Here’s a sneak peek at
Colleen Collins’s RIGHT CHEST, WRONG NAME
Available August 1997...
Colleen Collins’s RIGHT CHEST, WRONG NAME
Available August 1997...
“DARLING, YOU SOUND like a broken cappuccino machine,” murmured Charlotte, her voice oozing disapproval.
Russell juggled the receiver while attempting to sit up in bed, but couldn’t. If he sounded like a wreck over the phone, he could only imagine what he looked like.
“What mischief did you and your friends get into at your bachelor’s party last night?” she continued.
She always had a way of saying “your friends” as though they were a pack of degenerate water buffalo. Professors deserved to be several notches higher up on the food chain, he thought. Which he would have said if his tongue wasn’t swollen to twice its size.
“You didn’t do anything...bad...did you, Russell?”
“Bad.” His laugh came out like a bark.
“Bad as in naughty.”
He heard her piqued tone but knew she’d never admit to such a base emotion as jealousy. Charlotte Maday, the woman he was to wed in a week, came from a family who bled blue. Exhibiting raw emotion was akin to burping in public.
After agreeing to be at her parents’ pool party by noon, he untangled himself from the bed sheets and stumbled to the bathroom.
“Pool party,” he reminded himself. He’d put on his best front and accommodate Char’s request. Make the family rounds, exchange a few pleasantries, play the role she liked best: the erudite, cultured English literature professor. After fulfilling his duties, he’d slink into some lawn chair, preferably one in the shade, and nurse his hangover.
He tossed back a few aspirin and splashed cold water on his face. Grappling for a towel, he squinted into the mirror.
Then he jerked upright and stared at his reflection, blinking back drops of water. “Good Lord. They stuck me in a wind tunnel.”
His hair, usually neatly parted and combed, sprang from his head as though he’d been struck by lightning. “Can too many Wild Turkeys do that?” he asked himself as he stared with horror at his reflection.
Something caught his eye in the mirror. Russell’s gaze dropped.
“What in the—”
Over his pectoral muscle was a small patch of white. A bandage. Gingerly, he pulled it off.
Underneath, on his skin, was not a wound but a small, neat drawing.
“A red heart?” His voice cracked on the word heart. Something—a word?—was scrawled across it.
“Good Lord,” he croaked. “I got a tattoo. A heart tattoo with the name Liz on it.”
Not Charlotte. Liz!