Free Seven-Year Seduction by Heidi Betts Page A

propped on the coffee table, list of supplies on his lap while he sipped a beer and watched something on the sports channel, to sneak into the kitchen for a bottle of wine.
    Tiptoeing back upstairs, she shut herself into the bathroom and started drawing a bath. She poured a generous amount of bubble bath into the stream of roaring water and then started to undress as the small room filled with the scent of lavender.
    Once she was nude, she poured a glass of the rich red claret, set it on the rim of the tub, leaving the bottle within reach, and stepped inside the foaming, steaming water.
    Ah, heaven, she thought as she turned off the water and slipped beneath its heady spell. A good bubble bath went a long way toward curing life’s ills.
    Unfortunately, it didn’t go quite far enough tonight. She would need a lot more bubbles and a lot more wine to block out the memories her latest encounter with Connor had stirred up.
    No. She wasn’t going to think about that. Not anymore, not right now. This time was for healing, forgetting.
    Taking another drink of wine, she leaned her head back against the edge of the tub, closed her eyes and tried to think of anything other than what weighed heaviest on her heart.
    She thought about her brother’s wedding, and how happy he and Karen had both looked while saying their vows. She thought about her parents’ excited faces each time she stepped off the plane after being away for so long, often more than a year.
    She thought about all the work that awaited when she got back to Los Angeles. Contracts to go over, phone calls to return, and likely a few high-strung celebrities to calm down.
    The more her mind wandered to work issues, the sleepier she got, until her muscles began to relax and she could feel herself starting to fall asleep.
    And then the funniest thing happened. Just before she drifted off completely, Connor’s face played across her subconscious and pulled the lid right off of everything she’d been fighting so hard to keep under wraps.

Six
    S he was twenty-one again and a senior in college—old enough to drink but young enough to still feel carefree and invincible .
    Most importantly, though, she was in love. And finally, after so many years of wishing and dreaming, she was pretty sure he was in love with her, too .
    She’d gone home to Crystal Springs for the weekend, to visit her parents, and ended up going to a home-town football game with them, her brother and Connor. Afterward, she and Connor had gone off by themselves and ended up making love. Her first time and in the cab of his pickup, but as far as she was concerned, it had been absolutely perfect.
    She’d been smiling ever since. Even her friends atschool had noticed and asked her about it, pressuring her for details .
    But she wouldn’t tell them, at least not yet. The entire experience was too new to her. Too special. Too private. It was something that only she and Connor shared, and she wanted to keep it that way a while longer .
    A few days after she’d returned to school from her weekend home, though, her happiness began to fade. She’d expected Connor to call, but he hadn’t.
    The next time she phoned her parents, she’d even asked to talk to her brother and tried to subtly feel him out about his best friend. Had they seen each other or talked since she’d been home? Had Connor mentioned her at all? But her brother didn’t seem to know anything and she hadn’t wanted him to grow suspicious.
    Connor would call; she was just too giddy and anxious to hear from him. In another day or two, he would call .
    But the days passed, turning into weeks, and she never heard from him. Not a phone call, not an e-mail, not a short message passed to her through her family. Nothing.
    And then she started getting sick. She didn’t think much of it at first. A flu bug was going around campus and everyone seemed to be catching it, so she wasn’t surprised