A Valentine Kiss. Christy McKellen

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      She sighed, and then strode to the little crowd where the scene was unfolding.

      ‘What’s going on?’

      ‘Kevin broke up with me!’ Karen said through her sobs, and Mila wondered why she had decided that hiring a fresh young girl to perform at one of the biggest events she had ever planned—for one of the most prominent clients she had ever worked for—had seemed like a good idea.

      And then she remembered the voice in the online videos she’d watched of Karen, and the number of views all those videos had got, and she sighed again.

      ‘On Valentine’s Day, Kevin?’ Mila asked, instead of voicing the ‘What were you thinking?’ that sat on the tip of her tongue. Best not to rock the boat any further, she thought. Kevin, who looked to be only a couple of years older than the girl whose heart he had broken, shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

      ‘Well, ma’am, there was this—’

      He cut himself off when Mila held up her hand, affronted that he was calling her ‘ma’am’ even though she was only a few years older than him. Four, max. She’d also realised that whatever Kevin had been about to say would have caused Karen even more distress.

      ‘Okay, everyone, the show is over. Can we all get back to what we need to be doing? Our guests are starting to arrive,’ Mila called out and then waited until everyone had scattered, eyeing those who lingered so that they eventually left, too.

      When she was alone with Karen, she turned and took the girl’s hand. ‘Have you ever been broken up with before, Karen?’

      Red curls bounced as Karen shook her head, and Mila suddenly felt all the sympathy in the world for her.

      ‘It sucks. It really does. Your heart feels like it’s been ripped into two and your stomach is in twists. It doesn’t matter when it happens—that feeling is always the same. Stays there, too, if you let it.’

      Mila thought about when she had been Karen’s age—of how moving from foster home to foster home had meant that she’d never had someone to tell her this the first time a boy had broken her heart—and said what she’d wished she’d known then.

      ‘But, you know, the older you get, the more you realise that the less it meant, the less it will hurt. And, since Kevin over there seems like a bit of a jerk, I’m thinking you’ll be over this in a week...maybe two.’

      ‘Really?’ The hope in Karen’s eyes made Mila smile.

      ‘I’m pretty sure. And, you know, the best revenge is to prove to him that it didn’t really matter that much after all.’

      ‘But how...? Oh, if I perform with him, he’ll think that I’ve got over it. Maybe he’ll even want me back!’

      She said the words with such enthusiasm that Mila resisted rolling her eyes. ‘Sure... Why not?’

      She watched Karen run to the bathroom to freshen up, feeling both relieved that Karen was going to perform and annoyed that she didn’t seem to have heard a word Mila had told her.

      ‘That was pretty impressive.’

      The deep, intensely male voice sent shivers up Mila’s spine, and she turned slowly to face its owner. Jordan Thomas’s eyes were the most captivating she had ever seen—a combination of gold and brown that made her think of the first signs of autumn. They made the masculine features of his face seem ordinary though she knew that, based on the way he made her feel distinctly female, he was anything but ordinary. Light brown hair lay shaggy over his forehead, as though he had forgotten to comb it, but it added a charm to his face that might have been otherwise lost under the pure maleness of him.

      She took a moment to compose herself, and then she smiled at him.

      Because she was a professional and he was a client.

      And because she needed to prove that the effect he’d had on her when they’d first met had been a fluke.

      ‘Thanks. All a part of the job.’

      ‘Consoling teenage girls is a part of your job?’

      The smile came more naturally now. ‘When the teenage girl is the headline act at my event, yes.’

      He shoved his hands into his pockets and the action drew her attention to the muscles under the black T-shirt he wore. Heaven help her, but she actually thought about running her hands over them before she could stop herself.

      ‘It looks great.’

      She blinked, and then realised that he was talking about the event. She nodded, and then peeked out of the tent to where people were beginning to fill the seats of the amphitheatre.

      ‘It’s come along nicely.’ She noted that the wine stalls were already busy, and she could smell the waft of food from the food vendors. ‘You should pat yourself on the back. It was your idea after all.’

      She glanced back at him, saw the slow, sexy smile spread on his face, and thought that she needed to get away from him as she had almost fanned herself.

      ‘It may have been my idea to host the event here at the vineyard, but I could never have arranged a concert and a movie screening in one night.’

      ‘It pulls in fans for the concert and romantics for the movie,’ she said, as she had to Greg Thomas so many times before. ‘Who can resist either of those events—or any event, really—under the stars, with delicious Thomas Vineyard wines on tap, on the most romantic day of the year?’

      His eyes sparkled, as though her words had given him some kind of idea, and then he smiled at her. A full smile that was more impactful than a thousand of his slow, sexy ones.

      ‘I need to check everything one more time. If you’ll excuse me?’

      Jordan nodded, and then said, ‘I’ll find you later.’

      She frowned as she walked away, wondering what on earth he’d meant by that.

      * * *

      When the movie was about ten minutes in, she found out.

      He had come to her and claimed that there was a problem with the wine delivery for those who had pre-ordered boxes to take home with them. Like a fool she had followed him, her mind racing to a million different ways of solving the problem. Only when he led her through a gate past the Thomas house did it occur to her that there might not be an emergency.

      ‘What is this?’ she asked quietly, even though they were far enough away from the guests that no one would hear her.

      ‘It’s a picnic. Under the stars.’

      A part of her melted at that—the pure romance of it made her feel as giddy as a girl on her first date. But it didn’t change the way her heart raced in panic as she took in the scene in front of her.

      A blanket was spread out overlooking the vineyard, and in the moonlight she could see the shadow of the mountains. For a brief moment she wondered what it would look like during the day, with its colours and its magnitude and the welcoming silence.

      She СКАЧАТЬ