In Bed With a Stranger Read Online Free PDF

stuff. I just got back from filming for a new series in the US.’
    Horror congealed like cold porridge in Sophie’s stomach as her eyes flew back to the man. She now realised why he was vaguely familiar. Suddenly she was aware that she was standing in the same kitchen as one of the country’s top celebrity chefs wearing a wet shirt that barely skimmed her bottom and clung to her breasts, eating chocolate spread with her finger straight from the jar.
    Surreptitiously she put the jar down and tried to shrink backwards behind the large vase of flowers she’d bought in Covent Garden. Luckily the Very Famous Chef was engrossed in a discussion about business with Kit as they headed back
towards the door, but he did pause in the doorway and look back at her.
    ‘Nice to meet you, Sophie. You must get Kit to bring you to the restaurant some time.’
    Not on your life , thought Sophie, smiling and nodding; not now he’d seen her like this. As soon as he’d gone she picked up the jar of chocolate spread and was eating it with a spoon when Kit came back in.
    ‘You could have warned me,’ she moaned between spoonfuls.
    ‘Sorry,’ Kit drawled, ‘but I was pretty distracted myself.’
    ‘He’s a friend of yours?’
    ‘That depends on your definition of friend. I know him reasonably well because his restaurant is just around the corner from here and I’ve been there enough times over the years.’
    Sophie took another spoonful of chocolate spread. People didn’t go to restaurants on their own. She pictured the kind of women Mr Celeb-Chef must have seen with Kit in the past, and the contrast they must have made with her, now.
    Kit was looking at the foil trays in the crate. ‘Put down that revolting sweet stuff; we have smoked-salmon bagels, blueberry pancakes, almond croissants, proper coffee, oh—and this, of course.’ He held up the bottle of champagne. ‘So—do you want to eat here, or in bed?’
    Sophie’s resistance melted like butter in a microwave. She found that she was smiling.
    ‘What do you think?’
    Sophie walked slowly back to Kit’s house, trailing her fingers along the railings outside the smart houses, a bag filled with supplies from the uber-stylish organic supermarket on the King’s Road bumping against her leg. She felt she had some ground to make up after the incriminating chocolate-spread incident this morning.
    The thought of chocolate spread drew her attention to the
pleasurable ache in her thighs as she walked, and she couldn’t stop her mind from wandering ahead of her, to the house with the black front door at the far end of the square. From this distance it looked the same as all its expensive, exclusive neighbours, but Sophie felt a little quiver inside her at the thought that Kit was there.
    She had left him going through yet more of the post that had arrived while he’d been away, and she reluctantly had to admit it had been almost a relief to have an excuse to get out of the house. They had eaten breakfast and made love, slowly and luxuriously, then lain drowsily together as the clouds moved across the clean blue sky beyond the window and the morning slid into afternoon. Then they had made love again.
    It had been wonderful. More than wonderful—completely magical. So why did she have the uneasy feeling that it was a substitute for talking?
    There was so much she wanted to say, and even more that she wanted him to tell her. She thought of the contraceptive pills she’d thrown in the bin and felt a hot tide of guilt that she hadn’t actually got round to mentioning that. But how could she when it felt as if he had put up an emotion-proof fence around himself? There might as well be a sign above his head: ‘Touch, but Don’t Talk.’
    She was being ridiculous, she told herself sternly, reaching into her pocket for her key. They’d spent whole days in bed before he’d gone away and gone for hours without speaking a word, lost in each other’s bodies or just lying with their