Wicked Heat. Kelli Ireland

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СКАЧАТЬ and forth on its shocks like a child’s rocking horse. When Ella could convince herself they had truly stopped, she mentally logged the travel time in case the wedding guests wanted to know...or take a cab. She peeled her fingers from her armrests. Her muscles suffered mild rigor as she attempted to move toward the open door. That meant she had to accept the hand offered to help her down. Only it wasn’t the driver. Her fellow passenger, the stranger she found all too alluring, had quickly and quietly exited and then, quite unexpectedly, rounded the shuttle and waited by her door. She paused.

      He waited.

      Chastising herself for hesitating, she took his hand and stepped out of the vehicle. After all, the gesture was nothing but a courtesy. Yes, he’d clearly been flirting earlier, but it had been innocent. Or innocent enough. The problem was that she’d wanted to flirt back. And flirty banter led to things she’d forbidden herself this trip, things like a tryst that could call her professionalism into question. It was just...

      She glanced at him and found him staring at her unabashedly.

      Damn it.

      She turned her back on him, reaffirming her decision to avoid personal entertainment. Men like him were few and far between, and thank God for it. He was the exact type of distraction she couldn’t afford. Not on this trip. Not when her future hinged on the success of this job.

      Stepping forward, she returned the doorman’s smile as he ushered her into the air-conditioned lobby. “Welcome to the Royal Crescent. Your luggage has been tagged. Once you’ve checked in, a valet will deliver your bags to your room.”

      “Thank you,” she said.

      Ella sighed as cool air swept over her bare arms and legs. Thank God for air-conditioning.

      The resort seemed classy and sophisticated, giving an impression of subtle but irrefutable wealth and luxuries both small and large. A gentleman wearing all white and bearing a tray of champagne approached, offering her a glass. A single strawberry churned up bubbles as it gently bounced about the glass bottom.

      She sipped and sighed again. Chilled to perfection, the dry bite was ideal with the fruit’s sweet tartness.

      This place was going to be the perfect backdrop for the wedding Ella had planned.

      Scanning the lobby, her gaze landed on the concierge desk and the three people staffing it. The obvious leader of the group, a uniformed man who appeared to be in his fifties, rose and headed her way with a grin. He stopped and said something in the ear of the waiter bearing the champagne. The younger man nodded and stepped to Ella’s left, proffering a glass to the person behind her, a person she didn’t need to see in order to identify.

      Heat—his heat—spread across her back and chased away the air’s artificial chill. Her muscles, finally relaxing after the harried trip, became fluid, languid even. The urge to close the distance between them, to move back into what she knew was a solid torso, to feel the strength in the hands and arms that had effectively pinned her to her seat, had her instinctively shifting her weight onto her heels.

       What the hell?

      Sure, she believed in instant and undeniable attraction. Some called it chemistry. But her reaction to this total stranger was far beyond anything she’d ever experienced, and she didn’t like it. At all. It pushed against her self-control with the wildly rapid, incessantly repetitive tap-tap-tap of a crack-addled woodpecker.

      Lust, untamed and unchecked. There was no other name for it.

      The word wound through her senses and made her more aware of the earthy undertones of his cologne, the smell of hot leather from his briefcase and the susurrus of silk against wool as he moved.

      “Madam?”

      Ella blinked rapidly and brought the man she had assumed was the concierge into focus. “I’m sorry. Would you repeat that? I was lost in thought for a moment, I’m afraid.”

      “I said my name is Arvin. I’m the resort’s head event coordinator. And a woman soon to be wed certainly cannot be blamed if her mind wanders a bit.” He grinned wider. “Particularly in an environment so conducive to romance, yes?”

      Ella’s brow wrinkled as her brows squinched together. It was her typical reaction to stress, one her mother swore had begun at age three and would have Ella bearing deep, undesirable ridges in her forehead before she was forty. She absently pressed her fingertips against the ridges in an attempt to smooth her skin. “I’m sorry, but...who’s going to be newly wed?”

      The coordinator’s smile faltered as he glanced between her and the stranger she knew still stood within earshot. “I...well...you are, madam.” He raised a clipboard that held several sheets of paper with printed information and handwritten notes in the margins. “My staff and I have worked diligently on the preparations for the ceremony, just as you requested.” He looked at the list and began ticking off items. “We’ve made arrangements for cake tasting, set up appointments with three florists, have a string quartet that will play in the lobby this evening so you might hear the quality of their performance. Then there’s the—”

      “I’m not getting married,” she said. “I’m coordinating the wedding.”

      “No.” The denial, issued in that decidedly upper-crust British accent, was ripe with disbelief. “Not you.”

      Ella slowly turned to face the handsome stranger, working to keep her composure. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

      “You’re the one my sister hired to pull together this...this...” He dropped his briefcase and waved both hands wildly, the gesture encompassing the entire lobby. “This.”

      “Do not tell me that you’re the family member my unnamed bride has chosen as her surrogate decision maker.”

      “Oh, bloody hell. You are her. The event coordinator.” The last few words were enunciated with whip-like consonants and gunshot vowels.

      “Yes, I am.”

      The stranger downed his champagne in two long swallows then held the empty glass out with one hand while the waiter retrieved it. “You’re Ella Montgomery.”

      “Again, yes, I am. You are?”

      He watched her through narrowed eyes. “Liam Baggett. The bride’s brother.”

      “Baggett.” Her mind raced through the list of starlets she’d compiled as possible brides, but none was named Baggett. In fact, the name didn’t ring any bells at all.

      Confusion must have decorated her face, because Liam finally offered, “Half brother. Same father, different mothers. My mother died when I was very young, and my father remarried roughly five years later. My sister was born from that union.”

      “Still, Baggett isn’t ringing any bells.” Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep breath, held it for a count of ten and then let it go to a second count of ten. What had she done? How had she let herself invest everything she had, from money to the last of her reputation, in an event she was expected to plan without contact with the bride? Had she been set up to fail? The thought made her stomach lurch, the motion as nauseating as it was violent. “Tell me I’m not being punked. Tell me I haven’t flown more than halfway around the world to be made a fool of. Tell me—”

      “What СКАЧАТЬ