Harlequin KISS August 2014 Bundle (40 page)
Read Harlequin KISS August 2014 Bundle Online
Authors: Avril Tremayne and Nina Milne Aimee Carson Amy Andrews
Not that Sunshine’s lipstick habits were any of his business.
Except that now he couldn’t miss her too-heavy top lip, glistening as she darted her tongue over it. The wide and chewable bottom lip. She had a little
gap between her two front teeth that was kooky-meets-adorable. And she moved her mouth over her spoon as if she were having a food-induced orgasm.
He wondered if he was thinking in orgasm terms because she was going commando tonight.
Not
that he was going there. No way!
And please, God, get the thought out of my head!
Whatever, she’d clearly appreciated the 2002 Cristal her boyfriend
had ordered to go with dessert.
Leo preferred the 1996 vintage.
Talk about splitting hairs. What the hell was wrong with him?
He sighed. Stretched. It had been a long night, that was all. He just needed to get to bed. Right after he emailed Caleb. He was going to get the dinner party back under control at their meeting tomorrow. Put Sunshine the Bulldozer back in the shed.
Sunshine.
Groan!
She was like a six-inch electric blue thorn in his side.
So it didn’t make sense that he would be humming as he thought about that manifesto-sized checklist of hers.
And damn if it wasn’t that cheesy Natalie Clarke number about love biting you in the ass.
The most diabolically awful song of the century.
Clearly, he needed a drink.
God, he hated Barry White.
Copyright © 2014 by Belinda de Rome
ISBN-13: 9781460342732
DARE SHE KISS & TELL?
Copyright © 2012 by Aimee Carson
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Can she make organizing her friend’s wedding
any
harder?
- Sunshine Smart has only got two months until
the big day! - She has to include the grouchy, surly best man
Leo Quartermaine—a top chef and her complete opposite! - Said best man is extremely handsome and
sexy—and knows it! - He has no interest in decor, flowers, clothes
or shoes…but
has an
uninformed
opinion on all four! - And just a few days in she’s already slept
with him.
Rookie mistake…
SNEAK PEEK EXCERPT FROM
Here Comes the Bridesmaid
“And could I have a Campari and soda while
I wait for my friend?”
“Fine,” Leo said, irritated. “I’ll get one sent over.”
“And—”
“Good God, what else?”
“Just that it’s Gary’s birthday. So if there’s a special dessert or something…?”
“Yes. I. Will. Send. Out. A. Special. Dessert. Now, are you all right for socks and undies, or do you need me to get you some of those, too?”
“Actually, I never wear socks.” Sunshine
smiled serenely. “And I’m not wearing undies tonight—not under
this
dress!”
Leo could feel his eyes bug out of his head. “Thanks for that mental picture, Sunshine. Anything else you’d care to share?”
“Well…”
“Yeah, hold that thought,” he said, and made a bolt for the kitchen, where he leaned against the wall and burst out laughing.
His sous chef looked at him as if he’d grown
a gigantic unicorn horn.
Clearly it had been a long time since he’d laughed.
Dear Reader,
Food is a great passion of mine—in fact, I’m in love with about a dozen celebrity chefs. So I wasn’t exactly surprised to find myself becoming fixated on the idea of a chef as a hero…and Leo Quartermaine was born.
My other great passion is shoes. Oh, my goodness, the
shoes!
So…hello, Sunshine Smart.
And, of course, I’m partial to a nice romantic wedding.
Here Comes the Bridesmaid
gave me a chance to combine all three things in a setting always irresistible to me—my hometown, Sydney—as best man Leo and bridesmaid Sunshine are put in charge of planning the perfect wedding for two absent grooms.
Leo is driven, grumpy and serious. Sunshine is quirky, perky and enthusiastic. They have different takes on love, on life, on relationships—not
exactly the easiest working combination to plan a wedding reception. Add in an inconvenient sexual attraction, and things get even trickier.
But
Here Comes the Bridesmaid
is more than a story about opposites attracting—although the clash of personalities in Sunshine and Leo’s case
can
lead to some eye-popping conversations! It’s also about being jolted out of your comfort zone and opening
yourself to everything that’s in you, and finding the one you thought you’d never find—ready-or-not-here-I-come.
And there’s nothing quite as romantic as being taken by surprise by love.
I hope you enjoy
Here Comes the Bridesmaid.
Avril Tremayne
XXXX
Here Comes
the Bridesmaid
Avril Tremayne
About Avril Tremayne
Avril Tremayne read
Jane Eyre
as
a teenager and has been hooked on tales of passion and romance ever since. An
opportunistic insomniac, she has been a lifelong crazy-mad reader, but she took
the scenic route to becoming a writer—via gigs as diverse as shoe salesgirl,
hot-cross-bun packer, teacher and public relations executive. She has spent
a
good chunk of her life traveling, and has more favorite destinations than should
be strictly allowable.
Avril is happily settled in her hometown of Sydney,
Australia, where her husband and daughter try to keep her out of trouble—not
always successfully. When she’s not writing or reading she can generally be
found eating—although she does
not
cook!
Check out
her website:
www.avriltremayne.com
. Or
follow her on Twitter,
@AvrilTremayne
, and Facebook,
www.facebook.com/avril.tremayne
.
Here Comes the Bridesmaid
is Avril Tremayne’s debut book for Harlequin® KISS™ and is also available
in ebook format from
www.Harlequin.com
.
Dedicated, with thanks, to my husband
and @kder for absolutely everything.
To the astute, eagle-eyed Americans
Lisa McNair Palmer and Melinda Wirth
for knowing what’s good and what’s definitely not.
To Lloyd Quartermaine—great guy,
great
name!
And to each and every one of my marriage-minded friends!
ONE
TO: Jonathan Jones
FROM: Sunshine Smart
SUBJECT: Bridesmaid meets Best Man
Darling Jon
I’ve met Leo and I adore him!
We are on the same page, so fear not—your wedding reception will be everything you ever dreamed of!
Wish we could have the actual marriage in Sydney too, but hooray for enlightened New York!
Hugs and kisses to Caleb.
Sunny
xxx
TO: Caleb Quartermaine
FROM: Leo Quartermaine
SUBJECT: WTF??????
Caleb
What are you doing to me?
Sunshine Smart cannot be a real name. And she wants to friend me on Facebook! NOT JOKING!
Despite being dropped in it with the lunatic, I will ensure the dinner doesn’t turn into a three-ring circus.
Can’t wait to meet Jonathan—but please tell me
he’s nothing like his bridesmaid.
LQ
Sunshine Smart
was looking forward to her second meeting with Leo Quartermaine.
Despite
their introductory meeting two days ago, lasting just ten minutes and ending with him declining her request to be Facebook friends.
She loved Leo’s restaurants—well, what she’d read about them. Because she’d never actually eaten at one...which she
was about to remedy.
She loved him on TV—tough but fair, judging those reality TV would-be chefs, and
dreamy
as
when fronting
Cook It Up With Leo
.
She was predisposed to love anyone whose brother was smart enough to marry her best friend Jonathan Jones.
And she just—well,
loved
him. In that
Isn’t he adorable?
way of loving people who were just so solid and serious and a teensy bit
repressed.
But his hair—or lack thereof—was a problem. There was no
reason
for Leo to shave his head. It wasn’t as if he had a comb-over issue. He could have a full head of hair if he wanted! Lush, thick, wheat-blond. She’d seen the ‘before shaved head’ photos on the internet. And the start of the regrowth at their first meeting. She’d read a comment in an article about it being easier in
the kitchen without hair—but she wasn’t asking for a ponytail!
Anyway, that could be fixed. There was time for him to grow it. She would just drop a word in his ear.
Sunshine checked her make-up. Her new red lipstick looked fabulous. Her eyes...well, what could you do? The grey eyeshadow was heavily layered; mascara so thick each lash look like a tarantula leg—make-up intended to distract
people from her ocular weirdness. About which there was nothing she could do—unlike Leo Quartermaine’s hair!
She got out of her car—a bright yellow 1970s relic—and walked purposefully towards Q Brasserie.
* * *
Leo Quartermaine heard Sunshine approach before he saw her.
He associated that tap-tapping rhythm on the polished concrete floor with her, despite only having met her
once before.
He was betting she was wearing another pair of ankle-breaking high heels.
To be fair, she
was
a shoe designer. But shoe designers made flats, didn’t they? Like those ballet-slipper things. Not that he could picture Sunshine Smart in ballet slippers. Or trainers—crikey!
‘Leo!’ she called out, as though he were a misplaced winning lottery ticket, suddenly found. He was
starting to think ‘ecstatic’ was her default setting.
‘Sunshine,’ he said, managing not to roll his eyes.
Sunshine!
How had her parents put that on the birth certificate without gagging?
‘So!’
He’d already clocked the fact that she often started her utterances with ‘So!’ As though an amazing revelation would be out of her mouth on the next breath.
‘News!’ she said, tap-tapping
towards the window table where he was sitting.
And, yep, six inches of spike on her feet. In electric blue patent leather. God help his eyes.
She stripped off her trench coat as she made her way across the floor, causing her long necklace to swing. He’d noticed the necklace last time. Pretty. Three types of gold—a rose gold chain, with a yellow gold sun and white gold moon dangling from
it.
Miraculously, her dress was an understated colour—pale grey-blue. But it fitted her like a second skin and had one of those things—pellums? Peplums? Whatever!—that dragged a man’s eyes to a woman’s waist and hips. She had a hell of a figure, he had to admit. Curvaceous, like the hourglass pin-up girls of the 1950s.
Leo got up to pull out a chair for her on the opposite side of the
table. She took the opportunity to kiss him on the cheek, party-girl air-kiss style—except it wasn’t like any air-kiss he’d ever had—and he’d had plenty. It was a smacking, relishing kiss.
Not
the kind of kiss to slap on a person you barely knew.
Oblivious to his momentary shock, Sunshine tossed her trench coat carelessly onto a nearby chair, sat, and beamed up at him. ‘Did you hear? They’ve
set the date. October twentieth. So we’ve got two months. A spring wedding. Yay!’
Yay?
Who the hell said ‘yay’? Leo returned to his seat. ‘Not much time, but doable.’
‘Oh, it’s
oodles
of time,’ Sunshine assured him airily. ‘So! I’ve made a list of everything we need to do, and now we can decide who does what, give each task a deadline, and go from there.’
‘List?’ Leo repeated the
word, apprehensive. He liked lists. He worked well with lists. The haphazard approach to life of his wastrel and usually wast
ed
parents had made him a plan-crazy list junkie. But this was a simple dinner he could organise with his eyes closed while he whisked a chocolate soufflé.
For once in his life he
didn’t
need a list.
‘Yes.’ She reached down beside her to where she’d dumped the
silver leather bag she’d been swinging when she walked over and pulled out a dazzling chartreuse folder. She removed some paper, peeled off two pages and held them out to him. ‘Your copy. I’m actually not really into lists,’ she confessed—
surprise, surprise
. ‘So it may need some work.’
He looked at the first page. At the big, bold heading:
The Marriage Celebration of Jonathan and Caleb, October
20th
.
Seeing the words was like a punch to the solar plexus. It was real. Happening. Imminent. His baby brother was getting married.
What were the odds? Two Aussie guys who’d never met in their own country moved separately to New York, met at a random party, and—bang!—happy-ever-after.
It didn’t matter that Leo didn’t know Jonathan, because Jonathan made Caleb happy. It didn’t matter
that the ceremony was taking place on the other side of the world, because the place was just logistics. It didn’t matter that their marriage was only going to be legally recognised in a handful of countries, because
they
knew what it meant wherever they were.
Leo wondered if he would have had more luck meeting the love of his life if
he
were gay. Because it sure wasn’t happening for him
on his side of the sexuality fence. The succession of glossy glamour-pusses who seemed to be the only women that came his way were certainly lovely to look at—but they didn’t
eat
,
and they didn’t occupy his thoughts for longer than it took to produce a mutual orgasm.
He wanted what Caleb had. The one. Someone to get into his head, under his skin, to intrigue and dazzle and delight him. Someone
who burrowed into his core instead of bouncing off his shell. Someone to belong to. And to belong to him.
He thought back to his last failure—beautiful, talented singing sensation Natalie Clarke. She’d told him on their second date that she loved him. But nobody fell in love in two dates! Nope—what she’d loved was the concept of Leo the celebrity chef. She’d wanted them to be part of ‘the
scene’. And who said
‘the scene’
with a straight face? He couldn’t think of anything worse than ‘the scene’...except maybe her predilection for snorting cocaine, because apparently
everyone
on
‘the scene’
did it.
In any case, she was a relentless salad-with-dressing-on-the-side type. And she liked playing her own cheesy love songs in the bedroom
way
too much.
With a repressed shudder
he brought his mind back to the present and ran his eyes down the list.
Budget
Wedding Party
Master of Ceremonies
Venue
Menu
Alcohol
Guest List
Invitations
Flowers
Lighting
Music
Cake
Clothing
Shoes
Hair and Make-up
What the hell...? Why did
that
need a subheading?
Gift Registry
Photographer
Videographer
Wedding Favours
Order of Proceedings
Toasts and Speeches
Printing
Seating Plan
Each item was bullet-pointed with a little box that could be ticked, and accompanied by questions, comments and suggestions.
Good thing she wasn’t into lists!
Sunshine must have noticed the stunned look on Leo’s face, because she asked, ‘Have I screwed
it up?’
‘This is...’ he started, but words actually failed him.
‘Exciting?’ Sunshine suggested, looking as if she were about to celebrate Christmas, her birthday
and
the wedding all at once.
‘Comprehensive,’ Leo corrected. He ran a hand across his scalp. Her eyes followed his hand. She was frowning suddenly. He wondered what was going through her mind.
She opened her mouth.
Closed it. Opened it. Closed it. Sighed.
Then, ‘So!’ she said. ‘The venue is the first thing. Because it’s bound to be tricky, securing somewhere wonderful with only two months’ notice.’
‘It may have escaped your notice, but I am a restaurateur,’ Leo said. ‘I
have
venues. I
am
venues.
And
menus. And
booze
.’
Sunshine seemed startled. ‘Oh. I just assumed we’d be too late to get a
large group booked into one of your places. That’s why I’ve suggested somewhere like the hotel on—’
‘My brother is
not
celebrating his marriage in a hotel.’
‘Okay. Well, there’s that lovely place that used to be a stately home in—’
‘Or in an old house.’
‘Then perhaps the new convention space—which is not as tragic as it sounds. In fact it has a—’
He slammed his hand on
the table. ‘No!’ He stopped, reined in the spurt of annoyance. ‘No.’
Better. Calmer.
‘We have a perfectly...’
Reaching, reaching...
‘Perfectly perfect...’
hmm, thesaurus required
‘...private room in this restaurant.’
The only sign that Sunshine had noted his ill-tempered hand-banging incoherence was a tiny twitch at one side of her mouth. He feared—he really feared—she was trying not to laugh.
‘Which seats...?’ she asked, her head on one side like a bird, with every indication of deep interest.
‘Seats?’
‘How many people does the private room seat?’
‘Twenty-five.’
Sunshine crossed her arms—seemingly unaware of how she was framing her rather spectacular breasts—and looked at him, apologetic. ‘See? Me and lists! I got the order wrong. “Guest List” should have come
before “Venue”. So! Let’s take a step back. I have Jon’s invitation list. Do you have Caleb’s?’
‘It’s coming today some time.’
‘Because there are seventy-five people on our side.’
He stared. ‘You are not serious.’
‘I assure you, I am. And that’s with a savage cull.’ She shuddered theatrically as she uncrossed her arms.
‘Savage.’
‘Caleb wants an intimate dinner.’
‘That’s not my understanding, but I’ll tell you what—you check with Caleb overnight, and we can reconvene tomorrow.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I hate it when people try to soothe me.’
Sunshine bit her lip. ‘Oh, dear, and I was
trying
to sound like I was keeping an open mind. But...okay. I’ll tell you straight out, if you prefer: there is no way this is going to be a dinner for twenty-five people.
And there’s no use getting in a snit about it—it’s just the way it is.’
‘I’m not in a snit.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do. Say so.’
‘All right.’
‘I’m
not
.’
‘All
right
.’
Another mouth-twitch. She was
definitely
trying not to laugh.
And Leo had had enough. ‘I have to go,’ he said, despite not being needed in the kitchen for fifteen minutes.
‘Yes, I can see
everything’s getting under way here. I love the buzz of restaurants. Jon and I used to try a new restaurant every other week. I miss him. He’s so...so important to me.’ Her voice wobbled the merest fraction as she added the last bit.
Uh-oh, tears.
Leo didn’t do tears. He felt himself shrink back. Wanted to run.
But her face morphed into something tortured, right before his eyes, and
he froze. It was as if a layer had been ripped off her in one half-second. Her eyes were strained and yet also vacant, as if she were seeing...emptiness. Her lips trembled. Her skin looked ashen. Every trace of happiness was obliterated. The contrast with her normal exuberance was dramatic—almost painful to see.
All this because her best friend had moved overseas and she missed him?
Huh?
Leo wanted to touch her. Pat her hand or...something. Say...something. He who never touched, never comforted, because he didn’t know how. His hands fisted uselessly.
Then Sunshine blinked. Shook her head—tiny, tiny movement. And in another half-second everything clicked back to normal and Leo breathed a silent sigh of relief.
‘Um...’ he said. Yep, he was super-articulate today.
But she was smiling blindingly, as though that moment had never happened, so he did the sensible thing and shut up.
‘We haven’t got far down the list,’ she said. ‘What about if I shortcircuit a few things? You know, invitations, et cetera.’