"Roberts, Nora - Carnal Innocence" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

CARNAL INNOCENCE
By
Nora Roberts
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CARNAL INNOCENCE
NORA ROBERTS
BANTAM BOOKS
NEW YORK Х TORONTO Х LONDON Х SYDNEY Х AUCKLAND


This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
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CARNAL INNOCENCE A Bantam Book
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PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam paperback edition published January 1992
Bantam hardcover edition / July 1999
Bantam paperback reissue / April 2000
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Copyright й 1991 by Nora Roberts.
Cover design copyright й 1999 by Yook Louie.
Hand lettering copyright й 1999 by Ron Zinn.
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-54920.
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ISBN 0-553-29597-7
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
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Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


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To the Colonel and his Yankee


Prologue
The air was raw with February the morning Bobby Lee Fuller found the first body. They would say he found it, when in truth what he'd done was trip over what was left of Arnette Gantrey. Either way, the end was the same, and Bobby Lee would live with that wide white face floating into his dreams for a long time to come.
If he hadn't broken up with Marvella TruesdaleЧagainЧthe night before, he'd have been hunkered over his desk in English lit, trying to twist his brain into coping with Shakespeare's Macbeth, instead of dropping his line into Gooseneck Creek. But this last fight in his rocky eighteen-month romance with Marvella had worn him down. Bobby Lee'd decided to take himself a day off, to rest and reflect. And to teach that sharp-tongued Marvella that he wasn't no pussy-whipped wimp, but a man.
The men in Bobby Lee's family had always ruled the roostЧor pretended to. He wasn't about to break the tradition.
At nineteen, Bobby Lee was long past grown. He was six one and gawky with it, the filling-out years still to come. But he had big, workingman's hands, like his father's, on the ends of long skinny arms, and his mother's thick black hair and luxuriant lashes. He liked to wear that hair slicked back in the style of his idol, James Dean.
Bobby Lee considered Dean a man's man, one who wouldn't have tolerated book learning any more than Bobby Lee did. If it had been up to him, he'd have been working full-time in Sonny Talbot's Mobile Service Station and Eatery instead of hacking his way through twelfth grade. But his mama had other notions, and nobody in Innocence, Mississippi, liked to cross Happy Fuller if they could help it.
HappyЧwhose childhood name was appropriate enough since she could smile beauteously as she sliced you off at the kneesЧhadn't quite forgiven her eldest boy for being held back twice in school. If Bobby Lee's mood hadn't been so low, he wouldn't have risked hooking a day, not with his grades already teetering. But Marvella was the kind of girl who pushed a manЧa man's manЧinto doing rash and reckless things.
So Bobby Lee dropped his line into the sulky brown waters of Gooseneck Creek and hunched in his faded denim jacket against the raw air. His daddy always said when a man had powerful things on his mind, the best cure was to take himself down to the water and see what was nibbling.
It didn't matter if you caught anything, it was the being there that counted.
"Damn women," Bobby Lee muttered, and peeled his lips back in a sneer he'd practiced long hours in the bathroom mirror. "Damn all women to hell and back again."