Body Movers 2 Bodies for the Price of 1

9780778324843_TS_txt.qxpExtracted 1 threads from 9780778324843-exw.PDFUntitled Article 01: UntitledoeSweetheart, its meDaddy. Carlotta Wren stepped off the up escalator in the Atlanta Neiman Marcus department store where she worked, so shocked by the sound of the voice on the other end that she dropped her cell phone.It landed on the shiny,waxed floor with a smack, bounced and skidded away. With her heart in her stomach, she frantically scrambled after the fleeing phone, the baritone of her long-lost fugitive father ringing in her ears. Was it really him calling after ten years of silence? Ten years during which shed put her life on hold to finish raising herself and her younger brother Wesley after her parents had skipped bailand townon investment fraud charges. Ten years of feeling alone and abandoned after her friends and even her fi- ancA had withdrawn their affection in light of the scandal. The tiny phone spun away like a mouse scurrying for cover. Carlotta gulped air as she clambered after it, brushing the shoulders of people in her path, darting between racks of clothing. The foot of a striding customer struck the phone and sent it spinning in another direction. Carlotta hurtled after it, feeling her father slip farther from her grasp with every agonizing second that passed. She was practically hy- perventilating when she fell to her knees, curled her fingers around the elusive phone and jammed it to her ear.oeHello? Daddy? Dead air. If it had been Randolph Wren on the other end of the line, he was gone. A sob welled up in her chest.oeDaddy, can you hear me? She couldnt bring herself to hang up, unwilling to sever the only connection shed had with her father in over a de- cade. Then she realized that he might be trying to call her back and stabbed the disconnect button. Sitting under a rack of beaded bathing-suit sarongs,Carlotta stared at the phone,will- ing it to ring again, thinking how ridiculous she would seem to an onlookeran almost thirty-year-old woman sitting on the floor waiting for a call back from her long-lost daddy. Somewhere between her nonexistent career goals, her brothers legal problems, their hulking debt to loan sharks and her confused love life, shed made the transition from pitiful to pathetic. Suddenly she remembered the callback feature and realized with a surge of excitement that shed at least be able to see what number hed called from. She stabbed at buttons on the phone,but was rewarded with a rather sick-sounding tone and noticed with dismay that the display was interrupted by a hair- shattered family. Carlotta felt less forgiving, es- her mother Valerie, who hadnt been a crime, yet had chosen a life on the lam over She sat on her heels for five long min- perspira- A shadow fell over her. When she standing with her eyebrows raised.narrow blonde, conservatively Patriciais there a problem? Lindy asked.oeNo. You know youre not supposed to be using oeYes, Carlotta said, her throat closing. oeBut this is aan emergency. oeOh?&Bond, Stephanie is the author of 'Body Movers 2 Bodies for the Price of 1', published 2007 under ISBN 9780778324843 and ISBN 0778324842.