Indecent Suggestion Read Free Page A

her phobia of eggplant, and these days she still broke into a sweat whenever she saw ratatouille. Even as a side dish. Hypnosis had been beneficial for her aunt in one way. Just, you know, not the right way.
    Becca repeated, “It could work for us. We won’t know unless we try.”
    Turner covered the short distance between them in three long strides and dropped into the chair beside hers. He satthe same way now that he had in high school, all sprawling limbs and masculine confidence. These days, though, he took up considerably more room than he had back then. Funny how he’d gone through that second puberty while they were in college at IU. He’d always been so skinny as a kid. Now he was solid rock.
    Becca shook off the observation, almost literally. “We could at least try it,” she said more softly.
    He met her gaze levelly for a moment, and Becca thought again what nice blue eyes he had. Maybe she couldn’t blame Loosey for being such a tart around him. The tart.
    “Right,” he said tersely. “We let ourselves be hypnotized, and the next thing you know, we’re on a stage in Vegas with some guy in a red, crushed-velvet blazer, named the Amazing Mesmiro, and he’s making us bark like a dog and flap our arms like a chicken. Is that what you really want?” Turner dipped his head lower, smiled a seductive little smile and gazed at her through hooded eyes. He dropped his voice an octave or two as he added, “Because ya know, Becca, I can make you bark like a dog if I use the right words and touch you a certain way….”
    His voice held just a hint of sexual innuendo, enough to bring that wet, naked-dream business rushing to the fore, and she made herself ignore the tremor of heat that splashed through her midsection. It always made her uncomfortable when Turner acted as though he wanted sex, even when she knew he was only joking. Those few occasions when the two of them had kissed and stroked and groped had ended awkwardly, and it had taken days, sometimes weeks, for the two of them to feel comfortable together again. Turner, especially, had seemed to have troublegetting back to normal. But because of their reactions to each other after getting even remotely sexual, they knew they weren’t suited to it. They were much better as friends than lovers. And Becca didn’t want to risk losing that friendship.
    So she ignored the last part of what he’d said to focus on the first part, something that had her biting back both the sarcastic retort and the smack upside the head she felt threatening. There. That was better. That was more in keeping with the way she wanted to feel about Turner.
    “Not that kind of hypnosis,” she patiently corrected him. “Hypnotherapy hypnosis.”
    He eyed her blankly. “And the difference would be…?”
    “Hypnotherapists are better dressed, for one thing,” she quipped. “They have white jackets and name tags and stuff.”
    He rolled his eyes.
    “And licenses,” she quickly added. “They’re licensed to do this kind of thing. They go through a lot of training and education, whereas the Amazing Mesmiro probably got his training from the Johnson Smith catalog. Not to mention his license.”
    Turner’s expression remained impassive. “Hypnotherapists are licensed and trained to make people bark like dogs and flap their wings like chickens? Wow. And here I wasted my time with an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in marketing.”
    “They’re licensed to help people,” Becca told him through gritted teeth. Oh, yeah. That smack upside the head was really close now.
    “It won’t work,” he said.
    She studied him through slitted eyes, nibbling the edgeof her lower lip in thought. Turner’s gaze seemed to zero in on the movement, and his pupils widened to nearly eclipse the blue irises. She figured he recognized it meant she was lost in thought—he’d be correct about that—and that he was probably dreading what she was going to say next.
    And he was correct there, too, she