Vanity Fare Read Online Free Page A

wasn’t I fainting? I was older than I thought.
    The God spoke.
    “You must be John’s secret weapon,” he said, making that sound much dirtier than it should. It simply was not fair that he looked like that, sounded like that, and apparently could bake like that. He held out his hand and smiled. “I’m Simon.”
    “Hi,” I said, staring up into his face. Green eyes. Brilliant, emerald green eyes. Man, did I love green eyes. Hugh’s eyes were brown, a fact I’d always secretly resented.
    Another man had apparently walked in while I was gawking but stayed just inside the door, leaning his back against the wall. Simon gestured toward the guy without looking at him.
    “This is Nick. He represents our American investors.”
    Nick nodded. Ah, the quiet, forbidding type.
    John rushed into the conversation. “Simon and Nick are in from London, from Simon’s home office. Of course, Nick is from here, but Simon—”
    “I’m from over there,” Simon finished, taking a seat next to me. He swung one long, lean leg over the other. I brought my finger up to my mouth to make sure I wasn’t drooling. I wasn’t, but I did find another crumb. I stuck my finger in my mouth to lick it off, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
    He did. He smiled, a knowing, sensual smirk that made his eyes crinkle up at the corners.
    “You like my baked goods, then?” Simon’s eyes glowed.
    He definitely knew what he was saying. A slow heat began to build in my stomach. It wasn’t the coffee.
    “Yes,” John answered, “she was practically licking the bag.”
    Simon’s lids dropped halfway down, and he swept his gaze from my feet to my head. “Was she? I would’ve liked to see that.”
    Oh. Dear. He was . . . flirting with me. It had been so long, I wasn’t sure, but it certainly felt like flirting.
    The other man, Nick, chose that moment to speak up. Good thing, since I wasn’t quite ready for the flirting thing. “We’ve only got fifteen minutes,” he said, in a brusque voice. He definitely had an American accent, a glaring, flat contrast to Simon’s lustrous tone. “So perhaps we can talk about what we came here to talk about?”
    Well. That was certainly to the point. The three of us all straightened in our respective chairs, as though he had blown a bugle wake-up call or something.
    Simon waved one hand toward Nick. “Go ahead then, killjoy. Tell them.” He rolled his eyes at me, and I tried not to giggle. Or imagine him naked.
    Nick didn’t react to his boss’s—it was clear this was a hierarchical relationship—goading. “The store will be near the main library. Diagonally across from the Nat Sherman cigar store. Do you know it?”
    Smooth skin covering lean, sinewy muscles. Maybe a matching dimple on Simon’s . . . I cleared my throat, hoping my thoughts weren’t showing on my face. I glanced over at Nick.
    “I’ve been there, to the library. Not to the Nat Sherman store, though. I don’t smoke.”
    Brilliant, Molly. How about just announcing “Hi, I’m a dork, and I’m not used to speaking to people.”
    John interrupted before I could further stick my foot in my mouth. “Obviously the area is prime for Simon’s business. There are tons of tourists, office workers, loads of people traveling through there every day.” Nick snorted somewhere behind me.
    Yes, New York City holds a lot of people. In other breaking news, Brad Pitt is rumored to be handsome, and scholars reveal William Faulkner was wordy.
    “But I have to have more than just fantastic baked goods, don’t I, Molly?” Simon smiled, unleashing the full effect of his dimples on me. Maybe he should just stand outside handing out samples. That’d get at least half of the city’s population—the female half—to buy his stuff.
    No wonder he was a rising star—I bet few men who looked like this could bake like that.
    I reached back into the annals of my brain to try and locate that part that used to know how to do marketing. “Yes, in that high