Shopping for an Heir Read Online Free Page A

because she needed a boundary, no matter how invented.
    Calm and cool, she took two more steps.
    And froze.
    Because just past Gerald, a vision of nude perfection stood on an elevated platform, a flesh-feast for the eyes, and Suzanne Dayton might have been nervous, but she wasn’t dead .
    “Oh,” she said, her voice low and impressed by the class model, a man with dark green eyes, thick brown hair, and a chiseled body that made the David look kinda just okay.
    You know.
    Meh.
    Skin not just kissed by the sun, but French- kissed with a reach-around thrown in for good measure, went on for miles. The man on the stage was tall and browned, muscles braided into cords that curled and straightened, tightened and loosened, the kinesthetic calibration a muscular symphony without sound. A feast for the eyes, and as he turned in place, she watched the domino effect of ribs and intercostal muscle rippling down his torso, the hypnotic effect triggering a deep ache.
    And then she looked back at Gerald.
    Who had never stopped looking at her .
    The ache intensified.
    “You two know each other?” Hot Nude Greek God Guy asked. He stood up from the stool on which he was perched and looked at her, then Gerald, his eyes filled with questions. Casual and comfortable, he had zero self-consciousness about being naked in a room full of more than thirty people.
    She tried very, very hard not to look between his legs.
    She failed.
    “You’re ruining the work, Declan! Sit down!” snapped an old lady in the front row. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to train my hands to manage an asymmetrical ball sac?”
    “That’s what she said,” groaned someone from the back row.
    “I like this view better,” said another one, wearing a blond wig. “Stay right there. Everything dangles where it should be. By the time my husband was eighty, his balls were close to his knees.”
    The nude model took a step toward her, his body fluid and tight, all his skin drawn over compact muscle that looked like it belonged right where it was, exacting and calibrated. He had thick eyebrows, an expressive face, but one that stayed neutral now. She frowned, forcing herself to study his face after realizing she was a bit more consumed by observing the rest of him.
    Declan.
    Declan?
    “Declan McCormick?” she gasped, the pieces fitting. “The Montgomery Trust? Anterdec?” Elena Montgomery had been married to James McCormick, and upon her death, her three sons had come into a substantial family trust, one that Suzanne helped to manage. Once a year, she met with the three McCormick sons.
    She’d never seen Declan quite like this before.
    Unable to stop herself, her eyes combed over the fine details of his cut body, the shoulders broad, arms toned as if sculpted by hands like Gerald’s, the eight-pack of abs a work of art in flesh form. His waist narrowed to inverted Vs of muscle at the hips, a smattering of dark hair on olive-toned skin a delightful vision. The man was tanned, with thick thighs featuring an array of rippling muscle, hardened by years of exertion, graced by good bones and genes but maintained by sheer will and steady discipline.
    She felt her mouth go dry and water at the same time.
    Gerald moved with that bold swiftness she knew well, inserting himself between the nude model and her, reaching for her arm and pulling her toward the open classroom door. His touch electrified her, the sudden rush of her pulse sending blood through her like a sonic boom. Gerald smelled like clay and paint, with a faint undertone of sweat and coffee. If you added sand and sunshine, she’d think it was a decade past.
    He smelled like home. Like love. Like promise and comfort, like passion and disbelief.
    “What’s wrong?” he snapped, his face alternating between joy and anger. “Why are you here?”
    Coming to her senses, she extracted the thick envelope from her brief bag, looking him square in the eye. “Legal matter. I’ve been instructed to deliver this to