A Girl Like Her (Ravenswood Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Everyone has secrets. He wants all of hers.

  Meet the man next door…

  After years of military service, Evan Miller wants a quiet life. The small town of Ravenswood seems perfect—until he stumbles upon a vicious web of lies with his new neighbour at its centre.

  Ruth Kabbah is rude, awkward, and—according to everyone in town—bad news. Thing is, no-one will tell Evan why. Does she perform ritual sacrifices? Howl at the moon? Pour the milk before the tea? He has no clue.

  But he desperately wants to find out. Because Ruth doesn’t seem evil to him; she seems lonely. And funny, and clumsy, and secretly quite sweet, and really f*%king beautiful…

  The more Evan’s isolated, eccentric neighbour pushes him away, the more he wants her. Her—and all her secrets. Because there’s no way a girl like Ruth truly deserves the town’s scorn.

  …Is there?

  A Girl Like Her is a steamy, small town BWWM romance. Warning: this book is 65,000+ words of extreme pleasure and intense romance, ending in a HEA. There is NO cliffhanger and NO cheating. Enjoy responsibly!

  Please note: this book contains mentions of intimate partner violence that could potentially trigger certain audiences.

  A Girl Like Her

  RAVENSWOOD BOOK 1

  Talia Hibbert

  Nixon House

  For my mother, who wouldn’t allow me

  to be anyone but myself.

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Talia Hibbert

  Also by Talia Hibbert

  Also by Talia Hibbert

  Also by Talia Hibbert

  Also by Talia Hibbert

  Also by Talia Hibbert

  Prologue

  May 2016

  Daniel Burne felt smug.

  This wasn’t particularly unusual; he was often pleased with himself. But tonight, he was especially proud of his own brilliance—because the second-most beautiful, and eminently suitable, woman in Ravenswood was on his arm. Wearing his ring.

  And the crème de la crème of the town was there to see it.

  “Daniel, love,” Laura murmured, leaning in close. “Do you think your dad is pleased?”

  Daniel’s gaze crawled over the room, past the chattering guests of the engagement party, until it settled on his father. The older man lounged against the mantle, ankles crossed, as if his only child’s engagement simply bored him.

  Their eyes met, green clashing with green. Daniel studied his father’s face for less than a second. That was long enough to recognise the familiar disdain there.

  “Yes, love,” Daniel said. “He’s just a bit reserved; that’s all.”

  Laura relaxed beside him. “Oh, good. I wondered what everyone would think, since we kept ourselves a secret.” She smiled. It was a beautiful smile, the teeth neat and small. Irritatingly perfect. She patted his chest and added, “You naughty man.”

  Daniel smiled back. He also slid a hand into the pocket of his freshly pressed, linen suit. Hidden from view, he dug his nails into his palm until he drew blood.

  Instantly, he regretted it. There’d probably be stains on the silk lining, now.

  “Oh, I say!”

  The exclamation cut through the party’s quiet music, through the low hum of voices. All eyes swung to Margaret Young, who stood by the window, champagne in hand. She twitched the curtains back, sharp anticipation dancing across her powdered face.

  The anticipation of a shark smelling blood in the water.

  “We have a visitor!” Margaret trilled.

  Daniel’s heart lurched. A cold sweat sprang to his brow. Surely she wouldn’t come here. Not in front of all these people. Not when she knew how important this was.

  “Daniel?” Laura’s voice was at once too distant, as if coming through a tunnel, and too loud. Her arm, tucked into his own, felt tight and confining. He shook her off and strode towards the window, ignoring her confused frown.

  He would shut the drapes, shove bloody Margaret Young aside—

  But, before he could manage either objective, two overdressed biddies pushed in front of him. They peered through the window, squinting into the growing darkness of a spring evening.

  “Who is it?” one wondered aloud.

  “You need spectacles,” the other drawled. “It’s one of those Kabbah girls. Clear as day.”

  “Which one?” The first asked.

  Yes! Daniel wanted to scream. Which fucking one?!

  “Oh, I don’t know. Whole family looks the same to me.”

  Daniel’s patience, always whisper-fine, snapped. He bit out, “They look nothing alike,” and pushed through the growing crowd, forcing his way to the window and ignoring the outraged cries of old gossips.

  He reached the cool glass panes to see a young woman—small, dark, soft-bodied and hard-faced—striding up the drive, dragging a cricket bat behind her. As he watched, she tucked the bat under her arm and clambered on top of his car.

  His mint-condition, forest green, Porsche 911.

  The woman straightened up, feet spread wide on the hood for balance. She turned to look at the window, and around him, Daniel heard a sharp intake of breath. As if she’d cursed them all instead of simply setting eyes on them.

  As if she were there for any of them, anyway. She was looking at him. Only him.

  Another woman might take this cliff’s-edge of a moment to shout out her grievance, bellow a war cry, at least scream. But this was a Kabbah girl in a rage, and so she was utterly and disturbingly silent. For a few long seconds, she stared
at him.

  Then she turned away and swung the bat.

  She was strong, and she was sure. The windscreen shattered on her first try. But she did not stop there.

  Chapter One

  February 2018

  Ruth’s favourite place had always been her head.

  Inside her mind, the sort of excitement she struggled to process in real life became accessible. She could slow it down and compartmentalise it, like a TV show she controlled utterly. And she could translate it, too. That was the best part.

  Ruth’s stylus flew over the screen of her graphic tablet as she sketched out the story unfolding before her eyes. Not the eyes that saw light shining off the tablet’s pristine glass, but the eyes that saw entire worlds beyond this one.

  She’d found the sweet spot. The zone. That precise point in time and space and possibility when a story began to flow like water, and the artist was able to keep up with the current.

  In the peace of her shitty little flat, Ruth’s easily-shattered focus was, for once, razor-sharp.

  Until the phone rang.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she muttered. The sweet spot became sour. Ruth was thrust out of her own head and back into the real world, into herself. The image, the story, was left behind.

  For a moment, Ruth looked down at the scene she’d just outlined. Lieutenant Lita Ara’wa glared at her captain, an 8-foot-tall, golden alien, from over a huge, living desk. The desk smelled and felt like Derbyshire peat, but that was a detail only Ruth would ever know. In a moment, Lita and her captain would commence rage-fuelled hate-sex on top of the Derbyshire peat desk.

  Which, come to think of it, didn’t sound very hygienic. Maybe one of them should catch something…

  Aaaaaand the goddamn phone was still ringing.

  Its shrill chime threatened to snip the golden thread of Ruth’s idea—which could not be allowed to happen.

  Chewing at her lower lip, Ruth thrust out a hand in the direction of her phone’s repeated chime. After a few unseeing, experimental gropes at her bed’s rumpled sheets, she came up empty-handed.

  But the phone kept ringing, loud and clear. It had to be there somewhere.

  Eyes still trained on the tablet, Ruth shuffled across her bed. Lita and the captain should definitely catch something, she decided. An unfamiliar Earth disease. What could one catch from Derbyshire peat? Frowning slightly at the image before her, Ruth reached out towards the space where—if muscle-memory and instinct served—a bedside table sat.

  Muscle-memory and instinct did not serve.

  In fact, not for the first time, they failed her completely. Ruth shuffled a bit too far, leaned a bit too hard, and fell right off the bed.

  Again.

  “Ah, fuck.” The cool, wooden floor of her bedroom was a familiar location, but that didn’t ease the sting in her hip and elbow.

  Ruth stayed still for a breath, because serious pain usually waited a second to make itself known. Just as she decided that nothing was damaged, the blasted phone stopped ringing.

  And, of course, in that precise moment, she spotted the bugger. It was on the floor, next to a nearby stack of Avengers comics. Exactly how it had gotten there, Ruth had no idea. Perhaps she’d thrown it.

  With a sigh, she scrabbled over and grabbed the phone.

  1 MISSED CALL: HANNAH

  Oh. Any hopes of ignoring the call and returning to work evaporated. Rising to her feet, Ruth called her elder sister back.

  “Hey,” Hannah answered. “You’re up.”

  “Unfortunately.” Ruth pressed a hand to her belly as she stood. Sometime in the last few minutes, she’d become aware of a concerning, nauseous feeling low in her gut. She headed out into the hall, weaving expertly through her stacks of comics, and explained, “Inspiration struck.”

  “Well, it’s good that you’re awake. I wish you’d get your sleep schedule on track.”

  Sigh. Ruth had been gifted with a mother who did not nag. As part of the bargain, she’d been given an elder sister who did nothing but. “My sleep schedule is fine,” Ruth muttered, stepping into the bathroom. “I’m not one of your—” Of your toddlers, she’d been going to say. Because she was an insensitive, ungrateful cow. She swallowed the words and hoped they’d gone unnoticed.

  “What time did you get up?” Hannah demanded. Thank God for dogged determination.

  “About four.”

  “In the afternoon?”

  Ruth ignored the question, because the answer was obvious. She yanked down her pyjama bottoms and enormous granny knickers to find the expected splotches of blood staining their crotch. “Oh, dear,” she mumbled.

  “Are you talking to yourself again?”

  “Nope.” Ruth grabbed a box of tampons from the bathroom cabinet and found it quite tragically empty. “Shit.”

  “You are talking to yourself,” Hannah insisted. “Oh, Ruthie. You really should get a cat.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Ruth tucked the phone between her shoulder and chin, tearing off a length of toilet paper. “Cats despise conversation.”

  “Perhaps a goldfish, then.”

  “You’d rather I talk to a goldfish?” Ruth wadded up the tissue and shoved it down her knickers. Emergency manoeuvres were called for.

  “I’d rather you talked to people,” Hannah corrected. “Real, live people. Why don’t you come out with me tonight?”

  Ruth paused in the act of pulling up her pyjama bottoms. She couldn’t help it. At the prospect of spending a Friday night out—like, out out—her body froze.

  There was a pause. Then her stiff joints released, her muscles relaxed, and her breath calmed just enough for her to say, “No.”

  Hannah sighed. Perhaps unsurprised, probably disappointed. “Not in Ravenswood. We could go to the city.”

  As much as Ruth hated to deny her sister anything… “I’m on deadline, Han.”

  “You make your own deadlines.”

  “And I’m a bitch of a boss.” Ruth arranged her pyjamas, then headed out into the hall, grabbing a jacket. “I have to go.”

  “Ruth—”

  “Period emergency.”

  That was enough to distract even Hannah. “Oh, God. Are you alright? Do you want me to bring you some ice cream?”

  “I have plenty of ice cream. Bye, Han. Love you.” Ruth put the phone down before her sister had a chance to say those last words back.

  She didn’t really feel worthy of hearing them.

  “You shouldn’t do that, you know.”

  Evan Miller stifled a sigh.

  He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know who those words had come from. After five days at Burne & Co., he was more familiar with those cultured, charming tones than he’d like.

  So Evan continued to focus on the length of iron before him, holding it up to the light, making sure that he’d drawn it out just far enough. His muscles ached and sweat trailed down his brow as the forge cooled. He was almost ready to leave, but now he wanted to find some reason to stay. Just ten more minutes, or maybe twenty. As long as it took for his visitor to get the hint.

  Evan had been waiting all week for Daniel Burne to lose interest in him, and so far it didn’t seem to be working. Maybe Evan was the problem. Maybe, by not rushing to befriend the boss’s kid, he’d made himself stand out too much.

  Daniel Burne was rich, handsome, good at his job despite the possible nepotism, and king of this small town. He probably didn’t understand why Evan rebuffed his friendship. That was the problem with popular people; they needed, more than anything, to be noticed.

  So it came as no surprise when, instead of going away, Daniel moved further into the workshop. He wandered within Evan’s line of sight and leant against the wall, folding his arms.

  This time, Evan didn’t stifle his sigh. He released it loudly, a drawn-out gust that spoke a thousand words. But his mother had raised him to be a gentleman, so that sigh was the only hint of annoyance that he allowed to escape.

  “What�
�s up?” Evan asked, lowering the iron finial.

  Daniel’s auburn hair gleamed bright in the light of the dying fire. He tossed his head towards the line of cooling finials at the edge of Daniel’s workshop. Eventually, they’d form a gate for the Markham family.

  “You shouldn’t be doing Zach’s work for him,” Daniel drawled. “If he wants to slack, let him face the consequences.”

  There were lots of things that Evan could’ve said to that. Like, You do know that Zach’s mother has cancer, right? Or, Since I’ve known him 5 days and you’ve known him since childhood, you should be more eager to help than me. Or maybe, Do you have any fucking conscience whatsoever?

  Instead Evan said, “I’m done now, anyway.”

  Avoiding conflict was his mode of operation. They’d taught him that at basic training, once they’d figured out his hair-trigger temper. Always avoid conflict.

  It worked, partly. Daniel nodded, and didn’t say another word about Zach or the gate. But he did hover as Evan put away his equipment, as he checked the forge’s temperature. And when Evan headed for the exit, Daniel was right on his heels.

  “You walking?” Daniel asked, his long strides matching Evan’s easily.

  “Yep,” Evan replied.