Mother, Please! Read Online Free PDF Page B

bitterly cold and snowing in New York when he left, and he’d heard that the golfing in Cabo was surpassed only by the fishing.
    Besides, his father had called yesterday and asked him to visit—since Gunner had claimed to be unavailable for Christmas. As much as he knew he should spend some time with Quincy Sr., that he should forgive his father as his mother had always encouraged him to do, this trip had given Gunner a good excuse to postpone the reunion yet again.
    Finally beginning to relax, he saw the porter holding a placard with his name and let the man take his bag and load it into the limousine that Walt had sent to collect him. Then Gunner slid into the dark, air-conditioned interior to find April Ashton waiting for him.
    “Thanks for coming,” she said as soon as he spotted her sitting quietly in the far corner.
    He was rather surprised to see her wearing a short skirt. Somehow he hadn’t expected April Ashton to possess such pretty legs. But it was her tight-fitting T-shirt, which advertised a local bar called the Wiggling Marlin, that really tempted his eye. April was skinny, but not without shape, he conceded as he took in her small but firm-looking breasts. “I’m sure it’ll prove interesting,” he said. “I’ve never pretended to be anyone’s lover before.”
    “Lover?” She glanced at him as if she didn’t know how to take his comment, and he hid a smile. She thought she could dangle Ashton Automotive in front of him the way her father did, and that he’d simply perform the role she’d chosen for him. But he was determined to control everything that went on down here.
    “Isn’t that what you said on the phone?” he asked, playing innocent. “That you wanted me to come down here and pretend we’re having a torrid affair?”
    “I didn’t say anything about torrid, and you know it.”
    “Oh.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Then perhaps I should have mentioned that my idea of a relationship ‘with romantic interest’ is a little different than yours.”
    The chauffeur started the car and they moved away from the airport. “You’re joking, right?” she said, beginning to squirm.
    He watched her for several seconds, struggling to hold back a grin. “What do you think?”
    “I think you’re joking.”
    “Of course I’m joking,” he said. “I know torrid is well beyond someone like you.”
    “Someone like me?” she echoed.
    “An intellectual, remember? Someone who’s prim. Someone who looks down her nose at a womanizer like me.”
    “You say ‘intellectual’ and…and ‘prim’ as if you really mean ‘uptight virgin.”’
    He could only keep a straight face by biting the inside of his cheek. “Really?”
    She folded her arms beneath those firm breasts he’d noticed earlier and crossed her legs. “You’re jumping to some pretty big conclusions, Mr. Stevens.”
    “I am? I didn’t realize.”
    “For starters, I’m not a virgin.”
    He rumpled his brow as if seriously considering her words. For someone so smart, she was amazingly easy to bait. “You’re not?”
    “Of course not. I might not get out much, but I’m not completely naive.” She frowned at the closed window separating them from the chauffeur and lowered her voice as though she was still worried about being overheard. “I was only eighteen when I lost my virginity.”
    He coughed to keep from laughing. “Is that so? Who was the lucky guy?”
    “Bill Sossaman. He used to be one of my father’s attorneys.”
    “An older man?”
    “Not that much older. Maybe seven years. He was just starting his practice and I was on break from school.”
    “Were the two of you in love?”
    “ I was in love,” she said.
    Of course. He couldn’t see April Ashton peeling off her clothes for any other reason. “But he wasn’t.”
    She grimaced and glanced at her watch as if suddenly regretting the fact that they’d be cooped up together during the entire forty-minute drive to Cabo del Sol, a resort area