Read Online Blonde Ambition by Zoey Dean - Free Book Online

Princeton casually. She wondered if that was part of the reason she was holding back: her knowledge that soon he’d have to leave.
    “How much school have you missed?”
    Ben groaned. “Anna, we came out here to get away from stress, not bring it with us.”
    He was right. Why, why, why couldn’t she learn to just
be
in the moment?
    “Sorry,” she whispered, then leaned down to kiss him. His arms circled her. She kissed his neck, down his chest. She heard him groan.
    “Don’t start what you’re not going to finish,” he said hoarsely.
    Anna was determined to stay in the now. Not the past, when Ben had abandoned her on the boat. And not the murky future, when he’d leave for college.
    She raised herself over him and whispered in his ear: “Race you to the finish.”
    He rolled her over and pinned her down with his strong hands. He smiled down into her eyes. “You’re on.”
    Anna awoke with a start. The same boat, the same bed, the same no one beside her. Oh my God, it was happening all over again! She threw off the covers, not thinking about how naked she was, and jumped out of bed …
    Just as Ben came down the cabin stairs with two steaming cups of fresh-brewed coffee from the boat’s tiny galley. “If you greet me in that outfit, I’ll bring you coffee anytime.”
    “I thought you were …”
    She felt too stupid and couldn’t finish the sentence. “Gone? You really thought that?”
    She didn’t answer him. Instead she crawled back into bed. He handed her the coffee and sat next to her. “I’m so sorry, Anna. I swear to you, it will never, ever happen again.”
    He looked so sad, so earnest. She nodded and gratefully sipped the coffee. What they’d shared for the past couple of hours had been amazing. She’d fallen asleep with a contented smile on her lips. How could she wake up with the same old fears?
    A memory, long buried, flitted into her mind. Of her father, there one day and then … gone. Her mother wouldn’t talk about it. In fact, it was nearly a year until she informed her daughters that she and their father had gone through a very civil divorce and Jonathan Percy was now living in Beverly Hills, California, his hometown. She wanted to tell Ben about this. Yet something stopped her. For all her insight into “bonding,” Anna knew little about intimacy. God knew she hadn’t learned it from the
This Is How We Do Things
    Big Book, East Coast WASP edition. Sharing something so personal was number one in that apocryphal book’s “Thou Shalt Nots.”
    So she didn’t. Instead she sipped her coffee and tried to enjoy the moment for what it was.
    Ninety minutes later they’d docked at Marina del Rey, secured the boat, and made their way back to Ben’s parked car. Ben cranked the heater, gallantly making sure that the vents were pointed at Anna as they pulled out of the marina’s parking lot. “Have fun?”
    “It was wonderful,” Anna assured him. She kissed her fingertips and touched them to his cheek as her eyes flicked to the clock on his dashboard. Nearly midnight. Theoretically there was school the next day.
    On the boat ride back to the marina Anna had filled Ben in on how she’d be interning for Clark Sheppard at the Apex agency. And now, as they drove back to Beverly Hills, she found herself thinking about it … as well as the look Cammie had fired in her direction when Clark had summarily dismissed his daughter from his office.
    Evidently the subject was on Ben’s mind, too. Out of nowhere he said, “Listen, watch your elegant ass around Cammie Sheppard, okay?”
    “I have no interest in giving her a moment’s thought.”
    “She’s capable of pretty much anything.”
    “You’re aware that she still wants you back,” Anna pointed out.
    “She knows I’m not interested.”
    Something made Anna press the point as Ben sped north on Lincoln Boulevard toward the 10 freeway. “You’re the one who said she’s capable of anything. She could hop on a jet and show up at