Read Online About Last Night by Ruthie Knox - Free Book Online Page A

the stairs with a foot in the arse, then closed the door with a weary sigh.
    He ought to have seen it coming.
    But it was bizarre, wasn’t it? By any objective standard? He found it difficult to be certain sometimes. His family was so far from normal, they had a way of scrambling his sense of how ordinary people behaved. Which was one of the reasons he’d insisted on moving out in the first place.
    He couldn’t imagine why Mother and Winston were so anxious to get him down the aisle. It was hardly a disgrace to be a bachelor at twenty-eight, and it wasn’t as though Mother required an heir or needed more grandchildren to cuddle. The notion of her cuddling anyone was frankly alarming. Perhaps she simply wanted a big social event to plan.
    More likely, his move to Greenwich had loosened the noose she kept around his neck, and she wanted to tighten it up, simply to demonstrate that she could.
    She could. But only if he allowed her to.
    What his mother failed to understand was that he’d made up his mind to stop allowing her to. He’d grown tired of living someone else’s life, of waking up in the family home and commuting to work at the family bank under his brother’s thumb. Moving to Greenwich had been his first step toward independence. He wasn’t about to turn around and find some polished society woman to wed because his mother and brother thought he should.
    He wouldn’t play along anymore. When they went to tighten the noose, they would find it was no longer around his neck.

Chapter Seven
    She did what she could to avoid City. Skipping her Monday-morning run, she showed up at the station at six-thirty, more than half an hour before his usual train. Once seated, she plugged her iPod into her ears and delved into her bag for her journal and favorite pen. But when she looked up for inspiration, she found herself staring into a very familiar pair of green-brown eyes.
    “Good morning, Mary Catherine.”
    He was standing with one hip braced casually against the pole for support. Dressed for work in a dark blue suit and a silvery tie, City was every inch the banker again—except he was smiling his shark smile, and he no longer looked the least bit remote or cold.
    Nope, everything about the man was seriously hot.
    Cath tried to ignore the flush of pleasure that washed over her at the sight of him, but it was hard. Half a dozen different places on her body were reminding her of what he’d done to them on Saturday, and not one had a bad word to say about him. Stupid body.
    She closed her eyes and took a moment to roll the fortifications into place around her heart. He wasn’t playing fair—she hadn’t expected to see him again this morning. She hadn’t expected to see him again at all. And he’d switched tactics. Where was the impassive City face from Saturday morning, the one that had told her to git on home?
    “This isn’t your train,” she said. She could be chilly. She could totally be chilly.
    “No. You weren’t at the park this morning.”
    He’d been looking for her. With a near-audible thunk , a little spear of pleasure hit the ramparts she’d tossed up to protect herself, and she bit her lip. Silly to be delighted by his interest. She was finished with him. She was New Cath again.
    The train stopped at Cutty Sark, the doors opening with the usual high-pitched beeping, and she considered flight. Because she was delighted by his interest, and all New Cath had onhand to keep him at bay were temporary defenses, weak and termite-riddled. There were ten more stops between here and Bank. The walls would never hold.
    The train doors closed.
    Flight wouldn’t have worked anyway. City was standing directly in front of her, and even though his eyes were lit with amusement, there was resolve there, too. The odds he’d let her slip by him were slim.
    She opted for silence, hoping she could drive him away with her obvious lack of interest. A lack of interest she’d probably be more successful in conveying if