The Senator’s Daughter Read Online Free Page A

goblet at the wall.
    â€œLooks like somebody spilled their drink,” he commented, snapping on more lights.
    Sylvia turned from rummaging in a kitchen drawer and made a disgusted face. “I let Rory Campbell get me mad one night. Threw it after he went out the door.”
    Lyle slipped out of his shoes and padded in wet socks onto the kitchen tiles. “Remind me not to rile you.”
    But didn’t Sylvia have a right to be upset? She’d been treated shabbily, a bargaining chip in some modern-day medieval matchmaking. Thank God Rory had stood up to parental tyranny and married the woman he really loved or Lyle wouldn’t be standing here.
    He very much liked being where he was.
    Sylvia came up with a red terry dish towel and tossed it to him. He used it to dry his face and ruffled it through his dripping hair.
    She wiped her arms and chest with another, drawing his focus to her cleavage. Moving closer, he looked down into her vibrant eyes. “Would you say you’re over Campbell?”
    Sylvia brushed back her damp hair that had fallen over her forehead, reached into the drawer for another towel, and approached him. “Did you know you have lipstick all over?”
    Lyle shook his head.
    Gently, she wiped his mouth and gave his cheek a light scrub.
    Everything in him went on alert. Though she stood without brushing her body against his, her musky rain-drenched aroma set off another flashbulb. In this vivid image, he dragged her against him and she came along, giving him a press of full breasts against his chest the way she had at Ice. He’d splay his hand across her bare back, locate the zipper …
    Mind you, he only wanted to help her out of that wet outfit so she didn’t get a chill.
    Lord, how fantastic that would be. Even better than their public embrace, for there was nobody here to interrupt what this might lead to. As she had no doubt intended, he dropped getting an answer to his question about Rory.
    While he was getting up his nerve to carry out his fantasy, she drew back. “There. You look like the proper DA again.”
    Lyle sighed. He’d always relished his untarnished reputation, but the way she said it made him feel dull.
    â€œYou’re still wet, though,” she went on.
    The kitchen towels having done little to dry him, he got to thinking about hot water and getting his back scrubbed. Too bad the proper DA wasn’t the kind of guy who brought up something like that on the first date.
    Setting the lipstick-stained towel on the counter, Sylvia murmured, “Why don’t I draw a bath?”

    As soon as the words were out, she regretted them. All she had intended to offer was a chance for Lyle to warm up … privately … but the sudden darkening of his blue eyes told her he’d taken it wrong.
    Sylvia wanted to stamp her foot or sit down on the floor and cry. Playing provocative, her stock in trade that had served in the past, had gone sour in a single season. First, she had realized it was wrong for Rory, and now with Lyle it seemed even worse. On the other hand, how could she break her habit of flirting, which she’d developed to an art?
    Casting about for a way to change the subject, she looked at the wall clock. “Almost eleven. Maybe we ought to put on the tube and see what those bozos do to us.”
    The light in Lyle’s eyes subsided.
    Though she’d wanted his sensual expression subdued, her first reaction was disappointment. The way he’d looked at her had been obvious, but she’d detected nothing cheap in it.
    Confusing images of stripping this man down and getting them both beneath a steaming shower warred with knowing he would find it one more reason to think her a tramp.
    Going to her living room, she located the remote, pointed it at her big-screen TV, and zapped it on.
    Lyle followed. She noted that, rather than sit on her beige leather couches in his wet clothes, he stood shifting his weight from one