No Holding Back. Isabel Sharpe

      Chapter One

      “SO THERE I WAS IN PARIS at one of the greatest restaurants in the world, and stomach flu picks that night to turn on me, between the pigeon aux olives and the baba au rhum.”

      “Oh, no. Imagine that.” Hannah O’Reilly swallowed another mouthful of tepid champagne and glanced desperately behind the large pallid lump named Frank who’d inflicted himself on this portion of her evening. At a New Year’s Eve party in an ostentatious mansion outside of her home city of Philadelphia, wearing one of those dresses saved all year for parties like this, she should be dancing wildly with a hot stranger. If she wanted boredom, she could have stayed home.

      A waiter wafted by with a tray of tidbits. Hannah grabbed one, not sure what was in it, but assuming it cost more than her daily food allowance. Gerard Banks, owner of both this house and the newspaper that employed her, The Philadelphia Sentinel, threw a fancy New Year’s Eve party every year for his staff, friends and family. Hannah didn’t know which category this guy Frank belonged in, staff, friend or family, but she wished he’d bludgeon someone else with his stories. She was here for a healthy serving of hedonism.

      “Another time, in London, I ate an oyster and felt movement between my teeth.” He mimicked checking in his large mouth and pretended to hold something up. “Turned out to be a worm. Never ate oysters after that.”

      “I don’t blame you.” She laid her hand on his jacket sleeve to cushion the rejection. “You know…I think I’d like a refill on my champagne. It was great talking to you.”

      “Sure.” He sighed and lifted his soda in a resigned toast. “Happy New Year.”

      “Same to you, Frank.” She escaped, breathing a guilty sigh of relief, maneuvered between a chatting couple and a chartreuse settee, set her glass on a table full of similar empties next to the stone hearth and went searching for a champagne-bearing waiter. Then she was going to find some wild single hottie and flirt her head off. Because she was determined that this new year would launch a fabulous new chapter of her life. Careerwise, familywise and manwise. Out of the rut, into the rutting.

      Bingo. Tuxedoed waiter ten paces ahead, carrying a tray of fizzing delight. She dodged between a ficus and a ceramic statue of a leopard. With any luck she could cut him off on the other side of the orange suede couch, and—

      “Hannah, how’s the year winding down for you?” Tragically, her boss, Lester Wanefield, neither wild nor single nor with an extra glass of champagne, stepped into the few remaining feet between her and her next dose of bubbly. “Hey, now don’t you do good things for red sequins.”

      “Oh. Thanks.” She loved how she looked in this dress, but enticing her boss made her wish she’d worn sackcloth.

      “Great party, huh?”

      “Mmm, yeah.” If she could keep herself from thinking the money should be used for something more worthy. Like charity or education or disease research or Hannah’s bank account.

      She kept her eye on the waiter. This could still work. If he moved a few feet to his right and glanced her way…

      “I’ve been thinking about your next assignment. Not for your Lowbrow column, but a feature story. Maybe start it on the front page.”

      Lester had her full attention then—all rotund, gray-bearded, bespectacled, five-foot-six-inches of him. Now that she’d been at the paper over a year, she’d been pestering him—well, hinting first, suggesting second, pestering third—for more substantial assignments than the powder-puff stories he’d been tossing at her and burying in the back sections. “That