOSED
     
    Alpha Male Romance
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER ONE
    Laura Kimball sat waiting patiently outside the Hotel Viking reclining on one of the benches as she leisurely smoked a cigarette. Her thin summer dress clung to her tightly, despite the swaying summer breeze. Normally, she’d be throwing on a baggy sweater to cover the flimsy cotton, self-conscious as she was. But it had been Jack’s insistence that she wear clothing a little too tight, a little too revealing for Laura’s modesty. Besides, thanks to the heavy wine she had consumed during the dinner, she was without a care in the world.
    It had been five days since she had first met Jack, and she still had no idea what her “surprise” was. In fact, she didn’t even know his real name. It was his insistence that she only refer to him by the name of Mark. It was a role of virtual anonymity he maintained at all times; not only was she supposed to know nothing about Jack DiStefano’s personal life or his business associations, it was his persistent dismissal of all questions pertaining to any background whatsoever —including her own—that caught her off guard. It seemed to Laura at times that one of the roles she was to fulfill required a deliberate erasure of history altogether. Neither of them was to have a past, mutual or otherwise. And what was to be of the present? It was merely a question mark; a cipher that stood between themselves and the present - a present without cause. And as for effect? It might take her a lifetime to figure out.
    Laura felt as if layers of skin were being shed from her revealing a supple, subtler personality. All questions of responsibility had been stripped from her over the past week. She knew she could never go back to work after her mysterious disappearance from the conference; a disappearance she only explained in a curt text to Gloria:
     
    “Sorry to do this but I’m going to have to tender my resignation immediately. I no longer see any point in continuing my career with this company. I wish you the best in the future.”
     
    That was it. No explanation, no requests for severance, not even a two-week notice. Even Gloria’s repeated and frantic texts went unanswered without any rationale whatsoever.
    To celebrate, Laura decided to get a complete makeover while Jack was busy finalizing the particulars of his auction (the ostensible reason they had traveled down to Newport.) Jack had already begun to take the lead in her transformation. He insisted on a full wardrobe change, including clothing that just two weeks earlier Laura would have dismissed as unrealistic. Yet when she stood in front of the full length mirror, watching the plunging necklines and short cut hems of her dresses hug her body, revealing the full length of her languid curves and soft, ample skin, she felt alluring for the first time in years. It didn’t matter that she was a size 14, even on the self-assuredly aristocratic streets of Newport, where every woman was an elfin-shaped advertisement for collagen disasters; she didn’t care about their smirks or haughty glares, or the way their husbands would linger a little bit too closely on her backside as she walked arm in arm with Jack into a restaurant. She had them outclassed in every respect imaginable, and she knew it. It was evident in her slow, feline stride and the tilt of her neck straight ahead, her eyes envisioning a horizon far beyond the cloistered and sterile walls; a horizon perhaps even beyond the very edges of the Atlantic Ocean itself.
    She had her hair cut in a chin-length, asymmetrical bob and had dyed it a dramatic hue of cherry red, to compliment the shade of lipstick Jack preferred. At first, she was a little put off by the cut. She thought it made her cheeks appear more round; and to make matters worse, the