The Personal Shopper by Carmen Reid Read Free Book Online Page B

offer and she’d tried out many, many different styles. Unfortunately finding a replacement partner was turning out to be much more difficult than finding a new pair of shoes.
    Although she had spent almost every single Friday night for the past eight months on a date, Annie had to admit she was not making much progress.
    She had been out with twenty-two men. She’d kept count. Eighteen of those men had been complete losers of the tragicomic variety: badly divorced, depressed, dumped, dysfunctional or defective – truly the very end-of-sale rail in the romance department.
    Three had been a little more promising. Well . . . they’d been worth a second, even once a third date for closer inspection, but nothing had come of them. And then there had been the One Night Wonder.
    Oscar, the man in a crumpled linen suit, incredibly good looking for the dating circuit, funny, attentive, utterly convincing and so persuasive that she had taken advantage of the children being away for the night and invited him home.
    There was no hanging around waiting for Oscar to make a move, oh no. No sooner had she brought him in through the front door than he’d caught her wrist, spun her round and pulled her in close saying, ‘We have to kiss, right now. It can’t wait,’ in a voice not unlike to Cary Grant’s.
    He was a fabulous kisser: moist, deliberate, practised, delicious and a great fit. He knew perfectly well she hadn’t been this close to a man for too long and he was there to meet that need, no doubt about it.
    His tongue moving against hers had felt breathtaking; she’d opened her mouth wider, twisted her tongue against his and wanted to eat him up, right there in the hallway.
    Of course they’d gone to bed together. She’d expected to feel nervous, but instead found herself running up   the stairs, not stopping to turn on the lights, and throwing herself on top of him.
    Kissing her busily, he’d felt for the gap between her top and skirt, put cool fingers against the bare skin of her   back, then moved them slowly to her stomach.
    But still talking to her, joking, charming her all the way. ‘ Hello, I think I love you, what’s your name again? ’ he’d sung in a giggly whisper against her ear, running a finger teasingly round the rim of her belly button. Then two fingers had begun to walk from her knee upwards, taking the hem of her skirt with them.
    ‘No, no,’ she’d giggled back, pushing his hand away.
    So the fingers had moved back to her belly button, circling round, playfully persuading.
    When he kissed her, whenever their lips had brushed together, she’d felt an electrically charged tingle.
    ‘You so want to. You do,’ he’d told her, moving his hand slowly up her leg again, taking big wolfish bites and licks at her mouth and neck.
    He’d smelled spicy, sweaty, grassy and delicious. She’d been unable to recall wanting anyone more, was ravenously hungry . . . starving.
    ‘Nah ah, no,’ she’d protested, but she’d been laughing and pushing closer, had begun to unbuckle and investigate him, both of them totally focused on each other.
    His fingertips had moved . . . just there, yesss . . . softly, insistently against her as his tongue licked down her neck and his leg wrapped in behind hers.
    It had got much more heated, deliciously desperate .   .   . frantically moving, probing fingers and mouths until they were naked and moving, sweating, gasping together, Annie determined to have him, make up for all the time she’d lost, cram in every sensation she’d been so deprived of.
    Finally they’d fallen asleep in the not so small hours, they’d kept each other awake so long. He’d held her,   whispered to her, been unbelievably tender and she had so, so fallen for him. But in the cool light of the morning, he’d already seemed detached – had to hurry off – left a number which when three days later she finally ventured to call turned out to be wrong !
    ‘I’m emotionally scarred and