Just Surrender... Read Online Free PDF Page B

named Cynthia. What did you love about her?” she asked, curious about what would attract him, since it wasn’t the allure of topless females.
    Carefully he arranged his silverware, silently laying out the utensils until he lifted his head and gave her a curious look. “Why do you think I loved her?”
    His answer was a total dodge. She knew it. “Why were you with her, if you didn’t love her?”
    “Cynthia is beautiful, good company, intelligent and very fond of literature.”
    Oh, yawn, Edie thought to herself, so what was the source of attraction? Ha. There could be only one.
    “A wildcat between the sheets,” she surmised. She’d seen it before. Her old roommate, Scott had been dumped fourteen times by his girlfriend, but kept crawling back because she blew his mind—in the allegorical sense. Edie looked at Tyler sympathetically, genuinely sad that he was caught in such a web of sexual slavery. Men could be such dogs.
    “I’d prefer not to discuss my sex life,” he insisted, a flush rising on his cheeks.
    “Sorry,” she apologized. He was a cute blusher. All buttoned up and trying so very hard to be polite. Having known her share of uncouth males, the old-fashioned gallantry was new, fun… sexy . “Okay, we won’t dwell on the painful past of your sex life. Instead, let’s concentrate on the new and exciting future. There’s a lot of women out there. Like that one, for instance.”
    The waitress Edie pointed to was nearly thirty, heir to the Petrovich fortune, and always enjoyed meeting new fab people. “That’s Olga,” Edie explained, and started to wave her over, but Tyler grabbed her hand, holding it painfully tight.
    “It’s okay,” he said, still holding her hand, but the tension there became something new, nice… warm .
    Not liking this friendlier line of thinking, Edie started on her selling job. “Olga’s great. She’s so easy to talk to, and she has this great sense of humor. Ask her to do her Joan Rivers impression. She’ll have you rolling.”
    “I’m sure she would, but I don’t need you to take care of me.” He looked down at their entwined fingers, smiled, and then let her hand go. And no, she didn’t miss the contact. Not at all.
    “Don’t take it personally,” said Edie, laughing it off. “I like taking care of people. And you’re new to the city, and you’ve had this miserable night, and it’s completely my fault. I’d feel ten times better if you let me do something else for you.”
    “I don’t want you to owe me,” he insisted.
    “But I do,” she insisted, too.
    “No, you don’t. Couldn’t we be…friends, just because we actually get along?”
    Get along? Trench coats and tattoos? Ties and toe-socks? It sounded… impossible .
    Or not?
    “Maybe,” she answered, then shifted uncomfortably in the vinyl booth. “But I still feel responsible.”
    “You can buy breakfast. We’ll call it even. Unless you can’t afford it.”
    Edie grinned, grateful for her own financially viable position, none of which was her own doing. Dad called her a shameless loafer. Mom called it ADD. Edie merely considered herself smart. “Dad’s a doc. Money is not a problem.”
    “What sort of doc?”
    “The ‘I’m bigger than God’ sort of doc.”
    “That’s no answer. They’re all like that,” he said seriously, and she laughed, because he seemed to understand.
    “People don’t understand why I don’t think he’s the best father ever. He’s charming and funny, and his patients adore him. There are four buildings named after him because apparently three wasn’t enough and—”
    “Why don’t you like him?”
    Even though her mother understood Edie’s jealousy about the time and attention he gave his patients, she never complained about his long absences from their lives. No, Clarice Higgins was a saint. Unlike Edie, who believed that saints got what they deserved. Usually an early death.
    She dismissed her jealous feelings, easy squeezy. “Men don’t