Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

in a girl-next-door type of way, Cole, of course, never would. And although maybe there was something to be said for a woman who wasn’t overly concerned with something like going to great extremes to enhance her physical appearance, no way would Cole be the guy to say it. Simply put, Hortense wasn’t his type. So obviously Hortense was the perfect candidate for buffer material. There was just one problem.

He had no idea how to contact her.

But he knew her name, and he knew where her friend worked. There couldn’t possibly be more than one Hortense Waddy in the phone book. And if there wasn’t one at all, then he’d just make sure he dropped into the Ambassador Bar again when Bree was working. One way or another, he’d see Hortense again. Starting by checking the phone book as soon as he got home.

Home, he repeated to himself, thinking about the little house he’d been trying to escape tonight when he went out in search of dinner, because if he banged his head on the bedroom ceiling one more time, he was going to have to be treated for brain damage. Funny, though, how it wasn’t the ceiling he thought about just then. And funny how, in spite of wanting to escape the place, he couldn’t wait to get home.

Back, he immediately corrected himself. He couldn’t wait to get back. Back to the flurry of Post-it notes he was still encountering daily, like the one he’d discovered that afternoon on a big bag of M&M’s in the pantry. “You may eat my M&M’s,” it said. “But only if you are in the throes of extreme chocolate withdrawal, a condition I fully understand and with which I totally relate. But if you do eat my M&M’s, you’d better pay me back. Twice the amount. Or else I’ll hunt you down like a dog and call you Rover.”

And back, too, he thought fondly, to the daily journal he’d accidentally, really, opened again after inadvertently, really, switching on her computer when he’d unintentionally, really, set his briefcase on the desk too close to the On button. Which, okay, was on the back of the computer, so he’d had to set down his briefcase unintentionally, really, too close to the button four times before it got pushed, but that was beside the point. The point was, he hadn’t consciously, really, meant to read the journal again. It had just…happened. Once. A day. Maybe twice when he was especially clumsy with his briefcase.

Oh, hell, so he’d kept reading his hostess’s journal. It wasn’t like she ever wrote about anything of great importance or of an especially personal nature. She wrote about food. Or books. Or movies. Walks through the park. A neighbor’s peonies. A particularly beautiful sunset. Somehow, though, she always managed to make every entry sound like some kind of sensual, sexual pleasure that always left Cole feeling like he needed a cigarette. Or a cold shower. Or both.

Now there was a woman he could be attracted to. A woman who had color in her house, and sass in her personality, and hedonism in her soul. A woman who clearly enjoyed everything life had to offer. A woman, he thought as he swallowed the last of his beer and rose to make his way out the door, he’d never need a buffer to avoid.

He thought about her all the way home, trying to get a visual on her without the benefit of the photograph to aid him. The long blond hair and lush curves were easy, and, even though all the photos were from a distance, he’d decided at some point that she had brown eyes, because he’d always had a weakness for brown-eyed blondes. She was taller than the other women in the picture, which would probably bring her to about his nose—his forehead, if she was wearing sexy spike heels which, it went without saying, she did. All the time. Even to bed.

What else would she wear to bed? he wondered. Well, hell, that was easy. Nothing. Spike heels and long blond hair. A woman didn’t need to wear any more than that to bed.

By the time he got home, Cole’s image of the blonde—whom he’d decided was named Delilah—was pretty complete. Delilah was twenty-six years old and worked as a legal secretary. She liked the novels of Thomas Pynchon, the music of Itzhak Perlman, men who wore glasses, snowy mornings in bed, and kittens.

Oh, no, wait. That had been Miss February, he remembered. Delilah liked yachting, single malt Scotch, the music of John Coltrane, and Formula One racing. Yeah, that’s it. Okay, and snowy mornings in bed and kittens. Whatever.

After pouring himself a brandy, climbing the stairs to the bedroom, bumping his head on the ceiling—again—and changing into his pajamas, Cole had Delilah completely figured out, right down to the black silk bra and panties that he knew—he just knew—were her favorite choice of underwear. Inescapably, the thought made him drop his gaze to the dresser drawer he was certain contained her lingerie. The small one on top, on the left-hand side. And, just like that, his devil and angel selves appeared on his shoulders again.

This time, though, the angel only muttered a halfhearted, half-heard, You are such a dirtbag.

And the devil rubbed his hands together with glee and said, Let’s do it.

Cole supposed he should credit himself with the fact that his fingers hovered over the drawer pull for a few seconds before actually grasping it. And, too, he thought it said something in his favor that, even after his fingers curled lightly around the little glass knob, he hesitated. But what truly spoke volumes about his character was that, even after the hesitations, he began to slowly, slowly—oh, so slowly—tug the drawer open.

Just a peek, he told himself. It would only be for a few seconds.

Of course, that was what he’d told himself about the journal, too.

But he’d seen the stuff about wonderfully erotic then, he reminded himself. No