Page 13 of Mr. Scandalous

“Now, he wouldn’t admit it if you tortured him, but I’ve seen the wistful way he looks at Randy and Jill and me and Zach. No matter how much he protests, he’s just not built like Uncle Mac. Sooner or later he’ll realize what he’s missing by clinging to his silly belief that love, and marriage mean the death of fun and adventure. And I think your Eden is just the woman to teach him how to face his fears. He’s going to love monogamy once he gets a taste of it.”

“How do you know?”

Sarah held out her left hand and admired the big diamond sparkling there. “Until I met Zach, I was afraid of commitment, too. We Ramseys are a stubborn bunch, but when we do fall in love, we’re in it for the long haul.”

“I remember.” Jayne laughed. “I kept trying to tell you what a wonderful thing agoodmarriage is.”

“Call me a slow learner. Let’s hope Alec realizes sooner than I did that there’s nothing more profound than building an intimate life with someone who always has your back no matter what. Not to mention that it’s hot, hot, hot.”

“The sexual chemistry between those two was unmistakable,” Jayne said. “I thought Eden’s boutique was going to spontaneously combust.”

“All they needed was a push in the right direction.” Sarah nodded. “They’ll thank us in the end.”

“I’ll call Eden after she comes back from their luncheon and see how things went.”

“I’ll keep you posted on what Alec says.”

The two women grinned at each other, and Sarah started humming the matchmaker song fromFiddler on the Roof.

* * *

Would lightning striketwice? Or had yesterday simply been a fluke?

Biting her bottom lip, Eden changed from her Nikes in the ground-floor ladies’ room in Alec’s West Chelsea office building and slipped into the pair of four-inch Jimmy Choo ebony sling-backs Jayne had loaned her.

Was Alec Ramsey really the man she wanted as a sex mentor?

That was the question she was here to answer.

In the meantime, she had caved and conceded to Ashley and Jayne’s suggestion that she vamp out, although she couldn’t shake the feeling she was leading Alec on, acting like an experienced, sexually confident woman when she was anything but.

“Act the part,” Ashley had said and then insisted Eden borrow her skintight black leather skirt that was long enough to hide Eden’s burn scars but short enough to generate plenty of head-turning interest.

On the subway ride over she’d gotten several appreciative stares at her legs.

“Perceiving, behaving, becoming.” Jayne had imparted her wisdom along with the Jimmy Choo’s, and a pair of dynamite black fishnet stockings with sparkly rhinestones sewn into the seam.

But what had finally convinced her to give Alec a chance was the latest upload on hisSex andSingle Guysocial media platform. The way Alec advocated responsible sex and described woman as goddesses, impressed her. As an influencer aimed at bachelors, he might be commitment shy, but watching the recording clued her in that Alec definitely knew his way around the female body.

And that was exactly what she needed. A temporary tryst with a considerate, educated man who wouldn’t head for the hills when he discovered her secret.

Eden peered at herself in the bathroom mirror, startled by how unruly she appeared. She ran a hand through her rowdy curls to tame them. The humid weather played havoc with her hair, giving her a just-tumbled-out-of-bed, beach-waves look. Her lipstick was too red, her mascara too thickly applied.

Rocker chick glam.

She felt restless and reckless and edgy, and those alien feelings scared her. She wished she’d had the courage to explore her sexuality more fully before the fire, before she had the scars to contend with, but she’d been too chicken. Frightened of catching a communicable disease or of ending up like her mother or of getting her heart broken.

Or all three.

Which was why she was in the situation she was in. Sexually frustrated and her creativity stagnant. Dare she hope that Alec Ramsey held the key to her liberation?

She glanced at her watch. Five minutes to one.

“Show time,” she whispered to her reflection, slipped her sneakers into her tote bag, took a deep breath and headed for the fourteenth floor.

Controlled chaos greeted her when she stepped off the elevator and pushed through the double glass doors withSex andSingle Guylogo etched into the panels in bold, masculine font.

Phones rang incessantly. People hurried to and fro, squeezing past each other in the narrow corridor at the same time someone was holding an impromptu sales meeting right there at the central credenza.

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