The Mistaken Escort's Pleasure: A Liaison Novel Read Online Free

between him and Rebecca when Ellie questioned him about being an escort, but he was already invested in being her date, to get to know her, so he kept his mouth shut.
    He wanted to have the chance to get to know her, and for the first time in his life, to have her get to know him as a man, not a successful business owner with more money than he knew what to do with.   He would be her date for the wedding of a man who failed to see the beauty of a woman who was becoming an obsession to him.
    But he wouldn’t make the same mistake.
    He just needed time to come up with a plan to tell Ellie the truth about him, and to convince her that they would be perfect together.
    He strode into the office.   His focus was to find more information about Ellie, and he rooted around Bec’s desk for Ellie’s file.   For the third time that day, his focus had caused him to ignore everything and everyone around him.   It wasn’t until he found the file and he blew out a relieved breath that he glanced up to his sister’s smiling face looking back at him from across her desk.
    He sighed as he tightened his grip on the file, walked a few feet to the chair that Ellie had vacated a few minutes earlier and sat down.   Her light scent of lemon grass and coconut still lingered, and his body tightened at the smell.   He focused across the desk, knowing that Bec would have questions about the way he acted, but he wasn’t sure how he was going to answer them.
    “How are you feeling?” he asked.
    She shook her head and leaned back in her office chair, waiting for him to explain his behavior.
    But for the life of him, he had no explanation to give.   He acted on instinct because Ellie had enchanted him from the moment he spotted her curled up in this chair, her braid draped over her left shoulder and her sky-blue eyes widening as his gaze raked over her.   What they shared in the few minutes they were together was beyond his realm of explanation, and until he spent more time with Ellie, he couldn’t explain it to anyone else, so he remained silent.
    Bec blew out a breath before she smiled at him.   “I called Gabriel and told him what happened.”
    Lucian growled at his sister.   He knew she and Gabriel had no secrets between them, but he hoped to understand why he reacted to Ellie in such an elemental way before they dissected his reactions.   He considered Gabriel to be as close as a brother, and he’d been happy when Gabriel and Rebecca acknowledged that they were in love.   But he didn’t need his love life examined by the two people who were the epitome of love in his eyes.
    He knew that you couldn’t build a relationship on deception, but he knew that if he had told Ellie the truth of who he was, she would have rejected him outright and he would never have the chance to get to know her.   And he had to get to know her.
    “Don’t look at me like that.   I’m happy that you’re interested in Ellie, but when she finds out that you’re not an escort, she’s gonna be upset, to say the least,” Rebecca pointed out.
    He nodded to acknowledge the truth in her words.   But once he spotted Ellie, there was nothing that would discourage him from getting to know her and touch her.   He craved to know that whether her skin was as soft as he imagined it to be.
    Her white buttoned shirt had exposed a patch of skin just below her neck, and he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her there, to see whether it was as sensitive as it looked.   He loved the flare of color in her hair, but it was encased in a braid, and he wanted it loose so he could run his fingers through it, to know how it would feel against his naked chest.
    Hell, in a matter of an hour, she had managed to make him think about nothing else but her.   And what surprised him the most was that he was happy to have his sterile existence turned upside down.
    “I know that look,” Bec said.
    He opened his mouth to deny it, but closed it without uttering a word.
    He