Read Two Week Seduction Online
Authors: Kathy Lyons
Two Week Seduction
She’s going to break
all
of his rules…
Tech Sergeant John O’Donnell was never fond of his hometown. Too many reminders of poverty, his rocky family life, and the girl he was never allowed to have. Now he has exactly two weeks to sort out his mother’s finances before he heads back overseas. Two weeks that he’s determined to spend as far from his best friend’s little sister as possible.
Alea Heling has a naughty streak a mile wide. Sweet and simple?
Boring
. She’s been craving a bad boy like John since their wild days together in high school, and this time, she’s not taking no for an answer. But with every panty-meltingly hot encounter, Alea forgets one hard, cold reality—this soldier won’t let a fortnight turn into forever…and forever might be exactly what they both need.
T
WO
W
EEK
K
ATHY
L
YONS
Table of Contents
If you love sexy romance, one-click these steamy Brazen releases…
Take Me if You Dare
Dare to Resist
Recipe for Seduction
Wanton Heat
Drive Me Crazy
In Bed with Mr. Wrong
Seducing the Playboy
Game for Marriage
No Flowers Required
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Katherine Grill. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.
Brazen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC. For more information on our titles, visit
www.brazenbooks.com
.
Edited by Liz Pelletier
Cover design by Heather Howland
ISBN 978-1-62266-641-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition June 2014
To Liz P whose brilliance never ceases to amaze me
Not only could this book never have been done without you
But I probably would have given up on writing contemporary
Thank you for believing in me
And thank you for being you
Also, this is for my daughter Amanda
And all the other people who give back through the
Teach for America program
.
Chapter One
Alea Heling froze, her tube of Seduce lipstick an inch from her mouth. She was going to a welcome home party for John O’Donnell, the man she’d been lusting for since tenth grade. He was finally home from the Air Force and she’d have the chance to see if the reality of him lived up to her nearly decade-long fantasy.
But even if she was headed to his party with the idea of seduction, she had to consider her strategy. John didn’t like bold colors on her. She’d learned that at sixteen when she’d attempted to attract him with a tight red tank top and a black miniskirt. The thigh-high leather boots had been icing on the Alea cake, or so she’d thought. Instead, he’d called her a tart, spanked her ass, and sent her right back home via her older brother. The humiliation of the moment still made her cheeks burn.
So with a sigh, she put down the lipstick and reached for the pale pink tube of Darling. Instead of letting him see her bad girl self, now relegated to blowout weekends, she changed her curve-hugging tee with the plunging V-neck to a pale yellow blouse that looked stylish with her jeans. She finger combed her short bob with a dark red highlight that made her feel wild, even as she opted for professional black pumps over strappy sandals. There. Her alter ego as a high school teacher. Boring, sedate, proper.
“Alea!” her brother Sam called from the living room of her tiny apartment. “If I’d known you were going to take this long, I wouldn’t have offered to pick you up.”
“Chill,” she shot back. “I’m coming. And here I thought it was lucky that you and John happened to get leave at the same time. How wrong I was.” Resisting the urge to make her eye shadow way more dramatic, she grabbed her teacher purse—a massive tote with every office supply known to man in it—and headed out, only to have her brother gasp.
“Who the hell are you and what have you done with my sister?”
“What?”
He gestured at her outfit. “All you need are pearls and you’d be Nana.”
She grimaced, horrified by the idea. Then she reminded herself that was probably the image John preferred. If dressing more maturely fed into that endgame, so be it. “Nana was a class act,” she said to her brother.
“Of course she was. But when have you ever said so? I believe your words for her were stuffy, old-fashioned, snobbish—”
“That’s our grandmother you’re insulting,” she huffed.
“No, that’s our grandmother
you
insulted. Before, during, and after every society party we were forced to attend.” He straightened up from the couch with a shrug. “Hey, if you want to dress like we’re going to dinner with Mom and Dad, then who am I to care? I just thought since we were going to see John you’d be in thigh highs and stripper heels.”
“Yeah, when I was sixteen. And you made your opinion on that very clear.”
“Why do you think I came over here before the party?”
Alea swallowed, trying to find her way through her emotions.
“Look, Sam, you’ve been away a long time.” Fourteen months, three weeks, and two days, to be exact, since his last leave. Being a fighter pilot wasn’t exactly a nine to five job. “It’s possible I’ve grown up since you’ve been gone. It’s possible that I’m not the wild child you remember.”
“Whatever, Little Nana,” he said.
In response, she slugged his arm. Hard. He didn’t even bother to duck. Then he laughed while she rubbed her hand in pain.
“Next time, go for the nuts. It’s the only part of a man you’re strong enough to hurt.”
She glared at him. He had no idea what part of a man she knew how to hurt. But before she could say anything, she remembered if she put her big, bad brother on the floor, she’d likely mess up her sedate-as-Nana makeup.
So instead, she simply glared. “Cool it, or I’ll tell everyone to call you pencil dick.”
“That would be scary if half the women at the party didn’t already know the truth.”
Damn.
…
“It’s so good to have you back home.”
John O’Donnell smiled at his sister as he tossed his bag into the back of her Jeep. His sister rarely needed him to fill in the conversation, even when there were only two of them, so he settled back into his seat as she pulled away from the airport. Five minutes later, he was watching the familiar sights of home roll past the window. Unease gripped his gut.
“I’m not staying,” he said. Best get that information out early.
Gail shot him a motherly look. She was only four years older, but she’d been giving him that look since he was in diapers. “Don’t make any rash decisions.”
“I’m never rash.”
“Things are different now. Better. You’ll see.”
He didn’t answer. She meant things were better because their father was gone. The man had died four weeks ago by wrapping his car around a tree. When John had gotten the news, he’d asked three questions. First, had anyone else been hurt? Answer: no, though the tree probably wouldn’t survive. Second, was Mom taken care of? Answer: his two older sisters, Gail and Jean, were handling things. Since Gail was a paralegal, she was taking care of the official matters. Jean and her twin toddlers were helping with the emotional.
The third question was a repeat of the second: was Mom taken care of? And by that he meant financially. Answer: no. That was why he was here now. It had taken him weeks to get leave from the Air Force so he could sort through the money and then get the hell out of Florida. There was nothing holding him here and a thousand memories urging him to fly fast and far away.
“Come on, John. I miss my baby bro.”
He didn’t answer. She commented with a heavy sigh.
“Look, I know you’re all big, bad, and surly.”
His snort was eloquent.
“But do you think you could attempt to be nice for a bit? Remember, we all love and miss you. Better still, you could pretend to like us back.”
He almost spoke, but her words stopped him cold. All? Us? “There better not be a welcome home party.”
She winced. It was a quick move, but he was a trained observer. “No welcome home party,” she deadpanned.
He groaned. “How many people?”
“No party.”
“Come on, Gail, who? Who is going to leap out at me?”
“No leaping going to happen.”
“I’m military. I shoot on reflex.”
“No party.”
He waited in silence.
“Really. We all know how you’re a killjoy. We know better than to surprise you with good food, friends, and family gathering around.”
His sister might be a tough paralegal, but under the right kind of silence, she cracked like an egg. It took thirty-two seconds.
“Don’t shoot anyone. It’s just a few people.”
It could be three people or three thousand, just so long as one petite brunette with a shock of red hair wasn’t among them.
She lasted twenty seconds this time.
“Look, they’ve all been really helpful. Mom’s been struggling. Damn, I can’t believe you got me to tell.”
He shrugged. “I am military security.”
“Yeah. Glorified TSA—”
“You did not just say that.”
She waved her hand dismissively at him. “Okay, okay. So you’re a big guy with an important job.”
He was, but clearly that made no impact on his sister.
“You can be nice for one evening. After that, you can go back to your normal surly self.”
“I’m not surly,” he said. Though even he had to admit his tone could possibly be construed as…less than nice. It was the Florida air. The humidity brought out the worst in him. “Who’s going to be there?”