Sweet Seduction Read Online Free PDF Page A

brother said something, but it was so quiet, Jamie had to ask him to repeat it.
    â€œI said, I’m losing it.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, losing it?”
    â€œMy sense of taste.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat’s where I was the other day—getting tests done.”
    â€œWhat about your sense of smell?”
    â€œIt seems to be going, too.”
    â€œWhat do they think it is?”
    â€œThey don’t know yet.”
    Jamie let his head fall against the door frame. “Is it a tumor?”
    There was a long pause before Colin repeated, “They don’t know.”
    â€œHoly shit.”
    â€œNo one can know, do you understand? No one.”
    Jamie scrubbed a hand up and down his face. “Daisy won’t expose you.”
    â€œYou don’t know that.”
    It was true. Even though spending the morning with her had felt like spending time with an old friend, someone he knew but didn’t know, someone he liked a whole lot and wanted to get to know even better, he really couldn’t predict how she’d react to the news that he’d posed as his brother. The fact was, though he’d seen her in her tasty pink undies, he didn’t know Daisy Sinclair at all.
    â€œLook. It’s not like it matters to you,” Colin said.
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œYou know what that means. You go through women like disposable razors. One nick and they’re in the trash.”
    Jamie stopped pacing to stare out the window of his office. While the analogy might be fair, he still didn’t like hearing it. Made him sound like an ass.
    â€œYou’ve got to let this go,” Colin said. “Besides, it’s too late.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, it’s too late?”
    â€œIt means I already canceled the date.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDon’t bother calling, either. She said she never wanted to speak to me—you—again. Oh, and she thinks you’re a dick. Sorry.”

3
    D AISY CHECKED HER jacket and stood in line to get into the Grand Ballroom at the Chicago Hilton with her gala invitation scrunched in her hand, anxiety gnawing away the lining of her stomach. This was a mistake.
    Why had she let Gloria talk her into this?
    â€œYou’ve got to go, Daisy,” Gloria had said. “Go and show Colin Forsythe you don’t give a damn about him, about his stupid column, about anything.” Then Gloria had helped her with her hair and makeup, doing what best friends do, talking her up, telling her she looked gorgeous.
    â€œI wish I could be there to see his face. He’s going to regret his decision the second he sees you.” Gloria took a couple of pictures of her followed by the obligatory selfie, and Daisy left her place feeling like a million bucks: confident, bold and daring in her new dress.
    Now she felt more like a buck fifty. Conspicuously dressed in red—she apparently didn’t get the memo that she was supposed to wear black—Daisy felt her face burn, no doubt matching the color of her dress, as both men and women turned to stare at her while waiting to get into the ballroom. As if to punctuate her sense of not fitting in, her mother appeared—tall, lithe and gorgeous as ever in a pencil-thin, strapless black dress, wearing her handsome date like an accessory on her arm. So they hadn’t broken up. Daisy racked her brain for his name. What was it? Alexander? Didn’t matter. Her mother’s good-looking, usually much younger boy toys were all the same and never lasted.
    â€œSeriously, Daisy?” her mother said. “Red?” She made a subtle motion with her fingertips toward Daisy’s dress.
    â€œI didn’t know.” One second in her mother’s presence and all the insecurity came flooding back. It didn’t help that her mother always looked perfect...and young...and beautiful, more like an older, more sophisticated sister than her mother.