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

long T-shirt and hat. Squinting into the sun. Looking like she wasn’t having a good time.

Just who was the real Lulu Flannery? he wondered, not for the first time. Was she the one in the flesh, all buttoned up and battened down? Or was she the one underneath, off-center and on fire? His money was on the latter—hell, the woman wielded a blowtorch for a living; the heat had to come from somewhere—but for the life of him, he had no idea how to draw her out. Hiring her to be his buffer brought her closer—at least physically—but how could he coax her inner Delilah to the surface?

He set the photo back on the nightstand, but his gaze remained on Lulu as he wrapped a gold watch around his wrist and fastened it. He tried to picture her in the white string bikini. Didn’t happen. He tried to imagine her in the pale lace lavender. Couldn’t do it. He tried to visualize her in the gypsy apparel of the closet. Never came close.

The problem, he realized when he knocked at Bree’s front door a half hour later, was that he just hadn’t pictured Lulu in the right thing. When she opened the door and offered him a less-than-breezy, “Hey,” he realized he should have instead wrapped her in some shimmery, jewel-toned fabric that hugged her body like a lover’s embrace. Although Cole had noticed before that Lulu had some decent curves, what her dress did to them now made them positively indecent, which any man would tell you was really the way to go.

The garment had slipped off her shoulders—though he was pretty sure it was supposed to do that—showing off the elegant lines of her collarbones and riding just low enough to reveal the top swells of her breasts. When he skimmed his gaze lower, he saw that the hemline stopped well above her knees, offering him a view of extremely nice legs. He’d never really thought of himself as a leg man—he was infinitely more interested in what a woman carried on top—but Lulu Flannery’s legs certainly gave a man pause. He dropped his gaze lower still to see that she’d slipped her feet into gold high-heeled shoes that were more high heel than they were shoe, and then, then, his heart nearly stopped.

There, on Lulu’s toes, was glittery nail polish the color of a summer sunset. It was replicated on her short fingernails, he noted as he drew his gaze upward once more, and again on her mouth. And suddenly, all Cole could think about was what he’d have to do to get some of that glitter on his mouth, too. And then on other body parts that probably shouldn’t be wearing glitter, either, if they were male, but if the glitter got on there the way he was thinking it would get on there, no man in his right mind would refuse.

“Wow,” he said before he could stop himself. “You look…wow.”

She’d rendered him speechless, Cole thought. It took a lot to do that. But then, she looked…wow. So that explained it.

“Wow yourself,” she said with a smile. But it was a shaky smile. A none-too-confident smile. A smile that said she was in no way comfortable with the way she was dressed. Cole wasn’t comfortable with it, either. But he was pretty sure his discomfort was way different from hers.

But that was okay. He had all evening to get them on the same page. And then, if he was lucky, he’d have all night to keep them there.

He’d worried a little since hiring Lulu to do what he’d hired her to do, about the wisdom of having done it. Not just because any other man would have killed to have Cole’s problem—too many beautiful women coming on to him—but because the press might get wind of the arrangement somehow. He’d hoped like hell he didn’t wake up the morning after the Derby to find his face splashed on the cover of People and Us Weekly with a headline that screamed, “King Cole Didn’t Call for His Pipe or Bowl! He Called for a Girl! And Bought One!”

He wasn’t worried anymore. There was no way anyone would look at Lulu and think anything other than that she was a dazzling woman he’d met while in town and fallen for. Because that was exactly what Lulu was.

“Hello,” he finally managed to greet her.

Then, impulsively, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. When he pulled back, he could tell she was surprised by the gesture. But she couldn’t have been more surprised than he was. He didn’t think he’d kissed a woman on the cheek since he was ten years old. And then, it had been his great-aunt Rhea, not a woman like Lulu who should inspire way more than a kiss on the cheek.

“You look beautiful,” he told her.

The look she gave him in response told him she didn’t believe him, but she smiled a little more and said, “Thanks.”

A moment followed where neither of them seemed to know what to say, then Lulu mumbled something about getting her purse. She blew an air kiss to Bree, who, Cole noted, was giving him a funny kind of assessing look, and told her friend she wouldn’t be out late. Hah. Then she made her way back to Cole with surprising grace for a woman he was reasonably certain usually sported shoes with heels no higher than a compact disc.

“I’ll get the door,” Bree said as she followed Lulu. Before she closed it behind them, though, she had a word of advice for Cole. Literally a word. As in one. “Behave,” she told him. Then she gave him a curiously intent look and pushed the door shut.

Behave, he echoed to himself. Hell, that could mean anything. Behave well. Behave badly. Behave like a brother. Behave like a lover. Just what was Bree trying to tell him, anyway?

When they reached the foot of the steps, he glanced back over