Read Online Mistletoe Maneuvers by Margaret Allison - Free Book Online

You know, he didn’t want an office affair.”
    Great in bed…
    Lessa turned up the air conditioner, as if a blast of cold air might cool her off. She had to stop thinking like this. Maybe if she had more of a social life, maybe if she had a social life, she wouldn’t even notice Rick.
    Unfortunately, it had been years since she’d been intimate with a man. And her last date had been months earlier, when her aunt had fixed her up with a friend’s grandson. On paper he had sounded great, an engineer and part-time pro at a tennis club in the city. But it had been a disaster, right down to the three gold chains around his neck and the way he’d referred to every woman they’d encountered—the waitress, the hostess, the old lady whose cab he’d tried to steal—as “doll.” The icing on the cake had been when he’d told her that for a businesswoman she had a “nice rack.” And he should know, he’d added, because he’d “known”—big wink—a lot of businesswomen.
    She knew her aunt blamed her long hours for her lack of a social life, but Lessa knew the problem was more complicated than that. After all, what twenty-six-year-old woman these days had only slept with one man?One sexual affair to her credit and that had ended five years ago. Since then, she hadn’t dated anyone longer than a week or two. And it wasn’t just her love life that was suffering. Her entire social life was lacking. She had tried to make friends since she had come to New York to work for Lawrence, but it was difficult. Everyone she met was connected with Lawrence. Men were intimidated by her position and women tended to avoid her like the plague. One time she had invited a potential friend out for coffee only to find that the woman had not slept the night before, so worried was she that Lessa’s invitation had been a ruse to fire her.
    The truth of the matter was that Lessa didn’t fit in with people her own age any more than she fit in with her fellow board members. Patience, her aunt had told her. It will all change with time.
    But how could it when she spent all of her time at work? There was no way around it: She was lonely. It had gotten so bad that lately she had begun to wonder if perhaps she was destined for a life without love.
    â€œIt’s freezing in here.”
    At the sound of Rick’s voice, she turned. The sight of him, standing in the doorway with a mere towel around his waist, was enough to take her breath away. “You couldn’t get dressed?” she asked, quickly averting her eyes.
    â€œNot without my clothes.”
    She hurried past him and into the bathroom. He had left the shower running for her. She hurriedly took off her suit and stepped into the warm water. Only then did she realize that her clothes were still in the other room. She had been so flustered when Rick had come out ina towel that she had neglected to get her things. Now she had no choice but to do the same thing she had faulted Rick for—parade through the room in a towel. She finished her shower and grabbed the sole remaining towel, drying off and wrapping it tightly around her. Sabrina’s decor might be nice but her towels left a lot to be desired. Thin and small, it barely covered Lessa’s backside.
    She opened the door and took a deep breath. What was the big deal? Rick had seen her in a bathing suit, and the towel covered more than that did. She glanced at her clothes on the chair and quickly calculated the amount of time she would be half-naked in front of Rick. To walk over and grab them, twenty seconds max. The key was to act as if she weren’t embarrassed. To appear cool and in control.
    Rick glanced up when the door opened. And there she was, wrapped only in a towel. For a split second he thought that perhaps she had come out to seduce him. But when she didn’t look at him, when she walked right past him, he realized what had