One Night with Prince Charming by Anna DePalo Read Free Book Online

Manhattan’s wet and half-empty streets.
    They were content to make some more desultory chitchat as the car ate up the distance to her apartment. She discovered that he was thirty-three to her twenty-four—not ancient by any means, but older and more worldly than the boys she’d dated back in high school and college in Pennsylvania.
    Perhaps in order to make the gulf between them seem less so, she shared her dream of opening her own wedding planning business. Surely, he wouldn’t think of her as so young and inexperienced if he knew she had plans to be a business owner.
    He showed enthusiasm for her plans and encouraged her to proceed with them.
    All the while, as thoughts raced through her mind, she wondered if he felt the sexual tension, too. Would she ever see him again?
    In no time at all, however, they arrived outside her building.
    James turned toward her, searching her eyes in the silence drawing out between them. “Here we are.”
    â€œW-would you like to come up?” she asked, surprising herself.
    It was a daring move. But she felt as if their evening had been cut short when he’d had to meet with the CEO of MetaSky.
    He paused and looked at her meaningfully for a moment. “Sure…I’d love to.”
    He settled the cab fare, and then they raced up the front stoop of her building, sharing her small umbrella.
    She managed to fish out her keys in record time and let them inside. They stumbled into the vestibule and out of the cold and wet.
    She lived in a studio on the top floor of a four-story brownstone. At least, however, the rental was hers alone. On a night like tonight, she didn’t have to worry about the awkwardly timed arrival of a roommate or two. She’d made the best of her situation by putting up a partition wall to create a separate bedroom, though she couldn’t do anything to alter the fact that her windows were the small ones beneath the roof.
    As she heard and felt the tread of James’s feet behind her on the stairs, she couldn’t help feeling nervous about having him step into her little world.
    Fortunately, she didn’t have much time to dwell on the matter. Within a few minutes, they reached the uppermost floor, and she inserted her key in her door and let them inside.
    She dropped her handbag on a chair and turned around in time to see him scanning her apartment.
    He dominated the small space even more than she’d anticipated. Here there were no fellow bar patrons to defuse the full force of the magnetism that he exuded. There was no crowd to mitigate the sexual attraction between them.
    James’s eyes came back to hers. “It’s cute.”
    She’d tried to make the apartment cheerful, as much to lift her own mood as anything else. A tiny table flanked by two chairs and sporting a vase of pink peonies and tulips sat near the door. The kitchen lined one wall, and a love seat guarded the space on the opposite side. Facing the entry, asmall entertainment center stood in front of the partition that separated her bedroom from the rest of the space.
    Pia knew what lay beyond the partition that shielded what remained of her apartment from James’s gaze. A white croquet coverlet covered the full-size bed that occupied most of her sleeping area.
    Nervously, she wet her lips. She couldn’t keep her eyes from straying to the rain-soaked spots of his shirt. Some of those wet areas clung to the muscles of his arms and shoulders.
    She’d never done this before.
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    â€œPia.”
    Pia found herself jerked from her memories as Tamara closed the space on the lawn between them. Over Tamara’s shoulder, she noticed the member of the household staff with whom Tamara had been speaking was heading back toward the stone terrace and French doors at the back of the house.
    Hawk was nowhere to be seen. He, too, must have gone indoors.
    â€œI’m sorry to have left you stranded here.”
    Pia pasted a bright smile