Uninhibited

“Annie Hall meets…” Reed shuddered at the thought. His taste ran toward the sophisticated Grace Kelly type. Cool, understated and elegant—that was his kind of woman. Badly dressed waifs with untidy hair, no matter how well endowed, were not his cup of tea.

“Pamela Anderson,” Eddie said helpfully as he curled his meaty fingers around the curved brass handles on the elaborately carved double doors leading into the parlor. “You know, the blond babe with the prodigiously fine hooters.” He pushed the doors open with a flourish. “Mr. Sullivan has arrived, ma’am,” he intoned sonorously, bowing slightly toward his employer, as stiff and proper as if he had never uttered the word hooters—nor even knew what it meant.

The two women sitting on the pale blue brocade Victorian settee looked up expectantly. Moira Sullivan appeared much the same as she had the first time Reed had taken tea with her, nearly twenty-five years ago. She was wearing one of her elegant afternoon suits, a deep wine-colored bouclé that was immensely flattering against her pale skin and soft white hair. A triple strand of milky pearls adorned her neck. A large, square-cut sapphire sparkled on her right hand, complement to the impressive sapphire-and-diamond wedding set on her left. But it was her eyes that caught and held Reed’s attention. Bluer than the sapphires she wore, they were full of warmth and welcome, as always, with an undisguised hint of excitement and anticipation lurking in their depths.

“Hello, Gran,” he said cautiously, his gaze shifting to the young woman who sat beside his elegant, aged, conniving relative.

The redhead’s eyes were as big and brown as Eddie had said they were, wide set and heavily lashed beneath thick, sharply arched auburn brows. Her hair was a riotous mass of corkscrew curls that tumbled well past her shoulders. Her clothes were a colorful hodgepodge of fabric and style.

More gypsy than waif, Reed decided in that first comprehensive glance.

She wore a man’s soft white tuxedo shirt with a wing collar and an intricate Celtic brooch at the throat. Fanciful earrings of twisted metal and shiny stones dangled from her ears, glittering through the mass of springy curls. Dark forest-green, velvet pants were tucked into purple suede half-boots. A knitted mohair shawl in deep, rich shades of gold, brown and aubergine slipped off one shoulder to pool on the brocade settee beside her, its soft, nubby folds spilling over the edge toward the floor. Reed couldn’t tell anything about her alleged killer body because of that shawl and the large tapestry bag she held open on her lap, but her mouth was…well, soft and sexy didn’t even begin to describe it, he decided after a moment’s absorbed reflection.

Her lips were full and beautifully sculpted, as pink and glossy and moist as if she’d just finished eating a raspberry Popsicle. It was the kind of mouth made for heated, heedless kisses and breathless promises whispered in the dark across a satin pillow. Not a waif’s mouth, but a gypsy’s.

And he didn’t date gypsies—not even gorgeous, sexy gypsies—any more than he dated waifs. He dated nice, normal, conventional, well-bred women; the kind of women the men in his family had been dating and marrying for generations; the kind of women who were exactly like the last three women he’d met in Moira’s parlor over the past couple of months. The kind of women, in fact, who were exactly like the kind of woman he thought he’d been engaged to a couple of years ago.

It had turned out that his ex-fiancée hadn’t been all that conventional, after all, when it came right down to it. After a five-year engagement, she’d more or less left him standing at the altar and run off to New Orleans to work in a friend’s lingerie shop while she decided whether or not she really wanted to get married. She decided she did—to a laid-back New Orleans hairdresser rather than Reed’s illustrious self.

He’d put a good face on it—Sullivans always put a good face on things—but it had been quite a blow. To his pride, if nothing else. And truth be told, after all the dust had settled, he’d realized it was only his pride that had suffered any real damage; his heart had remained completely unscathed. In retrospect, he realized that Katherine had been absolutely right to run out on him because what he’d felt for her—what they’d felt for each other—had been nothing more than lifelong friendship coupled with a desire to satisfy family expectations. Reed still intended to satisfy his family’s expectations, and his own, as well. Eventually.

So what in hell was his dear granny up to?

It certainly couldn’t be matchmaking, not with this woman.

Could it?

“Shall I get the tea cart now, ma’am?” Eddie asked, his voice jolting Reed out of his absorption with Moira’s flamboyant guest and the likely reason for her presence in his great-grandmother’s front parlor.

“Yes, please, Eddie.” The whisper of an Irish lilt enhanced Moira Sullivan’s voice, adding piquancy to her upper-crust Boston accent. “And remind Mrs. Wheaton that there should be plenty of scones on the tray, won’t you?” She flashed a warm smile at the young woman sitting next to her. “I promised our guest a traditional tea with scones and clotted cream and strawberry preserves.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Eddie bowed again and backed out of the room, pulling the doors closed behind him.

Moira lifted her hand, extending it toward her great-grandson. “Reed, dear,” she said, her voice overflowing with delight. “Come and meet my new friend. This is Zoe Moon.” She flashed a warm, approving smile at the young woman sitting beside her. “Miss Zoe Moon,” she added, beaming like a proud mother showing off her new baby.

Reed stifled a sigh. No doubt about it now. As unlikely as it seemed, he’d just been introduced to yet another candidate for the position of Mrs. Reed Sullivan IV. It had been almost three years since his aborted trip down the aisle, and obviously his dear old granny was getting desperate to see him take that walk again. After all, he’d be thirty-four soon and no other Sullivan male in documented history had made it past thirty unwed. For him to have crossed that benchmark still a bachelor was looked upon as not quite proper—suspect, even—by the more conservative members of the family. Which was nearly all of them.

Plastering a polite smile on his face, Reed moved across the carpet to take his great-grandmother’s outstretched hand, resigned to enduring the next two hours of her relentless matchmaking efforts with all the charm and good grace at his command.

“How are you, sweetheart?” he said, bending to kiss Moira’s cheek. He nodded at the young woman sitting next to her as he straightened. “Miss Moon.”

“Call me Zoe, please,” she said as she extended her hand to him.

The scent of violets, incongruously sweet and old-fashioned, drifted up to meet him as he reached out to shake her hand. Her palm was cool and small against his, the fingers long and tapering, delicate but not fragile. Her nails were painted a gleaming coppery color and she wore several narrow rings of various metals, some with glittering stones like the ones in her ears.

Reed had a brief, heated image of those slender, bejeweled hands on his bare back, the gleaming nails pressing into hard muscle as she arched under him and begged for more. He withdrew his hand from hers.

“Reed Sullivan,” he murmured politely, wondering if she was available for anything other than the matrimonial bliss his great-grandmother was so dead set on.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” Zoe Moon’s voice was throaty and melodious, as seductive as the rest of her. The look in her eyes as she smiled up at him was friendly, curious and just slightly speculative, as if she were sizing him up.

As possible husband material, no doubt, he thought cynically.

“Moira has told me so much about you,” Zoe Moon said.

“Really?” He shot a cool, amused glance at his great-grandmother and seated himself in the wing chair opposite the settee. A low piecrust table, its gleaming surface decorated with an arrangement of golden button mums in a crystal bowl, occupied the space between them. “She hasn’t said a word about you to me.”

“That’s because Zoe and I only just met this past Monday,” Moira informed him.

Oh, great, he thought, now she’s parading complete strangers under my nose!

“Zoe’s an entrepreneur.”

“Really?” Reed murmured, polite but not encouraging. “In what field?”

“Cosmetics,” Moira said before Zoe could answer. She gestured at the table between them. “She was just showing me a few of her wonderful products.”

Reed glanced at the table. Half-hidden behind the arrangement of mums were several small jars and bottles. At least half of them were open, perfuming the air with the faint, fresh scent of flowers and aromatic herbs. He’d noticed the fragrance when he came into the parlor, but hadn’t thought anything about it, unconsciously assuming it came from the crystal bowls of potpourri Moira always kept scattered around the house.

On the settee next to Moira were a couple of shoe boxes he hadn’t noticed before, either, and a large Betsey Johnson shopping bag on the floor between the two women’s feet. Either Miss Moon had made a stop on Newbury Street before she called on Moira, or she was carting her wares around like a well-heeled bag lady. Whichever, someone really ought to tell her how unprofessional it made her appear.

“Then Miss Moon is…what?” He arched an eyebrow, ignoring the accompanying twinge as the butterfly bandage tugged at the fine hairs. “An Avon lady?”

“No, she’s not an Avon lady. She’s an entrepreneur.” Moira stressed the word as if he might not have understood it the first time. “She doesn’t sell other people’s cosmetics. She sells her own.”

“Well, not cosmetics, exactly,” Zoe Moon demurred with a smile. “Just lotions, body oils and sachets. So far, at least.”

“They’re not just anything,” Moira objected. She plucked a slender, frosted-green-glass bottle off the table. The words New Moon were hand-lettered in elegant calligraphy across the label, superimposed over a line drawing of a pale crescent moon. “Zoe makes them herself, right in her own kitchen, using only the purest, most natural ingredients.” Moira twisted the top off of the bottle and held it across the table toward Reed. “Try this,” she ordered. “It’s the most exquisite hand lotion I’ve ever used. Makes your skin feel as soft as water.”

Zoe extended her hand and intercepted the bottle before Reed could stir himself to reach for it. “I’m sure Mr. Sullivan—” she gave him a slanting, sideways look as she said his name, both her expression and her tone letting him know she’d noticed and was…amused, he decided, by his insistence on the formality of address “—doesn’t want to go back to the office smelling like a flower garden.”

Both puzzled and just a bit disgruntled by her attitude, he watched her recap the bottle and set it on the piecrust table. As one of Boston’s wealthiest and most eligible bachelors, Reed was accustomed to a great deal of respect, even awe, from the opposite sex. Women didn’t usually laugh at him, not even silently.

“Oh, Reed won’t go back to the office from here, will you, dear?” Moira said, apparently oblivious to the byplay between her guests.

Which was decidedly odd, Reed thought. Despite her advanced age, his great-grandmother prided herself on knowing exactly what was going on at all times.

“He always heads off to rugby practice after tea.” Moira smiled in the direction of her great-grandson without actually taking her eyes off Zoe. “So I’m sure he doesn’t care what he smells like.”

Zoe Moon slanted Reed another glance, taking in the small white bandage on his eyebrow, skimming the width of his shoulders, sweeping the length of his legs beneath the worsted flannel of his navy slacks as if assessing his fitness for the sport…or something else. Only sheer strength of will kept him from squirming like an inexperienced adolescent under her frank, unabashed scrutiny. He managed to meet her gaze, when she brought it back to his, with a cool expression and an elegantly raised eyebrow, the epitome of masculine aplomb.

She didn’t even have the grace to blush at being caught checking him out so blatantly. She simply smiled and looked away, turning her attention back to her hostess.

“I don’t imagine his teammates would appreciate the scent of lavender in the middle of a…” Her gaze flickered back to Reed. “What do you call that group hug in the middle of a game?”

He scowled at the teasing note in her voice. She was definitely laughing at him! “A scrum,” he growled, all but biting off the word in irritation.

Zoe Moon didn’t seem to notice the warning edge in his tone. “A scrum. Thank you.” She nodded, smiling, and turned her gaze back on Moira.