Jule Mcbride - All Tucked In…

Tobias hesitated even as his gaze burned down every inch of her body. “Back to bed?”

Carla frowned. Had she heard right? Or was she confusing her dreams with reality again?

His voice was husky. “Uh…you sure?”

“After last night?” She smiled in invitation. “Absolutely.”

He paused, then unbuttoned his shirt and let it shrug from powerful, sleek shoulders. His jeans were unsnapped next, the bulge of his masculinity unmistakable. “Climb in,” she offered, her mind racing with the events of the past two nights. “Am I dreaming?”

Grinning, he reached over and gently pinched her cheek. “How’s that feel?”

She pushed the sheet aside in welcome. Another look of indecision crossed his features. “You’re overdressed,” she complained, putting her arms around his neck. As pImages** from their previous night’s lovemaking flashed through her mind, she snuggled against his hard body. “And I was counting on a repeat performance….”

Judging by the arousal beneath the fly of his jeans, Tobias was more than ready to oblige her.

Dear Reader,

Like most people, I’ve always been fascinated by dreams, the unconscious and the elusive pImages** that often haunt us for years, swirling in our minds like fairy dust looking for the right place to land.

All Tucked In…proved to be such a landing place. The sexy hero, Dr. Tobias Free, has become a dream researcher in order to cure his ex-fiancée of the nightmares that haunt her. But sparks really fly when his cure works better than expected, turning her nightmares into hot dreams about him!

I hope All Tucked In…will tuck you in and keep you up well into the night!

Very best,

Jule McBride

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Birgit,

for her saintly patience with this deadline, and for so deserving all the good things that are coming her way!

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

THIS WAS HARDLY THE FIRST time Dr. Tobias Free wished he hadn’t discovered steel baron Cornelius Sloane’s nineteenth-century pornography collection. In fact, the only other thing in life that had caused Tobias more sleepless nights was Carla DiDolche, the Italian spitfire who’d left him at the altar seven years ago. Now he surveyed the “artwork” spread across the boardroom table, his eyes trailing over a few pieces before settling on an ink drawing of a whip-wielding woman in a bustier and frilly pantaloons, a pencil sketch of three topless chorus girls, and a watercolor of a man in cross-tied breeches having his crotch fondled.

Then Tobias looked around the crowded board table.

“Well,” Margaret Craig was saying to J. J. Sloane the seventh, sole heir to Cornelius Sloane’s fortune, “we all know how much this ancestral mansion has meant to you, since you used to live here, Mr. Sloane, and we also know how much it means now—” She shot a piercing, significant look at Tobias “—to the University of Pittsburgh, which has been using it to house its sleep clinic research facility for the past ten years.” Margaret paused for a deep breath. “However—and I’m speaking for every member of the Pittsburgh Preservation Society, not to mention the community at large—we feel it’s our duty to open this mansion to the public, especially since Dr. Free has discovered such a vast vault of art….”

J. J. Sloane, whom Tobias secretly referred to as Sloane Junior, was a tall, thin, overly pretty, silver-haired playboy who’d just hit forty and begun to realize that he was an only child with no heirs. He leaned forward, looking interested. “Does the Society really think it could do something with the mansion? Something for posterity that we’d be remembered by?”

“Of course!” Margaret assured him, squaring her matronly shoulders. “We’re prepared to make this your legacy, Mr. Sloane. Stone mansions of this magnitude are rarely found intact, as you can imagine! Most of the places along this part of Fifth Avenue, which we Pittsburghers so fondly refer to as mansion row, have been turned into apartments or businesses. And yet this remained a private home until you left in the nineties, sir, which makes it very special. Its architecture is gorgeous. The extensive grounds are divine. Even the astonishing stone fountain just off the veranda is in working order. With the exception of the Frick mansion in the Point Breeze neighborhood, few buildings in Pittsburgh are this impressive….”

Sloane leaned further forward. “You really think it compares to the Frick museum?”

“Absolutely!”

“And the Preservation Society would…?”

“The plans—and let me tell you, we have many, Mr. Sloane—are all included in the prospectus in front of you. We’d like to offer tours of the mansion, as well as lectures about the many contributions the Sloanes have made to our city. Maybe open a gift shop. Possibly even lend books from the extensive library. And of course, we’ll be opening a gallery, not only for the photographs displayed in this room, but also for the new art found by Dr. Free….”

Tobias’s eyes shifted to the pornographic pictures again, landing on a charcoal drawing of a woman removing veils as she danced. Most of the stuff wasn’t that racy, at least not by comparison to today’s Guess ads, but in the late 1800s, it must have been as hot as tamales.

Tobias shook his head. Under any other circumstances, he would have laughed. Yes, watching the members of the Preservation Society—mostly prim elderly ladies like Margaret with blue-rinsed hair and American flag pins proudly affixed to the lapels of their linen suits—sit around trying to elevate a porn collection to the level of high art would have brought a chuckle.

Except that Tobias’s ten-year lease on this building was over in a month, and these sweet little ladies were truly going to snap his dream clinic out from under him. Having finally realized he lacked heirs, Sloane had become determined to do something to give his life meaning. As near as Tobias could tell, turning forty had been a rude awakening, and now Sloane hoped the Preservation Society could lend his previously dissipated life some credibility.

To add insult to injury, Tobias had once married Margaret Craig’s daughter, Sandy—this was after Carla DiDolche, of course—and while the union had lasted only three disastrous months before it was annulled, Margaret had never forgiven him for leaving her daughter. Now she was relishing taking away the building in which Tobias housed his life’s work. Oh, yeah, he thought now, eyeing her, Margaret definitely carried a grudge. Probably Sandy had told her mother the truth. That even after marrying another woman, Tobias simply couldn’t get his mind off Carla.