The Tycoon's Resistant Lover by Elizabeth Lennox Read Free Book Online

of numbers. She’d been making mistakes like this all day long and it was all because of James Cavanaugh!
    She was shaking so badly and the whole day had been a complete waste of time. She’d barely been able to concentrate today, her mind wandering back to last night and being with James. He was the only man who had discovered her secret and she wasn’t sure if she hated him, or if she loved that he knew.
    Oh why hadn’t she anticipated him discovering her habit of not wearing underwear and done something different last night? It was a crazy habit she’d gotten into when her parents had been lecturing her on the appropriate clothes to wear. It had all started one day when she was in her late teens. She’d been sent up stairs to change for the fourth time that day and she’d been exasperated by the ridiculous waste of time and energy and all because one social engagement required a certain look of clothes while a meal required another. There had been no arguments, and the dress she’d been wearing for afternoon tea was perfectly acceptable for a family dinner, at least in her mind. But her mother had a different idea. She’d worn the dress to tea and some neighbors had arrived. Therefore, a different dress was needed for the evening meal where other guests would be attending.
    In her opinion, she’d wondered how anyone had enough time on their hands to compare what she had been wearing to afternoon tea versus a dinner party. Who even cared? But she’d dutifully went up to her room and changed into what her parents might consider appropriate dinner attire, which for that night had meant a different colored dress.
    Julianna had rarely argued with her parents, knowing that it was pointless. Her mother would simply walk away from any form of dissension while her father would start berating her for her lack of tact, diplomacy, decorum or manners. But these small, secret battles she’d won. Going without undergarments had been her secret victory and, to date, no one had ever even suspected.
    Unfortunately, James was more bold than any man she’d ever met in her life and she had no clue how to deal with him, how to put him in his place so that he followed the strict rules upon which her entire life revolved. There were moments when she actually hated him for being so brash and other times when she wished he would just finish what he’d started.
    Was she wanton for wanting him in that way? She was supposed to be waiting to marry Edward, to whom she was fully prepared to marry and have a family with him. So why was she having feelings like this for James?
    Edward was a good man, had been a member of her social circle since she was a child so he knew the rules and understood all the parameters around which their world worked. He would never be so bold as to kiss her in the back of a limousine, unless it was a chaste kiss goodbye.
    She shivered, wondering what other rules James ignored. Tapping her pen against her nose, she imagined that he was enormously fun to be with. What was his family like? What were his parents like? She suspected that they might be just as fun-loving as he was. He had to have gotten that plow-through-the-world attitude from someone.
    The bell over her front door chimed and she was reminded of how much work she still had to accomplish tonight. No more fantasizing about the brash Mr. Cavanaugh, she told herself firmly.
    She looked back down at her ledger and plugged several more numbers into her computer, knowing that her store manager would take care of the remaining customers for the day. It was near to closing time anyway so whoever had just entered would need to be turned away until there was more time to shop. She was rigid in her store hours, unconcerned with selling something to someone when it was outside of her normal operating hours. She refused to cater to obnoxious people who demanded that they were important and her store had to remain open just for their convenience. It happened, but