Sizzling by Susan Mallery Read Free Book Online

believe her family
helped make her the way she is. She's alone and lonely."

"She's
crabby, difficult and mean."

"She's not mean. Not to
me."

"You don't know her well enough," Reid
said as he slid the folded tortilla onto the hot pan.

Lori set
down her empty glass and tried to find something to look at other
than the man at the stove. If she didn't distract herself, she was
afraid she'd start drooling.

It didn't seem to matter that his
character was suspect. Her body wasn't interested in the three
thousand other women he'd had sex with. It just wanted to be number
three thousand and one. How sad was that?

She picked up the
top sheet of paper from the stack Reid had been going
through.

"What's this?" she asked as she scanned a
letter from a boy wanting an autograph.

"A bunch of crap
sent over by my manager," Reid grumbled. "I let his office
handle all my fan mail, which might have been a mistake."

Lori
remembered the slams about Reid ignoring kids in need in the
newspaper article.

He flipped the tortilla. "I didn't
want to bother," he said grimly. "That's my big crime. So I
trusted others to take care of things and apparently they did a
piss-poor job. Seth's response to everything was to send a
check."

"Seth's the business manager?"

He
nodded. "I was invited to a hospital opening and didn't know.
They put me on the program and everything. That's not good."

"But
if you didn't know, it's not your fault." Wait! Was she
defending him? She resisted the need to slap herself. Didn't she
consider him useless? Hello, naked pictures. That had to mean
something.

"Tell that to the people waiting for me to
show up." He grabbed a plate from the cupboard and slid the
quesadilla onto it. "It gets worse. Some kid who was dying
wanted to meet me as his last wish. But I didn't show up. Instead he
got an autographed picture and a signed baseball."

Reid
handed her the food, then slumped down across from her. "It all
just sucks."

She was torn, both feeling sorry for him and
wanting to shake him. "You're some famous baseball player,
right?" she asked before taking a bite. The quesadilla was
perfect— hot, with melted cheese, grilled chicken and just a
hint of spice.

"Used to be."

"Then
you're in a position to make a difference on a much bigger scale than
most people. Things went bad. You can't change that, but you can fix
things. The paper mentioned some kids who got stranded with no return
ticket. Pay them back. Call the kid and go see him now. Manage your
fan mail, yell at your manager or fire him. Get involved."

Reid
stared out the window over the sink. "It's not that
easy."

Okay, now shaking him had a definite priority over
pity. "It can be. I know you were too busy with your exciting
life before, but you don't have that excuse anymore. You have a
responsibility. Be the person everyone expects you to be. Grow up.
You might surprise yourself."

"You don't think much
of me, do you?"

"No."

He gave her a
slow, sexy smile. One that gave a whole new meaning to the phrase blown away. If he'd shown her the slightest bit of interest,
she would have ripped off her clothes and done it with him right
there on the kitchen table.

Of course, according to Cassie's
article, Reid wasn't all that great in bed. Except she had a feeling
Cassie was lying. She had to be. Everything about Reid, the way he
moved, he teased, he spoke, declared that the man loved women. All
women.

Well, all women except her.

Reality splashed
over her like cold water. Time to end the fantasy fest. She wasn't
his type. She would never be someone he could see as appealing. If he
knew how he got to her, he would only pity her.

The thought of
that shamed her and she spoke before she could stop herself.

"Just
so we're clear, I'm not interested in you," she said coolly. "Or
anyone like you. You're no one I could like or respect."

The
words hung there in the silence. She desperately wanted to call them
back. What had she been thinking? He was Reid Buchanan— he
could