Read Online Blush by Cherry Adair - Free Book Online Page A

was who she really was. Her name was immaterial.
    Yeah, go ahead and tell yourself that, Mia mocked. That name was on Forbes ’s list of the richest women in the world. It might have some bearing on how he perceived her if he knew.
    But Mia Hayward owned a run-down, two-hundred-year-old, weed-infested property in the wilds of Louisiana. Here, her net worth wasn’t relevant, to him or anyone else.
    Now she wore clothes bought at a store that also sold produce and cat food, and she’d had her waist-length hair chopped off at a walk-in chain salon. They’d done a crappy job. One side was longer than the other. Not in an avant-garde way, just a bad haircut. She kinda liked the way the messy, piecy style framed her face. It was different for her, not perfect, but fun.
    If anyone had told her three months ago that she’d be clean-faced, wearing inexpensive, off-the-rack shorts, and loving the freedom it gave her to do these things, she wouldn’t have believed them. It was just starting to sink in that she wasn’t living her real life.
    She didn’t have to wake up at five, work out for an hour in her home gym with her trainer, and get her hair and makeup done while her staff prepped her for her day via teleconferences from around the world. She didn’t have to hurry downstairs where her personal chef had a hot breakfast waiting for her. In her real life, she’d have to catch up with the news, make telephone calls, tackle urgent emails in the car, and be at her desk at Blush headquarters by eight thirty sharp.
    She had never woken to find herself spread-eagled and naked on the kitchen table.
    Mia Hayward’s life was starting to get interesting.
    “The bacon’s frozen. Should I defrost it, or pass?” She should pass. As much as she loved bacon, at home she only allowed herself two strips once a month.
    “Defrost in the microwave.”
    The microwave was in the cabinet beside the stove, necessitating her walking up right beside him. She popped the door to the microwave and shoved the package in. “High?”
    “Defrost. You really don’t know your way around a kitchen, do you?”
    “I eat out a lot.” Banquet-style meals, dinner meetings at upscale restaurants, or home with her personal chef.
    “Come and watch.”
    Leaning her hip against a nearby counter, eager to watch. Him, not him cooking. Mia put her hands behind her, then realized it was the gesture of a three-year-old and stuck her fingertips in her front pockets of her shorts instead. She wasalmost as fascinated by her response to Cruz as she was by Cruz himself.
    “Closer.”
    “I can see just fine from here.”
    “Hands-on cooking can be a very sensual experience. What’s the matter? Scared?”
    Heart pounding a little too fast for a cooking lesson, Mia raised a mocking brow. “Of an egg?” She didn’t move, but he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her flush against his body, his hard front pressed to her back. She stood trapped between his heat and the stove. She stiffened. “I’ll get burned.” In more ways than one.
    “I won’t let anything hurt you. Turn the burner to low. We’re going to do this nice and slow. French-style scrambled eggs must be seduced slowly.”
    Her legs felt as insubstantial as jelly as she felt the hard length of his penis in the crack of her ass through the thin cotton of her shorts. Hot all over, all her nerve endings feeling exposed, Mia turned the knob on the stove as if hypnotized.
    Why did he smell so damn good? As far as she was aware, he wore no cologne. Just sexy, soapy-clean male skin. Her brain darted to an image of him standing in the shower, a slow trail of foamy white soapsuds drizzling down his slick, wet body as slowly as a glacier, then pausing, like the yummy frosting on a cake, on the hard ridge of his—
    Mia blinked the stove back into focus. Holy crap! Get a grip!
    He reached around her, his arm brushing her breast, to adjust the knob on the stove.
    Mia put a palm over the warm burner.