Free Not For Sale by Sandra Marton Page B

morning, took her home and left her at her door.
    “I had a wonderful time,” she gushed, and he knew damned well it was a lie. He’d been the worst kind of company: silent, unsmiling, rushing her through a meal that normally would have taken three hours and then pretending he had no idea what she hinted at when she stepped close and turned her pretty face up to his.
    “So did I,” he said.
    Liar,
he thought…but not a liar anywhere near the equal of Caroline Hamilton.
    He went back to his gym Saturday, played a couple of games of racquetball, lifted weights, traded the workout room for a run through Central Park. At night, instead of simply sending a check to a charity auction, he attended it with a redhead with an infectious smile and legs that went on forever. Afterward, he took her for a light supper because he knew it was the right thing to do but when she took his hand and said she lived nearby and the night was really young and it would be lovely if he came up for drinks, he pleaded another early appointment, delivered her to her door and left her there with a handshake.
    Merda,
a handshake!
    He made himself a vow. He would do much better tomorrow, when he had a date to take a stunning Broadway actress to lunch.
    If anything, he did worse.
    “It isn’t you,” he said, when she asked him what was wrong, and before he could say, “it’s me,” she was on her feet and gone.
    Enough.
    He went home, packed, phoned his pilot, flew to Martha’s Vineyard. A banker he knew had a weekend home on thebeach; the guy and his wife were having a big party. They’d invited him but he’d declined.
    “Turn up if you change your mind,” the banker had said.
    Well, he had definitely changed his mind.
    He drank some excellent wine, ate a grilled-to-perfection lobster, got hit on by two women…and excused himself and went, alone, for a walk along the sand.
    The day was not the kind chambers of commerce hope for. The sea was the color of pewter, the waves were high, the sky was bleak. All of that was fine.
    It suited his mood.
    Why in hell couldn’t he stop thinking about Caroline? He despised her, despised what she was. So what if she was beautiful? He’d had the chance to get involved with several women equally beautiful in the past couple of days and he’d walked away from each one. He hadn’t wanted to pretend interest in their conversations or smile at their jokes, and he sure as hell had not wanted to take one of them to bed.
    And yet, he knew that if Caroline materialized in front of him at this moment, as willing and eager as she’d been the other night, he’d strip her of her clothes, take her in his arms, draw her down to the sand and bury himself inside her.
    And she’d respond. No subterfuge, no games, no coy teasing.
    “Damnit,” he snarled, because it had
all
been subterfuge. She, and everything she’d done, had been an endless, ugly, practiced lie.
    Turning him on, making all those little sounds, those whispers, driving him out of his mind with want and need…
    They were the cornerstones of her profession. She traded sex for money.
    And if there were moments it had seemed as if she’d never let a man do half the things he’d done to her that night, maybe that was her specialty. What had he heard it called, that blendof sex and innocence? The Madonna-whore thing. He’d never wanted those traits in a woman himself but then, he’d never been with a woman like Caroline before.
    God knew, he would never be with one again.
    The Elins of this world were more honest. They traded sex with powerful men for the tokens of that power. He wasn’t a fool; he understood that. He’d always understood it. Jewels. Gifts. Being seen in the right places at the right times. It was what such women wanted and absolutely, that was more honest, wasn’t it?
    Wasn’t it?
    The sky went from gray to charcoal. Lightning flashed out over the Atlantic; rain beat down with a swift ferocity. He jogged back to the party, laughed