The Billionaire's Bridal Bid Read Online Free Page A

was a little too pointy, her nose a little too broad. Her mouth off balanced, with a perfectly sensible upperlip and a lush, sensual lower lip. Her face was more interesting than lovely. The kind of face you could spend hours looking at. The kind of eyes you could stare into endlessly, sharply intelligent, but still friendly.
    Normally, that is. Today, her eyes were blazing with annoyance. “What are you doing here?”
    She managed to make “you” sound like an insult. She stood in the doorway, blocking his way, leaving him standing out on the street. Her hands were still propped on her hips, her chest thrust out belligerently.
    The sight of her made something tighten inexplicably in his chest. Indigestion, he hoped. Or maybe a heart attack. That would be better than the other possibility. That some long-buried affection was rearing its head.
    He wished she looked worse, but what had he really expected? After all, he’d seen her on the stage just last night. But then, they’d been in a crowded room and separated by a distance of least thirty feet. Now she was mere feet away. And suddenly he was struck by the memory of what it had been like to kiss her. How hungry her mouth had always been beneath his. How her body hummed beneath his touch.
    How many women had he dated since Claire? Hundreds, at least. So why was it he couldn’t remember what a damn one of them smelled like, but he could still remember the scent of Claire’s skin like she’d slept with her head on his pillow just last night?
    He wanted to shake the memory from his body. To scrape it off his very soul. Every instinct he had roared at him to just turn and walk away.
    As if sensing his indecision, she stepped back into the diner. “I’ve got doughnuts to ice. If you’re leaving, just go. If you’re coming in, lock the door behind you on your way in.”
    A wise man would have left. And he’d always considered himself on the smart side of brilliant. Still, he followed her into the dining room, sliding the bolt closed on the front door as she’d asked.
    She looked up when he followed her through the swing door into the back kitchen.
    “Hello, Claire.”
    “Whatever it is you want to say, you’ll have to talk while I work.” She stood with some kind of paintbrush in one hand and a frown on her pretty face. “The doughnuts have to be iced within a few minutes of coming out of the fryer or the icing won’t set.”
    Her words caught him off guard. He’d expected a little groveling. Instead, her tone was brusque and impersonal. “Come on, don’t be like that.”
    “Don’t be like that?” she parroted back in apparent disbelief. “How am I supposed to be?”
    “We didn’t get a chance to talk last night.”
    “So you came by here now? You thought we could catch up for old time’s sake? At five in the morning?”
    Since that sounded both less creepy and less pathetic than, I felt compelled to stop and watch you work, he nodded. “Sure.”
    “Fine.” But her acquiescence seemed forced, her tone pleasant, but overly so. She dipped the paintbrush into a bowl of milky white sauce and slapped some of it onto of the first row of doughnuts. “So how you been? Your millions treating you well?”
    “What?”
    “I guess that’s rude to ask about your money.” She dipped the brush again and moved on to the next row, leaving a messy trail of sugary goo in the wake of her brush. “Okay, how about this? So how’s the weather outthere in the Bay Area? I hear the summers are brutally cold.”
    “Stop it.”
    “Stop what?” Again she dipped and slopped.
    “This. Talking about the weather. I didn’t come here for small talk.”
    Instantly, the brush stopped, midswipe. Her head dropped forward and for a moment she was completely still. When she looked up, a mixture of chagrin and annoyance flickered across her face. Shaking her head she said, “Well, Matt, I don’t think we’re anywhere near ready for a big talk, so the small talk is all