Beneath the Surface Read Online Free Page A

instead of the white button-down cotton shirt and suit jacket she’d worn to work, she would look dressed up enough for dinner at the Oyster Bar. And the black actually brought out her blonde hair.
    So why was this decision so difficult? Maybe because the last time she had dressed for a date was so far in the distant past she couldn’t even remember what she had worn.
    Glancing at her watch she saw it was nearly quarter to six. “All right. I’ll take it. And I’ll wear it out if you could just cut the tags off and ring it up.”
    The clerk looked relieved to be close to getting rid of her after the nearly twenty minutes of indecision. “No problem.”
    She headed off to get scissors while Beth took the opportunity to observe how badly her hands were shaking as she took out her credit card. They had been shaking since she’d gotten up the nerve to accept Rick’s invitation to the Oyster Bar.
    After completing her transaction, she made her way to the restaurant, her heart pounding harder as each step brought her closer. Worse than that, the entire way she kept thinking that Robby and Lyssa were right. She was so out of practice when it came to dating that it would be funny were it not so sad.
    Well she would remedy her dating drought here and now. When she saw Rick and noted how his gaze took her in from head to toe and then back again, she suspected her sexual dry spell might be coming to an end soon also. She swallowed hard at that thought and realized she didn’t seem to have enough saliva to even do that. For the first time in her life she really felt like she needed a drink, and not herbal tea either.
    Rick walked up to her and took both of her hands in his. He smiled easily, all while she struggled to not pass out.
    “Hi. You look great.” He looked down at her from a height that must be at least sixfoottwo compared to her fivefooteight.
    “Thanks.”
    He looked great too, but not because he had gone to any length at all to do so. He was in the same clothes she’d seen him in earlier. His five o’clock shadow—make that six o’clock—had filled in giving him a sexy, scruffy and a bit dangerous look.
    She imagined what that stubble would feel like against her cheek when he kissed her…or between her thighs.
    That image flooded her cheeks with heat and her lower abdomen with butterflies and desire. She dropped her gaze away from his, afraid he would know exactly what she had envisioned.
    “Shall we go inside?”
    “Sure.”
    “They don’t have a table available for hours but they said we can order some appetizers at the bar if we want. Is that okay?”
    Beth nodded. Better actually. Less intimate, less nerve wracking. She would have to ease her way back into this dating thing slowly.
    That concept—easing into things slowly—worked until the first glass of white wine, cushioned by nothing but Oysters Rockefeller, hit her stomach and her bloodstream like a nuclear bomb. Before she ordered the wine, she should have remembered she had skipped lunch to give the tour, and then had been pulled right into the cracked tile mystery. Given that fact, the second glass she sucked down had probably been a really bad idea. But the conversation seemed to flow much smoother after each sip she took. And Rick was so cute and sexy. She felt like she could listen to him talk forever about his marketing company and how he was in New York researching the demographics and traffic patterns of visitors in Grand Central Terminal.
    She listened to how he really loved classical architecture and how he wanted to learn more. She told him as much as she could without it sounding like a lecture about the history of Grand Central and he listened to every word she spoke with rapt attention. He was so smart…and so hot.
    But eventually, all that wine supplemented with a few glasses of ice water to combat her dry mouth caught up with her and she couldn’t ignore the pressure in her bladder any longer. Rising to go to the restroom,