Take Me for a Ride by Karen Kendall Read Free Book Online Page A

many metro stops as he could. Unfortunately they might have to hire a human guide for their, ah, more nefarious purposes, since he was a fish out of water in Moscow, and Avy would be, too.
    He could just imagine calling the local tourism office. “Hello, how are you? Yes, I’d like to hire an English-speaking man foolish enough to take me to the home of a prominent citizen and help me break into the building. Oh, you have just the gentleman for the job? Lovely, thank you.”
    No, this was a delicate matter, one that might just require his slippery friend Kelso’s connections. Kelso had put him up to this, and Kelso owed him.
    Liam tapped the tip of his nose with a sterling-silver pen and frowned. Kelso was responsible for him being thrown into an American jail. And yet . . . Kelso was also responsible for hooking him up with the FBI, which in the end had gotten him out of jail. Who owed whom?
    Liam wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. He needed to get a message to the bloody man, so the next text he sent was to the horrific Sheila, receptionist and office manager at ARTemis.

Seven
    Natalie awoke to the gray light of dawn coming through the sheer curtains at the window. A battalion of Lilliputians with sledgehammers were busy pounding her cerebral cortex into mush, and for a bad moment she couldn’t remember where she was.
    A gentle snore to her left inspired her to roll over, which sent the sadistic Lilliputians into screaming overdrive. She registered a very buff shoulder, a chest full of reddish gold hair, and a square, stubbled jaw first.
    Oh, dear God . . . I didn’t. Did I?
    One laser blue eye opened, squinted at her, and then closed. “Good morning,” said the very hot, Newman-like stranger from Reif’s.
    I did.
    Natalie swallowed, which was difficult because her mouth was dry and pasty and . . . yuck, something had clearly crawled into it and died last night. Something with fur.
    “Wow,” she said. “I’ve never done this before. I guess I’ve racked up some big ‘ho points.’ ”
    The stranger rolled to face her, opening both eyes this time. “Nah. No money changed hands.” He grinned at her.
    He was so good-looking that even with sleep-tousled hair and sheet marks on his face, he took her breath away. Unbelievable. The one time in her life that she had a one-night stand, with a gorgeous man . . . and she couldn’t even remember if the sex was hot or not.
    “Um. Your name is Eric, right?”
    “Brava, Natalie.” There was no condemnation in his eyes, only deep amusement.
    She screwed up her courage. “So. Um. Was it good?”
    “You were absolutely amazing,” he said.
    Uh-oh. Did that mean shameless? “Please tell me you used a condom?”
    He yawned. “On what, the champagne bottle?”
    She stared at him, alarmed. Had he done something perverted to her with a bottle ? She shuddered.
    “Relax, Natalie. Nothing happened. You passed out cold.”
    Mortification threatened to swallow her whole, and she clutched the sheet to her breasts and sat up, to the rage of those angry Lilliputians still banging inside her head. “I did not .”
    “Yup. You did.” Eric sat up, too, and then stretched luxuriously. “Not surprising, considering you had at least five stiff whiskeys in the bar and no dinner.”
    “I am an idiot,” she said gloomily.
    “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Happens to the best of us. Besides, you were upset about the necklace.”
    Horror engulfed her. “I told you about it?”
    “In living color.”
    “Oh, my God. Are you going to—”
    “Report you? No. I’m not going to tell anyone.”
    “You don’t feel a moral obligation to—” She stopped. Eric was laughing.
    “Do I look like Dudley Do-Right?” he asked. “Seriously.”
    She sat there, again transfixed by his looks and some charismatic quality that she couldn’t identify. All she knew was that she felt almost magnetically drawn to him. She was furious at herself, not for picking him up but for passing