Read Online No Romance Required by Cari Quinn - Free Book Online Page A

feel like dragging
     out his telescope and feeling oddly like a chump who’d been stood up on a fake first
     date.
    He leaned on the rail and scowled. They were just pretending to date. She was just
     goading him with that “next step” stuff. Because there was no way, just no way, she
     really intended to sleep with him. Even Victoria wouldn’t take one-upmanship that
     far.
    What had happened at the gala had been an aberration. End of story.
    Loath as he was to agree with his parents right now, he and Melinda fit. They had
     similar aspirations. Even the ways they spent their precious little free time meshed.
     Melinda enjoyed opera and visiting museums. Victoria’s idea of a fun night was hitting
     up a noisy club, partying until dawn, and waking up just in time to go to work.
    She did work hard, as proven by her successful business. No one could dispute her
     intelligence and insatiable curiosity. He disagreed with her more often than he agreed,
     but no one made him laugh more. He’d happily drown in her honey-colored eyes and never
     think to ask for a life preserver.
    He remembered the way she’d come apart beneath his hands, so hot and wet and beautiful
     in her release. If he was honest with himself, he’d been thinking about that day more
     often than not.
    And that was exactly why they shouldn’t date, for real or otherwise.
    Melinda was safe. Victoria was so very not. She wanted fun, at any cost. Just like
     his damn father. His real one, not the man who’d given him his name when he was a
     kid. Raymond Santangelo was a great guy, his recent directives regarding Cory’s love
     life aside. Hardworking, steadfast. Not the type to get wasted and forget his responsibilities
     like Tommy James.
    Dillon still bore Tommy’s last name. Why, Cory had no idea. Tommy hadn’t been a father
     to them, much as Victoria’s mother hadn’t been around for her. They had that in common.
     The difference being that Raymond had come into their lives a couple years after Tommy
     had walked out on Cory’s mom for the last time when he’d been eight, and Cory had
     been told he could stop worrying quite so much about taking care of his mom and little
     brother.
    Though he never really had. As much as he hated admitting it, he’d expected Raymond
     to choose wine, women, and song over his family someday just like Tommy had. So Cory
     had stayed vigilant, ever ready to step back into the role of man of the house.
    Even now that his parents were retiring, he still hadn’t stopped taking that role
     seriously. He never wanted to cause his mom even an instant of grief, which was part
     of why he’d come up with this inane fake girlfriend plan in the first place.
    Without the photos that had pushed him into making a move, he might’ve balked at going
     so far as faking a relationship. But he could trust Victoria to keep up her end of
     the bargain. This arrangement could be beneficial to her, too, as far as business
     contacts were concerned. That mutual benefit had swayed him, as had the fact that
     he wouldn’t risk losing control of Value Hardware for any reason. Not after he’d sacrificed
     so much of his life to make it a success.
    He’d come up with the crazy idea that Victoria could help him, nicely forgetting that
     she often inspired thoughts he had no business thinking. But it was too late. Victoria
     had thrown down the gauntlet with his mother. He’d tried to do the responsible thing
     and hold her at arm’s length.
    Now she’d see what she’d unleashed.
    He set aside the binoculars and yanked out his phone. No calls. No texts. Maybe she’d
     decided to break her sexless streak. Ten months. Ha. Though he didn’t use slang as
     a rule, he’d been tempted to whatever the hell out of her for that one.
    “Add in six more months, sweetheart,” he muttered. “Then we’ll talk.”
    He called and waited through three rings before someone answered who most certainly
     wasn’t Victoria, unless she’d been