Instruction in Seduction Read Online Free PDF Page A

ground-rules and that I’m okay with this being free and easy.”
    “It’s not you. I just really, really don’t think we should sleep together just like that,” he said and closed in to her.
    Ailsa, embarrassed, regretful, blushed fully. Then she stepped back and away.
    Then shock of shocks, she took off the winter hat and shook her head. A knot of fiery copper silk hair slid over her shoulder and he felt the blood in his veins turn to lava.
    Now he knew what it must have felt like seeing Lady Godiva starkers on that horse. Red hair, even better than his fantasy version. And how he wished his ethics were kaput.
    He wanted to see her naked. All palest alabaster skin and that hair. It almost made him shiver with wanting it.
    “Since we’re being honest,” said Ailsa. “I temped as a secretary for you in London eight years ago. You probably don’t remember me. I was office geek. So I’m not really a stranger and that’s why I came on so strong.” She looked at him all gutsy gaze.
    “No way.”
    “Yes way.”
    “Ailsa? As in Ailsa Murray; always in a hurry?” Nick exclaimed, stood back a few paces and then laughed.
    She looked crestfallen and defeated.
    “You barely met my gaze then. Ran by my desk so fast I figured you were allergic to my aftershave. Or me.”
    “Walking in a straight line when we were in the same room was tricky then. I was only nineteen.”
    “I wasn’t worth the lust.” Nick shook his head.
    “Believe me. You were.”
    Nick watched her and then laughed again.
    “Well, I’ll be blowed.”
    That hair down gesture thing blew him away and he was still reeling from the revelation. Now that he recalled a pair of unforgettable tight suit trousers and a long ponytail sprang to mind like some weird jigsaw. Big spectacles and a very shy girl who was the most organised temp he’d ever known.
    He experienced a brief memory replay featuring short skirts one hot London Summer and him having to work to keep his gaze averted. Girlish fruity perfume that wafted as he visited her desk.
    But back then he’d been too busy sorting out the crazy minefield of his life. An ex-girlfriend with no designs on a future with him; a baby bump surprise. The scary reality of no strings sex.
    Another reason why he now erred on ultra safe. He’d learned it the hard way.
    Ailsa watched him, green eyes cagey. “Now you think I’m an idiot. Nice New Year surprise. You’re welcome to come back to the house and call a cab or whatever. Maybe you just want to spend the night drinking with your pal Andy?” She didn’t meet his gaze and instead she just stuffed her hands deep into those pockets. The ones she’d held his hands in. And the memory of that brief, heated, exciting intimacy made something inside him melt and feel bad that their brief dalliance fizzled into nothing.
    It wasn’t that he didn’t like her.
    He just liked her too much to treat her like a throwaway good time. She deserved better. And so did he.
    In that look Nick knew he definitely couldn’t do it. Sleeping with her tonight was not on the cards. These days he didn’t do crazy impulse sex; as much as his loins might beg otherwise.
    If he’d learned something from back then it was when sex didn’t have strings, it usually wasn’t worth the risks.
    How did he keep his distance back then? How was he to resist Ailsa now?
    Especially when he’d been deprived of good sex in a long time. A seven-year-old son living with him tended to spoil opportunities and add an extra barricade to such endeavour.
    But Nick wasn’t just sure he wished things were different with Ailsa, he was more sure than he’d ever been of anything. He wished he really could cast it all aside and just say yes.
    “Ailsa, I’d like to take you out to dinner,” he told her. Voice calm, tone sensible.
    She reminded him of Sally his sister too because the brave stuff was an act. And right now Sally, the reason he was here in Edinburgh at all, was back in her hotel room alone.