Affair with the Rebel Heiress by Emily McKay Read Free Book Online

she had no idea what she was doing?
    He leaned closer, a seductive grin on his face. “I know what you’re really afraid of.”
    “Afraid of?” she squeaked.
    He brushed his thumb across her lower lip, once again sparking the desire that heated her blood every time he touched her.
    She should not be attracted to him. He was so not what she needed right now. Or ever, for that matter. Geesh, he wasn’t even wearing a tux. Okay, so he looked fabulous in an Armani jacket thrown over a gray cashmere sweater and black pants. And, yes, the understated elegance of his outfit made him look outrageously masculine. Never mind that he carried it off. Never mind that the day’s worth of stubble on his jaw made her fingertips tingle with the urge to touch him. Never mind that she could tell already all the other men at the fundraiser would look overdressed and foppish by comparison. She couldn’t possibly be attracted to a man who didn’t even know when to wear a tie.
    “Yes,” he continued. “You’re afraid of the attraction between us.”
    As his words registered, she was flooded with an odd sense of relief. He was still talking about sex. About what had happened between them in Texas.
    Maybe it shouldn’t have made her feel better, but somehow it did. Physical intimacy she could handle. Men had been pursuing her since she hit puberty. She knew how to handle that. She knew how to entice without promising anything. To lure and manipulate a man while staying just out of his reach.
    What she didn’t know was how to handle a man who was interested in her. Not her body. Not her net worth, but her.
    Thank God, Ford was proving no different than any other man she’d ever met. She’d learned long ago the secret to keeping men at arm’s length.
    The mere suggestion of sex was enough to distract the average man. The possibility that you might one day have sex with him made most men so befuddled they never bothered to look beneath the surface.
    To that end, she let herself sway toward him slightly, as if she couldn’t resist his draw. Then she ran her tongue over the spot on her lip that he’d touched. It was a gesture sure to entice him, but she found it disconcertingly intimate. She could almost taste him on her tongue.
    Suddenly memories flooded her of their one night together. How could she have forgotten what it had been like to kiss him? To feel his hands on her body? To give herself over so completely to his touch?
    She felt her breath catch in her chest, found herself leaning toward him, not in a calculated way, but as if he were a magnet and the heart pounding away in her chest were made of iron, pulling her inexorably toward him.
    He cleared his throat, breaking the spell he seemed to have cast over her. Nodding toward the cab door on her side, he said, “We’re here.”
    When had that happened? Damn him. She was supposed to be distracting him. Not the other way around.
    Feeling befuddled, she looked from him to thecrowded street outside her window, to the cab driver rattling off the fare. Her mind was embarrassingly sluggish, but finally she got moving.
    Staying one step ahead of Ford was going to be harder than she’d thought. This was going to take some serious work.
    Then just when it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, a camera flashed a few feet away. Great. Just what she needed.
    Paparazzi.

Four
    F ord stood near the bar, nursing a tumbler of weak Scotch, wishing he could have ordered himself a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. He would have thought that at five hundred bucks a ticket, they could have stocked the bar with some decent beer. But of course, the best beer in the world wouldn’t have distracted him from what was really bothering him. His date.
    From the moment the first camera had flashed outside the hotel and she’d practically leaped from his side, she’d been avoiding him. At first, he’d assumed she just didn’t want their picture taken together. That she was averting the potential scandal.