Bachelor's Bait by Mari Carr Read Free Book Online

reached a point of no return. He grasped Sophie’s ankle, halting her movements. “I need to leave now, Soph, or I won’t leave at all.”
    She lay still. He could practically see the wheels spinning in her brain. She wanted to invite him to stay as much as she wanted him to leave.
    Fair enough. It was too soon. He offered her a wry grin. They didn’t know each other well enough. Yet. He’d correct that problem. Sophie was about to start seeing a hell of a lot more of him.
    He lifted her legs off his lap and rose. Sophie started to sit up, but he placed his hand on her shoulder and pushed her back against the cushions. Leaning over, he placed a soft kiss to her forehead.
    “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    Sophie sighed softly then accepted his departure with good humor. “Thanks for the warning…and the foot massage. Good night, Marc.”
    “Night, princess.”

Chapter Three
     
    Sophie sat in the living room of the house she’d grown up in and marveled over how foreign the place seemed to her these days. The house felt less like a home than the rental she lived in. Since her mother’s death, the place had gotten…colder. Her father employed a full-time housekeeper who kept the place so spotless it looked as if no one lived there at all. Recently Dad had also hired an interior decorator who’d taken out her mother’s comfortable, airy décor and replaced it with the stark, leathery bachelor’s pad she was now sitting in.
    When she’d arrived, the housekeeper had led her to this room to wait for her dad, who was on a business call in his office. It was her own family’s home and yet she’d been ushered in like a stranger. She briefly wondered if the woman was standing guard outside the closed door, ready to attack should Sophie attempt to break out.
    Rising from the couch, she walked to the mantel, looking at the old pictures that were the only holdout from the days when she and her mother had lived here. There were a couple large, professionally done family portraits of her and her parents. One from when she was only a toddler and another showing her in that horribly awkward middle-school stage. Of all the things her father had thrown out, she was sorry that crappy picture hadn’t been part of the trash.
    Sophie’s gaze only touched on the portraits. It was the two smaller informal pictures her mother had framed herself that she preferred.
    In one, a very young version of her parents sat side by side in a restaurant, looking at each other and laughing. It was taken before she was born, but it reminded her that her parents had been genuinely in love. Not that she really doubted that. It was simply a trick of time. The more of it that passed and the colder her father became, the less she was able to remember him as the handsome, carefree man who would have moved heaven and earth for his beautiful wife.
    The second picture was of Sophie and her dad the day her parents brought her home from the hospital. He was cradling her in his arms as if she was the most precious thing he’d ever held. Her mother hadn’t been the only woman to receive her father’s adoration. At that moment in time, Dad had thought she’d hung the moon too.
    She sniffled, trying to batten down the strange sadness that had crept over her.
    “Sophia.” Her father’s deep voice rumbled behind her and she was surprised to realize how close he was. She hadn’t even heard him come in.
    She blinked quickly in an attempt to hide her tears, then pasted on a fake smile and turned to face him.
    Jasper Kennedy was still a handsome man, though now his looks fell more in the distinguished category, rather than the hottie column where Marc resided.
    Shit. Why on earth was she thinking about Marc now ?
    She knew why. He was the reason she was here.
    “How are you, darling?” her father asked, stepping forward to offer an awkward peck on the cheek.
    When had they stopped hugging? When had they become mere acquaintances? Her stomach ached for the days