Melt for You (Slow Burn #2)(105)
Her mother couldn’t be bothered to notice. She was too busy drinking chardonnay. Her father—her parents were divorced—liked to tell Eva she better get married quick because she was too dumb for college.
Eva scored a 1510 on the SAT, in the ninety-ninth percentile. When I told her she could get into almost any college with that test score, that she could go to Harvard if she wanted, she laughed.
She was too dumb for college, she said. Everyone knew that. It was a mistake.
The day she turned eighteen, Eva got breast implants. A few months later, after we graduated, she met a man twenty-five years her senior, a wealthy businessman who spotted her crossing a parking lot. He was struck by her beauty and followed her to her car to introduce himself. Within a few weeks of meeting, they’d eloped to Europe. I never heard from her again.
Several years later, I got a phone call from my mother. Sit down, she said. I have terrible news.
Eva had been murdered. Her much-older husband had poisoned her over the course of many months with overdoses of prescription medication. He’d buried her before even telling her parents she was dead.
The tragedy of Eva is one of huge potential lost to neglect and negativity. People can internalize even the most obvious falsehoods if they’re repeated often enough. When you’re surrounded by negativity, that’s what you tend to absorb. You become what you’re most often told you are.
I wish I could go back in time and tell Eva how much I loved her, how smart she was, how much she had to offer the world, but I can’t. But every time I meet a young girl, I want to hug her close and tell her she’s so much more special than she realizes. That her worth as a person and her looks are two entirely different things.
If you have young daughters at home, I hope you’ll do the same. They hear every word you say . . . and all the things you don’t.
THANK YOU to my team at Montlake Romance, who has nurtured my career since 2011. I love our partnership and hope it continues until I no longer want to write, which will be never. Thanks to Maria Gomez, my editor, who makes me laugh every time I talk to her. Thanks to Melody Guy, my developmental editor, who is a genius, and who knows how to say nice things about my work while pointing out how much it needs to be improved. Thanks also to the copy editors, proofreaders, and PR and marketing teams at Amazon Publishing, who are the best.
To my “old” readers, thanks for sticking with me for fifteen novels. I had no idea I’d be here, either. To my new readers, I hope you’ll stick around for the next fifteen. At my current pace of work, that will be approximately four years from when this book was published, so hang in there. I promise I’ll keep it interesting.
To my mother, who turned ninety this year, thank you for focusing on building my character and inner strength and for making it perfectly clear that my value as a human being isn’t tied to my looks or to anyone else’s opinion of me.
And finally, to my best friend, Jay Geissinger, who also happens to be the best human being I’ve ever met, thank you for loving all my parts, inside and out, even the ugly ones.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A former headhunter, J.T. Geissinger is the author of more than a dozen novels of paranormal romance, romantic suspense, and contemporary romance, including Melt for You and Burn for You in her Slow Burn series. She is the recipient of a Prism Award for Best First Book and a Golden Quill Award for Best Paranormal/Urban Fantasy. She’s a two-time finalist for the RITA Award from the Romance Writers of America, and her works have been finalists for the Booksellers’ Best, National Readers’ Choice, and Daphne du Maurier Awards. Find her on the web at www.jtgeissinger.com.