Free Ladies' Man by Suzanne Brockmann Page A

going to give it to me?”
    She glanced away from him. “I don’t want you to feel obligated to call me.”
    She didn’t think he was serious about wanting to see her again. Well, she was wrong. He was going to get her phone number from T.S. and call her.
    But first he was going to give her the time and space she’d asked for.
    If what she’d told him was true, he was the first man she’d let into her life after what had to have been a devastating end to her twelve-year marriage. He couldn’t relate—he’d never even had a twelve-
week
relationship—but he
could
understand how she might want a little time to sort her feelings out.
    And he had plenty of time. She was going to be in town for the entire summer.
    He kissed her again—a long, lingering kiss designed to keep her thinking about him in the days to come.
    “Thanks for having dinner with me,” he said softly, pulling away, intending to climb out of the car.
    But it wasn’t going to be that easy. He couldn’t keep himself from kissing her again as he felt the unmistakable tug of desire. He wanted her again. Already. It was not a surprise. She looked incredible, sitting there with her hair slightly mussed, the top buttons of her shirt undone just a little too far, a soft, dreamy, sleepy satisfaction in her gorgeous brown eyes. He wanted to wake up with her next to him in his bed.
    “You better go,” she whispered, her fingers in his hair.
    “I know.” Sam had to bite his tongue to keep himself from begging her to have dinner with him tomorrow night.
    He backed out of the limo, holding her hand until the last possible second.
    Ron was standing patiently near the car door, and he closed it, nodding to Sam. “Good night, sir.”
    Sam extracted some money from his wallet. Ron had been driving all night, and he definitely deserved a hefty tip.
    “Good night, Ron, and thanks,” he said, pressing the bills into the driver’s hand as the two men shook.
    Ron glanced at the money. “Oh, no, sir, I couldn’t…”
    “Yes, you could,” Sam insisted.
    “Thank you, Mr. Harrison.”
    As the driver climbed behind the steering wheel, Sam gazed at the limo’s window, knowing that even though he couldn’t see her through the privacy glass, Ellen could see him. And when Ron started the engine, the window slid down.
    Ellen’s dancing brown eyes and sparkling smile seemed to light up the night. “Good night, Sam,” she called to him as the limo pulled away. “I loved seeing the lions.”
    Sam laughed aloud as he watched the taillights of the limo disappear.
    To hell with space and time. He was calling her tomorrow.

FIVE

    M om! Telephone!” Ellen’s thirteen-year-old son, Jamie, came sliding into her bedroom, skidding across the highly polished wood floor in his socks, posing like a surfer, holding out the cordless phone.
    She took the phone from him, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. “Who is it?”
    “Some guy wid a New Yawk accent,” Jamie imitated with comic perfection.
    Sam didn’t have
that
much of an accent. But, she reminded herself, she wasn’t expecting him to call. She didn’t
want
him to call. “Hello?” she said.
    It wasn’t Sam. It was Lydia’s agent, calling with information about a second audition for Monday afternoon. Ellen wrote it all down in an appointment notebook she kept on her desk next to her laptop computer, as Jamie attempted clumsily humorous figure-skating moves, still sliding with his socks in the center of the room.
    “Audition?” he asked as she hung up the phone.
    “Yep.”
    “Who’s it for?”
    “Lyd.” Between the three of them, they’d been kept pretty busy, going from one audition to the next. Both of Ellen’s kids had been acting and modeling since Lydia had pointed to the kids on
Sesame Street
and said that she wanted to do that. Jamie had tagged along to several of her early modeling sessions and had signed on soon after.
    Since they’d been in New York full-time, there had been more