Read Sullivan's Woman for Free Online Page A

hands on his chest and pushed herself to safety.
    â€œYou’re not an easy man, are you, Colin?” Cassidy took a deep breath to steady her limbs.
    â€œNot a bit.” There was careless agreement in his answer. She defined what flicked over his face as something between annoyance and curiosity. “How old are you, Cassidy?”
    â€œTwenty-three,” she answered, meeting his eyes levelly. “Why?”
    He shrugged, stuck his hands in his pockets, then paced the room. “I’ll need to know all there is to know about you before I’m done. What you are will creep into the portrait, and I’ll have to work with it. I’ve got to find the blasted dress quickly; I want to start. The time’s right.” There was an urgency in his movements that contrasted sharply with the man who had seduced her with his voice only moments before. Who was Colin Sullivan? Cassidy wondered. Though she knew finding out would be dangerous, she felt compelled to learn.
    â€œI think I know one that might do,” she hazarded while his mood swirled around the room. “It’s more oyster than ivory, actually, but it’s simple and straight with a high neck. It’s also horribly expensive. It’s silk, you see—”
    â€œWhere is it?” Colin demanded and stopped his pacing directly in front of her. “Never mind,” he continued even as she opened her mouth to tell him. “Let’s go have a look.”
    He had her by the hand and had passed through the back door before she could say another word. Cassidy took care to go along peacefully down the stairs, not wishing to risk a broken neck. “Which way?” he demanded as he marched her to the front of the building.
    â€œIt’s just a few blocks that way,” she said and pointed to the left. “But Colin—” Before she could finish her thought, she was being piloted at full speed down the sidewalk. “Colin, I think you should know . . . Good grief, I should’ve worn my track shoes. Would you slow down?”
    â€œYou’ve got long legs,” he told her and continued without slackening his pace. Making a brief sound of disgust, Cassidy trotted to keep up. “I think you should know the dress is in the shop I was fired from yesterday.”
    â€œA dress shop?” This appeared to interest him enough to slow him down while he glanced at her. With a gesture of absent familiarity, he tucked her hair behind her ear. “What were you doing working in a dress shop?”
    Cassidy sent him a withering stare. “I was earning a living, Sullivan. Some of us are required to do so in order to eat.”
    â€œDon’t be nasty, Cass,” he advised mildly. “You’re not a professional dress clerk.”
    â€œWhich is precisely why I was fired.” Amused by her own ineptitude, she grinned. “I’m also not a professional waitress, which is why I was fired from Jim’s Bar and Grill. I objected to having certain parts of my anatomy pinched, and dumped a bowl of coleslaw on a paying customer. I won’t go into my brief career as a switchboard operator. It’s a sad, pitiful story, and it’s such a lovely day.” She tossed back her head to smile at Colin and found him watching her.
    â€œIf you’re not a professional clerk or waitress or switchboard operator, what are you, Cass?”
    â€œA struggling writer who seems singularly inept at holding a proper job since college.”
    â€œA writer.” He nodded as he looked down at her. “What do you write?”
    â€œUnpublished novels,” she told him and smiled again. “And an occasional article on the effects of perfume on the modern man. I have to keep my hand in.”
    â€œAnd are you any good?” Colin skirted another pedestrian without taking his eyes from Cassidy.
    â€œI’m positively brimming with fresh, undiscovered talent.” She tossed her