Sun Kissed (Crane Series) Read Free Page B

Crane.”
     

3
    She hates my guts, Cam thought to himself, perfectly aware that Jennifer Talbot wasn’t still in the kitchen eating. He’d expected her to come and see him when she was done, but it looked as though she’d bolted—not that he entirely blamed her. He had been a pig. He rolled his chair back from the computer and contemplated why.
    Since he planned to get her into bed as soon as possible, alienating the woman was stupid. But there was something about the coolness in those big blue eyes and the carefully sleek blond hair that made him want to mess her up a little. Stupid, since he’d just made the task of seducing her tougher. Still, he hadn’t made an outrageous success of himself by avoiding challenge. Quite the opposite. And when the challenge looked like the cover of a glossy dollie magazine, smelled like peaches, and gazed at him as though she saw right through him, he had no choice but to seduce her.
    Ah, who was he kidding? If she was anyone at all and he’d met her anywhere, she’d have drawn him. She was everything he wasn’t but secretly admired: tidy, cool, careful, and well-educated. Footsteps sounded in the hall, and he was delighted that his first assessment had been right. Jennifer Talbot didn’t avoid challenges any more than he did. She had the look in her china-doll blue eyes of a fighter. He recognized that look. It stared back at him every morning in the mirror.
    When she knocked on his open door and entered, he stifled an appreciative grin. Oh, yeah. She was a fighter all right. She was fully dressed right down to shoes. She hadn’t come to him in a bathrobe, nor had she slipped into jeans and a shirt, like him. No. She was wearing navy slacks with a crease you could cut yourself on, a silky white top that covered her but still tantalized with a hint of her shape, and dressy looking white sandals. Her hair gleamed smooth and blond and, based on the sheen to her lips, she wore makeup.
    In case he was in any doubt that her visit to him in the wee hours was strictly business, she carried a slim corporate-woman briefcase in one hand. It was three-forty in the morning, and she looked as though she were ready for his company’s annual meeting. He liked her better in her nightie and mussed hair, and he bet she knew it.
    “I’m glad to have this opportunity to talk to you,” she said in that accent even he could recognize as quintessentially Californian. Soft, a little breathy, and full of sunshine and bottled water. “I think it would be better for both of us if I moved to a hotel.”
    He was a little surprised she was charging into battle only hours after she’d arrived—and on precious little sleep. He admired her for it. He leaned forward a little and motioned her into a chair. “I work at home a lot of the time. This is more efficient. You seem like a woman who appreciates not wasting time.”
    “Certainly, but—”
    “As you’ll find, I’ve a lot of demands on my time during the day. You’ll hardly see me. Here, you’ve got full access.”
    And how. Not only could she do business with him at any hour, but she was welcome to jump all over him. He almost laughed at her pinched expression. Yeah, that was going to happen. Oh, but it was, he decided. His love life had been too much of the same recently. He dated women who were young, fun, and looked good on his arm. Maybe he was getting on a bit, but sometimes he yearned for more.
    Jennifer Talbot was definitely in the “more” category. She wasn’t as young as his usual fare, and while she looked good—fantastic, really—it was a different kind of gorgeous. He usually dated girls who were pictured in the gossip columns, models, surfer chicks and once a minor royal, which led to a feature in Hello! Jennifer Talbot’s picture was usually in the business section of major newspapers and corporate magazines. And fun? Did she know how to have fun? Probably, but it looked as though she were on the road to forgetting how.