Just About Sex Read Online Free PDF Page B

face. “Sick? Why would you say that?”
    He stared openly. His intense gaze crisscrossed her face and it took him an unaccountably long time to answer. A wave of warmth crept over her cheeks from her neck, but she didn’t look away.
    “S-so you…don’t mind cochairing the auction with me?”
    A shocked gasp slipped past her lips. He was her cochair? The man determined to ruin her career? For goodness’ sake, what kinds of horrendous crimes had she committed in her past lives?
    Swallowing her frustrated anger she smiled brightly, a maneuver as painful as jamming shards of broken glass through her cheeks. “Of course not!”
    His forehead wrinkled with obvious bemusement, but then he smiled too, apparently willing to play her game. “Good.”
    To her immense relief, the doors swung open behind him and he finally looked away. Laurel Anderson, director of the clinic, came in with a man.
    Simone put her plate down, rushed over and held out her hand. “Laurel! I was afraid they weren’t going to let you out of the office long enough to come to the meeting!”
    Laughing, Laurel shook her hand. “They give me fifteen minutes for lunch every day, whether I need it or not.” She turned to Greene and angled her head in time for his peck on the cheek. “I see you’ve met my brother.”
    Another surprise. Greene watched for Simone’s reaction, that same hateful half grin on his lips. She couldn’t believe Laurel, a perfectly lovely woman with whom she’d worked on several committees, shared bloodlines with the Prince of Darkness here. A manufactured smile—she was getting pretty good at them where Greene was concerned—rose to her lips.
    “Your brother, ” she said, her voice cooler than she’d intended. “Who’d have thought?”
    Greene laughed and Laurel shot him a quizzical look before she turned to the man she’d brought with her. Nearly as tall as Greene, he wore a short-sleeved blue silk shirt and jeans. Quite handsome, clean-shaven with black hair, dark eyes and dark olive skin, he smiled at Simone, a warm, inviting, irresistible smile she couldn’t help but return.
    “Do you know Juan Romero?” Laurel asked her. “He played—”
    “Baseball, I know,” Simone said, although she couldn’t remember which team he’d played for before he retired. Yankees? Mets? Giants? “You’re from Puerto Rico. Nice to meet you.”
    “And ju,” Juan said with a heavy Spanish accent. He held out his hand, his smile widening. “I wanted meet ju. Long time.”
    As Simone took his hand, she saw Alex scowl, his narrowed gaze on her face.
     
    Alex watched Simone from the other end of the conference table and seethed. Between them, on the long sides of the table, sat the other committee members. Romero, that muscle-bound walking vial of steroids, had embedded himself in the chair to Simone’s left, oozing charm the way a snail oozes slime. All the women in the room hung on his every word. Unbelievable.
    Worse, Romero kept brushing Simone’s bare arm with his Popeye-sized forearm every chance he got. She just laughed and stared at him with those sparkling gray eyes in a way she’d surely never stare at Alex. Not that he wanted her to stare at him.
    No wonder rumors of steroid use had dogged Romero for years. The guy was monstrous. Alex had seen smaller silverback gorillas at the Cincinnati Zoo. Romero always denied it by saying he ate healthy and worked hard in the weight room. Yeah, right. Like that was possible. Alex had half a mind to make an anonymous call to Major League Baseball’s corporate office and see if they couldn’t send someone over to give Romero a random urine test. Maybe revoke his World Series ring or something. How ironic. Simone was so worried about the size of his genitalia—someone should tell her before she got too attached to Romero that the side effects of steroid usage included shrunken testicles.
    She’d ignored Alex the whole meeting, which was why he was so pissed off. Just ignored