Just Three Words (Soho Loft Romances) by Melissa Brayden Read Free Book Online

you.” Smooches.
    Sam grinned and laughed and smooched more than she’d ever smooched. Turned out she was a world-class smoocher. But in shocking news, she kinda liked it, the attention from these people who looked like they’d leapt off the pages of a trendy magazine. So for the next hour, she small-talked and laughed and sipped the Pinot Grigio that seemed to flow faster by the minute.
    “You having a good time?” Libby asked her as the group poured onto the street. Sam estimated that they would need roughly four cabs to get to Splash, the club Tanya had selected for their outing. Always calculating, it seemed.
    She turned to Libby. “I am. I haven’t spent a lot of time with your friends. It’s like this window into your world.”
    “And what do you think so far?”
    She stared up at Libby, her heart squeezing that it mattered. “I think they seem about as awesome as you are. I like your world. It’s fancy.”
    “Now I have to kiss you.”
    Sam glanced skyward. “My life is so hard.”
    After a little on-the-curb lip action, Samantha glanced over her shoulder to see that no one was actually taking the necessary steps to hail the cabs they needed. She was going to have to take matters into her own hands and organize this thing. Beautiful or not, these people needed someone like her if they had any hope of getting anywhere.
    An hour later, and Sam looked on as throngs of twenty-to thirty-somethings jumped around the crowded dance floor at Splash. From the DJ stand on an elevated stage, a woman with green hair and giant headphones held court, blasting the place with a hypnotic beat that never seemed to end. Bangle bracelets, bare shoulders, and midriffs abounded. In contrast, her outfit was now noticeably bland. She’d worn a simple, sleeveless peach cocktail dress with what she now realized had a boring neckline. At home, she’d thought she looked pretty, somewhat chic. Here, her look could best be described as “on the steps of the convent.” Mental note: she would need to invest in some edgier clothes. Maybe Hunter could help.
    “You gonna dance?” Tanya shouted in her ear. They’d spent a handful of evenings with Tanya and she seemed fun enough. She was some sort of massage therapist, from what Sam understood. She also had killer moves, and they were right there on display as she spoke to Sam, sashaying easily to the music. Sam had no idea how to make her hips work that way.
    “I think I’ll work up to it,” she told Tanya. A lie. She wasn’t going to work up to anything. How was Sam going to explain that she was the world’s worst dancer? It was one thing to dance with her closest friends at Showplace, where she could make fun of herself and cut loose and have a goofy time doing it. It was quite another to advertise her lack of any coordination in front of People ’s 50 Most Beautiful People. “I’m probably going to kick back for a while. Hang out by the bar. You guys go ahead,” she said to Tanya and Libby.
    “But I want to dance with you tonight,” Libby purred in her ear. Okay, that was hard to resist, especially when her stomach went all flip-floppy like that, but Samantha reminded herself of the facts. They’d been a full-fledged couple for only two and a half months now, and that could be completely undone if Libby saw her dance. It was that tragic a display.
    “I’ll dance with you,” Tanya said to Libby.
    Bless that girl. Bless her. “Perfect. You two dance. I’ll order us more drinks,” Sam said.
    Libby seemed to warm to the idea, if her cozy proximity was any indication. “You sure you don’t mind? I don’t want to leave you by yourself. How about I stay with you?”
    “Pshhh. Of course not. Join your friends. I’ll be over here. You know, holding up the bar.” Samantha made a ridiculous bar-holding gesture that she quickly regretted. From her facial expression, Libby seemed to think it was cute, so there was that.
    An hour and a half later, bar holding had lost its