Kiss Don’t Tell. Avril Tremayne
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she could get the timbre of her own voice a little lower. Would that automatically make her sexier?
‘Lane?’
And now it was kind of urgent.
‘Lane!’
She blinked. Refocused. Blinked again. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was thinking of …’ How your voice will sound up close against my ear, how my voice will sound in your ear, when we— ‘Never mind. Just … thinking.’
Adam looked at her for a long moment. ‘You need to think less,’ he said.
‘Think less, feel more,’ she said. ‘Yes, I got that.’
‘So … Saturday?’
‘Saturday, yes, all right,’ she said.
Another long look from Adam. A half-step towards her, and then he said something under his breath, spun on his heel, and strode out of the room.
Lane heard the front door open … then close.
‘Saturday,’ she said, and looked down at herself—at her perfectly buttoned shirt, at her navy blue skirt, at her flat black shoes—and groaned. ‘Oh God, I’m going to have to go shopping.’
Surely the green dress that had just been thrown over the top of the fitting room door was the only remaining untried outfit in the metropolis.
But apparently not, because two other dresses, a skirt and a satin top followed in quick succession.
Lane stifled a little scream. She only had herself to blame for this girly shopping trip. She’d thrown herself at Erica the minute Erica had arrived home from Los Angeles last night, garbled out what had happened in her absence and begged for her help choosing an appropriate wardrobe for her sex classes. Erica, with a martial look in her eye, had insisted on inviting Sarah along too, since Sarah had ‘already been so helpful’ in persuading Adam to take Lane on as his private student, and now …
Well, now, having spent three hours being pelted with assorted items of clothing, with only a black cocktail frock to show for the girls’ combined efforts, Lane was thinking longingly of her navy blue suit. And the fact that Erica and Sarah were whispering furiously to each other every time they banished Lane to a fitting room wasn’t helping to reconcile her to the prospect of any more shopping.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put together the mishmash of phrases Lane managed to overhear and conclude that she was the topic under discussion. Well, her and Adam Quinn and their ‘ridiculous contract’.
‘I can’t take much more of this,’ Lane called out to the girls, who answered her by lobbing a leather jacket into the room.
Dispiritedly, Lane slipped the green dress over her head and stretched it into place. She looked at herself in the mirror and had to stifle another little scream. Awful. Scary, even. She looked like a green bean with breasts.
How did Erica and Sarah both manage to consistently look like they’d walked off a high fashion runway no matter what they were wearing? Lane was closer to a model shape than either of her friends—Erica being more voluptuous and Sarah being almost too tiny to be real—so why did everything she tried on look silly on her?
She slipped the leather jacket on over the dress. It didn’t improve the look.
Time to admit this was a waste of time. When she thought about it logically, it wasn’t as though David Bennett had ever appeared to be turned off by the suits she wore to work; he saw her in them practically every day and still managed to flirt with her! So if she packed away the momentary panic engendered on Wednesday night by Adam and his two undone buttons, wouldn’t she be better served by buying a couple of negligees to replace her white cotton nightgowns and leaving it at that? Things for going to bed?
She couldn’t wear that black cocktail dress to bed! She didn’t need that black cocktail dress at all—and certainly not for the next three months. It wasn’t as though she’d be going to a cocktail party with Adam Quinn!
So she would go out there, show the girls this current fashion disaster, then she’d insist on going home. After one last disgusted look at herself in the mirror, she exited the fitting room without even bothering to brace for the verdict.
Erica’s hastily bitten lip did not suggest anything complimentary would be forthcoming. ‘Maybe take off the jacket …?’ Erica suggested.
Lane took off the jacket.
‘The colour’s nice,’ Sarah ventured, ever the optimist.
Lane raised disbelieving eyebrows.
‘Well, it is,’ Sarah insisted.
‘We’re making a mistake with the tight sheaths,’ Erica said. ‘You’ve got the boobs for them but the leanness everywhere else isn’t screaming sex.’
‘Who said I wanted to scream sex?’ Lane asked, a little alarmed. ‘I don’t want to scream sex. I don’t want to scream anything. I don’t want to scream.’
‘Then what was the point of hiring Adam Quinn?’ Erica asked.
‘Not to … to scream,’ Lane said.
‘Oh God help us all, do we have to do this?’ Sarah, covering her eyes with a hand.
‘The thing is, Lane, there’s screaming and then there’s screaming,’ Erica said, giving the hem of the green dress a slight tug. ‘And I thought this little fashion expedition was about putting you in the hands of Adam Quinn to entice a certain type of scream out of you.’ She stood back and looked Lane up and down again. ‘But this definitely isn’t going to do the trick, so try the pale pink silk dress Sarah chose for you instead. It’s kind of floaty and romantic, and if you cinch it with this—’ she handed over a thick, dark gold belt ‘—we might be onto something.’
‘Pink?’ Lane asked doubtfully. ‘With carrot hair?’
Erica shook a finger at her. ‘Stop channelling Jeanne-the-Martyr! I keep telling you, your hair isn’t carrot, it’s scarlet. Girls spend a fortune at the hairdresser trying to get that exact shade of red. And you will be very surprised how lovely pale pink will look with it. Now, in!’
‘All right, but if I try it on, can we go home?’ Lane asked.
‘No. But if I like it and you buy it, we can drink margaritas. And I will even consent to going that hellhole bar you and Sarah like—especially if we can talk more about the elusive Mr Quinn.’
‘He’s not elusive,’ Sarah said reproachfully. ‘He’s just my brother, and not, as I keep telling you, a psychopath.’
‘Be that as it may, he’s still an unknown quantity and—as far as I’m concerned—and unmet quantity, so if I’m trusting my best friend’s tender heart to him, I need reassurance.’ She gave Lane a little push towards the fitting room. ‘So in please, margaritas and conversation await.’
Lane stood her ground. ‘As long as you understand I’m not dressing myself to please Adam.’
Another push. ‘In, Lane.’
Lane reluctantly re-entered the fitting room, and as she closed the door she heard Sarah whisper, ‘What are you doing, Erica? Don’t talk about hearts. Adam’s a commitment-phobe; he’s not interested in hearts!’
‘Shh!’ A hiss from Erica.
‘Well, to listen to you talk, anyone would think he was …’ But Sarah’s voice dropped so low at that intriguing point that strain though Lane did, she could only hear a snatched word or two after that.
Anyone would think he was what? How she wished she knew. Maybe