Read SVH11-Too Good To Be True for Free Online Page B

said.
    "Is it very valuable?"
    "Oh, I'm sure Mom and Dad paid a lot for it, but that's not the only reason I'd hate to lose it." She touched the absent place on her neck where it usually hung. "It's just that--well, you know how it is when you get attached to something. I guess you'd call it sentimental value."
    Suzanne's full mouth turned up in a sympathetic smile. "Sure, I understand. Once I lost a bracelet my father had bought me in Paris. I felt just sick about it! I couldn't stop crying for a whole day!"
    She hooked an arm through Elizabeth's as they headed out the door. Still smiling, she reached into her shorts pocket with her other hand, fingering the gold necklace that lay coiled inside. A pretty little trinket, she thought with satisfaction.
     

Seven
     
    "Oh, Todd, would you mind stopping at Mr. Collins's?" Elizabeth asked as they were heading down Calico Drive. "I have to drop off some stuff for the paper. It'll only take a second."
    "At your service, madam." Todd grinned, tipping an imaginary chauffeur's cap.
    Suzanne, sitting in the backseat of Todd's secondhand Datsun, giggled. "Todd, you're such a nut!"
    "Better watch out," he joked. "We nuts are sensitive to cracks."
    Todd turned off onto a narrow, tree-lined street, pulling up in front of a neat frame house
    painted a sunny yellow. A child's bike lay overturned on the lawn.
    "I didn't know Mr. Collins had children," Suzanne said, peering out the window at the bike. "Is he married?"
    "Divorced," Elizabeth answered. "And he's only got one child. Teddy--he's six and a real sweetie. I baby-sit for him sometimes. Though it's hardly what I'd call work. Teddy is practically no trouble at all."
    "Really? I absolutely adore children myself. If I ever get married, I'll probably have about a dozen." Suzanne reached over toward the manila envelope that Elizabeth had brought for Mr. Collins. "Look, let me run in with this. I want to thank Mr. Collins for rescuing me the other day."
    Elizabeth sighed in mock exasperation. "Suzy, you're spoiling me to death! Don't you ever stop being nice?"
    "Yeah," Todd agreed laughingly, "give the poor kid a break. How do you expect her to be able to put up with Jessica after all this?"
    While Elizabeth pretended to strangle Todd, Suzanne hopped out of the car. No one answered when she knocked at the front door. She could hear Water running, so she walked around to the back of the house. Mr. Collins was standing out on the lawn watering the
    shrubbery. Quietly she crept up behind him, a low, mischievous laugh escaping her. Mr. Collins whipped about in surprise, nearly dropping the hose.
    "Sorry," she said, smiling. "I didn't mean to scare you."
    He smiled back, but the smile didn't reach up to his blue eyes. "Don't worry, I don't scare that easily. You just surprised me, that's all. I didn't hear you come up. Is there something I can do for you?"
    She stared unwaveringly into his eyes, widening her own ever so slightly. It was a game she liked to play, but half the fun of it was that most of the men she played it with didn't even know what was going on. They would start blushing and stammering, or they'd look down at their feet. It gave her such a feeling of power to control people without their even knowing they were being controlled.
    Take that dopey Elizabeth, for instance. How could anyone be so naive? She'd probably spend the next hundred years crawling around on her hands and knees looking for that necklace without ever even suspecting that her dear, sweet friend Suzy had taken it. They were all so gullible, the whole bunch of them. None of the Wakefields knew how she was really sneering
    at them behind their backs. Them and just about everybody else in this little hick town.
    The trouble with Mr. Collins was that he didn't seem as eager to fall into her net as the others. He stared right back without blinking or shifting his gaze. For an uneasy moment Suzanne wondered if he'd seen through her pretenses. On the other hand, maybe