Free Sex & Sensibility by Shannon Hollis Page A

bottom of her list long ago.
    She tried to concentrate on the pictures in the second hallway, which, from the look of the bedrooms, was where the family slept. Here the pictures were a mix of family events, where Mandy’s smile was most evident, business successes, and holidays in places where there were palm trees or endless slopes of snow. Some of the photographs even featured Griffin in the background.
    The man whose body heat she could feel against her bare arm at this moment, whose gaze felt the way his hand might if it were memorizing the contours of her body.
    Oh, come on. Your imagination is running away with you. You cannot feel a man’s gaze .
    Maybe most people couldn’t, but she could. Right now.If he didn’t stop looking at her breasts she was going to cross her arms, and that would make her look defensive and prudish, and that would seriously annoy her.
    You’re imagining it because he’s standing so close .
    Was he trying to intimidate her? If so, he was going to fail. It was perfectly clear that she and her talent were all he had to work with, so that put her in control—a feeling so unusual that she was going to enjoy the novelty of it for all it was worth.
    No matter where he happened to be looking. In fact, let him look. He could look, but he couldn’t touch. She straightened her shoulders and sensed more than saw him rocking back on his heels. Ha.
    She stopped in front of a picture that looked as though it had been taken at a Christmas costume party. The internal sensor she had learned to trust over the years went, What’s this?
    “That was taken here at the house last Christmas,” Griffin said in the carefully resigned tone of a tour guide. “There’s a ballroom downstairs, on the ocean side.”
    There were a number of costumed people in the photo, including Jay Singleton as Santa and his daughter as something in a diaphanous dress with silvery wings. A sugarplum fairy, maybe? Singleton had his arms around a couple of guys in Roman togas, while a third guy raised a tall glass in a toast. Tessa could only imagine how romantic a winter dance in such a beautiful setting might be, with French doors opening on the terrace and the sea crashing in the background. Ah, the life of the rich and famous.
    On the down side, these people had their kids stolen. Given the option, she would rather be a nobody and safe in student housing than the daughter of one of the ten richest men in the country, tied up on a bed with scarves.

7
    From the private journal of Jay Singleton
    S HE SAYS THAT Christina was trying to impress someone. An older man, she thinks.
    That’s bloody impossible. The only things Christina cares about are shopping, clothes, and a hundred and one ways to avoid filling out college applications. Tessa says she doesn’t want to commit. I don’t get it. If moving out here isn’t a commitment then what is?
    Unless she didn’t really want to come. But she wasn’t forced. I stated my case, told her I wanted her to come live with me. I may have told her I loved her; in fact, I’m sure I must have. That isn’t forcing anybody.
    Then why the hell didn’t she want to commit? And speaking of committing, who is this older man?
    I’m getting that urge to hurt something again. Time to go whack a bucket of golf balls or go out to my secret log pile behind the garage and chop wood. Screw the shrinks—chopping wood is the best therapy I know. A big axe, lots of violence and it lets you think at the same time.
    I can’t think of a single person Christina has ever shown an attraction to. We have parties here, she talks to everyone—or more to the point, no one. She speaks when spoken to and the rest of the time she looks out the windowas if she can’t wait to get out of there. I used to think she hated hanging around with us fuddy-duddies, but now with this older man thing I’m not so sure. What if she was looking out the window at the driveway, waiting for his car?
    What older man?
    This is