Read Online Mistress: At What Price? by Anne Oliver - Free Book Online

balcony, maroon drapes tied back with tassels, black lacquered furniture, a matching antique full-length oval mirror on a stand. The bed was covered in a quilt of the deepest merlot. He’d added a black throw and a couple of overstuffed turquoise cushions.
    â€˜There’s air-conditioning if you prefer.’
    â€˜Fresh air’s fine.’
    â€˜The bathroom’s next door down the hall. You’ll have it all to yourself; I had my own en suite built into the master bedroom.’
    â€˜Thanks.’ She laid the day’s purchases on the bed.
    â€˜Come down when you’re ready and I’ll fix us something for tea.’
    As in they’d be dining in? With all these undercurrents swirling them into dangerous waters? She wanted, needed , to be amongst people. Lots of people. To go to the city and smell hot Adelaide pavement and hear familiar Aussie accents.
    â€˜Let’s eat out,’ she said. ‘I know just the place.’

CHAPTER FIVE
    T HE SETTING sun had turned the sky gold. The city streets still held the day’s heat. Tourists and locals strolled along North Terrace, past the lovely old railway building, now home to a casino and Hyatt hotel, where fairylights sparkled in trees. Others were enjoying drinks at open-air bars on the other side of the busy street.
    From their little table Mariel glared at the spot where she and Dane had enjoyed many a meal—only the old pie cart wasn’t there. A line of waiting taxis now filled the kerbside. ‘But it was a more-than-century-old Adelaide icon,’ she grumbled. ‘I was going to shout you a pie floater for letting me drive…and for being a good sport about the close brush with the foliage…the very soft , very overhanging foliage.’
    He tossed back a mouthful of beer. ‘It’s not really pie weather.’
    â€˜Any weather is pie floater weather, and I haven’t tasted one in ten years.’ She pursed her lips to suck lemonade through a straw. ‘You know, I tried explaining it to Luc… How do you convince someone, especially a French someone, with vast gastronomic experience, that an upturned meat pie swimming in thick green peasoup and smothered with tomato sauce is a culinary delicacy? And has to be eaten standing at the kerbside, rubbing shoulders with cleaners to cops to politicians come rain or shine?’
    He tipped back his glass, swallowed, then nodded. ‘I guess you have to experience it.’
    â€˜Yeah…’ She dropped her chin on an upturned palm and sucked on her straw some more, and for a moment they were kids again, shovelling pie and soup into their mouths, arguing over who had more sauce, waiting for the piecrust to turn sodden…
    She didn’t notice him move until the warmth of his hand touched hers. He slid his thumb over the inside of her wrist. ‘So we’ll make our own.’
    The way he said that—as if he wasn’t talking about pies, but something much more pleasurable. Her gaze darted to his and she found herself drawn unwillingly into the sensuous promise she saw there.
    The guy watching her wasn’t that teenager she’d known. Dane, the man, wouldn’t hesitate to take what he wanted, be it in business or pleasure, and the knowledge shivered down her spine. She tried to tug her arm away, but his grip tightened.
    â€˜Don’t,’ he said, and lifted it to his lips, laying a line of kisses from the middle of her palm to her elbow, watching her with that heated gaze as he did so.
    Sensation sparkled along her skin—much too brightly.
    Her pulse beat a tattoo beneath his lips—much too loudly.
    â€˜We’re meant to be lovers, remember?’ The low timbre of his voice vibrated against her flesh.
    Drawing a breath, she shook her head, as much toclear it as to negate his words. ‘No one’s watching. You don’t have to…do that.’
    â€˜Not true—you never know who’s