More Than a Fling? Read Online Free Page B

out.’
    ‘Butt out,’ Ally shot back, but she couldn’t help but like his
straightforward attitude. After the fake politeness she endured day after day it
was refreshing.
    She leaned back in her chair and played with her belt buckle.
The words were out of her mouth before she could haul them back.
    ‘He died of a heart attack when I was fifteen.’
    In a foreign country halfway across the world. But Ross didn’t
need to know that—and, besides, she never spoke about those dark weeks after his
death. To anyone.
    ‘My mother left when I was a baby.’
    ‘That sucks,’ Ross said with no hint of morbidity, which she
appreciated. After a little silence he sent her a mischievous look. ‘You can ask
me about my family if you want to. I might not answer, but you can ask.’
    ‘Thank you, but I’m not nosy. And I’d really prefer it if we
kept this conversation to the business at hand.’ Mostly because she wanted to
ask him a whole bunch of personal questions...which was very, very out of character for her. She’d learnt a long
time ago about the notion of quid pro quo.
    Ross slapped his hand on his chest. ‘Ouch. Touché. ’ He rested his elbow on the bar and pushed his hair out of
his eyes. ‘So, no personal stuff. Damn, that’s boring. Are we going to talk
about clothes now?’
    ‘No, the campaign.’
    ‘Ugh,’ Ross replied, taking a long swallow of his beer. ‘Let’s
go back to talking about your clothes, then. Specifically these shoes of yours.
How the hell do you keep them on your feet?’
    ‘You’re beginning to sound like you’re slightly obsessed with
my clothes,’ Ally said, and made the mistake of slamming her eyes up to his.
Green deepened to gold as she watched them heat and she could almost hear his
words... I’m obsessed with getting you out of
them.
    Oh, wait—maybe that was her silently saying, yelling, panting
that phrase. But there was definitely heat in his gaze...something she was
pretty sure she hadn’t imagined.
    Ross just looked at her as she fumbled around for something to
say. She was so out of practice with this man-woman attraction thing, Lord, she
hadn’t even been on a proper date since who could remember when.
    Blow her down with a feather... And that made her imagine Ross
drifting a feather over her torso, lower, lower, and following its path with his
wicked mouth.
    Feeling herself starting to ignite from the inside out, she
fumbled for her wine glass, lifted it up to her lips and allowed the icy liquid
to slip down her throat. She drained the glass and gestured to the bartender for
a refill.
    ‘I would pay a lot of money to be on the road trip you just went on,’ Ross drawled in a husky voice...a
bedroom voice.
    ‘Uh, yeah...sorry about that.’ Ally shook her head and held up
her hand. ‘Would you excuse me for a minute? I need to...take a...Ladies’.’
    Ross stood up as she did and somewhere, in a part of her brain
that still had some sort of cognitive thinking, she appreciated his manners.
Pulling her bag over her shoulder, she quickly walked over to the Ladies’
restroom, slammed the door open and paced the small area in front of the
basins.
    She wanted him in the worst take-me-now, stop-this-throbbing
way. Every pore on her skin was prickling, and she was intensely aware of every
breath he took, each flick of his eyelids, every movement of his strong thighs,
each bob of his throat. His deep voice sneaked into places that had been so cold
for so long and set her nerve-endings on fire...
    She wanted to ask him up to her room for a one-night stand and
the thought terrified and shocked her. They hadn’t even discussed the launch of
the new line, but at this moment it didn’t matter and she so didn’t care.
    Ally shoved her hands into her hair and pulled. She’d never not
cared. Who was this stranger in her head?
    Ally looked at herself in the mirror above the sink and didn’t
recognise the flushed, wild-eyed woman looking back at her. Lifting her finger
to