Read Online Beatrice and Douglas by Kelly Lucille - Free Book Online Page A

Then he treated the woman
with a wide smile.  “Coffee would be excellent.  Black.”
    “Sure thing, sugar.  I’ll be right back with
that.”  She winked and then pulled two menus out from beneath her arms and
sauntered off on three-inch high-heeled leather boots.  Douglas watched
her walk away for a minute, his eyes wide on her rolling walk.  The woman
had to be sixty, easy.
    “Do you need a minute?” Beatrice asked on a laugh.
    “Probably,” he said shaking his head, “that’s not something
you see every day.”  The ‘Thank God’ was implied, but remained unsaid.
    Beatrice looked over at the roving server.  Alice was
coming back with a coffee pot and cups, but stopped to lean over the table of
an obviously delighted senior citizen with an oxygen tank.
    “Maybe when we get to be her age we’ll have that much game
left . . . but I doubt it.”
    “Speak for yourself.  I intend to be chasing nurses
around the hospital bed when I hit 105.”  He leaned over the booth and
took her hand.  “Speaking of which.  Where were we?”  He
smiled.  “Right.  Your flakiness.  There is only one sure way
you don’t become one of those sad ditzy females who blow hot and cold.”
    “Really, do enlighten me.”
    “Just stick with the ‘take me to your bed’ part.”  He
laughed when she rolled her eyes.  “You’re not a flake, Bumble Bee. 
You just like to over think things.”
    “Whereas you go with the flow?” she asked with her brow
raised in doubt.  “Please, the longest I have ever seen you with the same
woman was a weekend.  We both know you suck at keeping relationships going
worse than I do, and that’s saying something.”
    “No one else was you and me.”
    Alice was back before she could respond to that.  But, since
she had no idea what to say, she made a big production of opening her menu and
then ordering without reading it.
    “I’ll have the French toast.”
    He let her have that play, though he did watch her with that
sexy smirk of his, all the while she made her breakfast choices.  Then he
ordered the same thing with extra bacon and a tall milk.  Beatrice kept
her eyes open and on his, meeting his obvious challenge. 
    Alice finally finished making her notes and floated away
with another wink at Douglas.
    “I suppose you’re going to tell me you have been wasting
away, dating swimsuit models as a last resort while you waited for me to notice
you pining in the corner?”
    “Maybe.”  He shrugged, sounding not at all
serious.  “You finally drove me to drink, and I figured I should make my
move, before you did something idiotic, like marry the wrong man.”
    “And all that time when you were driving me crazy and
teasing me, it was all, what. . . some kind of defense mechanism to protect
your beleaguered heart?”
    “More like sexual frustration.”
    Beatrice searched his eyes finding the usual teasing smirk
and some serious heat.  She swallowed.  Hard.  “So what are you
actually suggesting here?  A trial run?  Marriage and a white picket
fence?  A weekend fling?  What?”
    He rubbed his thumb over the knuckles he still held, his
eyes searching her face.  “How about we just see where this leads when we
aren’t fighting each other every step of the way?”
    She rolled her eyes again.  “We know where it leads,
apparently it leads right to bed.”  She sighed, then bit her lip,
thinking.  “All right.  We’ll just let it be and see where we end
up.  But, when one of us is done, we don’t try to spare feelings.  We
just say straight out and move on.”
    “I can get behind that.”  He pulled on her hand to make
sure he had her attention.  His eyes going flat and serious on hers. 
“But only if it’s a real end and not some lame attempt to keep me at a distance
because you’re afraid of your own feelings.”
    She opened her mouth and closed it again.  “Douglas
Bruce.  Have you been watching Doctor Phil?”
    “You say that like it’s a bad