In Serena's Web Read Online Free Page A

reasonable, in fact, that Brian could not immediately think of a reason why he shouldn’t do it.
    Brian took a deep breath. “Rena,” he said carefully, “there are some things you simply don’t ask.”
    “Why not?”
    He raked fingers through his hair. “Rena, you know damned well why not. You have to know. Asking me to teach you how to seduce a man is like—” Gazing into those inquiring eyes, Brian forgot what he was going to say. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You,” he said very dryly,“are twenty-six. You’ve spent the better part of four years in Europe. Correct?”
    Serena nodded, her brows still lifted inquiringly.
    “You’ve certainly dated?” He waited for her nod, then nodded himself. “Then you have to know the effect you have on men. Most men, in fact.”
    “But you’re my friend,” she said, as if that made a difference.
    At the end of his metaphorical rope, Brian fell back on brutal honesty. “Rena, if I taught you how to seduce a man,
I’d
be the man you seduced.”
    Serena didn’t respond for a few moments, since their waiter was busy placing their meal before them. Then, in her matter-of-fact way, she said cheerfully, “Well, that’s all right with me, Brian. I don’t think Josh would be pleased by a virgin in his bed anyway. So you can teach me how to seduce a man
and
please him in bed. And since we’re friends, you won’t be too rough with me, or—”
    “Serena.”
    She gazed at him, wide-eyed. Then those misty eyes grew even more misty, and her expression revealed how hurt she felt. “Oh. I see. I understand, Brian, really I do. You don’t have to say anything more.”
    “I don’t think,” he said from between gritted teeth, “that you understand at all, Rena.”
    “You don’t want me. I understand.”
    “It isn’t that.” He swore roughly. “I’m responsible for you. How could I face Stuart after seducing his only daughter?”
    “He wouldn’t have to know,” she offered, her tone one of anxious entreaty.
    Brian stared at her for a long moment and then, very belatedly, remembered just who he was dealing with. A woman who had punched a policeman in the eye. A woman who had blithely jumped into the Mississippi River. A woman, he had learned, to his cost, who had taken the meaning of the phrase “iron hand in a velvet glove” to new and staggering heights.
    He lifted his fork and began eating. Stalling for time.
    “You
do
want me, don’t you?” Serena askedwith all the natural curiosity of a child. “I mean—the thought of seeing me naked isn’t giving you the horrors, is it?”
    Brian choked on his blueberry pancakes and reached hastily for his coffee. “Will you”—he wheezed—“for heaven’s sake learn to give notice of loaded questions?”
    “Well,
is
it giving you the horrors?”
    Brian’s principal reaction to the image her words had instantly provoked was hardly one of horror or revulsion, but he didn’t think the breakfast table was quite the place to give vent to his emotions. Not, at least, in a restaurant.
    “Serena,” he said in a tone that had been compared by various of his friends to the sound of a saw biting into wood, “if you say another word not directly related to breakfast, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
    She stared at him for a moment, then cleared her throat with an odd little sound and addressed herself to eating the meal before her.
    Brian ate automatically. His bland expression was the product of stern control. But his thoughts—and his imagination—refused to be governed.He had spent the past three weeks, he now realized, subconsciously reminding himself that Serena was, in the truest sense of the words, off limits. Not only was she the most enigmatic lady he’d ever met and completely out of his experience, but she was also the daughter of a man he greatly respected—and who trusted him implicitly.
    Also, since her behavior had been as wayward, innocent, and troublesome as that of a child,