Beautiful Mess Read online

  Joseph watched them.

  “You can blink, you know,” I teased.

  “I’m not looking.”

  “Liar.” I elbowed him in the ribs. “Maybe I’m looking, too.”

  “Oh?” He squeezed my hand. “So I’m looking. They’re hardly my type, though.”

  I thought back to the old uniform I had worn for clients on occasion, the one I would have worn with Aidan tonight. “You sure about that?”

  “Leila. Schoolgirls are like sports cars. They’re nice to look at, but they’re impractical. In the end, they don’t do what you need them to do.”

  I had to stifle my smile, he looked so serious. Then I stole a glance back at the lithe-limbed shadows beneath the trees. “Is that so?”

  “It’s true. They won’t let you take them up the arse. They’re rubbish at sucking you. You want to ride them at a hundred miles an hour, but you end up doing forty in the sixty zone because you’re too fucking scared of damaging them.”

  A giggle trembled to a riotous guffaw. I couldn’t stop.

  “You’re meant to be appalled.” He laughed.

  “Oh, I am--”

  “No, you aren’t.” Another hand squeeze, then he let it slip away. “Best not do that near the office.”

  I bit my lip and thrust my numb fist into a pocket. “No.” A beat. “Thank you for lunch.”

  “My pleasure. Now…back to the playground, hmm?”

  CHAIRMAN OF THE WHORED, and sequel THE WHORED’S PRAYER, available from www.lyricalpress.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Excerpt