Read Online Guilty Pleasures by Bertrice Small - Free Book Online

in the Channel. Could she? Should she? Her hesitant finger lay upon the DELETE button. Carla rolled over in her bed. Even now Rick was flying over the Atlantic. He’d be home in a few hours, and she suddenly realized she couldn’t wait to see him. She loved him, and he loved her. And in a few months, they would be taking together the first vacation they had had in years. Carla could hardly wait. She pressed down hard on the button beneath her finger.
    Fantasy deleted, the syrupy voice said. And then the television clicked off.

NINA AND THE MOVIE STAR

    “H ave dinner with us tomorrow,”Ashley Kimbrough Mulcahy said to Nina, the manager of her Egret Pointe shop, Lacy Nothings. “A client of Ryan’s is building a house here in Egret Pointe. He’ll be staying with us this weekend.”
    “Are you trying to fix me up?” Nina Parsons said with a smile. She was a pretty women in her midfifties with fashionably short strawberry blond hair and warm brown eyes. “I told you a long time ago I’m not breaking in another husband, and the Channel satisfies my libido.”
    Ashley laughed. “But you aren’t against dinner out with a good-looking man, are you?” she teased her longtime employee. “Besides, a foursome is better than a threesome.”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” Nina replied, unable to resist. “I think threesomes are fun.”
    “Nina!” Ashley said.
    “Okay, okay! I’ll have dinner out with you, your delectable hubby, and the mystery man,” Nina agreed. “Where? And what time?”
    “Saturday night at the East Harbor Inn,” Ashley said. “We’ll pick you up. The chauffeur will be driving, so we can all drink the night away.”
    “Sounds good to me,” Nina replied. “What’s he like, the mystery man?”
    “Early sixties. Good-looking. Two divorces,” Ashley responded.
    “Sounds difficult if two women have dumped him.” Nina carefully threaded a price tag onto the silk nightgown as she spoke.
    “I don’t think so. The first was ages ago. The second, from what I gather, is because wife number two didn’t want to live in the Northeast. Couple of years ago. No kids from either marriage.”
    “So he’s fancy-free. Does the mystery man have a name?” Nina inquired.
    “Bob. Robert Talcott. I actually think you two will enjoy each other’s company,” Ashley told her companion.
    “Well,” Nina said, “a free dinner with two people I actually like and a mystery man will make a nice treat tomorrow night.”
    “Ryan will be tickled pink. He really wanted you to come,” Ashley responded.
    Nina smiled. “Ryan is hunky sweet. His mama brought him up right.”
    “She did,” Ashley agreed. “Well, I have to jet. Mr. Hunky has been watching the kids while I came into the village. Car will pick you up at seven.”
    “I’ll be waiting,” Nina promised as her employer hurried out the door. Then, as it was close to five thirty, she prepared to close Lacy Nothings. Late summer wasn’t their busy season anyway, but the autumn wedding season and the holidays loomed ahead. Already the special orders and Christmas items were beginning to arrive. After emptying the till into the night deposit bag, she locked up, made the bank run, and headed home.
    Nina Parsons had been widowed for ten years. Her husband, Charlie, had owned Egret Pointe Insurance along with his younger brother, Ralph. When Charlie had died suddenly of a massive coronary, Nina had learned to her distress that while she owned her late husband’s half interest in the business, it was Ralph who was to be in charge. She would be given Charlie’s share in the profits quarterly. If Ralph sold the company, she would have half of the sale price.
    And that was exactly what Ralph Parsons had done. He had, at the urging of his hysterical wife, found a buyer for Egret Pointe Insurance. May Parsons didn’t want her husband to end up like his older brother. She had convinced him that selling and taking an early retirement in Arizona was the right thing