Up to Me (Shore Secrets) Read Online Free PDF Page A

essence.
    If anyone looked in his direction, they’d notice only the beer and his fixation on the game. They wouldn’t notice that Gray was taking notes on his iPad. Or at least, they wouldn’t notice what he marked down as noticeable about the place. The number of people who wandered in and out of the bar. Those who stayed for dinner over on the restaurant side. How many lingered out at the fire pit. The mood of the room; casual, comfortable, but not terribly busy. Rustic décor that didn’t fit with the rest of castle motif throughout. On the other hand, it could be seen as a good escape bunker for guys sick of the antique furniture and oriental rugs.
    No assessment yet—and not just because the game wasn’t over. Gray planned to come back several times. Just like he’d suit up and spend an evening in the fancy restaurant, too. No televisions to distract him in there. Hard not to attract attention flying solo when every table held rose buds. Maybe he’d take a date. Strictly as cover, of course.
    Gray took a long slug of his beer. No point lying to himself. He was looking for any excuse to head back to the spa tomorrow, to ask out the gorgeous woman who’d put her hands all over him today. That had been an experience he wouldn’t mind reliving. Over and over again. He’d gone in there to do a spot check. See what sort of customer service a sweaty guy in running shorts got. The spa’s usual clientele probably ran to cougar types who wanted to get worked over while their husbands golfed.
    The spa and its staff passed his test with flying colors, but Gray had walked out of there with a very big problem. About five feet and six inches of a brown-haired, green-eyed problem: Ella of the no last name. She’d grabbed the attention of his dick from the moment he saw her on the floor. Then once she started talking, her passionate sell of massage tickled his brain too. Sweet, pretty, and with fingers that he could tell in just five minutes knew how to wring pleasure out of every inch of a man’s body.
    Oh, he wanted Ella. Enough that it had slipped the truth right out of his lips. He wanted to learn about her, wanted to get to know her. And yes, he wanted to see if her lips tasted as raspberry-delicious as they looked. Dating on the job, though, could be tricky. Could be all kinds of tricky. Mostly because he hated lying to a woman. Yeah, he did it pretty much every day of every assignment. But Gray never lied to a woman once they were involved.
    Back home in Manhattan, he had a few friends-with-benefits he bed-hopped between. None of them were looking for anything serious. That arrangement suited him just fine. Gray only hung out in the city long enough to switch out his ties and grab a new assignment. Not like he was a monk out on the road. There were three flight attendants who knew his real story. Depending on their schedules, he’d meet up with one of them for a...layover. They bopped around the country so much that Gray provided them with a feeling of home, or at least continuity.
    Which was why his Herculean reaction to Ella surprised him. He met cute, interesting women all the time while undercover. Gray almost never followed up on that attraction. Thanks to his Slingbox setup, he’d go back to his hotel room and catch up on all the stuff piled up on his DVR. He loved all the crazy, thousand-year-old hijinks the History Channel brought to light. His true secret obsession was worse. Nobody in the world aside from his cable repair guy knew that Gray had an addiction to court television.
    Something about Ella, though, tugged at him on a whole different level, above and way beyond sex. Gray didn’t know what and he didn’t know why. He crammed a huge glob of nachos into his mouth. There was no getting around the fact that dating her would complicate his job. The idea was eight kinds of stupid. Nevertheless, Gray knew that he’d be at the door of the spa the minute it opened tomorrow.
    A loud cheer went up from