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LOVING YOU EASY
RONI LOREN
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in USA by Penguin Group (USA) 2016
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2016
Copyright © Roni Loren 2016
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Roni Loren asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780698184237
Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008108267
Version: 2016-08-24
To my husband, kidlet, and family,
thank you for your endless encouragement and love.
To my friend Dawn for being my sounding board and
first reader for this book. It might’ve been
burned in a bonfire before it was
done if you hadn’t helped me push past the roadblocks.
Thanks for being such a bossy cheerleader!
And finally, to my readers, thank you for continuing
on this journey with me. I look forward to
many more trips to come!
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Epilogue
Keep Reading Off the Clock
Praise for the Novels of Roni Loren
About the Author
Also by Roni Loren
About the Publisher
february 14th—log-in time: 11:26 p.m.
I know how to recognize dangerous men.
My mother taught me from an early age what to zero in on. The way a man looked at you. The way he spoke. The way he tried to get you to do something or see his point of view. The way he made you feel when he came close to you, that visceral, bone-deep sense that there was danger present. Your instincts know, Cora. Don’t ignore them.
It’d been a lot to teach an eight-year-old.
I doubt Mom wanted me to have to face that kind of fear so early on, but when you’re a detective and there’s a killer on the loose with a vendetta against you, you do what you have to do. My mom never caught the killer, and I never forgot the lesson.
So even though he’s only a form on a screen, a cartoon really, I know the instant that he strides into the game what Master Dmitry is. I know what my body is trying to tell me even as I sit in the safety of my bedroom on the other side of a screen. Danger. Back away.
But I don’t. I can’t.
Dangerous men scare me. And I’m fascinated. After years of being mostly ignored, of failing at the dating game, of making high art of being put in the friend zone, I want to know what it’s like to be someone else. To not play it safe. To be desired.
I use my wireless controller and have my character, Lenore, flip her hair to catch his attention. She’s so unlike me, Lenore. All flowing blond locks and epic curves. Feminine with a capital F. She’s the girl the guys fantasize about. I want to be that girl for