Skin Read Online Free PDF

away from Reese as she could without actually exiting the café. Impatiently she sipped her latte and waited while Gina Sportaletti filled a few cannoli shells. Just her luck they ran out and she had to stick around. Despite her misgivings about the man, her skin warmed as she watched Reese charm the hell out of the reticent Beatrice, Gina’s dried-up spinster aunt.
    Reese glanced back at her and shot her that to-die-for smile. Her knees wobbled. He started toward her. She backed up, the edge of the counter biting her in the tush.
    His eyes stopped her where she stood; his slow, lazy smile held delicious promise. Frankie halted the inevitable flood of warmth she felt every time he looked at her. She seriously questioned her sanity. The man was a stranger, and she reacted to him with the familiarity of a lover.
    “Knock it off, Reese, the interview is over.”
    “Apparently I need to work on my convincing skills.”
    As men had so often led her to do over the years, Frankie smiled and raked her eyes across his chest. “If it makes you feel any better, the bottom line is I can’t afford you.”
    “If you really wanted me, you’d find a way.”
    Her smile widened. She twisted a lock of her hair around her finger and cocked her head. “Maybe I don’t really want you.”
    Reese moved in closer, his body heat radiating into her skin. He dipped his lips to her ear. “Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?”
    Her smile waned and she let go of her hair. But she didn’t move away.
    His dark blue eyes turned black, his lips curled into a half smile. Even though she thought the man was intrusive and rude, she felt herself sucked in by his charisma. And it bugged her that in her vulnerable state she was so responsive to him. She was once again certain her decision to continue her model search was the right one.
    Just as she reaffirmed her decision, a sudden thought struck her dumb. If she — a woman who had no use for a man, especially models — reacted to him so strongly, how would women desperate for a man, especially a prime specimen such as the one standing before her, react?
    She sucked in a deep breath and took a step away from him. Was it fate? Meant to be, as her
nona
was famous for saying? Was Reese Barrett the
it
man? Like a deck of expertly shuffled cards, everything fell into place. Who was she kidding? He had that extra-special something, and more. She knew it in her gut just as sure as she knew if she didn’t act soon, she’d lose her magazine to her brother.
    Frankie chewed her bottom lip, indecision ping-ponging in her brain.
    Unexpectedly, in her mind she saw their naked, sweaty bodies tearing up the sheets. Reese’s long, powerful body over hers, commanding it to respond. She gasped and stepped further away.
    Her father’s words, “hormone-induced stupidity,” rang in her ears.
    “I know what’s best for
Skin,
Mr. Barrett, and you aren’t.”
    She grabbed the bag of cannoli from the table and ran out of the café.
    “Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered. Holding her latte in one hand and the bag of cannoli in the other, she weaved between the traffic on Post Street. What the hell was wrong with her? “Sex,” she said out loud, “Sex with Reese Barrett.”
    “Holy Mother Mary, what am I doing?” She tried to cross herself with the hand holding the cannoli and nearly dropped the bag on the sidewalk.
    As she hurried into her office, she noticed a half dozen studs perched around Tawny’s desk. Sheepishly, her assistant looked up and shrugged her shoulders. “You told me pronto, so here’s pronto.”
    “Give me a minute, then send one in.”
    Frankie sipped her lukewarm latte and continually forced Reese Barrett from her thoughts. Since the first model strutted in a half hour ago, she hadn’t bothered to get up and take one picture. While the man standing in front of her had the required equipment — tight ass, hard abs, and substantial penis — his penis listed limply to the left and