Read Online Shattered: by Janet Nissenson - Free Book Online Page A

living in San Francisco a very short while, she still recognized the name of the restaurant – easily one of the best known and highly rated in the entire city. Talk was that it could take weeks to get a reservation there. And yet it appeared that the Nick Manning effect was wide reaching – to the extent that nabbing a table at the last minute would be the easiest thing in the world for him.
    Angela slipped the card into her skirt pocket and wondered when she could make a discreet exit of her own. She was fairly sure it would be a ten minute walk or less to the restaurant, but from the commanding tone of Nick’s voice she wouldn’t dare risk being late.
    By rights, she really ought to be bristling right about now at the arrogant, take-no-prisoners sort of way he’d maneuvered her into meeting him. Normally, men wouldn’t even think of trying to intimidate or boss her around, since most of the men she’d met were more than a little daunted by her height. Only a handful of boys in her high school class had actually been taller than her, and even then not until their senior year. As a result, she hadn’t dated at all back then, except for a rather embarrassing arranged date to her senior prom with her older sister’s brother-in-law. It had been ten different kinds of awkward, and Angela wasn’t sure which of them had been more relieved when the very uncomfortable evening had finally drawn to a close.
    Fortunately, college had been different, and she’d dated several athletes – basketball and volleyball players, and swimmers and water polo players among them. But they had still very much been boys – immature, awkward, hardly more experienced than she was. Nick was most assuredly the first man she’d ever come close to going on a date with, and she doubted he’d been awkward – or inexperienced – for a very, very long time.
    But even as she steeled herself for the approach of her obviously curious co-workers – swarming around her, she thought in mild disgust, like a school of fish around bait – she wondered if this dinner with Nick was even a real date. Maybe he just wanted to talk about their mutual alma mater. Or sports. Or one of a dozen different subjects.
    But no, she thought, as a satisfied little smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. It was very obvious what Nick wanted with her. Drinks, yes, and dinner, of a certainty. But there was little doubt in her mind that a man like him would also expect sex at the end of the evening. Probably a lot of sex, and she doubted there’d be much intimacy or romance involved. And judging by how tight and swollen her breasts felt at this moment, not to mention how damp her black silk thong was getting, her body liked the idea of that particular outcome. A lot.
    Her fellow trainees all seemed to be talking at once, at least those who weren’t still shocked speechless by the fact that the unapproachable Nick Manning had actually, well, approached her. The others were noisily asking her what he’d talked about, why he’d singled her out of every other woman in the room, was he as hot up close and personal as he was from a distance.
    Angela instinctively sensed that Nick would not want her sharing even the smallest detail about their conversation, and thus fobbed off her co-workers with some barely believable tale about how they’d merely discussed Stanford and sports. She knew no one believed her, didn’t particularly give a shit whether they did or not, and was quick to extricate herself from the group with the excuse of having to visit the ladies room. Two minutes later she was exiting the hotel out onto the sidewalk, and walking at a brisk pace towards her rendezvous with the most exciting, stimulating man she’d ever met.
    A block away from the restaurant she regretted not having taken an extra few minutes to actually pop into the ladies room to check her hair and makeup. Hastily, she dug a lipstick from her bag and reapplied the dark berry gloss without