Passion Read Online Free Page B

of guilt he’d been carrying for
     the last seventeen years had finally become more than his mind could bear, and he had just gone all-out nuts.
    Pushing away the headache those thoughts brought, he forced his attention back to Teryl. With her sleek brown hair, brown
     eyes, and easy smile, she was pretty in a wholesome, innocent way. She was too trusting—her affair with the marriedman proved that—and too naïve. Coming down here with
him
proved that.
    And she was, in ways totally at odds with her naïveté and wholesomeness, sexy as hell.
    On his one night in Denver last week, he had picked up a pretty blonde—high-priced, charming, dressed to thrill—but she hadn’t
     aroused even the faintest desire in him. Maybe it had been because she was a pro, because he’d known it would be greed, not
     desire, that brought her to his bed, because he’d known it would be a performance, her movements practiced, her responses
     rehearsed.
    There would be nothing practiced, nothing rehearsed, about sex with Teryl.
    And there was nothing realistic in thinking about it, either, he admitted grimly. Her brazen bluff about men aside—
I just use them for sex
—the only way he was going to get into Teryl Weaver’s bed tonight was to seduce her, and he had been alone so long that he
     wasn’t sure he remembered how.
    She was window-shopping, ignoring the crowds, often looking back to make sure he was behind her. He stayed close, patiently
     following her inside one shop after another.
    “So you’re not a fan of Simon Tremont’s,” she remarked when they turned off onto Governor Nicholls and the crowd thinned enough
     that he could walk beside her.
    “He’s written some good stuff.”
    “Good stuff?” She tilted her head to one side and studied him as they walked. “I’ve been reading him since I was in college.
     He’s written some of the best ‘stuff’ out there.”
    “How about—” John swallowed hard. He couldn’t say the title, couldn’t bring himself to speak it aloud. “How about the new
     one?”
    “
Resurrection
?” She stepped onto a green-painted stoop, then down again. “You can see for yourself in August. Morgan-Wilkes is really pushing
     to get it out as quickly as possible. It’s scheduled to hit the shelves in about eight weeks.”
    Eight weeks. That was a major rush. With his previous books, turned in on time, he’d faced a wait of nine to twelve months
     before they appeared in the bookstores. Was the publishersimply eager to take advantage of all this free publicity Tremont was drumming up?
    Or was
Resurrection
really that good? Teryl hadn’t said.
    “Have you read it?”
    “He brought it into the office last week while Rebecca and I were both gone to lunch. I got back first and started reading
     it, but she came in just as I was finishing Chapter 2 . She went home and took it with her, and didn’t come back the rest of
     the week.”
    “So what did you think of the first two chapters?”
    They walked nearly half a block before she stopped and faced him head-on. “It was the most impressive work I’d ever read.”
    John shifted uneasily. Her manner answered his question far better than her words. People had spoken like that about his own
     work in the beginning, in that hushed sort of reverent tone. Awed. Admiring and, at the same time, envious. Worshipful.
    And now Teryl was speaking the same way about the man pretending to be him.
    He ignored the jealousy that sparked, turned her with a touch back toward Jackson Square, and asked, “Is this the first time
     you’ve met Tremont?”
    “We’ve talked on the phone a few times in the last couple of months, but today was the first time we’d met face-to-face.”
    “What do you think?”
    She paid the shop windows they were passing more attention than they deserved before finally giving him a sidelong glance.
     “You know you’re asking my opinion of the man who, in a roundabout way, makes my job possible. The commissions he pays