Free Road to Seduction (Kimani Romance) by Ann Christopher Page B

seen the writing on the wall before he had. At this point he wanted to award her a million dollars for her brilliance. Taking a deep breath, he laid it all on the line.
    “Things seem to be, ah, changing, between me and Izzy.”
    “Oh.” There was a short pause. “Oh.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Hang on.”
    Eric listened to the sounds of Viveca’s footsteps hurrying somewhere in her massive Park Avenue apartment, and then a door shutting. When she came back on the line, her voice was breathless and excited.
    “I knew it. The second I saw the two of you together, I knew you shouldn’t be just friends. So what’s the problem?”
    “Well, this is a little, ah…sudden.”
    “Right…?”
    “And it’s going to take some time getting used to. I don’t want to ruin the friendship and all. And Izzy’s special. Not like the other, ah—”
    “Hoochies?” she suggested helpfully.
    “—well…yeah, not like the other hoochies I date.”
    “You’d better not blow it, okay?”
    The sudden vehemence in Viveca’s voice made him pull back a little. He held the phone away from his ear and looked at it, half-expecting to see Viveca climb out of it and point a finger in his face.
    “I don’t want to hear about you hurting her, or cheating or anything—”
    “Excuse me,” he snarled, pacing back and forth next to the SUV. “Before you start ranting about what a terrible person you think I am, let me just stop you right there, okay? This is the problem—she’s not gonna give me the chance to hurt her. She’s already got an end game in mind before the damn relationship even starts.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean she says she’ll have sex with me, and that’s it. One time . And then she’s moving to South Africa to teach.”
    Just then a stooped man and woman, one of those little old couples who look like they’ve been married since the time of the pharaohs, tottered by several feet away on the sidewalk. Hearing the word sex —maybe Eric had been talking a little louder than he’d meant to—they glanced around, looking scandalized. Eric smiled, waved, and watched as they clutched each other’s arms tighter and hurried off.
    “Oh,” Viveca said in his ear, and Eric could almost see herface fall. “Well, I could see why you’d turn down that arrangement, but—”
    “Oh, don’t worry,” he interjected. “I’m taking the sex. Any way I can.”
    “What?”
    “The problem is getting her to stick around so we can see where this thing goes. There’s no way I can up and move to South Africa. You know that. But I just don’t get what her problem is. Why would she tell me a flat-out no? ”
    “Well…” Viveca sighed thoughtfully. “If she’s anything like me, she probably doubts your ability to, ah, commit to one woman. Maybe she’s worried about that.”
    “Maybe,” he said doubtfully.
    That explanation certainly jibed with what Izzy had said a few minutes ago, in between her bursts of hysterical laughter, but his gut told him there was something else going on. He just didn’t know what, although he had the persistent and sickening worry that she was still hung up on her ex.
    “But if you think there’s more to it, and you really want her—”
    “I do,” he said. “You have no idea.”
    “—then you need to hang in there with her. Isabella’s worth it.” Viveca paused and he heard the smile in her voice. “Anyway, I don’t think there’s a Warner man who ever lived that couldn’t, ah, win over a woman he wanted.”
    Right on cue, Eric heard a door open on Viveca’s side of the line, and then approaching footsteps that could only belong to one person.
    “Excuse me,” Viveca hissed, though her voice was a little muffled now, as if she’d put her hand over the receiver. “I was in the middle of a very important private conversation.”
    “So sorry,” said Andrew’s faint voice, but he didn’t sound sorry at all, especially when he raised his voice for his next sentence, no