Working With Heat by Anne Calhoun

Author:Anne Calhoun [Calhoun, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-05-24T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

So much for keeping it together with Milla.

Charlie had taught himself to be careful, patient, controlled, all the things he wasn’t when he and Chelsea were burning up all the oxygen in the United Kingdom. He’d taught himself to take no risks. And yet there he’d been, sprawled out in his washroom, utterly bared to her, hearing nothing but his pulse in his ears and the snick of the scissors, lost in the sweet the weight of her hips on his thighs and her fingers against his face and throat. There was no real risk, he told himself, in a safety razor wielded by a friend.

It was a lie. He knew lies now, knew them well. Chelsea had taught him how to do it, how to deceive himself, how to doubt himself.

Milla wasn’t Chelsea. She was loyal, faithful, true. He felt like an ass for being so harsh to her on Friday night. If anything he was surprised Milla hadn’t used her mad social media skills to research him before they’d started sleeping together. He had overreacted to an invasion of privacy, but both the invasion and privacy were an illusion. Milla meant well, but he felt more than he wanted to feel, which meant they were banging into each other like shins against furniture, hurting each other.

Making amends by offering a little more of themselves. After all, friends did travel together, but all the suggestion did was remind him of how small his world had become, and how much he wanted to be more than Milla’s friend.

Monday morning dawned clear, bright and still, promising yet another glorious summer day. Seated at the tiny table in the girls’ flat, Charlie ate his fry-up in silence while the girls chattered around him, putting together this week’s date poll. With rather more force than necessary, he speared the last pieces of sausage and tomato, then lifted the fork to his mouth.

“Milla bought her Orient Express tickets today,” Elsa said as she dropped the frying pan into the dishwater.

“You chose a route?”

“I’m going through Vienna,” she said. A hint of color stained her cheeks, barely visible through the thick curtain of her hair. She’d left it down today, and it framed her face, emphasizing her eyes, mouth and stubborn chin.

Charlie found he was unreasonably annoyed, both with the process of picking dates for Milla and with her decision to go through Vienna. This week’s poll included yet another banker, an accountant and IT Guy, whom Milla wanted on the list again. “Why do you assign them nicknames based on their jobs?”

All three girls looked at him. Elsa was still in her kimono. Kaitlin was dressed for work in jeans and a T-shirt bearing the logo for a theatre production she’d designed. Milla wore a dress with a wide collar that bared her arms and stopped just at her knees. It was another retro look he could describe as a sheath only because he’d been dragged downstairs more times than he could count to help one of them put together an outfit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.