Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire) Read Free Page B

pick up a bit more atmosphere. Just please stop trying to set me up with that guy, okay? You may be acing art school, but postgrad veterinary science is kicking my butt. I just don’t have time for a whirlwind romance right now. From what I’ve read, they seem to take up quite a lot of time and energy.”
    “Zat’s vhy zey call zem vhirlvinds, dahlink.” The playful accent was back, and forgiveness floated on the air kisses Maxie blew at Sarah. “And I’ll take whichever book describes the clothes better, please.”
    “War and Peace,” Sarah said decisively.
    “I don’t know how you read all of those incredibly long books, on top of all that studying,” Addy whispered directlyinto her sister’s ear as they turned and hugged each other hello. “Give me a nice, uncomplicated set of engineering plans any day.”
    Melting snowflakes sparkled like tiny jewels in Sarah’s long, straight dark hair, the only one of the siblings not to inherit their parents’ waves and curls. She poked a careful finger at Addy’s still-muddy tangles. “It keeps me sane. And you liked Jane Eyre. Admit it.”
    “Yeah, sure. It was okay. But do you know how long it took me to read that thing?” Addy scoffed out loud, although she’d been wondering for the past month if she should ask her sister to recommend another book to her. Studying civil engineering hadn’t afforded a lot of time to read grand, sweeping love stories, and she’d found herself oddly caught up in the story between the governess and the aristocrat, the tragedy and the joy of it.
    “Let me guess. There was a fire at a farm and you had to stop, drop and roll in the pigsty, right?” Maxie’s teasing words and gentle tug at her hair reminded Addy that she still needed to clean up for dinner.
    “Trust me, and don’t ask.”
    Family dinner at the Tyler family homestead was, as always, a raucous affair, as stories, complaints and triumphs came pouring out of all of them. Addy braced herself for the onslaught of opinion and advice as she dropped her bombshell.
    Standing in front of the plate-glass living room window after dinner, her head was full of conflicting voices arguing caution versus a take-the-money-and-run approach. Watching the exhaust billow in clouds from her truck as it sat running on the street in her hopeful attempt to warm the interior before her drive home, she found herself pulling up a picture of the irritating Spencer Reed in her mind’s eye. Dislike wound up with embarrassment, like a ball of snakes, settled heavily in her stomach as she recalled their childish bickering. She tried to remove her emotions from the equation, to look at her great-aunt’s bequest fairly and without prejudice, and found that she couldn’t do it.
    No doubt Mr. Spencer Reed would have no difficulty shutting off his emotions and approaching the situation coldly and with a logical mind. But Addy couldn’t stop herself from feeling angry and insulted.
    She only hoped she wasn’t letting her dislike of the urbane lawyer, with his pristine suits and polished manner, affect her good judgement.
    “Take it, take it, take it, take it,” the voice hissed softly in the quiet room.
    After a brief moment of toe-curling startlement, Addy reassured herself that in fact neither the devil nor her subconscious was whispering to her in a disembodied voice from the coziness of her mother’s living room.
    “Speak to me, oh wise one,” she intoned.
    Her brother, several feet taller than the skinny brass lamp behind which he was attempting to hide, cocked his head to one side and grinned the grin that unraveled scores of women on a Friday night at Sully’s Tavern as he walked over to her.
    “I know this whole thing is freaking you out a little bit. I just think you should check it out is all. The woman is dead.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen, as if expecting their mother to come running to scold. “No disrespect intended, but she can’t hurt you now. Or make