Free In Your Wildest Dreams by Toni Blake Page A

your hair."
    "I don't want your money, chère."
    "What do you want?"
    As their eyes met, he thought they both felt the heat the question implied. / want to lay you down and touch you, glide my hands over each and every one of your pretty curves. He gave his head a quick shake to jerk himself back to reality. "No payment required," he finally said, his gaze still locked on hers. They were so damn blue he thought he could go for a swim in them.
    She sat up a bit straighter, her breasts thrusting forward with the motion. "So you're saying you'll help me find her?"
    He let out a sigh. Was that indeed what he was saying? That he, a man who tried to care as little as possible about anybody or anything these days, was going to attempt assisting Stephanie Grant in locating her lost sister?
    "Yeah, beb, sure. I'll help you find her."
    He had to be out of his mind.
     
    Chapter 6
     
     
    Tina pulled the sheet up over her breasts, watching as Robert crossed in front of the bed, naked, disappearing into the bathroom. For a guy in his forties, he had a good body—he worked out every morning, and it showed.
     
    She wasn't sure why she felt the need to cover herself. The sex wasn't horrible or anything. And whenever those weird feelings of yuck entered the picture, she just closed her eyes and imagined it was Russ making love to her, and that took any slight element of distaste away.
    She sighed, sinking a little deeper into the goose-down pillow, watching the sway of her toes, back and forth, where they stuck out from the one-thousand-thread-count sheet. Screw Russ. She didn't need him. She only wished he could see her now—living in the lap of luxury. Robert had put her up in a house in the Garden District. Well, not a whole house— it was a grand old mansion that had been divided into apartments—but it was gorgeous, everything a girl could want.
    She shifted her gaze to the window, overhung with draping vines. Outside stood a large trellis adorned in wisteria,
    and sometimes she opened the window, despite the heat, just to drink in the fragrance. Yet the really fabulous part was inside—high ceilings, crystal chandeliers, plush draperies, and big, majestic furniture that looked like it should be in a castle. "Your throne, m'lady," Robert sometimes said when escorting her to the dining-room table, so she knew she wasn't exaggerating the grandeur in her mind. Stephanie always said she exaggerated everything, but Stephanie was so wrong about her, in so many ways.
    She wished Stephanie could see the place, too, but that was impossible. Her holier-than-thou sister would never approve of the way she'd ended up here.
    "You're doing what?' Steph had said when Tina had called her a few weeks back. "An escort, as in ... a prostitute?'
    It was only sex. Sometimes she wondered if Steph even had sex with the men she dated.
    When Stephanie had been in high school, she'd gotten in trouble for coming in late from a date more than once, and on one occasion Tina had spied her furiously making out with Tommy Rhodes on their front porch when she'd thought everyone was asleep. But somewhere along the way, Steph had changed. By the time Tina was old enough to start asking questions about guys, Stephanie had turned all prim and proper, all "Don't do this" and "Don't do that" and "Don't let yourself get talked into anything" and "You'll like yourself better if you wait."
    "How long?" she'd asked once.
    Stephanie had been packing her green tapestry suit-ease, the one Tina loved because it looked so sophisticated, to go back to college after a long weekend. She'd been making neat little rows of underwear and sweaters and jeans. " 'Til..." She'd pondered slowly, unaware that
     
    Tina watched her fingers with the perfectiy-polished nails, admiring her every move as she packed so fastidiously. " 'Til you feel like you're in complete control of the situation."
     
    Tina had hugged a throw pillow from Steph's bed to her chest. "You mean, like, being in