Read Your To Take - Connaghers 03 for Free Online

a moment. Colors swirled in her mind’s
eye, all shades, all hues, dizzying and overwhelming. “I never thought about
what I would wear.”
    “You’re the most important one! You should wear the
signature piece. It’s a formal event, right?”
    “A gala fundraiser hosted by the City of Dallas, with a
fashion show featuring a total of five designers. Each of us is donating pieces
to auction off. I don’t expect my pieces to bring much for the fundraiser—I’m
just hoping to get some buzz about my new line.” The more she thought about it,
the more she couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid. She’d never once thought
about what she would wear, the designer, the billboard for her line. “Okay,
okay, you’ve saved me from making a horrible mistake. I need an evening gown,
definitely, and it needs to be the showstopper.”
    Her stomach churned and a stress headache threatened. “I
don’t have much time to pull this off, because now I need two new pieces, not
one. I don’t even have the design yet, or the fabric, and Miriam still has to
hem…”
    Stepping up behind her, he closed his palms on her arms,
which stilled her frantic thoughts. He didn’t press against her, but his
closeness made the nerves hum up and down her spine. “First, color. Something
unexpected, but you can still mix with the others.”
    “It has to be a color that I’ll look decent in.”
    He let out a low, husky laugh against her ear that sent the
southern half of her body on full alert. Oh God, now it was her turn to feel
ashamed at her ravenous hunger. She was lucky her stomach didn’t rumble as
loudly as his had at breakfast. Starved and so damned needy, it took all her
willpower not to turn around and haul his mouth down to hers.
    “You’ll look gorgeous in any color. Do you have a favorite
color, something that’s meaningful to you?”
    She had to clear her throat. “No.”
    “Any color will go with black, white and gray. How about
green to complement the red?”
    Closing her eyes, she fought not to lean back and rub her
entire body against him. She hadn’t been held, touched, in months. That’s
all this is. A night with Elias, and I’ll forget this insane need. “Too
Christmassy.”
    “The colors you’ve chosen so far are hard and dramatic, a
bit like you and Reyes.” Jesse mused aloud. “He’s harsh and grim. As a cop,
everything is black and white. Right or wrong, law and order or utter chaos. I
bet he despises the gray. Gray is where people begin to tell lies. All too
soon, gray leads to black. There can be no middle ground, no compromise, or
black wins every time. Everything has to be in its proper place, right or
wrong, and he’s always right.”
    His analysis was spot-on, but then again, Elias wasn’t that
hard to read. She wasn’t too concerned, until Jesse began analyzing her.
    “You’re definitely red: passionate, uncontrolled wildfire.
You clash with black all the time and you never give up without a fight.”
    His gentle voice didn’t sound aggressive or inflammatory,
but he dared a soft brush of his lips against her ear that damned near made her
knees buckle.
    “Maybe you need a buffer between you and him. Someone
softer, gentler, who can absorb all the dramatics without falling apart, who
would never try to set one against the other, and will always do exactly as you
say, when you say, how you say, no questions asked. Someone who’d love getting
burned by your sparks, and isn’t afraid of the harder black, either. In fact,
you just might like someone who can take it hard, real hard, as hard as you
want.”
    She knew, then, that she was in serious trouble.
Street-smart and worldly in ways she couldn’t even comprehend, Jesse had voiced
the crux of her relationship problems with Elias. In the great war of passion
between them, Jesse offered himself as Switzerland.
    What he didn’t get at all was that Elias would go all
shock-and-awe on them both if she even thought about it.
    So why am I thinking