Entry-Level Mistress Read Online Free Page A

hair and slid a Swarovski crystal pin into place. “In art, he can’t touch you. Just imagine you’re Warhol deigning to have dinner with a suit. Hey, maybe he can be your muse or your benefactor or something.”
    I smiled. Trust Leanna to say exactly the right thing.
    •  •  •
     
    I didn’t see his Porsche when I peered out the window at a minute to eight. However a black Bentley idled on the street, complete with chauffeur opening the door to the back seat. I watched, captivated, as one be-suited leg appeared and then the next, along with that glossy head of chestnut brown hair.
    Hartmann straightened, looked up, and unerringly found me, peering out of a bay window three stories above. Heat flushed through me. How did he do that? I turned from the window, negligently, as if I had all the time in the world. Then I gathered my things—keys, mints, cell phone—and tossed them into my purse. I thought about condoms. Discarded the thought.
    When I stepped out into the cool night air, he was leaning against the wall of the building. Ready to move to my side, to place a warm hand on my back.
    “You look lovely,” he said, the deep tenor of his voice spreading the warmth from his touch throughout my body. It was silly, but I stood straighter at his words,
felt
lovely. “I’m so pleased you agreed to join me.”
    Verbally, I’d agreed to nothing, but I didn’t say that, didn’t pierce the sweet fabric of the night with unnecessary truths.
    I slid into the car. There was champagne chilling in a silver bucket of ice. I held my breath until he slipped in from the other side, until all the doors were closed around him.
    He handed me a glass of champagne. It was like a movie: me, in borrowed stockings and shoes, sipping champagne in the back of a Bentley. With Daniel Hartmann.
    If my dad only knew.
    Even that dire thought wasn’t icy enough.
    I couldn’t think, barely registered where the car was driving. Daniel was making everything so convenient for me, yet beneath it all I still had this utter disbelief that this worldly man could possibly find me interesting. Especially the sweater-set version of myself.
    He had to know who I was. He had to be stringing me along, seducing me with all his famed charm, for some nefarious reason.
    I had nothing to say to him. Except—
    “Do you like art?” Which was an utterly and completely stupid thing for me to say.
    “I’m on the board at the Museum of Fine Arts.”
    Which I had known.
    “Do you collect privately?”
    I expected him to say yes. After all, I’d seen photographs of his architectural loft and dotting its walls were huge canvases by famous twenty-first-century artists.
    “My house is decorated with art, thanks to a buyer and ex-girlfriends,” —girlfriends,
of course
— “but no, I don’t actively collect. You look disappointed.”
    I laughed, covering, drawing on my actress alter-ego. “No, not entirely disappointed. Simply adjusting my plans. If you won’t be my benefactor, you’ll simply have to be my muse.” I slanted a look at him, indulged myself by admiring the line of his jaw, the sculpted length of his neck disappearing beneath the lavender of his shirt. He made the color look so masculine.
    “Emily.”
    “Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard that before,” I said quickly, “but I’m not the jealous type.” A fine statement for a woman who was playing a game, who didn’t intend to get emotionally involved, but I knew, if I were
really
interested in Daniel Hartmann, I wouldn’t be willing to share.
    My words charged the air, laid out a challenge. We both understood where this was leading. There was no doubt the attraction was there. What I didn’t know was, would I gather up my clothes and be driven home in the wee hours of the morning, or would there be breakfast and normal, awkward, next-morning conversation? And why was I considering sleeping with a man I didn’t like? On the first date? When only half an hour earlier I had