Mother, Please! by Brenda Novak, Alison Kent, Jill Shalvis Read Free Book Online

distorting.
    Marginally reassured, he put down his margarita and strode over to meet her—and couldn’t help bending close to press a quick kiss to the hollow beneath her earlobe. Her skin, soft as a baby’s, smelled of cucumbers and melon.
    She stiffened in surprise, but he knew she wouldn’t pull away because her mother was watching.
    “You’re gorgeous tonight,” he told her.
    “Thank you.” She gave him a meaningful look, one that told him he was overacting, and he hid a smile at the knowledge that he wasn’t acting at all.
    “Hello, Claire,” he said. “And Happy New Year.”
    “I’m glad you could be here with us,” April’s mother returned. “It’s wonderful to see my daughter so excited about a man.”
    April hid a cough.
    “I’m looking forward to our time together, too,” he said. In more ways than one. Who would have thought a skinny, sexually repressed intellectual like April would be able to capture his attention when all the fabulously beautiful, and sometimes extremely talented, women he’d been dating over the past few years had left him cold?
    “Shall we sit over here?” he asked, leading them to a table on the far right.
    April allowed him to take her hand but, at the first opportunity, she leaned into him and whispered, “You don’t have to overdo it.”
    He didn’t have a chance to respond because Walt had spotted them and was on his way over. “There you are,” he said jovially. “I’ve already got a table for us. It’s up front.” Then his eyes fell on Claire, whom he’d obviously not recognized until that moment, and he made a choking noise. “What are you doing here?”
    April’s thin fingers, still threaded through Gunner’s, tightened in a death grip as a vulnerable expression flashed across Claire’s face. Gunneropened his mouth, feeling he needed to protect them both, but Claire threw back her shoulders and spoke before he could.
    “I have every right to be here, Walt.” Her voice was as pleasant as though she’d just addressed a total stranger. Only the tightness of her smile gave away the underlying tension.
    Walt harrumphed and shoved his hands into the pockets of his chinos, scowling as if they’d all double-crossed him. But Gunner looked at him expectantly and finally Walt seemed to make a decision. “Oh, all right,” he told her. “You can join us.”
     
    A PRIL COULD FEEL Gunner’s eyes on her all through dinner. She had to hand it to him—he could act. His interest in her almost seemed authentic. Especially when the temperature grew cooler and he removed his jacket and slipped it over her shoulders without asking if she wanted it.
    Gunner’s residual body heat, which clung to his coat along with the scent of his cologne, quickly became a distraction, conjuring up visions of his kiss near the limo. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant association. Having a boyfriend—even a pretend one—had excellent benefits, April decided, although Gunner probably wasn’t too comfortable sitting there without his coat.
    She looked over at him, wondering if he felt cold.But the other people at their table—Wayne Smith, the District Sales Manager for California, Wayne’s wife, Christie, and Tom Corcoran, Advertising Director for the whole company, as well as her parents—had just begun a conversation about Gunner’s background.
    “I’ve never been to upstate New York,” Tom said, “but someone once told me it’s nothing like New York City.”
    Gunner waved away the waiter circulating with testers of tequila. “It’s mostly rural. Lots of green rolling hills, dairy farms and small towns.”
    “Did you grow up on a dairy farm?” April’s mother asked.
    “No. My mother was the lunch lady at school. The job didn’t pay much, but she wanted to be home with me and my older sisters in the afternoons.” He grinned ruefully before taking another bite of his steamed vegetables. “And we weren’t the easiest kids in the world to raise, so that was