Free Chance Encounter (Take a Chance: Prequel) by Nancy Warren Page A

hardness to his face that
made her wonder.
    She took her fingertip and pointed to the
words, STUPID pregnant teenaged slut, in her notebook. “That’s my
story. Right there.”
    He reached over and put his hand over hers,
only for a moment but she felt the warmth, the leathery palm that
suggested he worked with his hands. “That’s not a story,” he said.
“That’s some shit you’d find scrawled on a bathroom wall.”
    Before her bemused gaze, he reached over and
ripped the page out of her notebook with a satisfyingly destructive
sound. He tore the page in half. Then he turned the two pieces to
the side and ripped again. He crumped the jagged squares of paper
into a ball and stuffed them into the seat pocket in front of him
where someone had left an empty Snickers Bar wrapper.
    He picked up her pen before it could fall to
the floor, reached once more over the now fresh page in her
notebook and wrote in big block letters.
    THE BEGINNING. He handed her back her pen.
“That’s your story.”
    She felt the fluttering movement in her belly
that reminded her of how true those words were. “Okay. The
beginning.”
    He held out a hand. “Jack.”
    “ Daphne.”
    “ Good to know you,
Daphne.”
    He settled beside her and she wasn’t sure
whether she wanted him to go back to his own seat or not.
    He was right. He was a stranger she’d never
see again, what did it matter if he knew the awful truth about
her?
    He had a pocketbook in his hand, as though
he’d been reading when her sobs reached him. Mortifying
thought.
    She glanced at the
title. Interview with the
Vampire , by Anne Rice.
    He saw the direction of her gaze and said,
“You read this?”
    “ No. Never heard of
it.”
    “ It’s pretty good. I’m
almost done. You can have it when I’m finished.”
    “ A man sucking a woman’s
life blood out of her and leaving her undead is too much like my
life right now,” she said. Then winced. “That was a little heavy on
the self pity, right?”
    “ Maybe a little.” He
turned his head and once more she was struck with the blueness of
his eyes. Something about him made her want to trust him. “I bet
your story’s as interesting as this one.”
    “ Don’t you want to tell me
yours?” She couldn’t remember ever meeting a guy who didn’t seem
more interested in his own story than in anything she had to
say.
    “ Nah. I’m rewriting my
story, anyway.”
    She laughed in spite of herself. “Can you do
that?”
    “ Sure? Why
not?”

Chapter Two
     
     
    Jack wondered when he was ever going to stop
picking up strays. Hurt kittens and starving dogs and girls with
big eyes and sad stories.
    Daphne looked like a privileged daughter
who’d always had a warm home, good food, decent clothes,
respectability. Everything money could buy.
    Everything he’d never had.
    His hardscrabble life had made him tough
though. This poor girl looked like one of those flowers he’d seen
as a landscaper. Had to be cultivated in a green house. One whiff
of strong wind or a few drops of rain and that delicate bloom would
wither and die.
    Her hair was long and as blond as a
California beach. Her skin was tanned and when she smiled, she
looked like that model who was forever in Sports Illustrated.
Christie Brinkley.
    But for the shadows in her eyes.
    “ So,” he said, “What’s a
nice girl like you doing on a bus like this?”
    She turned a little in her seat, so she faced
him. Tucked her hair behind her ears. “You really want to
know?”
    “ I do.”
    She seemed to be searching for a place to
begin. Finally she said, “I started college last year. It was my
first time living away from home.”
    Her story was a tragedy in the way that every
girl who gets taken advantage of by an older man who oversteps the
bounds of honor and decency is a tragedy. Jack had heard way too
many stories like it.
    When the professor who knocked her up found
out she was pregnant, he had freaked. Admitted he had a family.
Cried. Told her he’d pay