Hanging by a Thread

Hanging by a Thread
Karen Templeton

You can take the girl out of Queens…Or can you? Because for five years, fashion assistant Ellie Levine was taking a halfhearted stab at it, commuting to Manhattan by day, trying desperately to keep secret her outerborough existence–that accent, that hair…that daughter. Until the day fate landed her back in her Richmond Hill neighborhood 24/7, the very place she'd sworn to escape.Now she has a business to run there–not the business she had in mind, perhaps, but a business nonetheless. And the boy next door, who for years had been the married-man-next-door, is suddenly available. And interested?Maybe there really is no place like home. So even if you can take the girl out of Queens, would you?

Hanging by a Thread

KAREN TEMPLETON

spent her twentysomething years in New York City. Before that, she grew up in Baltimore, then attended North Carolina School of the Arts as a theater major. A RITA

Award-nominated author of seventeen novels, she now lives with her husband, a pair of eccentric cats and four of their five sons in Albuquerque, where she spends an inordinate amount of time picking up stray socks and mourning the loss of long, aimless walks in the rain. Visit her Web site at www.karentempleton.com.

Hanging by a Thread

Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

This book is dedicated to anyone who’s struggling with seemingly impossible decisions, and to anyone who’s made a few that have come back to haunt you.

I trust Ellie’s story will give you hope.

Or if not hope, at least a good laugh.

And to all the folks on the richmondhillny.com message board…thanks for actually believing I was a writer and not some weirdo stalker, and double thanks for answering what I’m sure were some really eye-rolling questions.

Contents

chapter 1

chapter 2

chapter 3

chapter 4

chapter 5

chapter 6

chapter 7

chapter 8

chapter 9

chapter 10

chapter 11

chapter 12

chapter 13

chapter 14

chapter 15

chapter 16

chapter 17

chapter 18

chapter 19

chapter 20

chapter 21

chapter 22

chapter 23

chapter 24

chapter 25

chapter 26

chapter 27

chapter 28

Postscript

chapter 1

Through a jungle of eyelashes, eyes the color of overcooked broccoli assess the image in front of them. Which would be me, a short, pudgy woman in (mostly) men’s clothes, clutching a size eight (regular) Versace suit. Scrambled data is transmitted to Judgment Central while a bloodred, polyurethane smile assures me the saleswoman’s only reason for living is to serve me. Whatever galaxy I’m from.

“Would you—” eyes dart from me to suit back to me “—like to try this on?”

An understandable reaction, since we both know I’ve got a better chance of finding Hugh Jackman in my bed than shoving my butt into this skirt.

I lean forward conspiratorially. “It’s for my sister,” I whisper. “For her birthday. A surprise.”

The smile doesn’t falter—she’s been trained well—but I can’t quite read her expression. I’m guessing either pity for my apparently having been dredged from the stagnant end of the gene pool, or—more likely—seething envy that I’m not her sister. Not that I would actually buy my own sister an eight-hundred-dollar anything, but still.

“Oh.” Smile falters a little. “All right. Will that be a charge?” A discreetly tasteful vision in taupe and charcoal, she leads me to the register, her movement all that keeps her from blending completely into her cave-hued surroundings. Why is it that half the sales floors in this city these days make me want to go spelunking instead of shopping?