Free Body Heat by Susan Fox Page B

semi-retired from teaching to do more research and article-writing, as well as keeping his longtime position on the board of the Wilton Academy where both he and Maura had attended secondary school. But he was still very much attached to his beloved history department, and rare was the day that he didn’t spend a few hours at the university.
    With a sense of inevitability, Maura turned and assessed her parents’ latest offering. She was thirty. Maybe today’s awful luck would change and, for once, Agnes and Timothy would have chosen a man who actually appealed to her.
    Edward Mortimer was a poster boy for the word “average.” He certainly wasn’t bad looking, but nor was he handsome. Roughly her age, he had regular features, medium brown hair, and a build that was neither lean nor heavy. She didn’t see a single distinguishing feature. He’d make a perfect spy. No one would ever remember seeing him. He’d be the George Smiley type of spy—the character created by John le Carré—not the flashy, unrealistic kind.
    She thought of her favorite spies, especially the various 007s. No one had ever topped Sean Connery, in her considered opinion. Pierce Brosnan’s Bond was debonair, like Connery’s, but didn’t have that raw masculine edge, the edge that women went wild for in Daniel Craig. And, no doubt, in Jesse Blue.
    She shook her head to clear it. Thank heavens her parents and, presumably, Professor Mortimer, weren’t mind readers or they’d be appalled.
    “Pleased to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand.
    She put hers into it. “Likewise.” His grip was neither strong nor weak, just . . . average. His skin was neither hot nor cold, and definitely not sweaty. As they both let go, she saw that his hand was slim and pale. No calluses or blisters. Not a hand she could imagine on the handlebar of a motorcycle, or levering a garden tool into the resistant earth. Or tracing the outline of her lips . . .
    As they all sat, Edward said, “May I wish you a happy birthday?”
    What if I said “no,” she wondered mutinously. Instead, the soul of decorum, she murmured, “How kind of you.” In her head, she heard Eliza Doolittle dutifully repeating “How kind of you to let me come.”
    Come? The double meaning resonated in her head. Not that she had any personal experience with the sexy connotation of that word. With Bill and Winston, she’d never achieved orgasm. But she’d just bet Jesse Blue’s women came, and thanked him for it—but by shrieking their lungs out, not mouthing platitudes.
    Edward lifted his water glass and Maura closed her eyes briefly, remembering how Jesse’s muscles had flexed and shifted as he drank that glass of soda.
    “. . . drink?”
    Her eyes flew open as she realized her father was asking her a question. She made a guess. “I’d like a glass of red wine, please.”
    “White might do better,” Timothy said, putting down the wine list. “The club has a number of excellent seafood specials tonight. Why don’t we get a bottle of the New Zealand chardonnay?”
    Why could he never remember that she didn’t like chardonnay? She always hated to disagree with her adoptive parents—the only people who’d been willing to take her in when she was orphaned—and risk their disapproval, but tonight was her birthday and it had been a rough day. Despite the acid twinge of guilt tugging at her belly, she said, “White’s fine, but I’d rather not have chardonnay.”
    Edward picked up the wine list and handed it to her. “It’s your birthday. You should choose, Maura.”
    Pleasantly surprised, she beamed at him. Then, of course, she felt the overwhelming pressure of choosing a wine neither of her parents would criticize. Though Agnes and Timothy maintained that they lived frugally and weren’t pretentious, the fact was that he’d grown up comfortably well-off and she came from serious money. It showed in a thousand ways, from their choice of wine to their decision to send Maura