The Setup Read Online Free PDF

“Why?”
    The contrite expression on the clerk’s face made his apologies for him, even though none of this was his fault. “Because this is the beginning of Mardi Gras season, sir. Everyone wants to be here this time of year. All of our rooms are booked.”
    Of course, Jefferson thought. But he was flexible. “Do you know where I can get a room?”
    “Perhaps with a friend?” the clerk suggested tactfully, offering a weak smile.
    Jefferson refused to believe that he’d come all this way, only to wind up standing in a lobby, albeit a beautiful one, with nowhere to go. He wasn’t about to impose on Blake—that wasn’t his style. Besides,he liked his privacy and Blake didn’t know the meaning of the word.
    “Do you mean to tell me there’s no other room to be had in the city?”
    The clerk tried again, quickly checking with the various hotels in the area. Because of Katrina, there weren’t as many as there once had been. He frowned. “I’m afraid not, Mr. Lambert. The city is bursting at the seams. We’re all celebrating our first full season since the hurricane almost did us in.”
    “Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” Jefferson said, more to himself than to the man behind the desk. He’d never been one for omens, but this one was hard to ignore. The powers that be obviously thought it was a bad idea for him to resume dating, however briefly and inconsequentially, at his advanced age.
    He had to face it. At forty-seven, he should be focused on funding his pension plan and making sure there was enough money to send Emily to the college of her dreams. And graduate school after that if she so desired. He had no business reentering the world of dating—a world he had never much cared for in the first place. Dating left you vulnerable. It stripped you down to your underwear and paraded you that way before the world at large. He’d survived it once and had had the incredible fortune of finding a beautiful woman to love him. That was more than enough for him.
    “No, Mr. Lambert, it’s never a bad idea to cometo New Orleans,” the desk clerk told him quickly. “Let me try to make some calls—”
    “Give him the Jackson Suite.”
    Jefferson turned toward the melodious voice behind him.

CHAPTER THREE
    T HE VOICE SOUNDED as if it belonged to a soft, genteel southern lady. One who might be given to spending long, languid afternoons in a lush, vine-covered garden, sipping something cool and refreshing beneath the shade of a gazebo while watching a willow weep in the gentle spring breeze.
    That was not the woman he found himself looking at.
    The woman who had suggested that the desk clerk place him in the Jackson Suite, whatever that was, looked very much like a model who had just stepped off the runway in Paris. And she was taking no prisoners.
    Only conquests.
    Her hair was an enthralling shade of red and fell in curls and waves about her oval face and shoulders like a storm churning at sea. The eyes that looked at him were almond shaped, green and extremely lively, yet not nearly as lively as her mouth, which had quirked into a smile that Jefferson was fairly certain could send strong men to their knees if she felt so inclined.
    For reasons that Jefferson couldn’t begin to fathom, she was looking at him as if she were studying him, trying to decide something. What, he didn’t have a clue. But he knew that women who looked the way this one did, which was nothing short of drop-dead gorgeous, did not study men like him. Not with a mysterious gleam in their eye.
    Oh, they might easily bring their financial woes to him, or ask for some kind of legal advice. But when any kind of active interest entered their gaze, their eyes were guaranteed to be focused in another direction and on someone else. Someone more ruggedly handsome. The only time he had attracted anyone remotely near this woman’s league had been during his time as a tutor. Donna and he had attended Tulane together. She’d been in