Uninhibited. Candace Schuler

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      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      1

      REED SULLIVAN ASCENDED the wide brick steps of his great-grandmother’s Beacon Hill mansion with nearly the same trepidation as he had shown the first time she had summoned him to share her afternoon tea.

      The weekly ritual had started as a lesson in deportment, a continuation of the Wednesday afternoon torture known as Miss Margaret’s Dance Academy for Young Ladies and Gentlemen. Moira Sullivan had seemed ancient to his eight-year-old self, with her snowy hair swept up into what he now knew was a Gibson girl topknot, and her elegant afternoon suits, which he now knew were Chanels. He’d been tongue-tied and uncomfortable at first, painfully aware that he was supposed to be on his best behavior, and itching for the whole ordeal to be over as soon as possible.

      His great-grandmother had graciously invited him to stuff himself with frosted petits fours without regard for how they might ruin his dinner, all the while skillfully encouraging him to vent about the indignity of actually having to put his arms around a girl and attempt to waltz her around the room in front of his giggling friends. And then she’d rolled back a corner of the Aubusson carpet covering the gleaming parlor floor, placed a small needlepoint pillow beneath her knees and beat him in a hotly contested game of ringer. He’d lost his prized Indian lutz to her, the one he’d traded two peppermint swirls and a blue clearie for.

      After that, the visits to his great-grandmother became, if not the highlight of his week, then an eagerly anticipated part of it—if only because they offered him the ongoing opportunity to reclaim his Indian lutz. Even during his teen years, when girls and cars and being cool were the focus of his existence and marbles were the last thing on his mind, he still found time for the weekly visits. In the nearly two decades since then, all through the time he spent earning both a law degree and an M.B.A. from Harvard, through the long days spent toiling at his first lowly job in the family firm to the even longer days required by the high powered position he now held, through schoolboy crushes, discreet love affairs and the very public embarrassment of a broken engagement, the weekly ritual had endured. Sharing tea and conversation with his great-grandmother was still one of the highlights of his week.

      They were an unlikely pair, perhaps, the oldest living Sullivan and the thirty-three-year-old heir apparent. Although they were separated both by gender and generations, with nearly sixty years of living between them, they clicked on some instinctive level that had nothing to do with experience or age. Sitting in Moira Sullivan’s front parlor, sipping tea, trading benign gossip and bits of personal news, Reed wasn’t the senior vice president in charge of international investments; he wasn’t the head of any high-profile committee; he wasn’t the heir to the vast fortune and responsibilities of the Sullivan business empire. He was simply Moira’s favorite great-grandchild. And there was nothing that great-grandchild wouldn’t do for his beloved granny.

      Or almost nothing.

      Lately, she’d been testing the limits of his affection and forbearance.

      Well, СКАЧАТЬ