Seducing Cinderella Read Online Free Page B

waiting for her and now he was staying in her home—
    Whoa! Breathe, girl, breathe. She inhaled deeply, held it, then let it out slowly, feeling marginally better.
    Earlier she’d insisted that instead of her moving into his hotel suite, Reid move into her apartment. It didn’t make sense for them to both be living out of suitcases, and this way there was less chance of him being bombarded by crazy fans. He’d shown up a half hour ago, she’d shown him to the guest room, and then left him to get settled.
    Suddenly a tinny rendition of “The Piña Colada Song” burst through her quiet ruminations. She snatched her cell phone off the coffee table. “Hi, Nessie, what’s up?”
    “Did you seriously give Dr. Jerkface my number? Because he claims he got it from you, but I figured that can’t possibly be right. I mean, I’d like to think that if the man my best friend has been crushing on for years asked her for my phone number, she would’ve told him to go fly a kite.”
    “Ness—”
    “Or at the very least , given him an excuse as to why he couldn’t ask me out.”
    Lucie squeezed her eyes shut and placed her head on her knees. With all the craziness of Reid moving in she’d completely forgotten. “What happened?”
    “I told him that I was dating someone but you didn’t know about it yet because it’s so new.”
    She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks. I’m sorry, but he caught me off guard and I didn’t know what to say.”
    “When are you going to either tell him how you feel or move on?”
    “Vanessa…”
    “I know you don’t like it when I bring this up, but come on. You can’t wait your whole life for this guy to up and decide one day that he likes you.”
    “Yeah, I know, it’s just—” Lucie heard Reid open his bedroom door down the hall. “Hey, I have to go, but I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” Before her friend could argue, she closed the phone, silenced the ringer, and set it on the table.
    “Whatcha reading?”
    His deep voice resonating in her usually quiet, usually very male-free home sounded out of place. She watched as he crossed in front of her wearing nothing but athletic shorts hanging low—almost indecently low—on his hips. At some point he must’ve sat in the opposite corner of the couch, but she somehow lost those moments with the distraction of his bare torso.
    “You keep your mouth open like that, Lu, and you’re bound to catch flies,” he said with a wry grin.
    Snapping her jaw shut in total humiliation she cut her eyes back to the book in front of her that could’ve been written in Hebrew for all she knew. She tucked her shower-damp hair behind an ear and cleared her throat. “You should put a shirt on when we’re not doing therapy.”
    “Why? The less I wear the more comfortable I am. I put the shorts on as a courtesy to your virtue.”
    She gasped. When he laughed, she realized that’s exactly the reaction he’d been going for. Narrowing her sights, she chucked the book in his direction, which he easily deflected with a flick of his hand. How annoying.
    “Relax, Luce. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating someone’s more appealing physical traits. In fact, that’s lesson number one.”
    She snorted. “How to properly ogle someone?”
    “No. How to properly get someone to ogle you .”
    Suddenly Lucie needed a drink and practically bolted to the kitchen. She was almost positive she had a bottle of wine some— Aha ! Grabbing the corkscrew out of a drawer, she worked quickly to open and pour a large glass of the Moscato wine, and then drained it almost just as fast. And then repoured.
    “Do you have wine often?”
    She jumped—again—and whirled to face him, glass in one hand, bottle in the other. “Will you stop sneaking up on me like that? And, no, I don’t usually drink wine. This was a Christmas gift from a patient.”
    “I’m not sneaking. You’re jumpy. Maybe the wine isn’t such a bad idea.” He scanned her apartment for a