A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man Read Online Free PDF

heard his name mentioned, and turned his attention from Piper to the museum’s executive director, Louis LaPaglia, who was obviously in the middle of introducing Mick to the staff.
    “And no,” LaPaglia added, a wry smile on his chubby face. “His salary is not coming out of our operating budget—it’s part of the university’s faculty exchange and sabbatical program, which is covering his entire six-month assignment.”
    Mick watched as the suspicion faded from several faces at the table. He couldn’t blame them for feeling threatened—the museum had lost close to six million of their endowment value in the last three years, and their exhibit receipts had plummeted forty-two percent in the same time period. Seven positions had been cut, more were likely, and it was a pattern being repeated all over the country throughout the nonprofit universe—museums, symphonies, zoos, libraries, theater companies—and everyone at that conference table knew they’d be substitute teaching or waiting tables if they were let go.
    He was here to help turn that trend around at the BMCS. He’d agreed to help launch a new fund-raising campaign if a portion of the proceeds went toward future archaeological exploration of Boston’s earliest urban settlements, one of his pet projects.
    He had other reasons for a visit to Boston. He needed to help his brother, Cullen, resuscitate the family pub business. And he needed to negotiate the terms of the Compass Cable Network reality TV project.
    Mick let his gaze wander back toward Piper. Suddenly, her bloodshot eyes locked with his. The connection lasted just an instant, but it was an instant longer than she’d managed all day and enough to send out a flash of sharp need. And sharper anger.
    But that couldn’t be. She was angry at him ? She was the one who blew him off all those years ago. She wouldn’t return his calls. She refused to speak to him except to talk about her feckin’ thesis, like the disaster in her apartment had never even happened! She turned away every time he asked for a few moments of her time.
    Dear God, the girl had been stubborn. And he’d left Boston after that semester, headed to the Isle of Wight, and shoved the memory of that night to the back of his mind.
    But looking at her now, he couldn’t help but remember. The sweet, innocent Piper had gone and gotten herself absolutely langered at a department wine-and-cheese, then asked him to walk her back to her place, where she pulled him in the door by his lapel and became hell-bent on getting him in bed. Sweet Janey Mack! Like he didn’t want what she offered. But he’d never taken advantage of a woman in such a weakened state, and he wouldn’t be starting with a brilliant student he suspected was a virgin, especially weeks before he would be leaving Wellesley to start fieldwork. That wasn’t his style.
    Mick shut his eyes for an instant, trying to block out the details that were coming back to him. It didn’t work. He remembered how she’d stumbled toward the CD player and slipped in some Marvin Gaye, then begun a torturously clumsy striptease that, within seconds, revealed that Piper Chase-Pierpont had the mind of a future Ph.D. candidate and the body of pole dancer.
    Right before Mick’s eyes, his shy, cute prepster had morphed into an extremely fuckable drunk chick within arm’s reach, practically begging for it. Mick froze. His eyes got huge. His fingers trembled. The zipper on his jeans nearly busted.
    He couldn’t do it.
    So he’d scooped her turtleneck from the floor, covered her perfect bare breasts, and kissed her forehead. He told her he’d call her the next day. And he headed for the door.
    Mick had kept an eye on her career through mutual acquaintances over the years. He heard she’d had a rough go with her last exhibit, something about the contribution of New England’s women telephone operators during the first half of the twentieth century. Apparently, it had cost a bundle to stage and