Uninhibited. Candace Schuler
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tea.
“Pamela Anderson,” Eddie said helpfully as he curled his meaty fingers around the curved brass handles on the elaborately carved double doors leading into the parlor. “You know, the blond babe with the prodigiously fine hooters.” He pushed the doors open with a flourish. “Mr. Sullivan has arrived, ma’am,” he intoned sonorously, bowing slightly toward his employer, as stiff and proper as if he had never uttered the word hooters—nor even knew what it meant.
The two women sitting on the pale blue brocade Victorian settee looked up expectantly. Moira Sullivan appeared much the same as she had the first time Reed had taken tea with her, nearly twenty-five years ago. She was wearing one of her elegant afternoon suits, a deep wine-colored bouclé that was immensely flattering against her pale skin and soft white hair. A triple strand of milky pearls adorned her neck. A large, square-cut sapphire sparkled on her right hand, complement to the impressive sapphire-and-diamond wedding set on her left. But it was her eyes that caught and held Reed’s attention. Bluer than the sapphires she wore, they were full of warmth and welcome, as always, with an undisguised hint of excitement and anticipation lurking in their depths.
“Hello, Gran,” he said cautiously, his gaze shifting to the young woman who sat beside his elegant, aged, conniving relative.
The redhead’s eyes were as big and brown as Eddie had said they were, wide set and heavily lashed beneath thick, sharply arched auburn brows. Her hair was a riotous mass of corkscrew curls that tumbled well past her shoulders. Her clothes were a colorful hodgepodge of fabric and style.
More gypsy than waif, Reed decided in that first comprehensive glance.
She wore a man’s soft white tuxedo shirt with a wing collar and an intricate Celtic brooch at the throat. Fanciful earrings of twisted metal and shiny stones dangled from her ears, glittering through the mass of springy curls. Dark forest-green, velvet pants were tucked into purple suede half-boots. A knitted mohair shawl in deep, rich shades of gold, brown and aubergine slipped off one shoulder to pool on the brocade settee beside her, its soft, nubby folds spilling over the edge toward the floor. Reed couldn’t tell anything about her alleged killer body because of that shawl and the large tapestry bag she held open on her lap, but her mouth was…well, soft and sexy didn’t even begin to describe it, he decided after a moment’s absorbed reflection.
Her lips were full and beautifully sculpted, as pink and glossy and moist as if she’d just finished eating a raspberry Popsicle. It was the kind of mouth made for heated, heedless kisses and breathless promises whispered in the dark across a satin pillow. Not a waif’s mouth, but a gypsy’s.
And he didn’t date gypsies—not even gorgeous, sexy gypsies—any more than he dated waifs. He dated nice, normal, conventional, well-bred women; the kind of women the men in his family had been dating and marrying for generations; the kind of women who were exactly like the last three women he’d met in Moira’s parlor over the past couple of months. The kind of women, in fact, who were exactly like the kind of woman he thought he’d been engaged to a couple of years ago.
It had turned out that his ex-fiancée hadn’t been all that conventional, after all, when it came right down to it. After a five-year engagement, she’d more or less left him standing at the altar and run off to New Orleans to work in a friend’s lingerie shop while she decided whether or not she really wanted to get married. She decided she did—to a laid-back New Orleans hairdresser rather than Reed’s illustrious self.
He’d put a good face on it—Sullivans always put a good face on things—but it had been quite a blow. To his pride, if nothing else. And truth be told, after all the dust had settled, he’d realized it was only his pride that had suffered any real damage; his heart had remained completely unscathed. In retrospect, he realized that Katherine had been absolutely right to run out on him because what he’d felt for her—what they’d felt for each other—had been nothing more than lifelong friendship coupled with a desire to satisfy family expectations. Reed still intended to satisfy his family’s expectations, and his own, as well. Eventually.
So what in hell was his dear granny up to?
It certainly couldn’t be matchmaking, not with this woman.
Could it?
“Shall I get the tea cart now, ma’am?” Eddie asked, his voice jolting Reed out of his absorption with Moira’s flamboyant guest and the likely reason for her presence in his great-grandmother’s front parlor.
“Yes, please, Eddie.” The whisper of an Irish lilt enhanced Moira Sullivan’s voice, adding piquancy to her upper-crust Boston accent. “And remind Mrs. Wheaton that there should be plenty of scones on the tray, won’t you?” She flashed a warm smile at the young woman sitting next to her. “I promised our guest a traditional tea with scones and clotted cream and strawberry preserves.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Eddie bowed again and backed out of the room, pulling the doors closed behind him.
Moira lifted her hand, extending it toward her great-grandson. “Reed, dear,” she said, her voice overflowing with delight. “Come and meet my new friend. This is Zoe Moon.” She flashed a warm, approving smile at the young woman sitting beside her. “Miss Zoe Moon,” she added, beaming like a proud mother showing off her new baby.
Reed stifled a sigh. No doubt about it now. As unlikely as it seemed, he’d just been introduced to yet another candidate for the position of Mrs. Reed Sullivan IV. It had been almost three years since his aborted trip down the aisle, and obviously his dear old granny was getting desperate to see him take that walk again. After all, he’d be thirty-four soon and no other Sullivan male in documented history had made it past thirty unwed. For him to have crossed that benchmark still a bachelor was looked upon as not quite proper—suspect, even—by the more conservative members of the family. Which was nearly all of them.
Plastering a polite smile on his face, Reed moved across the carpet to take his great-grandmother’s outstretched hand, resigned to enduring the next two hours of her relentless matchmaking efforts with all the charm and good grace at his command.
“How are you, sweetheart?” he said, bending to kiss Moira’s cheek. He nodded at the young woman sitting next to her as he straightened. “Miss Moon.”
“Call me Zoe, please,” she said as she extended her hand to him.
The scent of violets, incongruously sweet and old-fashioned, drifted up to meet him as he reached out to shake her hand. Her palm was cool and small against his, the fingers long and tapering, delicate but not fragile. Her nails were painted a gleaming coppery color and she wore several narrow rings of various metals, some with glittering stones like the ones in her ears.
Reed had a brief, heated image of those slender, bejeweled hands on his bare back, the gleaming nails pressing into hard muscle as she arched under him and begged for more. He withdrew his hand from hers.
“Reed Sullivan,” he murmured politely, wondering if she was available for anything other than the matrimonial bliss his great-grandmother was so dead set on.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” Zoe Moon’s voice was throaty and melodious, as seductive as the rest of her. The look in her eyes as she smiled up at him was friendly, curious and just slightly speculative, as if she were sizing him up.
As possible husband material, no doubt, he thought cynically.
“Moira has told me so much about you,” Zoe Moon said.
“Really?” He shot a cool, amused glance at his great-grandmother and seated himself in the wing chair opposite the settee. A low piecrust table, its gleaming surface decorated with an arrangement of golden button mums in a crystal bowl, occupied the space between them. “She hasn’t said a word about you to me.”
“That’s because Zoe and I only just met this past Monday,” Moira informed him.
Oh, great, he thought, now she’s parading complete strangers under my nose!
“Zoe’s an entrepreneur.”
“Really?”