Convincing Alex Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the air.
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    â€œI can’t believe we’re doing this.” Holly, Judd’s pretty wife of eight months, was all but hopping out of her party shoes. “Wait until I tell everyone in the teachers’ lounge where I spent the evening.”
    â€œTake it easy, honey.” Judd tugged at the tie she’d insisted he wear. “It’s just a party.”
    â€œJust a party?” As the elevator rode up, she fussed with her honey-brown hair. “I don’t know about you two, but it isn’t every day I get to eat canapés with celebrities.”
    Ominously silent, Alex stayed hunched in his leather jacket. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing here. His first mistake had been mentioning the invitation to Judd. No matter how insouciant Judd pretended to be, he’d been bursting at the seams when he called his wife. Alex had been swept along in their enthusiasm.
    But he wasn’t going to stay. Holly’s sense of decorum might have insisted that she and Judd couldn’t attend without him, but he’d already decided just how he’d play it. He’d go in, maybe have a beer and a couple of crackers. Then he’d slip out again. He’d be damned if he’d spend this rare free evening playing soap-opera groupie.
    â€œOh, my” was all Holly could say when the elevator doors opened.
    The walls of the private foyer were splashed with a mural of the city. Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Harlem, Little Italy, Broadway. People seemed to be rushing along the walls, just as they did the streets below. It was as if the woman who lived here didn’t want to miss one moment of the action.
    The wide door to the main apartment was open, and music, laughter and conversation were pouring out, along with the scents of hot food and burning candles.
    â€œOh, my,” Holly said again, dragging her husband along as she stepped inside.
    From behind them, Alex scanned the room. It was huge, and it was packed with people. Draped in silk or cotton, clad in business suits and lush gowns, they stood elbow to elbow on the hardwood floor, lounged hip to hip on the sapphire cushions of the enormous circular conversation pit, sat knee to knee on the steps of a bronze circular staircase that led to an open loft where still more people leaned against a railing decked with naked cherubs.
    Two huge windows let the lights of the city in. More partygoers sat on the pillow-plumped window seats, balancing plates and glasses on their laps.
    Paintings were scattered over the ivory-toned walls. Vivid, frenetic modern art, mind-bending surrealism. There was enough color to make his head swim. Yet, through the crowd and the clashingtones, he saw her. Dancing seductively with a distinguished-looking man in a gray pin-striped suit.
    She wore an excuse for a dress, the color of crushed purple grapes. He wondered, irritated, if she owned anything that covered those legs. This number certainly didn’t. Nor did it cover much territory at all, the way it dipped to the waist in the back, skimmed above mid-thigh and left her shoulders bare, but for skinny, glittery straps. Multihued gemstones fell in a rope from her earlobes to those nicely sloped shoulders. Her feet were bare.
    She looked, Alex thought as his stomach muscles twisted themselves into nasty knots, outrageously alluring.
    â€œOh, Lord, there’s Jade. Oh, and Storm and Vicki. Dr. Carstairs, too.” Holly’s fingers dug into her husband’s arm. “It’s Amelia.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œâ€˜Secret Sins,’ dummy.” She gave Judd a playful punch. “The whole cast’s here.”
    â€œThat’s not all.” Because he remembered in time he was supposed to be jaded, Judd stopped himself from pointing and inclined his head. “That’s Lawrence D. Strater dancing with our hostess. The L.D. Strater, of Strater Industries. The Fortune 500’s darling. The mayor’s over in