Playing Dirty by Susan Andersen Read Free Book Online

hadn’t thought things through. He hadn’t considered how being constantly thrown into contact with her would make him feel.
    He’d forgotten how much he’d liked her back in the day before he’d thrown her to the wolves in order to keep a bunch of friends, who hadn’t been worth what he’d sacrificed.
    “Shit.” Losing his appetite, he set the container of deviled eggs aside, dropped his feet from the stool and sat up. Jamming his fingers through his hair, he stared at the flickering flames.
    Let it go, Slick. What was done was done, and going over it for the hundredth time sure wouldn’t help him unwind after a day crammed with traveling and trying to get things organized. And hungry or not, he needed to fuel up. Tomorrow was the first full day on the set, and he needed to be on top of his game.
    So he reached for another egg. He’d eat his food, drink his milk and just veg in front of the fire for a while. What he wouldn’t do was obsess over old mistakes.
    Especially not the one he’d made with Ava Spencer.
     
    S LOW TO PULL her attention from the lists she was compiling when the landline at her elbow rang the following morning, Ava reached to pick up the receiver without bothering to check caller ID. She brought it to her ear and murmured an absentminded hello as she ran hergaze down the list she’d been assembling on her Grocery iQ app. Grey Poupon! That was what she’d forgotten—she’d known there was something.
    She added it to her list.
    “Ava, I need you to plan your father’s birthday event.”
    Well, hell. That got her attention. Abandoning her iPhone on the breakfast bar, she straightened on her stool. “Hello, Mother. I thought you and Dad were still in Chicago.”
    “Yes, yes, we are.” Impatience laced Jacqueline Spencer’s tone. “Which is precisely the problem. We’ll be here until early February—which allows me no time to arrange your father’s birthday myself. So you need to do it.”
    Ava counted to ten. “Do you remember the documentary job I told you about?” She didn’t hold out much hope, since usually the things that were important to her went out of her mother’s ears as quickly as they’d gone in.
    But Jacqueline surprised her. “The one with Allan Gallari’s son?”
    “Yes. I just started it yesterday and between that and some jobs for a few of my longtime clients, I’m afraid it’s going to take up all my time for the next several weeks. But I can refer you to a fantastic local party planner I met at the conference in New York last summer.”
    “I don’t want some second-rate caterer! This is your father’s sixtieth birthday we’re talking about, Ava.”
    Crap. The guilt card. No wonder parents played it so often—it was so freaking effective. Sighing, she picked up her iPhone again and opened a new app. “How many people?”
    “I’m keeping it small. I thought seventy-five. At the house.”
    Small. Uh-huh. “On Dad’s actual birthday?”
    “Don’t be silly, darling—how many people will turn out on a Wednesday night? Make it the following Saturday.”
    “Winter theme okay?”
    “Yes, that would be lovely. And engraved invitations, of course, with the RSVP to you, no gifts. I’ll get you the guest list.”
    Ava made a note to contact the calligrapher she used as soon as she had that in hand. “What do you have in mind for food? The guest list strikes me as too large for a sit-down unless you want me to rent a tent for the back lawn.”
    “Not in late February—the weather’s too iffy for that.”
    “My thoughts exactly. Were you thinking circulating waiters with hors d’oeuvres? Or a buffet?”
    “I thought an open bar and hearty hors d’oeuvres, served by, yes, the wait staff. Then a dessert buffet with, of course, a spectacular cake as its centerpiece. Tiered, not sheet. Champagne fountains at either end.”
    “I will need to hire one of my caterers, because I don’t have time for that part and I know you want the best for