Free Strung Out by Kaitlin Maitland Page B

Talia could do nothing but nod.
    “Come and lie down.” Erik gathered her into his arms and deposited her back onto the bed. Nestling in beside her, he pulled the sheet and blanket up over their bodies. “I’m sorry if I was rough. I’m not usually like that.”
    Had she ever felt so cherished? It was bizarre, really, that this near stranger could evoke such powerful feelings. Why oh why did he have to be determined to sell himself to someone else?
    “Talia, say something.”
    She cleared her throat. “We totally had sex in front of a window with the blinds open.”
    His chuckle shook the mattress and sent zingers straight to her heart. “If anybody is forced to be awake at this ungodly hour on a Sunday morning, they deserve a show like that.”
    “So you don’t care at all that the whole city might’ve seen you naked?”
    “No.”
    She twisted her head around to see the unapologetic and frankly devilish grin on his face. She couldn’t help but smile back. After all, if she looked as incredible in the buff as Erik did, she’d be shameless too. “You’re so bad.”
    His face sobered. “Did I hurt you?”
    “I’m not some porcelain doll that’s going to crack if you take me out of the box, Erik.”
    The thought of porcelain led to other thoughts about blonde ice princesses. How could she lie here and giggle and joke when she’d just had sex with the man Courteney Colton intended to marry? Again. In fact, she couldn’t seem to stop having sex with Erik.
    “I recognize that look.” He brushed his lips across hers. “C’mon, get up. I have the perfect remedy to all that thinking you’re doing.”
    She was intrigued. “What’s that?”
    “Breakfast.”

Chapter Eight

    Erik had once claimed that the phrase “money can’t buy everything” was a crock of shit.
    Now he wasn’t so certain. In his whole life, he had yet to find a situation he could not manipulate in some way to his advantage. It was one of the things that made him so lethal in a boardroom.
    But sometimes what worked in corporate life was woefully inadequate to handle the dilemmas in his personal life. Or at least that was what he was discovering.
    “What kind of car is this?”
    He glanced at the passenger seat and tried to suppress the enormous smile that kept threatening to overtake his face. Talia was giving the interior of his sports car a very thorough going-over.
    She poked at the headliner. “Is that suede on the ceiling?”
    “Yeah. The entire interior is leather. Pretty standard on a Porsche.”
    “What a pain in the ass to clean.”
    Erik whistled. “Man, you’re just chopping away at my ego. First my job, now my car.”
    A pretty blush colored her cheeks, and she ducked her head. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I’ve just always wanted a car. So I tend to obsess over details when I get in one.”
    The idea that she’d never in her life owned a car rendered him speechless. But why would she have owned a car? The Massachusetts public transit system was well developed. Why deal with the expense of owning the car, let alone trying to find a place to park the damn thing while you weren’t driving it. If his place in Beacon Hill didn’t come complete with parking, he would leave his cars in Brookline.
    Talia was still mulling over the car topic. “I think I’d rather have something bigger though.”
    “Why?”
    “Do you have any idea how large a cello case is? If you got it in this car, you’d never get it out.”
    He shrugged. “Put the top down.”
    “I swear. Men have solutions for everything.”
    Not everything.
    Erik pulled up to the curb at his favorite Sunday morning brunch spot. Before he’d exited the vehicle, a young man appeared at the curb. Instead of a typical valet’s uniform, he looked like a dishwasher. Which he was.
    “Morning, Mr. Erik.”
    “Hey, Sam, good to see you.” Erik handed the kid a fifty. Valet wasn’t really on the menu, but he and Sam had a long-standing arrangement that ended