The Fifth Favor Read Online Free Page A

words like fingers stroking her nerves, stroking her skin…
    Get it together, Billie .
    “Let’s go back to the other room,” she said, a light suggestion to banish the tension choking the air.
    He didn’t speak, and for an alarming moment, she thought he would end the interview, show her to the door. Perhaps she’d breached some boundary after all, simply by telling him no .
    Rejection for such a man wasn’t food for power.
    With a half-glance in her direction, Adrian finally tossed the towels on the counter and motioned brusquely toward the doorway. Once again seated in the bedroom, he waited in silent observation while Billie changed the tape in the recorder with trembling fingers.
    Pressing the record button, she looked up at him. He had long lashes, a seductive gaze that could unbutton, unhook, unzip every garment on a woman’s body. His steady regard bathed her in heat. He wasn’t finished toying with her. A carnal shiver worked its way up her spine and her nipples hardened beneath the linen jacket.
    As if he knew, Adrian said, “Why don’t you take off your jacket and get comfortable?”
    Billie opened her mouth to decline, but found herself sliding the material off her shoulders. Painfully aware of his observation, she wriggled out of the jacket, folded it and laid it across the arm of her chair. When she turned back to him, he said, “Now your shoes.”
    “Oh, I’m—”
    “You’ve got until one o’clock to interview me.” He rose from the chair, knelt in front of her and lifted her foot against his crotch. “That’s a whole morning in these torture devices,” he said, slipping the shoe off and setting it beside the marble hearth.
    His palm caressed her sole through her stocking. “Now the other.”
    Speechless, Billie let him remove her other shoe and closed her eyes at the desire that sizzled through her. The simple touch at her foot left her aroused and aching. How could any woman survive making love with this man? Just the flashing image brought a groan to her lips, one she barely suppressed.
    “That’s better.” He considered her face for a moment before he straightened and seated himself again.
    Billie glanced blindly at the notes in her lap. “Uh…where was I? Tell me about your clients.”
    The topic sent a bevy of emotions skittering across his features: amusement, aversion, interest, resignation. He folded his hands across his lean stomach as he searched for the answer. “They range in age from twenty-one to fifty, with most in their 16

    The Fifth Favor
    forties. Accomplished businesswomen. Doctors, diplomats, attorneys, politicians. Rich, lonely housewives.”
    “Married women,” Billie said.
    “Many of them, yes. So alone in their marriages they have to seek intimacy from a total stranger.”
    “And pay for it, too.”
    “Yes.”
    She stared at her notepad again and closed it with a sigh, knowing she couldn’t concentrate on the questions she’d scribbled there earlier. “Tell me about a typical visit with a client.”
    Adrian rested his head against the back of the wingback chair, his features shadowed. “First the client has to present a clean bill of health. Blood test, the whole nine yards.”
    “And you?”
    “Every six weeks I see a physician, have a complete blood work-up. It’s all in my file downstairs, which you’re welcome to examine. Every companion has a file for the clientele’s reference.”
    “Okay.” She made a mental note to stop by Azure’s office after the interview. “So when the client arrives for her appointment, how does she choose you?”
    “She looks at pictures during a preliminary meeting with Azure or her secretary, Maria. She reads files, bios, asks questions. Then she makes her appointment.”
    “And then what?”
    Adrian shifted, and the candlelight glow from the brass chandelier touched his profile. “I meet her at the time and place she specifies. Parties, gallery openings, the opera. Sometimes here at Avalon, and sometimes