Surprise Package Read Online Free PDF

interrupting her critique. Breathlessly, she pressed the button, and the doorman announced that Jeff had arrived. “Send him up,” she said with a catch in her voice. “Get a grip, girl. You're carrying on like one of Gwendolyn Gleeson's simpy heroines!”
     
    * * * *
     
           Jeff rode up in the soundless elevator, admiring its dark walnut paneling and gleaming brass fixtures. Some class act. They must pay editors a lot better at the big houses than he'd imagined. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if a woman as successful as Gilly would want to marry a struggling assistant district attorney, then quashed the thought with horror. Good grief, he'd met the woman barely a month ago! No reason to be thinking of anything as permanent as marriage. Just saying the word aloud normally made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. But then, he'd never met a woman quite like Gilly Newsom. She was funny and bright, wholesomely small town, even if her family was wealthy and she had a high-powered job in publishing.
           The elevator stopped on the seventy-fifth floor, and the door opened silently. He walked across the marble foyer to apartment 7501 and rang the bell. Gilly opened the door the moment he buzzed, indicating that she'd been waiting on the other side. As he handed her the bouquet of white roses he'd bought from a vendor on the way over, his gaze traveled appreciatively over her body.
           She was wearing something soft and flowing made of sheer silk in a dramatic tiger-stripe print. The neckline was cut in a low vee, revealing a sweet amount of pale flesh. The gossamer fabric faintly outlined tips of her breasts as she stepped back, inviting him inside. She buried her nose in the bouquet and inhaled. It was all he could do not to inhale her!
           “How did you know white roses were my absolute favorites?”
           He grinned. “I could claim ESP, but all I really had to do was watch you every time we passed a florist's shop.”
           “That's much sweeter than ESP,” she said, noting the way his crisp white shirt stretched across those broad, muscular shoulders and contrasted with his naturally dark coloring. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and the collar open. He wore age-softened jeans that looked as if they'd been spray-painted on. Her throat suddenly felt dry. No wonder. All the moisture in her body had moved south!
           “Come in and make yourself at home—after you open the wine, that is,” she said, taking his battered leather bomber jacket and hanging it in the entry closet.
           He surveyed the huge living room. The soft sounds of Mozart's Andante surrounded them, floating through the vast space. “Wow. Even my old man would be impressed by that view, not to mention the painting. Hard to believe your super would give you grief about having a dog in a place this expensive.”
           “I'm glad you approve,” she replied nervously.
           “Not nearly as much as I do of you,” he said, taking her into his arms. When she slid her arms up around his neck, the silk folds of her caftan rustled softly, and his nostrils were filled with the essence of vanilla. “Mmm, you smell good enough to eat,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck.
           Gilly chuckled. “Silly, you're smelling the flowers.” The bouquet was draped over his shoulder, still clutched in her hand.
           “That's what they say to take time to do, isn't it?” He continued his leisurely path of kisses and soft nips, running his mouth across the silky skin on her collarbone, then traveling up to the pulse racing at the base of her throat, sliding from there to her delicate jaw.
           Her fingers combed through his hair, but she almost dropped the roses in her other hand when his mouth finally claimed hers. What began as a soft exploration suddenly turned to voracious hunger for both of them. Mouths open, tongues dueling, they pressed