Alison Kent - Indiscreet

Annabel refused to let this evening end with another of Patrick’s disappearing acts. He rarely made it through a meal’s first course when there were more than the two of them present.

“What?”

Now that she had his attention, she reached back with both hands, took hold of her zipper and slowly eased it down. Her dress parted and began to slide from her shoulders. Ah, yes. She had his attention now.

“Annabel?” His voice a husky rasp, Patrick shifted his hips and widened his legs where he sat. “What are you doing?”

“I’m offering you dessert. With one caveat. You stay, you don’t run out and then you can have dessert.”

He shook his head and wrapped his arm around her and pulled her forward. “Anytime, anywhere, any way. That was the deal.”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts. Now, here, standing exactly as you are. That’s what I want.”

This was not going at all as she’d planned. All she’d wanted to do was convince him that it wouldn’t kill him to stay. Now she was the one battling the urge to feel. Patrick Coffey was one dangerous man.

Dear Reader,

What a long, fun trip gIRL-gEAR has been! From six single professional females to nine committed couples…plus weddings, engagements and babies on the way!

Thank you so much for loving the stories and the characters of gIRL-gEAR. Leaving the series now, I feel as if I’m saying goodbye to friends. I want to come back in five years and hear the pitter-patter of little gIRL-gEAR feet.

Yes, I know. There’s still Jess Morgan and Nolan Ford and now Devon Lee left hanging. Not to mention Chloe’s brothers, Colin, Richard and Jay. Oh, and didn’t Anton have a younger brother? And Macy was the youngest of how many siblings?

See? These characters have become like family to me. And walking out of their lives is going to be tough. But I’m strong. I will survive! Plus, I can always visit them again on the Web at www.gIRL-gEAR.com!

And you can visit me, too, at www.AlisonKent.com. The girls and I would all love to hear from you!

Best!

Alison Kent

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Behind every successful author stands a good critique group, even better friends and a family that’s the best. As always, to Jan Freed.

A special thank-you to Bekke and Rey for respecting my voice, for refusing to don kid gloves, for the nits and the giggles. And to Walt, for loving me and all that entails.

Ahoy, my fine maties! Samantha Venus here again for Urban Attitude Magazine, asking how much did the pirate pay for corn? Why, a buck an ear, of course!

Here he is. The one you’ve been waiting for. The cocky frat boy turned savage beast who, by the way, dropped quite the treasure chest of cash to purchase Ms. Annabel “Poe” Lee at the gIRL-gEAR Halloween bachelorette auction. According to a message in a bottle, the two have been inseparable since!

A little bird named Polly told me that our studly young thing will be plying his cooking skills for the New Year’s Eve showing at the Gallery at Three Mings. (And did I mention that incredibly sexy Devon Lee will be on hand? The man can invite me up to see his etchings anytime!)

Avast, ye scurvy landlubbers! Until we sail the high seas again, this is Samantha Venus, walking the plank.

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

THE HARDEST THING a woman had to do was tell a man to leave when she wasn’t sure she wanted him to go.

Or so Annabel Lee decided as she stood in front of her office’s wall of windows in the gIRL-gEAR complex, staring at the east-west headlights and taillights dueling down Houston’s Southwest Freeway.

With one section of the miniblinds raised and the lights turned off, the darkness of her office blended with that of the night sky, creating an encompassing theater of black. The glow from the hallway outside her door provided the only illumination. She didn’t need any more.

It was eight o’clock on Friday night.

It was the seventeenth of December.

Two weeks of vacation loomed ahead. Time she’d set aside to recover from the grueling study schedule she’d kept for the past month, a schedule that had helped her ace her finals, bringing her another step closer to completing her forensic anthropology degree.

Two weeks to explore her options—both career and personal. An exploration best done in solitude, no matter that her partners in the gIRL-gEAR fashion empire, where she held a vice-presidential position, insisted otherwise. They wanted to brainstorm, to role-play, to run aptitude tests, to make introductions, to initiate contacts.

Like Greta Garbo, Annabel simply wanted to be left alone.

She’d done all she could to limit disruptions to her self-imposed exile. She’d set an auto-response on her e-mail accounts, had vowed to check phone messages but once a day. Her voice mail gave emergency instructions on reaching her through gIRL-gEAR’s CEO, Sydney Ford.

It wasn’t as if Annabel wouldn’t be seeing her partners at all during her time away from the office. She was hosting a casual Christmas Eve dinner for those staying home for the holidays, though the finalization of those details would be no more than a minor distraction. And, yes. She had an impending New Year’s Eve catering disaster to divert, which would, unfortunately, take a bit of time and effort.

Neither of those, however, rivaled her most immediate crisis. Because tonight, during the four hours or so that remained between leaving the office and going to bed, she had to give up sex.

Celibacy had never before presented a problem. She wouldn’t have gotten as far as she had in life without learning the value of discipline. She was thirty-three years old and hadn’t been a virgin for a very long time. She’d experienced her fair share of devoted lovers as well as a few whose loyalties had belonged in another’s bed. Never in her life, however, had she been swept away by a man’s body.

Yet for seven weeks now she’d been drowning.

Taking stock of her life required total concentration, unwavering focus. The distraction of sex would be impossible to resist, the temptation to experience mindless oblivion insurmountable. At least this sex, this oblivion, and all of what she had with this man. She had to pour her energies into her self-assessment—not into bed nor a relationship that would never go anywhere beyond.