Billionaires Prefer Blondes Read Free Page B

Sotheby’s auction in favor of spending a quiet evening with Samantha. If he knew her, though, she wouldn’t want to do any such thing.
    He’d half suspected, in fact, that her enthusiasm to accompany him to New York had a great deal to do with the Sotheby’s invitation he’d received—whether she pretended ignorance about it or not. “The Great Masters Auction” sounded right up her alley, so to speak. And if she’d ever attended one before, it hadn’t been to bid.
    “Samantha?” he said, pushing open the door to the master bedroom suite.
    Considering how little time he had to put on his tuxedo and get her to dinner if they were to make the auction, part ofhim was relieved that she wasn’t in the room. On the other hand, having to sit behind his desk for the past hour in order to maintain his dignity hadn’t been easy. Forced to concentrate on images of the old Queen Mum while trying to hammer out a reasonable offer for the new Manhattan Hotel, he’d ended up with both a headache and a fair concentration of sexual frustration. Wilder had laid out his tuxedo for him, and after a quick, cold shower that didn’t help either affliction, he dressed and headed back downstairs to find his obsession.
    She was sitting in the front room, gazing across the street at Central Park. “I hope you took the tag off that dress,” he murmured, his throat constricting at the sight of her, “because I’m thinking you should wear it to bed every night.”
    Samantha faced him, grinning. “We’d get sparklies all over the sheets.”
    “Yes, we would.”
    The red of the dress brought out the copper color of her shoulder-length hair, which she’d pinned into some sort of upswept tangle. Richard wanted to run his hands through it. He walked over to offer his hand. “Shall we?”
    “Such the gentleman, you are,” she drawled in a very good Southern accent, dipping her fingers across his and rising.
    The gesture was more because he wanted to touch her than because of his deep-seated gentlemanly qualities. “If you had any idea what I’d like to be doing with you right now, I doubt you’d call me a gentleman,” he returned, drawing her up against him to kiss her soft red-colored lips.
    “Don’t smudge me,” she stated, sweeping her arms around his shoulders.
    “Later, then,” he whispered, taking a step backward andnot trying to hide his reluctance to let her go. Every time he did so, he had the whisper of a thought in the back of his mind that he’d never be able to catch her again. “We have reservations at Bid.”
    “I’ve been wanting to see what it looks like now,” she said, following him to the foyer where Wilder waited for them, her black shawl in his hands.
    “Now? It’s only been open a few months.”
    Samantha flashed him a smile as she allowed the butler to put the shawl over her shoulders. “As a restaurant, yes.”
    Wonderful. So she’d been in the Sotheby’s basement before it had been converted to a restaurant. Did he want to know more than that? Yes, but he damned well wasn’t going to ask her in front of Wilder.
    The limousine pulled up in front just as they reached the bottom of the steps. The driver jumped out and hurried around to open the door for them. “Ben,” Samantha said, smiling at the driver. “Did you find that…thing I mentioned?”
    “What ‘thing’?” Richard broke in.
    Ben grinned, pulling a candy bar from his pocket. “Chocolate and caramel,” he said, handing it to Samantha.
    “You rock, man.” Favoring the limo driver with a kiss on the cheek that made him blush bright red, Samantha dove into the back of the limo. For a moment Richard second-guessed his decision to fly Ben up from Palm Beach with them. Acquiring a driver in New York would have been a simple matter, but Ben knew things about them, about their…habits, that he would never discuss. And therefore having him about provided both of them with an extra layer of security. Or so Richard had thought. The