The Tempting Mrs. Reilly Read Online Free PDF Page A

started, yep.”
    â€œHave you seen him?”
    â€œOh yeah.”
    â€œAnd…?”
    Tina grabbed the twisted cord in one hand and wrapped the coils around her index finger as she talked. “And, he’s just like I remembered.” Actually, he was more than she remembered. More handsome. More irresistible. More aggravating.
    â€œSo you’re still set on this.”
    Tina sighed. “Janet, we’ve been all through this. I don’t want to go to a sperm bank. Can you imagine that conversation with my child? ‘Yes, honey, of course you have a daddy. He’s number 3075. It’s a very nice number.’”
    Janet laughed. “Fine. I’m just saying, it seems like you’re asking for trouble here. I’m worried.”
    â€œAnd I appreciate it.” Tina smiled and let her gaze drift around her old bedroom. Nana hadn’t changed much over the years. There were still posters of Tahiti and London tacked to the walls, bookcases stuffed with books and treasures from her teenage years and furniture that had been in the Coretti family since the beginning of time.
    There was comfort here.
    And Tina was surprised to admit just how much she needed that comfort.
    Though she’d been born and raised in this house, this town, she’d been gone a long time. And stepping into the past, however briefly, was just a little unnerving.
    â€œBut you want me to back off,” Janet said.
    Tina heard the smile in her friend’s voice. “Yeah, I do.”
    â€œTony told me you’d say that,” Janet admitted, then shouted to her husband, “okay, okay. I owe you five dollars.”
    Tina laughed and felt the knots in her stomach slowly unwinding. “I’m glad you called.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œYeah. I needed to hear a friendly voice,” Tina admitted. With Nana in Italy and Brian holed up in his cave, Tina had been feeling more alone than she had in a long time. “Even I didn’t know how much I needed it.”
    â€œHappy to help,” Janet said. “Call me if you need to talk or cry or shout or…anything.”
    â€œI will. And I’ll see you in three weeks.”
    After her friend hung up, Tina sat up and folded her legs beneath her. She looked around her room and felt the past rise up all around her. She’d still been living in this room when she and Brian had started dating.
    It felt like a lifetime ago.
    Back then, she was still working part-time at Diego’s, an upscale bar on the waterfront, and studying for her MBA during the day. Brian was a lieutenant, the pilot’s wings pinned to his uniform still shiny and new. He’d walked into the bar one night, and just like the corniest of clichés, their eyes met, flames erupted and that was that.
    In a rush of lust and love, they’d spent every minute together for the next month, then infuriated both of their families with a hurried elopement. But they’d been too crazy about each other to wait for the big, planned, fancy wedding their families would have wanted.
    Instead, it was just the two of them, standing in front of a justice of the peace. Tina had carried a single rose that Brian had picked for her from the garden out in front of the courthouse. And she’d known, deep in her bones, that this man was her soul mate. The one man in the world that she’d been destined to love.
    They’d had one year together. Then Brian dropped the divorce bomb on her and left the next morning for a six-month deployment to an aircraft carrier.
    â€œSo much for soul mates,” Tina whispered to the empty room as she left the memories in her dusty past where they belonged. Then she flopped back onto the bed, threw one arm across her eyes and tried to tell herself that the ache in her heart was just an echo of old pain.
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    The next day, Tina dived into work on her grandmother’s garden. Nana loved having flowers, but she wasn’t keen on