Keeping Company by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online

the role of the upwardly mobile, materialistic ice princess, but he sensed there was more to her than that.
    Catching a glimpse of her cleavage, he held his breath tight in his lungs. Brother, was there more to her!
    “Do you have any illegitimate reasons for not going out with me?” he asked, his dark eyes gleaming with mischief.
    “No, but I do have an illiberal thought or two.”
    “How about illicit thoughts?” He waggled his eyebrows, a smile tugging at his lips as he caught the light of amusement in her eyes. Pretty eyes, mesmerizing and translucent with a bit of an exotic slant to them. A man could get lost staring into those eyes. At the moment he couldn’t help but think that wasn’t such a bad idea.
    Alaina stuck her patrician nose in the air and sniffed. “In your dreams, Harrison.”
    He cast a longing glance at her legs and muttered, “You’ve got that right.”
    She didn’t fight her smile this time. Her lush mouth hitched up on the right, and she shook her head. The man might have been a complete buffoon, but she was having fun bantering with him. Clayton hadn’t been much for verbal swordplay. Lies and deception, yes; he’d been a master at those. But when it came to the kind of sparring she was enjoying with Dylan Harrison, A. Clayton Collier had been a flop. He took things too literally and too seriously for double entendre.
    Dylan Harrison, on the other hand, seemed to take nothing seriously. His attitude was rubbingoff on her. Already she wasn’t half as mad about getting arrested, though she did still feel betrayed by her car. And she didn’t really feel all that nervous about turning into a clone of her mother. There wasn’t a chance in hell of her becoming seriously involved with Dylan; they were far too different. All she was feeling toward him now was chemistry. It was possible to feel chemistry and still be in control, she decided. He was a handsome man, and charming in a bizarre, Bill Murray sort of way. What woman wouldn’t respond to that on a basic level?
    Still, she decided, it was probably best to set him straight right off. “I’m not looking for a relationship,” she announced, giving him her most serious courtroom expression.
    “That makes two of us,” Dylan admitted. “All I want is a dinner companion and a dancing partner. People tend to stare when I go dancing by myself.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “So, you want to know more about me?”
    “Not really,” she lied smoothly.
    Dylan pressed on as if she had begged him tocontinue. “I don’t really like to talk about myself, but if you insist. My name is Dylan Henry Harrison. I’m forty years old as of ten twenty-two this evening. I like to sail and play the baritone. My favorite color is fuchsia, and I have long, bony feet, but I’m not vain about them in the least. What time should I pick you up?”
    “Fuchsia?”
    “Yes.” He leaned toward her again, a sexy smile turning his lips and lighting dark fires in his coffee-brown eyes. “You’d look great in fuchsia,” he confided in a low, pillow-talk whisper. On impulse he lifted a finger to trace the clean line of her jaw. Her skin was like silk, cool and soft. “You’d look great out of fuchsia too. So what time—”
    A horrified look came over his face as he sat up, his back ramrod straight. “Oh, damn. Time. What time is it?” He grabbed Alaina’s wrist and consulted the slim gold Rolex she wore, then bolted out of his chair, grabbed up the receiver of Deputy Skreawupp’s phone, and start punching buttons, muttering curses under his breath.
    Alaina watched him, only slightly bemused.She had already decided that nothing the man could do would surprise her.
    “Hello, Cori, sweetheart? It’s Daddy.”
    Except that.
    Alaina braced a fist under her chin to keep her jaw from dropping and putting a dent in her chest. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do to keep her heart from dropping into her stomach and sinking like a scuttled ship. A wave of