Truth or Dare (His Wicked Games #2) by Ember Casey Read Free Book Online Page A

another date?”
    “What are you doing tomorrow?”
    Tomorrow’s Saturday, so I have the day off,
but I decide to tease him a little for waiting so long to call.
    “I’m afraid I have plans with one of my other
suitors,” I say. “He’s been most attentive while you’ve been
away.”
    “Is that so? Well, I’m afraid he’s going to
be unexpectedly detained tomorrow.”
    “Is that a threat, Mr. Cunningham?”
    “It’s a promise.”
    I grin. “I guess I better send him away
then.”
    “You better. I’ll pick you up at three.”
    “Three it is.”
    By the time I hang up, most of my worries
about Calder have dissipated. I can’t believe I allowed myself to
get so worked up over the fact that he hadn’t called.
    I’m concerned by the “business matters” that
kept him occupied all week. I only hope that his call means that
he’s sorted everything out, that he’s taken care of whatever left
him so distracted during our dinner. Maybe he’ll even give up on
the whole “waiting to have sex” nonsense.
    Still, I’m pretty sure I’m grinning like an
idiot right now. I’m so caught up in my happy little bubble that I
don’t notice my dad has paused in my doorway.
    “You’re cheerful,” he says. “Get some good
news?”
    “Oh—oh, no, I just…” I’m too flustered to
come up with something quickly enough.
    He smiles. “Who were you talking to on the
phone?”
    Uh oh. He heard that?
    “Just a friend,” I say quickly.
    “Ah, a friend. Well tell him hello for
me.”
    He continues on his way before I can make up
any other lame excuses. Crap, I’m not very good at this
secret-dating thing, am I?
    It will all come out in time, I know. I’ll
have to create a believable story about how we met. I don’t want to
outright lie—not to my dad, not about someone important to me—but
I’ll need to bend the truth a little. Assuming I don’t want
Calder’s head to end up on a spike.
    In the meantime, things are looking up.
Between Asher’s article and Calder’s call, it’s been a pretty good
day. And tomorrow, I’m certain, will be even better.
     
    <<>>

CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    I sense that something is wrong the minute
Calder picks me up for our date.
    He arrives at three o’clock on the dot, and
in his jeans and fitted charcoal sweater he looks so sexy that I’m
tempted to drag him into my apartment and jump him right there. He
gives me a devilish smile and kisses me, but the minute I slip my
hands beneath his shirt, he pulls away and teasingly shakes his
head.
    “A little eager, aren’t we?” he says, his
eyes gleaming. That’s when I see it: a flash of something across
his expression. It’s gone before I can give it a name—regret?
Sorrow? Guilt?—but whatever it is, I know that there’s something,
some worry, still lingering in his mind.
    He doesn’t want me to know. He smiles and
touches me and pretends that nothing’s wrong, and for the moment, I
let him.
    He takes me to a local park.
    “It’s nothing fancy,” he says. “But my father
used to bring my sister and me here when we were younger. I always
thought it was beautiful.” He sounds almost apologetic, and I
realize, with sudden clarity, that he is —after all, this is
a man who’s used to giving women expensive gifts and taking them
out to five star restaurants. Places like Ventine’s. He’s used to
dating starlets and supermodels, not normal girls like me who are
perfectly content to stroll hand-in-hand through a park.
    “It’s perfect,” I say, looping my arm through
his.
    He smiles down at me, his uncertainty
replaced immediately by his usual wicked smile. The shadows are
still there, hidden in the depths of his eyes, but if he wishes to
ignore them for the afternoon then I will too.
    He leads me along a path through the trees,
down toward the pond—which everyone around here calls the
“lake”—and away from the crowds on the main green. The air is
chilly, but in that lovely mid-autumn kind of way—though