Too Wild
Too Wild
Jamie Sobrato
When researching her latest story puts her life in danger, freelance journalist Jenna Calvert decides she needs to get out of town. And the opportunity presents itself in the form of sexy Travis Roth. In exchange for two weeks in Carmel, she simply has to pretend to be someone else–not a problem for this spontaneous wild child.But a seriously tense Jenna makes the agreement conditional–she'll spend the weekend with Travis rehearsing her role, if he'll help her unwind by indulging in a little sensual stress relief! After all, the gorgeous but uptight businessman looks as if he could do with a little sexual healing himself. And Jenna's not foolish enough to think that one wild weekend will blossom into a real love affair–until it does!
“Are you feeling relaxed yet?”
“Far from it.” Travis almost groaned the answer to Jenna’s question.
Her lips were swollen and her eyes half-lidded as she smiled up at him. “Guess I’ll have to try a little harder, then.”
“If you try any harder, the last thing I’ll be is relaxed.”
She bit her lower lip, then slowly released it and sighed. “We’d better be going, hmm?”
Going where? Oh, right, to the country house. Travis tore his gaze away from Jenna.
“Yeah, we’d better. I think we’re still a half hour away.” But if they happened to pass a hotel along the way, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep himself from screeching into the lot and dragging Jenna to the nearest available room.
An image of making love to her on a cheap bedspread in a sleazy motel room flashed in his mind, and he banished it. How had he gone so quickly from respectable businessman to crazed guy who got in bar fights and fantasized about frenzied motel sex?
He looked back at Jenna, and he knew in an instant.
Dear Reader,
I’ve always admired women who aren’t afraid to take risks to get what they want. With this book, I’ve had the pleasure of writing about just such a woman. Jenna Calvert is a journalist who isn’t afraid of much—except the stalker trying to stop her from writing the story of her career. I only wish I were half as bold as Jenna.
I can relate more easily to the hero, Travis Roth, who finds his perfectly planned life shaken up by wild, unpredictable Jenna. When these two come together, they illustrate why opposites can make the very best lovers.
I hope you love reading Travis and Jenna’s wild journey as much as I loved writing it. You can drop me a note to let me know what you think of the story at jamie@jamiesobrato.com or visit my Web site, www.jamiesobrato.com, to find out more about my upcoming books.
Sincerely,
Jamie Sobrato
Books by Jamie Sobrato
HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION
911—SOME LIKE IT SIZZLING
HARLEQUIN BLAZE
84—PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE
116—WHAT A GIRL WANTS
133—SOME KIND OF SEXY
Too Wild
Jamie Sobrato
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To The Wild Writers, who’ve been there for me from the start. I’m blessed to have the friendship and support of such a wild, wonderful group of women.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#ua1c1163b-7cf7-5733-a2d6-0a54f479ace4)
Chapter 2 (#ud667ed07-bbf2-5c6e-bfe1-ef3c3b367cbf)
Chapter 3 (#uafff864d-d720-5c71-8dcf-4249a8297317)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
1
WHAT JENNA CALVERT NEEDED was a large, tattooed man with a look of death in his eyes. Perhaps someone with a prison record and an intimate knowledge of firearms. Some guy named Spike or Duff.
But even Bodyguards for Less was out of her price range. Jenna listened a second time to the phone recording that described the business’s services. No way could she swing the eighty dollars per hour the burly voice on the recording stated was the base price without additional services—and what additional services could a bodyguard provide, anyway?
She hung up and exhaled a ragged breath.
Without a bodyguard, the only protection she had was Guard-Dog-In-A-Box. For twenty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, she’d purchased as much peace of mind as she could afford—a sorry amount indeed. Thirty bucks had bought her a motion-sensing device that simulated the sounds of killer dogs barking at any unsuspecting intruders.
Unfortunately, it also barked at neighbors passing in the hallway, at pizza delivery men and at Mrs. Lupinski’s many elderly lovers traipsing in and out of the building at all hours of the day and night.
Jenna hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a week, and everyone else in the building was getting tired of her canned guard dogs, too. Even Mrs. Lupinski, who was normally otherwise engaged, had yelled obscenities out her door at Jenna last night when she had heard her in the stairwell.
Guard-Dog-In-A-Box had looked so promising there on the shelf at the store, but now that she’d lived with her faux protection for a week, she saw just how desperate she’d become to even buy it.
She was cooked meat.
She never should have started researching the underbelly of the beauty-pageant industry. Ever since she’d begun the research a month ago, her life had been turned upside down by someone who didn’t want her writing the story. Jenna had racked her brain trying to figure out who among the people she’d interviewed or spoken with might wish her harm, but no one jumped out as a likely culprit. She hadn’t even uncovered any information that seemed worthy of death threats. But the voice-altered phone calls and the threatening mail had included comments like “back off the story” and “you’re risking your life if you write it.”
Jenna surveyed her apartment, wishing now that she had a roommate, or at least a parakeet. Someone to comfort her and tell her that it wasn’t such a bad thing to get three death threats in the past month. Someone who could also remind her that it was really quite normal to nearly get run down by a car in San Francisco. Two days in a row.
Yes, a roommate would be nice right about now. A roommate, a bodyguard and a really big weapon. But all Jenna had was Guard-Dog-In-A-Box. She resisted the urge to hurl the waste of money across the room and eyed the double locks on the apartment door. If anyone really wanted to get in, they wouldn’t have much trouble. The wood of the door frame was rotting away in places, and the locks looked as if they’d been installed before Jenna was born.
Sure, the front door of her apartment building was supposed to remain locked to nonresidents, but Mrs. Lupinski liked to prop it open for her lovers and the ever anticipated sweepstakes-prize delivery people. Getting buzzed in on the rare occasions it was locked was as easy as claiming to be a pizza delivery guy.
Jenna leaned against the decrepit door and closed her eyes. She let her mind drift to happier days, when home security was the least of her concerns. Only two months ago she’d been a relatively carefree journalist who’d made a decent career of writing for women’s magazines, and she was embarking on the story she was sure would finally turn her career from decent to well paying. No more squeaking by on a paltry freelance income that barely paid the high rent in the city. The beauty-pageant exposé was supposed to be her ticket to success.
When the buzzer on the door sounded, she jumped so hard that Guard-Dog-In-A-Box clattered to the floor and began barking. It sounded about as menacing as tin-can recorded dog barks could sound—that is, not menacing at all.
Her hand shook as she pressed the intercom button and said, “Who is it?”
“Ms. Calvert? My name is Travis Roth. I need to talk to you about your sister, Kathryn. May I come up?”
Kathryn? Jenna stared at the intercom, dumbfounded. She hadn’t heard from or spoken to her twin sister in years. Could this be a ploy someone was using to get inside the building?
“What about her? Just tell me now.”
“I really need to speak with you face-to-face. It’s a sensitive matter.”
A sensitive matter? Did bloodthirsty criminals talk like that?
“Haven’t you ever heard of the telephone?”
“I’ve been trying to call you for days with no answer.”
Oh. Right. She’d unplugged the answering machine after the strange calls started coming in, and finally she’d just stopped answering the phone.
“Look, if you’re here about the pageant story, I don’t have any idea what your problem is with it!”
She turned off the intercom and pushed her sofa against the door, then climbed on top of it and pulled her legs to her chest. She was beginning to think journalism had been the wrong career choice. What she needed was a nice, safe job. Maybe in forestry, or library science.
No, that was just fear talking. She loved her work. She’d always dreamed of being a freelance writer, and now she was one. Was she really such a coward she’d let someone bully her out of writing the truth? Scared as she might be, in her gut, Jenna knew she wasn’t about to stop working on the article.
Fifteen minutes later, she was still sitting in the same spot staring at her chipped toenail polish when she heard Mrs. Lupinski hollering about the whereabouts of her free pizza, a sure sign that the guy with the sensitive matter to discuss had gotten into the building.
Someone knocked at the door, and in spite of herself Jenna jumped again.
“Ms. Calvert, this is urgent. It’s about your sister’s wedding.”
Kathryn was getting married? No surprise there, if he was telling the truth. Her sister had been dreaming of a rich Prince Charming ever since they’d been old enough to date.
“She needs your help.”
“Right, now I know you’re lying. And why isn’t she here asking for my help herself if she needs it?” Kathryn would no sooner ask for Jenna’s help than she would wear a designer knockoff dress.
“I’ll explain, if you’ll just give me a chance.”
“Go away before I call the police!”
She peered through the peephole at him to see his reaction. Yow! What a cutie. Smoky green eyes, sand-colored hair streaked with blond and cut meticulously short, the kind of stern, masculine mouth that begged to be kissed into submission. Not exactly the face of a thug, but what did she know? Maybe criminals were going for the GQ look this year.
“I understand you and Kathryn haven’t spoken in some time, and you didn’t part on friendly terms.”
Okay, somehow he’d found some personal information to make his cover seem authentic. Jenna sank back down on the couch and chewed her lip.
“Jenna, this is really urgent. Open the door.”
She eyed the fire escape. Today was not a good day to die. For one thing, her roots were starting to show, and she had a zit on her chin. She’d look like hell in a casket. Maybe this guy was legit, but she couldn’t afford to find out. It would only be a short drop from the bottom of the fire escape to the ground.
She hopped off the couch, grabbed her backpack purse, slid her feet into the nearest pair of sandals and hurried to the fire-escape window.
The gorgeous maybe-assassin started pounding on the door, and Jenna pushed her window open and squeezed through it. Her breath came out ragged, and she imagined herself in an action movie as she climbed down the fire escape and dangled herself over the bottom edge for the drop. Five feet, no problem. She let go and landed with a thud in the scraggly mess of weeds that made up her building’s backyard vegetation.
Now what? She hadn’t exactly formulated an escape plan. Jenna eyed the tall chain-link fence that surrounded the backyard and tried to envision herself scaling it. No way—she wasn’t risking it unless there were no other options.
If she hurried, she might be able to go out the alleyway to the street and slip away before he realized she wasn’t in her apartment anymore. Jenna hurried to the rusty gate and eased it open, then ran down the alley to the sidewalk.
She’d only made it past the neighbor’s house when she heard a man’s voice call after her, “Jenna, wait!”
Him again. What, did he have X-ray vision? Jenna ran, and the sound of footsteps quickened. He caught up with her as she rounded the corner of the next street.
“Kathryn said you’d resist helping, but she didn’t tell me you were crazy,” he said over her shoulder, and something about the perplexed tone of his voice made Jenna stop and look at him.
He was even more gorgeous in person without his features distorted by the peephole. Up close, he was half a foot taller than her, and he stood with the kind of assurance that suggested he was accustomed to being in charge. Jenna’s fear was suddenly overcome with a pang of desire. Wow, did she ever need to pay more attention to her love life, if her would-be assassin was suddenly turning her on.
His clothes—a navy wool sport coat, an open-collared white oxford and a pair of beige summer wool slacks—were tailored, expensive. The way they fit, the way he looked so carefully put together, gave Jenna the urge to muss him up.
He was studying her, probably trying to make sense of the differences between herself and her high-society identical twin. “You are Jenna Calvert, right?”
Jenna kept her hair long and dyed various shades of red—this month it was Auburn Fire—while Kathryn had always been fond of short debutante haircuts in their natural blond color. And Jenna had always asserted her independence and uniqueness from her twin through her wild wardrobe, while Kathryn’s taste tended toward the classic and exorbitantly priced.
“Yes,” she said, secretly thrilled that she’d managed to distinguish herself from her identical twin so well.
“I’m Travis Roth. It’s good to finally meet you.” He withdrew a business card from his pocket and offered it to her. Jenna took it and read the raised black lettering on a tasteful white linen card. Travis Roth, CEO, Roth Investments.
Whoopee. Any bozo could get business cards made up and call himself a CEO.
Jenna stuck it in her pocket.
“What color are Kathryn’s bridesmaid dresses going to be?”
“Excuse me?”
“The colors in the wedding—dresses, flowers, everything. If you know that, I’ll talk to you.”
He appeared to be giving the matter some thought. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”
Jenna wished she’d remembered to grab a kitchen knife on the way out the window. “If you know Kathryn, you’d know what colors are in her wedding.”
A look of understanding softened his features. “Some kind of purple? Lavender, right?”
Lavender was Kathryn’s signature color. Ever since they were kids, she’d worn lavender, while Jenna’d had to wear identical outfits in pink. But that was one of their many differences—Kathryn had embraced being dressed up as a sideshow act by their mother, while Jenna had hated every moment of it. She still couldn’t look at the color pink without feeling slightly nauseated.
Kathryn could never understand why Jenna had felt the need to differentiate herself from her twin with wild clothes and different hair colors, while Jenna couldn’t understand her twin’s obsession with being one of an identical pair.
“Okay, so what’s your connection to my sister and her wedding?”
“I’m her fiancé’s brother, and I’ll explain everything if you’ll just give me a half hour of your time.”
Her curiosity was piqued now that she had some assurance this Travis guy wasn’t a hardened criminal. What sort of urgent matter could bring Kathryn to turn to Jenna for help? And why had she sent her fiancé’s brother to talk to her?
She looked Travis up and down. Okay, considering his sex appeal, he was a pretty good messenger. She could stand to spend a half hour with him, though she could think of much more interesting things to do with him than talk about Kathryn and her prenuptial problems.
“I’ll listen, if you’ll buy lunch,” she said, her stomach rumbling because she’d skipped breakfast. “There’s a diner around the corner.”
TRAVIS DID HIS VERY BEST to focus on the business at hand, but Jenna Calvert had thrown him completely off track. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Yes, Kathryn had described her as a rebellious type, as someone who liked to shock others and be contrary just for the sake of conflict, but she hadn’t mentioned how damn sexy Jenna would be.
A waitress with three nose rings and threads of purple in her braided hair arrived to take their order, and Travis tried to take his mind off Jenna long enough to choose a lunch. His gaze landed on meat loaf, and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever even tasted it, but he’d seen it on TV and decided that’s what he was having.
“I’ll have the meat loaf, and…” Certainly wine wasn’t the appropriate beverage. “Iced tea.”
“You want green tea or black?” This was San Francisco, after all.
“Green will be fine.”
He caught himself staring at Jenna’s lush pink lips as she placed her own order for a cheeseburger, chili fries and a chocolate shake, and when the waitress disappeared, he forced his gaze back to Jenna’s eyes.
The gorgeous redhead had managed in the space of ten minutes to muddle his thoughts and set his senses on high alert. It took a monumental effort to keep from letting his gaze fall even lower than her sensuous mouth to the front of her tight black tank top—to keep from thinking about the fact that she apparently wasn’t wearing a bra.
And curse the guy who invented bras if all women could look like that without them.
She wasn’t even remotely his type. Her look wasn’t classic Coco Chanel, as he’d always preferred, but rather rebel-without-a-Nordstrom-card. With her dyed burgundy hair; her short, unpolished fingernails and her tight, faded jeans, she was about as opposite to Kathryn Calvert as she could get and still be the woman’s twin sister.
When he looked into her ice-blue eyes, he saw sparks of fire that weren’t present in her sister’s. Perhaps Jenna had spirit, something he suspected lacking in Kathryn. Travis was undeniably intrigued by this wilder twin, and he was curious to know her in spite of his suspicion that she probably had a tattoo hiding somewhere on her body.
Where and what that tattoo might be—the possibilities were endless. A little red rose on the satin skin of her inner thigh, or a tiny heart hiding beneath her panties…Whoa, mama.
What on earth was going on here? He didn’t like tattoos, and he didn’t even know if Jenna had one. But she certainly had his imagination in the gutter all of a sudden.
There was no sense in fantasizing about Kathryn’s bad-girl twin anyway, because if she agreed to his offer—and he knew she would—then she would be transformed in the next few days into an exact replica of her sister. It was his unwelcome job to make that happen.
Jenna sat across from him with her elbows propped on the table, her slender arms sporting two chunky bracelets in various stones and faux gems, displaying an utter lack of grace that Travis found oddly charming. As he explained his acquaintance with Kathryn Calvert and her engagement to his younger brother, Blake, she listened closely, never taking her gaze away from his eyes.
But next came the sensitive part, the reason he’d driven all the way from Carmel in the hope of bringing Jenna back with him.
“The wedding plans were moving along just fine until last week, when Kathryn flew to Los Angeles for what she claims was supposed to be a week-long spa treatment. She decided to get some minor plastic surgery while she was there, and—”
“What kind of plastic surgery?” Jenna’s eyes had grown perfectly round.
Their conversation was interrupted by the waitress delivering their meals and drinks. Jenna continued to watch him as she dug into her burger.
When the waitress left, Travis continued. “Some kind of procedure where the doctor takes fat from one part of your body and injects it into the cheeks and lips. Kathryn is outraged with the results, and she refuses to come home until the problem has been corrected.”
Jenna laughed out loud. “What, her face is too fat now?”
Travis smiled. “Something like that. She says she looks lumpy.” He couldn’t begin to understand why anyone would endure such a procedure, especially not for beauty’s sake, but of all the people he knew, Kathryn was the easiest to imagine having fat injected into her face.
“Now I’ve heard it all.”
“The problem is, we can’t postpone the wedding or any of the prenuptial events. For one thing, Kathryn doesn’t want my family to know she was off having facial enhancements done. My mother hasn’t exactly welcomed her into the family.”
“I can imagine how important it is for Kathryn to impress her future mother-in-law.”
“She has a long list of people to impress, I’m afraid. Kathryn initiated a project with Blake to establish a women and children’s shelter through the Roth charity foundation, and she is supposed to meet with a couple interested in donating land for the project later this week.”
“So reschedule.”
“They’re already hesitant about the project thanks to Blake’s reputation for flakiness. Kathryn doesn’t want to give them any reason to back out, because such a prime piece of land so central to the Bay Area is nearly impossible to come by.”
Jenna frowned. “Sounds like she’s got herself in a real bind.”
“Not just herself, but my business, too. Our family’s investment firm has suffered recently as a result of Blake’s inability to handle responsibility, and this wedding is our chance to give some of our clients a better impression of him, to leave them feeling warm and fuzzy about Roth Investments. We need everything to come off without a hitch.”
Jenna’s expression turned wary as she bit into a French fry. “Why can’t you just tell everyone that the bride has come down with pneumonia or something and is too sick to go through with the wedding?”
Travis took his first bite of meat loaf and decided he’d been missing out all these years. He made a mental note to ask the family chef to prepare the dish regularly.
“Any postponement will look like flakiness on the family’s part, no matter what the excuse, and that’s an image we have to avoid at all costs. Several of our biggest clients have threatened to leave because of Blake’s unreliability. This marriage will show them that he’s settling down and becoming a family man.”
“Why doesn’t someone just fire your brother?”
If it were only so easy. “My father has forbidden it. Blake is Dad’s favorite.”
“This all sounds a little crazy, and I don’t understand how you think I can help.”
“The doctors have assured Kathryn that her face will look normal before the wedding, but she still refuses to come home until the damage has been undone.”
“So you just have to hope she’ll come back in time for it.”
“And that’s exactly what I’m doing, except that still leaves us without a bride for the prewedding events my parents have planned, along with the land donation meeting.”
“Does your brother know about Kathryn’s little problem?”
“No, and he cannot find out. He’s awful at keeping anything secret. He’s expecting Kathryn back from her trip on Monday, but she obviously won’t be back.”
“Isn’t he going to notice when his bride doesn’t show up for the rehearsal?”
Travis took a deep breath. “That’s where you come in. We need you to impersonate Kathryn until she returns.”
Jenna dropped her cheeseburger onto its plate and stared at him as if he’d just sprouted antennae.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said matter-of-factly, her cheek full of half-chewed cheeseburger.
“You haven’t even heard my offer yet.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not going to help Kathryn or the dimwit who agreed to marry her.”
Kathryn had never explained why she and Jenna were estranged from each other. Apparently the rift was a deep one, judging by Jenna’s reaction, but Kathryn had mentioned how she and her twin had switched places many times as children—how it had in fact been one of their favorite games.
“You’ll be quite well compensated.” He noted a gleam of interest in her eye that she quickly subdued.
“I’m earning a good living already. I don’t need anyone’s charity.”
From the looks of Jenna’s neighborhood, Travis was willing to bet she was barely scraping by on her meager freelance earnings, and that she could definitely use the money he had to offer.
“Not charity. Payment for a job completed.”
“Yeah, whatever. I still won’t do it.”
“You don’t even know what the compensation will be.”
“Not enough.” She turned her attention to her milk shake.
He could tell by the tenseness in her narrow shoulders that he had to pull his final punch. “Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Chocolate milk shake spurted from her mouth across the table and onto the lapel of his favorite jacket. She stared at him wild-eyed.
He dipped his napkin into a glass of ice water and dabbed at the spot until it disappeared, and when he looked back up, she was scooting out of the booth.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you and whatever crooked scheme you’ve cooked up.” She stood and shrugged on her small leather backpack.
Travis stared after her as she headed for the door.
He hadn’t anticipated her walking away once he’d started to talk money. Nor had he imagined he’d be so mesmerized by the sway of her hips in those faded Levi’s that he’d be frozen in place, speechless and unable to form complete thoughts. No, things weren’t going the way he’d planned at all.
2
JENNA CLIMBED THE STAIRS to her apartment, her mind playing over and over Travis’s proposal. Had she made too rash a decision? Twenty-five grand was a lot of money to walk away from, yet the thought of not only helping Kathryn, but actually taking over her life, was just too much to contemplate all at once.
Jenna had spent every moment since she’d left home ten years ago trying to forget that she was not unique in the world, that she had an identical twin out there and that she wasn’t even the best liked of the two. Kathryn had always been their parents’ favorite, their teachers’ favorite and the one who had more friends and more boyfriends. Kathryn knew the art of getting along to get along, while Jenna had been born with a rebellious streak that angered authority figures and scared away the faint of heart.
An image of Travis Roth popped into her head. A perverse little part of her wondered if he was faint of heart, or if he’d be the kind of guy who could hang on when life with Jenna got unpredictable. Crazy thoughts, considering a guy like Travis and a girl like Jenna would never get together, not in a thousand years—unless, of course, some sort of paid services were involved.
Like being hired to impersonate her sister.
The thought gave Jenna a shudder. Impersonating Kathryn would be like taking a giant leap backward in time. She’d be admitting that all her rebellion in the past ten years had been for nothing—that with a bottle of dye, some scissors, a change of clothes and a bit of makeup, she was just a duplicate of her ever-so-proper sister.
The wild hairstyles, the sexy clothes, the wild men, the wild nights out…
All for nothing.
The choices she’d made to prove herself an individual could be wiped away in one fell swoop.
Jenna reached her floor of the apartment building, and the first thing she saw was her door standing ajar. She froze, and her stomach contracted into a rock.
Could Travis have gotten it open before he came outside and found her trying to escape? Possible, but how could he have so quickly gotten around the couch she’d jammed up against it earlier? That, along with getting past the locks, would have taken more time than he’d had to come back outside and catch her sneaking away.
She took a step closer and saw that the locks hadn’t been broken, and an image of the open fire-escape window flashed in her mind. In this neighborhood, no one left fire-escape windows open unless they wanted to find all their valuables and not-so-valuables for sale at a swap meet the next weekend.
Her heart raced. Should she go in or just leave and call the police from a neighbor’s place? Common sense told her to leave, but curiosity had her aching to peek inside, if only for a moment.
Her computer—she had to know that it was safe.
Jenna held her breath and stepped into the doorway, thinking of how she was going to pitch Guard-Dog-In-A-Box out the window at Travis Roth’s head if she saw him outside her building again. Slowly, she eased her head around the half-open door, until she could see the interior of the apartment.
It took her a moment to make sense of the changes since she’d last been there an hour ago. Couch overturned, cushions ripped open, papers and books strewn everywhere, bookshelves emptied and her laptop missing from her desk.
Jenna’s heart pounded in her ears as she realized the months—the years— of work saved on her hard drive that now might be missing, and she didn’t see her box of floppy disks anywhere among the mess.
She gripped the door frame and resisted the urge to rush in and search for her laptop and files before she knew for sure that the intruder was gone. She needed to think, make a plan…. First she’d go to Mrs. Lupinski’s and ask to use the phone.
She backed away from the door and crept up the stairs.
Damn it.
Was Travis Roth a diversion for someone to break into her apartment? No, that didn’t make sense. He hadn’t come expecting that she’d flee out the window, that they’d end up having lunch at a diner down the street…But he could have had some other plan to get her out of the apartment. Could that whole story about her sister have been an elaborate charade?
Her mind raced from thought to thought, and her hands began to shake as the reality of what she’d likely just lost sank in.
Jenna raised her fist to knock on Mrs. Lupinski’s door, but the door swung open at that moment and her neighbor, in mint-green curlers and a red satin robe, peered out.
“Shouldn’t have left your window open, huh! Saw some guy climbing up the fire escape, and twenty minutes later he walked right out the front carrying a black bag full of stuff.”
“Did you call the police?”
“How was I supposed to know if he was up to no-good? Could have been a friend of yours for all I knew.” Mrs. Lupinski’s robe slid open in the front to reveal a black lace nightgown. The sounds of a daytime soap opera could be heard in the background.
Jenna shuddered. She knew better than to argue with her cantankerous neighbor. “I need to use your phone. My apartment has been robbed and ransacked.” While you were up here minding your own business.
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
She wanted to throw up or kick something. Or both. Tears burned her eyes, but she blinked them away, determined not to let her neighbor see how upset she really was.
The elderly woman eyed her suspiciously but stepped aside and motioned her in. Jenna had never actually been inside the apartment before, and she half expected to see a heart-shaped bed in the living room, mirrors on the ceiling, maybe a few pieces of emergency resuscitation equipment in case any of her lovers went into cardiac arrest at an inopportune moment.
What she saw instead was a two-room flat almost identical to her own, except for the matter of décor. Mrs. Lupinski had stopped decorating sometime in the late sixties, when she’d apparently been enamored with orange-and-green flower prints.
She pointed to a telephone next to the couch, and Jenna was surprised to note that it actually had a rotary dial. The feel of catching her shaky fingers in the small holes as she dialed 911 took her back to childhood for a fleeting moment, until an operator came on the line and she found herself recounting the relevant details of the break-in.
The operator warned her not to enter her apartment again until the police had secured it, so Jenna was stuck waiting for them to arrive in the company of Mrs. Lupinski. Luckily, her neighbor didn’t see any need for small talk. Without saying a word, she simply planted herself in front of the TV and watched with undivided attention the plight of Rafe and Savannah, a couple who seemed to be very upset over the resurrection of someone named Lucius.
Jenna, left to her own thoughts, didn’t want to consider what might be missing from her meager belongings. Nor did she want to contemplate whether the break-in was connected to her research of the pageant industry. If it was, and if her files were missing—
A sense of violation rose up in her chest. How could they? How could someone have taken her things, violated her privacy, stolen her work—the thing that mattered most to her?
It was bad enough that she’d taken to cowering behind her apartment door, afraid to venture out in public like a normal person. Now her home had been invaded, and she had nowhere to cower.
No, she had to stop thinking this way. This was exactly the kind of fear they wanted her to succumb to.
She shook herself mentally and her thoughts landed instead on Travis Roth. Where did he fit into this puzzle? Her gut told her he was telling the truth, and her libido told her he was an undeniable babe. But what if he were a hit man, hired to lure her away and kill her, then dump her body in a shallow grave? There was one way to find out, even if it meant calling her mother, Irene Calvert-Hathaway.
She picked up the phone again, dialed directory assistance, and went through the motions of placing a collect call to Palm Springs. Moments later, she heard her mother’s voice on the line. It should have been a comforting sound, in light of the circumstances.
“Mom, it’s Jenna.”
“What’s the matter, dear? Are you dead? Did you get thrown in jail?”
“No, Mom. If I were dead, I’d have trouble dialing the phone. My apartment was just broken into and I can’t go back in yet, but that’s not why I’m calling.”
She heard her mother’s put-upon sigh. “I told you not to move to that crazy city. Probably drug addicts—I’ve read how they steal things to support their habits.”
“I’m calling about Kathryn, actually. I hear she’s getting married.”
“To an absolutely magnificent man!” Her mother’s voice had changed from nagging to dreamy in an instant. “The wedding is in two weeks. I told Kathryn to send you an invitation, but the way you two fight…”
Yeah, yeah, whatever. No need to invite the black sheep of the family to the social event of the season. Kathryn probably couldn’t imagine her lowlife sister rubbing elbows with her country-club friends. Not that Jenna considered herself a lowlife, but she knew her lack of a six-figure income and her less than glamorous lifestyle were a major embarrassment to her family.
While Kathryn had stepped right into their mother’s social climbing footsteps, Jenna had never been much impressed by status symbols and excessive wealth. Her rejection of the material life was a constant source of discord between herself and her family, and Jenna imagined Kathryn and their mother shaking their heads and tut-tutting every time the subject of Jenna’s rattletrap car or seedy apartment came up.
“It doesn’t matter. Do you know anything about Travis Roth, the brother of Kathryn’s fiancé?”
She could almost see her mother’s surgically youthful eyes narrow. “Why do you ask, dear?”
“He, or someone claiming to be him, contacted me today.”
“About what?”
“First, tell me what you know about him,” Jenna said, already feeling relieved that at least there was a Travis Roth.
“I’ve only met him a few times, but he seemed like quite the gentleman. Handsome, too. He has a stellar reputation, from what I hear. Runs the investment branch of the Roth family empire, isn’t married, lives in Carmel near his brother and their parents.”
“What does he look like, exactly?”
“Tall, sandy blond hair, green eyes, nice physique, in his mid-thirties.”
“Do you happen to know if their family is connected to any beauty pageants?”
“No, and why on earth do you ask?”
“Never mind.” Jenna relaxed back onto the sofa, releasing a mental sigh of relief. It sounded as if her lunch companion wasn’t a fraud and knew nothing about the break-in.
“What are all these questions about?”
“I can’t say, but don’t worry. I’m not going to ruin Kathryn’s wedding or anything.”
Soon after Jenna ended the call with her mother, the police arrived, checked out her apartment, took statements from Jenna and Mrs. Lupinski and dusted for fingerprints. The biggest clue the police found was a note scrawled on the bathroom mirror in red lipstick that read, “Don’t write the story, bitch.”
The only story Jenna was working on was the beauty-pageant exposé, so she’d given the police all the information she could remember about whom she had contacted during her research and promised to let them know if she remembered anything else. They’d advised her to take some time off and leave town, maybe stay with family or friends, but to give them an address and phone number for wherever she went.
An hour after they’d left, Jenna sat alone in her ransacked apartment, nervous and depressed. Her laptop and all her files had indeed been stolen. She didn’t allow herself to think about the years of work that were now gone. Instead, she focused on the mess. She wandered around and around the small space surveying her once orderly surroundings.
And strangely, her thoughts kept going back to Travis Roth. His offer wasn’t sounding so outrageous, now that her normal life had suddenly turned into a bad dream she wanted to wake from. As if she hadn’t been scared enough before, now she knew for absolute sure that someone didn’t want her writing the beauty-pageant exposé.
Jenna twirled a strand of hair between her fingers in a nervous habit she’d engaged in since childhood. Any minute now, she figured her eye would start twitching, and then some outrageous behavior wouldn’t be far behind.
Her entire life, she’d always relieved tension by doing something wild. In elementary school, there’d been that incident with Mrs. Joliet’s desk chair right before the big Little Miss Twin America finals. In junior high, there had been the liberation of the science-class rats after her mother had filed for divorce from her father. In high school, there’d been the time she’d cut class and gone cruising with the biggest badass hunk in school, right before refusing to ever do another beauty pageant.
Later, she’d discovered a little fun in bed had the same effect. Preferably, outrageous fun in bed. And here she was with the greatest need for a tension reliever she’d ever had, and no boyfriend or even the prospect of one in sight.
Jenna sank onto her bed, fighting back the big melodramatic sob that threatened to escape her throat.
Not now, not when she had to think.
Two weeks and twenty-five thousand dollars. She’d get to leave town, forget about her own mess of a life for a little while. Maybe that would give the police enough time to catch the scumbag who’d just trashed her apartment. Or maybe not.
But she’d get to leave town. Even if it meant impersonating her sister, perpetrating a fraud, it was an offer she couldn’t turn down now.
And maybe the offer had advantages she hadn’t even considered yet. She envisioned Travis Roth in all his tall, blond, broad-shouldered, suntanned glory. Maybe a few weeks in close proximity to him was just what she needed…and maybe a little negotiating was called for.
She smiled, and an outrageous impulse came bubbling up from her subconscious.
Negotiations, yes.
Something to take her mind off her worries. Something to remind her that she was still Jenna, still in control of her own destiny.
Something wild.
Yes.
A calm settled over her for the first time since she’d laid eyes on her ransacked apartment, and an idea formed in her head. An outrageous idea, guaranteed to make her forget her problems, sure to dwarf all the other outrageous stunts she’d pulled over the years.
She withdrew Travis’s business card from her pocket and stared at it. After a few moments and a silent prayer, Jenna dialed his number.
TRAVIS HAD DECIDED to drop in on an old college friend at his office downtown before leaving the city. He was just starting the car, wondering what his next step with regard to Jenna should be, when his cell phone rang.
“Travis Roth,” he answered.
“It’s Jenna Calvert. I’ve been thinking about your offer, and I may have changed my mind.”
“So you’re willing to help?”
“Maybe. I have a condition of my own I’d like to discuss, in person.”
“Of course. I’m open to negotiating.”
“I’d like you to come here to my apartment and pick me up, if you don’t mind.” She sounded almost…scared. And far less sure of herself than she had a few hours earlier.
“Is something wrong? You sound upset.”
She expelled a strained laugh. “You’ll see when you get here.”
“I’m just leaving downtown, so I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes if traffic is light.”
Travis pressed the end call button on his phone with no small sense of satisfaction. Mission accomplished. Now there was some hope of saving the wedding from ruin, once they’d overcome the next big obstacle—transforming Jenna into an exact copy of her polished, elegant sister.
No matter how daunting the task, it had to be done, and quickly—without any more getting distracted by sexual attraction. Travis drove back to Jenna’s apartment reviewing the necessary steps in his head and trying damn hard not to be thrilled at the thought of a weekend alone with the redheaded vixen.
Before they returned to Carmel, he’d be taking her to a house among the vineyards of Napa Valley, where he’d have the privacy to school Jenna on Kathryn’s life without raising any eyebrows. But for the life of him, he couldn’t stop the images of other things they might do alone at the country estate from invading his thoughts.
There was the matter of the condition Jenna mentioned placing on helping him, but whatever it was, he couldn’t imagine it being much of a problem. More money? He’d pay it. A new car? Consider it done. A nicer apartment? She clearly had the need for one.
The central San Francisco neighborhood where Jenna lived was an urban jungle of decrepit Victorians, tenement apartment buildings and seedy business fronts. The people who walked the streets weren’t the sort who hung out at wine-tasting parties or attended charity art auctions. Rather, many looked as though their favorite forms of entertainment might get them arrested.
Travis questioned his own sanity when he found a spot on the street for the second time that day and maneuvered his Mercedes into it. His car had gathered plenty of looks as he’d driven along, and now he’d be lucky if it were still here when he returned. He activated the security system and hoped there weren’t any smart car thieves around.
The door of Jenna’s building was propped open with a brick, so he went inside and climbed the stairs to her apartment. After knocking on the door, he took time to note the peeling paint on the door frame, the worn hardwood floors, the dingy walls. Jenna’s landlord needed to do some building maintenance, that was for sure.
After several minutes, there was still no answer, and Travis fought the sneaking feeling of panic in his gut that Jenna had changed her mind. He knocked again and waited some more. No one came.
He tried knocking harder, then heard a door open on the floor above.
“You trying to get in to see that red-haired girl?” A woman’s voice called down.
Travis looked up the stairs toward the source of that voice, but all he could see was the landing, lit by what must have been a twenty-five-watt bulb.
“Um, yes,” he said.
Then came the sound of footsteps, and the sight of fuzzy pink house slippers descending the stairs. Next came a red satin robe, and finally he had a full view of a small elderly woman with green curlers in her hair.
“She told me to let you in,” she said, eyeing him with interest. “I’m supposed to ask what your name is.”
“Travis Roth.”
“Yep, you fit the description.”
“Did she have somewhere to go?”
“Don’t ask me what that crazy girl’s up to.” She put a key in the door, unlocked it, then presented the key to him.
“I’m supposed to give this to you so’s you can return it to her.”
Travis took the key, then stared at it in his palm, dumbfounded.
“You get finished with her,” the woman said, “and I’m available right upstairs.” She waggled her eyebrows at him and flashed what must have been her version of a seductive smile.
“Thanks,” he said, forcing a neutral expression. “I appreciate your help.” He pushed the door open and stepped inside Jenna’s apartment before their encounter could get any more bizarre.
“The thing about us older women you can’t get with a young one like that,” she said, nodding in the direction of Jenna’s apartment, “is that we know more.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Honey, I could play your body like an accordion.”
Travis shuddered at the image.
“Have a good night,” he said as he closed and locked the door.
Turning away from it, he looked around the small room. Jenna was nowhere in sight, much as he’d expected, but the sound of running water came from behind a nearby door. Light was visible in the space between the door and the floor, so he figured Jenna had decided to take a shower.
He took in the mess that surrounded him. Either Jenna Calvert was a lousy housekeeper and a woman with violent feelings toward her sofa, or someone had trashed her place. But, if there had been a break-in, maybe even a struggle, it could have only just happened. Maybe Jenna wasn’t even alive and well in the shower. An image of her murdered body being soaked in a bloody shower flashed in his mind, and he panicked.
“Jenna!” He raced to the bathroom door and flung it open.
There, behind the transparent shower curtain, was the unmistakable silhouette of Jenna’s body, standing up, seemingly alive and well. He couldn’t help admiring the perfect proportions, the tantalizing curve where her waist met her hips. Steam from the shower dampened his face, and he caught the scent of her shampoo, something feminine and fruity.
“Jenna? It’s me, Travis.”
She peeked out from the edge of the curtain and smiled. “Oh, hi. You got here faster than I thought you would.”
Even the sight of her bare shoulder and her crimson hair, slicked back away from her face, aroused Travis. He’d definitely been working too hard lately, neglecting his social life, because instantly, he had a hard-on.
Cardiac arrest was the only appropriate reaction to what she did next. As Travis struggled to keep his jaw from sagging, she slid the curtain open and smiled a wicked half smile.
“Care to join me?” she asked, her tone playful, but her gaze leveled at him with a look of absolute daring.
There was simply no way not to look. He admired the full, round perfection of her damp breasts, the small pink nipples forming tight peaks; the narrow expanse of her waist; the incongruous but tantalizing triangle of blond curls at the peak of her thighs; the delicious shape of her long legs. Not a tattoo in sight. Rivulets of water formed all over her skin, and the only coherent thought Travis could form was that he wanted to lick them off.
Finally, he recovered the ability to speak. “It’s a tempting offer….”
She sighed. “But you don’t think it would be appropriate.”
“Um…” Surely he could say something more profound than “um,” but nothing came to mind.
Instead, he could only think of pinning her to the shower wall and burying himself deep inside her. To hell with propriety, to hell with everyone’s expectations—he could do something wild and improper for once in his life, couldn’t he?
Couldn’t he?
Apparently not.
“I’ve shocked you speechless, I can see.” She slid the shower curtain closed again. “I’ll be finished in a minute, if you want to wait in the living room.”
Travis closed the bathroom door, then leaned against it, barely resisting the urge to bang his head on the wall. His inability to seize the moment was so typical, so thoroughly Travis Roth, it made him want to yell.
Everything he’d accomplished in life had been through careful study and hard work. Never risk taking. His lack of daring had slowly brought the family investment firm out of a slump and into steady profitability, but as his little brother frequently pointed out, the risk takers were the ones who dominated the business world. Calculated risk, their father had always preached, was the hallmark of success. Since he’d been the man who’d built the family fortune, he had the right to preach.
And here was Travis, presented with the erotic invitation of a lifetime, and he couldn’t take it. But so what? Business and personal matters weren’t the same, and risk taking had entirely different kinds of repercussions for each. He wasn’t going to beat himself up for not hopping into a shower with a woman he’d only just met. Getting involved sexually with Jenna would be a huge mistake anyway.
He glanced around again at the mess of her apartment, finally remembering why he’d rushed into the bathroom in the first place. At least he knew now that she was unharmed, but that didn’t explain the chaos in her apartment.
Was she just the world’s lousiest housekeeper? Was she mentally unstable? That could explain the shower incident, too…. Yet he had the feeling this was definitely a mess someone else had made.
On the other side of the door, the water cut off, and he heard the shower curtain slide open. Travis pushed aside thoughts of Jenna’s naked, wet body and walked across the room to look at the books strewn around the bookcase. He bent and picked up some of them, placing each one on a shelf after reading the title. Classics, mysteries, biographies, romance novels, memoirs, philosophy—Jenna seemed to read it all.
He supposed he shouldn’t have found that surprising, since she was a freelance journalist. That career suggested a certain intelligence and curiosity, both traits Travis had to admit he considered incongruous with her wild image.
He’d just bent to pick up a copy of the Atlantic Monthly— definitely not typical vixen reading material—when Jenna emerged from the bathroom dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a white sleeveless top that laced up the sides. Her damp hair had been pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup except for a hint of red on her lips.
Her gaze lingered on him, and rather than looking embarrassed by the shower incident, as Travis imagined he did, Jenna seemed amused.
“I guess Mrs. Lupinski let you in, no problem?”
“She offered to play me like an accordion, but yes, she let me in.” He winced at the image and held out the key that was still in his hand. “Here’s your key back.”
“Thanks. Don’t worry, my place doesn’t normally look like this.”
“What happened?” He was almost afraid to ask.
“While we were having lunch today, someone came in the open window and ransacked it. They stole my laptop and all my backed-up files.”
A sense of outrage rose up in his chest on behalf of Jenna. “I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.”
“But why would someone take all your files? Do you have other copies anywhere?”
“It’s a long story, and yes, I do have some hard copies and disks of some of my work, but a lot of the newer stuff is lost. I’d hidden emergency backups in my closet, but I wasn’t very methodical about backing up regularly.”
“We’ve got a long drive ahead, so you can tell me on the way why someone would want to steal your files.”
“A long drive where?”
“To Napa. My family has a country home there, a private place where we can get you up to speed on impersonating Kathryn.”
“We haven’t even discussed my condition for helping you yet.”
Up until a few minutes ago, he’d been pretty sure whatever she wanted wouldn’t be a problem, but now he knew firsthand that Jenna could be…unpredictable. Outrageous. Wild.
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
She stepped over a mangled couch cushion and sat on the arm of the sofa next to him. He could smell the fruity shampoo scent from her hair, and that, combined with her proximity, was intoxicating.
“First, I want to apologize for my behavior in the bathroom.”
She certainly could have done worse. “Apology accepted.”
“I have these sort of urges when I get stressed out.”
“Urges?” He couldn’t wait to hear her explanation.
“Yeah, urges.” She paused, giving him a once-over. “Whenever life gets stressful, I tend to react by following my impulses, which can lead to rather outrageous behavior, as you saw in the bathroom.”
Travis shrugged. “No harm done.” Other than the image of her lush body burned in his memory for eternity.
“I’m getting this vibe about you.”
“What sort of vibe?”
Her eyes sparked mischief. “An uptight one.”
“Thanks, that’s just the impression I was going for.”
“You strike me as one of those guys who’s going to die at an early age from a heart attack or a stroke, before you ever get to relax and enjoy life.”
Travis ignored the protests of his ego and bypassed her insult. “I’m still waiting for your condition on the deal.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. You and I, we have a mutual need. I’m stressed out by crazy people stalking me, and you’re stressed out by your job or my sister’s wedding or whatever. We both need to let off some steam.”
He thought of the way he’d snapped at his brother that very morning before coming to meet Jenna. Blake had simply been acting like his usual irresponsible self, turning in a report late, and even though Travis always set artificial deadlines for his brother to make sure the work really got to him when he needed it, he’d exploded right there in the office, in front of his secretary—which meant the entire office building knew about it by now.
Yeah, he definitely needed to let off some steam.
“So what does that have to do with the deal?”
“I’ll impersonate Kathryn starting next week. But until then, I’m Jenna. You can coach me on acting like Kathryn, but after hours, I’m still me. All weekend long, we work on unwinding.”
Travis didn’t quite see where she was going, but he played along. “Okay, I’ve always found the wine country to be relaxing. Slower pace, quiet—”
“That’s not what I mean. The most effective place I know to relieve stress—to really relieve it—is in bed, and I don’t mean sleeping.”
Travis blinked. He couldn’t argue with her there. Nothing like sex to put the spring back into his step. But he hadn’t even had a serious date lately, let alone—
She continued. “You’re single, I’m single, we’re attracted to each other, I think. No one will have to know.”
“Let me get this straight. You want to make a sexual relationship part of our business agreement?”
“Not when you put it like that. I’m just saying I need a little companionship this weekend, and I think you do, too.”
Travis frowned. A weekend alone, letting off steam, as Jenna put it, with one impossibly sexy woman. It was either the best idea he’d heard in a long time, or it was absolutely nuts.
3
JENNA SURVEYED THE apartment she’d called home for the past year, feeling yet another burst of anger at the person who’d invaded her privacy and stolen her most valued possessions. It took all her willpower not to kick something—more proof that she needed to unwind. She glanced down at the duffel bag and backpack that held everything she planned to take with her, then up at Travis Roth, who apparently was stunned silent by her proposition.
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to…unwind,” he finally said, “but don’t you think it might be awkward?”
“If it is, we won’t do it. Just give it a chance tonight, and if it feels wrong, we’ll pretend we never had this conversation. Deal?”
If he turned her down, Jenna really was going to kick something. Namely, him. In the ass. Right out her door.
“Okay.” He smiled, and the sexy gaze he pinned her with warmed her body in all the right places. “You have a deal. I’d be crazy to turn you down, after all.”
She did a mental happy dance. Look out Travis Roth, you’re in for the weekend of a lifetime.
Jenna switched off all the lights except the one near the door, then started to pick up her bags, but Travis grabbed them first. After he took them out the door, she switched off the last light and locked up her tiny apartment, with the odd feeling that when she returned, her life was going to be very, very different.
While Travis loaded her bags into the trunk of his pristine silver Mercedes, Jenna settled back into the plush gray leather of the passenger seat and tried not to think too hard about what she’d just gotten herself into. She’d focus on the fun part for tonight—do a little flirting, find out what had put all that tension into her companion’s shoulders, and do her best to work it out.
It seemed her desire to focus on the positive was not to be fulfilled though. They’d barely been on the road for five minutes when Travis brought up the one subject she most wanted to forget for the weekend.
“Care to tell me why you think someone broke into your apartment and ransacked it?”
“I guess you won’t leave the subject alone until I do.”
“Probably not.”
“I’m researching a story that someone doesn’t want written. This was supposed to be the piece that established my reputation as a serious journalist.”
“What’s the subject?”
“An exposé on the beauty-pageant industry—on the exploitation and behind-the-scenes stuff most people don’t know.”
Travis nodded. “Sounds interesting. How can you be sure that’s why your apartment was broken into?”
“Pretty quickly after I began researching the story, I started receiving threatening phone calls, then other strange things started happening.”
“Like what?”
“I was nearly run down by a car earlier this week. It actually drove up onto the sidewalk where I was walking, and it didn’t have license plates on the front or back.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You don’t think it was an accident?”
“An almost identical accident happened with a different car the day before.”
“Who knew you were writing the article?”
Jenna pressed her fingers to her temples. Her left eye was starting to twitch, a sure sign that she was overstressed. “More than a few people. Let’s talk about this another time, okay? Right now, I just want to pretend I have a normal life.”
“So tell me why you and Kathryn don’t speak to each other.”
Yet another pleasant subject. Jenna stared out the window at the city lights passing by on the East Bay. The eye twitch was getting worse.
“I think I have a right to know what I’m dealing with here. Kathryn said she had no idea why you hated her so much, but I’m betting she wasn’t telling the whole story.”
“You’d win that bet.”
“She has a tendency to only remember stories that make her look favorable, doesn’t she?”
“Yep, that’s my sis.”
“So tell me your side.”
“My mother used to enter my sister and I in these horrible beauty pageants all the time—Little Miss Twin California, Little Miss Twin U.S.A., Little Miss Twin America—we did the whole circuit.” She scoffed. “I hated it, and Kathryn adored it. That basically sums up our differences.”
“You didn’t ever want to be Little Miss Twin America?”
“I hated dressing up, wearing makeup, being gawked at by crowds, the whole bit. By the time we were eight, we knew how to apply mascara flawlessly.”
“Makeup on an eight-year-old?”
“You think that’s young? I have photos of myself wearing lipstick at the age of three.”
“So that explains your interest in the beauty-pageant story.”
“I’ve wanted to do this story as long as I’ve been a journalist.”
Travis nodded. “I had no idea your mother was such a…”
“Wacko? That’s why I’m not exactly close to her, either.”
“Wacko is not quite the word I was looking for, but if you had the kind of mother who dressed you up in matching twin outfits, why not matching names, too, like Kelly and Nelly?”
“It’s almost as bad, Jenna Kathleen and Kathryn Jennifer.”
“Oh.” He fought a smile. “But these pageants were when you were kids, right? Why all the bad feelings after so many years?”
“That was just the beginning. Kathryn always resented me for dropping out of the pageant circuit during our freshman year in high school, thereby ruining her chances of being Miss Twin Anything. It was her big dream to win a pageant, and she never did.”
“And that made your mother angry, too?”
“She never said so in so many words, but I knew she was disappointed. She always identified more with Kathryn, and by the time we were teenagers, my sister and I had an all-out rivalry going. She stole my boyfriends, my favorite sweaters and my study notes.”
“So you rebelled?”
“In a big way. Where Kathryn was always Miss Perfect—at least to the outside world—I turned into the wild one. I started dating the bad boys she wouldn’t dream of being caught with, wearing clothes way too sexy for her taste and I dyed my hair whatever color suited my mood.”
“I have to admit, that sounds like an effective way of solving your problems with her.”
Jenna smiled nostalgically. “She never once stole one of my black lace see-through tops.”
“How long has it been since you’ve spoken to Kathryn?”
Jenna frowned, unable to immediately recall. “Maybe at a family Christmas get-together a few years ago. And even then, I doubt we said more than ‘pass the turkey.’”
“That’s too bad. I know Kathryn isn’t the deepest person in the world, but she seems to have matured in the time she’s been dating my brother. Maybe this wedding will give you a chance to reconcile with her.”
Reconciling with her sister sounded about as appealing as diving into a pit of snakes, but she kept silent as she mulled over the possibility. Maybe it was time to let go of her resentment, forgive Kathryn and move on. Or maybe it was just time to get a good laugh at her sister with her new jumbo lips and chipmunk cheeks. Part of Jenna did secretly hope they remained permanently inflated.
“What about you and your brother?” she asked, not ready to discuss something as heavy as forgiveness. “Your relationship with him can’t exactly be normal if you’re going through all this trouble to hold his wedding together, and I remember you saying he’s your father’s favorite.”
“Blake has never grown up. He’s still a little boy playing office at our family business, and our clients can tell.”
“So you have to cover for him?”
“In his business life only, up until now.”
“You don’t have to go around covering for my sister’s mistakes, too, you know.”
“If I want this wedding to go smoothly, I do.” His grip seemed to tighten on the steering wheel.
Jenna stared at his profile as he drove, trying to fathom exactly how much loosening up Travis needed. Definitely more than she’d first suspected.
“What about the rest of your family—do they know what a screwup your brother is?”
“Everyone else finds his boyishness charming. Father wants him at the forefront of the company because he says Blake has the personality to win clients and keep them. He thinks I’m too stiff and serious.”
“Hmm. Do you agree with him?”
“I’ve brought in most of our newer clients myself. When people look for someone to invest their money, they want to know they’re leaving their savings in stable hands.”
Stability. Why did that quality suddenly sound so sexy, when applied to Travis? Okay, so he could probably make doing a crossword puzzle look sexy, and maybe recent events were causing her to crave stability in her life, but still…
“Have you ever let things slide? Just relaxed and not worried about other people’s mistakes?”
“Not when it comes to business—no.”
Jenna studied his profile again. He seemed to be in deep thought, and she imagined him fantasizing about suddenly not being so responsible. Maybe she was helping him loosen up already. She settled back into her seat and stared out the window, content with the silence after such a harrowing afternoon.
They’d been driving for almost a half hour when Jenna came out of her trance and glanced over at Travis again. His gaze dropped to the dash as they passed a sign for a town in another mile.
“We’d better stop to find some dinner and a gas station. Are you hungry?”
“Starved. I know a place at the next exit that has great ribs.” She’d stopped there once with a friend on their way back to the city after a weekend hiking in the mountains.
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Jamie Sobrato
When researching her latest story puts her life in danger, freelance journalist Jenna Calvert decides she needs to get out of town. And the opportunity presents itself in the form of sexy Travis Roth. In exchange for two weeks in Carmel, she simply has to pretend to be someone else–not a problem for this spontaneous wild child.But a seriously tense Jenna makes the agreement conditional–she'll spend the weekend with Travis rehearsing her role, if he'll help her unwind by indulging in a little sensual stress relief! After all, the gorgeous but uptight businessman looks as if he could do with a little sexual healing himself. And Jenna's not foolish enough to think that one wild weekend will blossom into a real love affair–until it does!
“Are you feeling relaxed yet?”
“Far from it.” Travis almost groaned the answer to Jenna’s question.
Her lips were swollen and her eyes half-lidded as she smiled up at him. “Guess I’ll have to try a little harder, then.”
“If you try any harder, the last thing I’ll be is relaxed.”
She bit her lower lip, then slowly released it and sighed. “We’d better be going, hmm?”
Going where? Oh, right, to the country house. Travis tore his gaze away from Jenna.
“Yeah, we’d better. I think we’re still a half hour away.” But if they happened to pass a hotel along the way, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep himself from screeching into the lot and dragging Jenna to the nearest available room.
An image of making love to her on a cheap bedspread in a sleazy motel room flashed in his mind, and he banished it. How had he gone so quickly from respectable businessman to crazed guy who got in bar fights and fantasized about frenzied motel sex?
He looked back at Jenna, and he knew in an instant.
Dear Reader,
I’ve always admired women who aren’t afraid to take risks to get what they want. With this book, I’ve had the pleasure of writing about just such a woman. Jenna Calvert is a journalist who isn’t afraid of much—except the stalker trying to stop her from writing the story of her career. I only wish I were half as bold as Jenna.
I can relate more easily to the hero, Travis Roth, who finds his perfectly planned life shaken up by wild, unpredictable Jenna. When these two come together, they illustrate why opposites can make the very best lovers.
I hope you love reading Travis and Jenna’s wild journey as much as I loved writing it. You can drop me a note to let me know what you think of the story at jamie@jamiesobrato.com or visit my Web site, www.jamiesobrato.com, to find out more about my upcoming books.
Sincerely,
Jamie Sobrato
Books by Jamie Sobrato
HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION
911—SOME LIKE IT SIZZLING
HARLEQUIN BLAZE
84—PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE
116—WHAT A GIRL WANTS
133—SOME KIND OF SEXY
Too Wild
Jamie Sobrato
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To The Wild Writers, who’ve been there for me from the start. I’m blessed to have the friendship and support of such a wild, wonderful group of women.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#ua1c1163b-7cf7-5733-a2d6-0a54f479ace4)
Chapter 2 (#ud667ed07-bbf2-5c6e-bfe1-ef3c3b367cbf)
Chapter 3 (#uafff864d-d720-5c71-8dcf-4249a8297317)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
1
WHAT JENNA CALVERT NEEDED was a large, tattooed man with a look of death in his eyes. Perhaps someone with a prison record and an intimate knowledge of firearms. Some guy named Spike or Duff.
But even Bodyguards for Less was out of her price range. Jenna listened a second time to the phone recording that described the business’s services. No way could she swing the eighty dollars per hour the burly voice on the recording stated was the base price without additional services—and what additional services could a bodyguard provide, anyway?
She hung up and exhaled a ragged breath.
Without a bodyguard, the only protection she had was Guard-Dog-In-A-Box. For twenty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, she’d purchased as much peace of mind as she could afford—a sorry amount indeed. Thirty bucks had bought her a motion-sensing device that simulated the sounds of killer dogs barking at any unsuspecting intruders.
Unfortunately, it also barked at neighbors passing in the hallway, at pizza delivery men and at Mrs. Lupinski’s many elderly lovers traipsing in and out of the building at all hours of the day and night.
Jenna hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a week, and everyone else in the building was getting tired of her canned guard dogs, too. Even Mrs. Lupinski, who was normally otherwise engaged, had yelled obscenities out her door at Jenna last night when she had heard her in the stairwell.
Guard-Dog-In-A-Box had looked so promising there on the shelf at the store, but now that she’d lived with her faux protection for a week, she saw just how desperate she’d become to even buy it.
She was cooked meat.
She never should have started researching the underbelly of the beauty-pageant industry. Ever since she’d begun the research a month ago, her life had been turned upside down by someone who didn’t want her writing the story. Jenna had racked her brain trying to figure out who among the people she’d interviewed or spoken with might wish her harm, but no one jumped out as a likely culprit. She hadn’t even uncovered any information that seemed worthy of death threats. But the voice-altered phone calls and the threatening mail had included comments like “back off the story” and “you’re risking your life if you write it.”
Jenna surveyed her apartment, wishing now that she had a roommate, or at least a parakeet. Someone to comfort her and tell her that it wasn’t such a bad thing to get three death threats in the past month. Someone who could also remind her that it was really quite normal to nearly get run down by a car in San Francisco. Two days in a row.
Yes, a roommate would be nice right about now. A roommate, a bodyguard and a really big weapon. But all Jenna had was Guard-Dog-In-A-Box. She resisted the urge to hurl the waste of money across the room and eyed the double locks on the apartment door. If anyone really wanted to get in, they wouldn’t have much trouble. The wood of the door frame was rotting away in places, and the locks looked as if they’d been installed before Jenna was born.
Sure, the front door of her apartment building was supposed to remain locked to nonresidents, but Mrs. Lupinski liked to prop it open for her lovers and the ever anticipated sweepstakes-prize delivery people. Getting buzzed in on the rare occasions it was locked was as easy as claiming to be a pizza delivery guy.
Jenna leaned against the decrepit door and closed her eyes. She let her mind drift to happier days, when home security was the least of her concerns. Only two months ago she’d been a relatively carefree journalist who’d made a decent career of writing for women’s magazines, and she was embarking on the story she was sure would finally turn her career from decent to well paying. No more squeaking by on a paltry freelance income that barely paid the high rent in the city. The beauty-pageant exposé was supposed to be her ticket to success.
When the buzzer on the door sounded, she jumped so hard that Guard-Dog-In-A-Box clattered to the floor and began barking. It sounded about as menacing as tin-can recorded dog barks could sound—that is, not menacing at all.
Her hand shook as she pressed the intercom button and said, “Who is it?”
“Ms. Calvert? My name is Travis Roth. I need to talk to you about your sister, Kathryn. May I come up?”
Kathryn? Jenna stared at the intercom, dumbfounded. She hadn’t heard from or spoken to her twin sister in years. Could this be a ploy someone was using to get inside the building?
“What about her? Just tell me now.”
“I really need to speak with you face-to-face. It’s a sensitive matter.”
A sensitive matter? Did bloodthirsty criminals talk like that?
“Haven’t you ever heard of the telephone?”
“I’ve been trying to call you for days with no answer.”
Oh. Right. She’d unplugged the answering machine after the strange calls started coming in, and finally she’d just stopped answering the phone.
“Look, if you’re here about the pageant story, I don’t have any idea what your problem is with it!”
She turned off the intercom and pushed her sofa against the door, then climbed on top of it and pulled her legs to her chest. She was beginning to think journalism had been the wrong career choice. What she needed was a nice, safe job. Maybe in forestry, or library science.
No, that was just fear talking. She loved her work. She’d always dreamed of being a freelance writer, and now she was one. Was she really such a coward she’d let someone bully her out of writing the truth? Scared as she might be, in her gut, Jenna knew she wasn’t about to stop working on the article.
Fifteen minutes later, she was still sitting in the same spot staring at her chipped toenail polish when she heard Mrs. Lupinski hollering about the whereabouts of her free pizza, a sure sign that the guy with the sensitive matter to discuss had gotten into the building.
Someone knocked at the door, and in spite of herself Jenna jumped again.
“Ms. Calvert, this is urgent. It’s about your sister’s wedding.”
Kathryn was getting married? No surprise there, if he was telling the truth. Her sister had been dreaming of a rich Prince Charming ever since they’d been old enough to date.
“She needs your help.”
“Right, now I know you’re lying. And why isn’t she here asking for my help herself if she needs it?” Kathryn would no sooner ask for Jenna’s help than she would wear a designer knockoff dress.
“I’ll explain, if you’ll just give me a chance.”
“Go away before I call the police!”
She peered through the peephole at him to see his reaction. Yow! What a cutie. Smoky green eyes, sand-colored hair streaked with blond and cut meticulously short, the kind of stern, masculine mouth that begged to be kissed into submission. Not exactly the face of a thug, but what did she know? Maybe criminals were going for the GQ look this year.
“I understand you and Kathryn haven’t spoken in some time, and you didn’t part on friendly terms.”
Okay, somehow he’d found some personal information to make his cover seem authentic. Jenna sank back down on the couch and chewed her lip.
“Jenna, this is really urgent. Open the door.”
She eyed the fire escape. Today was not a good day to die. For one thing, her roots were starting to show, and she had a zit on her chin. She’d look like hell in a casket. Maybe this guy was legit, but she couldn’t afford to find out. It would only be a short drop from the bottom of the fire escape to the ground.
She hopped off the couch, grabbed her backpack purse, slid her feet into the nearest pair of sandals and hurried to the fire-escape window.
The gorgeous maybe-assassin started pounding on the door, and Jenna pushed her window open and squeezed through it. Her breath came out ragged, and she imagined herself in an action movie as she climbed down the fire escape and dangled herself over the bottom edge for the drop. Five feet, no problem. She let go and landed with a thud in the scraggly mess of weeds that made up her building’s backyard vegetation.
Now what? She hadn’t exactly formulated an escape plan. Jenna eyed the tall chain-link fence that surrounded the backyard and tried to envision herself scaling it. No way—she wasn’t risking it unless there were no other options.
If she hurried, she might be able to go out the alleyway to the street and slip away before he realized she wasn’t in her apartment anymore. Jenna hurried to the rusty gate and eased it open, then ran down the alley to the sidewalk.
She’d only made it past the neighbor’s house when she heard a man’s voice call after her, “Jenna, wait!”
Him again. What, did he have X-ray vision? Jenna ran, and the sound of footsteps quickened. He caught up with her as she rounded the corner of the next street.
“Kathryn said you’d resist helping, but she didn’t tell me you were crazy,” he said over her shoulder, and something about the perplexed tone of his voice made Jenna stop and look at him.
He was even more gorgeous in person without his features distorted by the peephole. Up close, he was half a foot taller than her, and he stood with the kind of assurance that suggested he was accustomed to being in charge. Jenna’s fear was suddenly overcome with a pang of desire. Wow, did she ever need to pay more attention to her love life, if her would-be assassin was suddenly turning her on.
His clothes—a navy wool sport coat, an open-collared white oxford and a pair of beige summer wool slacks—were tailored, expensive. The way they fit, the way he looked so carefully put together, gave Jenna the urge to muss him up.
He was studying her, probably trying to make sense of the differences between herself and her high-society identical twin. “You are Jenna Calvert, right?”
Jenna kept her hair long and dyed various shades of red—this month it was Auburn Fire—while Kathryn had always been fond of short debutante haircuts in their natural blond color. And Jenna had always asserted her independence and uniqueness from her twin through her wild wardrobe, while Kathryn’s taste tended toward the classic and exorbitantly priced.
“Yes,” she said, secretly thrilled that she’d managed to distinguish herself from her identical twin so well.
“I’m Travis Roth. It’s good to finally meet you.” He withdrew a business card from his pocket and offered it to her. Jenna took it and read the raised black lettering on a tasteful white linen card. Travis Roth, CEO, Roth Investments.
Whoopee. Any bozo could get business cards made up and call himself a CEO.
Jenna stuck it in her pocket.
“What color are Kathryn’s bridesmaid dresses going to be?”
“Excuse me?”
“The colors in the wedding—dresses, flowers, everything. If you know that, I’ll talk to you.”
He appeared to be giving the matter some thought. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”
Jenna wished she’d remembered to grab a kitchen knife on the way out the window. “If you know Kathryn, you’d know what colors are in her wedding.”
A look of understanding softened his features. “Some kind of purple? Lavender, right?”
Lavender was Kathryn’s signature color. Ever since they were kids, she’d worn lavender, while Jenna’d had to wear identical outfits in pink. But that was one of their many differences—Kathryn had embraced being dressed up as a sideshow act by their mother, while Jenna had hated every moment of it. She still couldn’t look at the color pink without feeling slightly nauseated.
Kathryn could never understand why Jenna had felt the need to differentiate herself from her twin with wild clothes and different hair colors, while Jenna couldn’t understand her twin’s obsession with being one of an identical pair.
“Okay, so what’s your connection to my sister and her wedding?”
“I’m her fiancé’s brother, and I’ll explain everything if you’ll just give me a half hour of your time.”
Her curiosity was piqued now that she had some assurance this Travis guy wasn’t a hardened criminal. What sort of urgent matter could bring Kathryn to turn to Jenna for help? And why had she sent her fiancé’s brother to talk to her?
She looked Travis up and down. Okay, considering his sex appeal, he was a pretty good messenger. She could stand to spend a half hour with him, though she could think of much more interesting things to do with him than talk about Kathryn and her prenuptial problems.
“I’ll listen, if you’ll buy lunch,” she said, her stomach rumbling because she’d skipped breakfast. “There’s a diner around the corner.”
TRAVIS DID HIS VERY BEST to focus on the business at hand, but Jenna Calvert had thrown him completely off track. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Yes, Kathryn had described her as a rebellious type, as someone who liked to shock others and be contrary just for the sake of conflict, but she hadn’t mentioned how damn sexy Jenna would be.
A waitress with three nose rings and threads of purple in her braided hair arrived to take their order, and Travis tried to take his mind off Jenna long enough to choose a lunch. His gaze landed on meat loaf, and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever even tasted it, but he’d seen it on TV and decided that’s what he was having.
“I’ll have the meat loaf, and…” Certainly wine wasn’t the appropriate beverage. “Iced tea.”
“You want green tea or black?” This was San Francisco, after all.
“Green will be fine.”
He caught himself staring at Jenna’s lush pink lips as she placed her own order for a cheeseburger, chili fries and a chocolate shake, and when the waitress disappeared, he forced his gaze back to Jenna’s eyes.
The gorgeous redhead had managed in the space of ten minutes to muddle his thoughts and set his senses on high alert. It took a monumental effort to keep from letting his gaze fall even lower than her sensuous mouth to the front of her tight black tank top—to keep from thinking about the fact that she apparently wasn’t wearing a bra.
And curse the guy who invented bras if all women could look like that without them.
She wasn’t even remotely his type. Her look wasn’t classic Coco Chanel, as he’d always preferred, but rather rebel-without-a-Nordstrom-card. With her dyed burgundy hair; her short, unpolished fingernails and her tight, faded jeans, she was about as opposite to Kathryn Calvert as she could get and still be the woman’s twin sister.
When he looked into her ice-blue eyes, he saw sparks of fire that weren’t present in her sister’s. Perhaps Jenna had spirit, something he suspected lacking in Kathryn. Travis was undeniably intrigued by this wilder twin, and he was curious to know her in spite of his suspicion that she probably had a tattoo hiding somewhere on her body.
Where and what that tattoo might be—the possibilities were endless. A little red rose on the satin skin of her inner thigh, or a tiny heart hiding beneath her panties…Whoa, mama.
What on earth was going on here? He didn’t like tattoos, and he didn’t even know if Jenna had one. But she certainly had his imagination in the gutter all of a sudden.
There was no sense in fantasizing about Kathryn’s bad-girl twin anyway, because if she agreed to his offer—and he knew she would—then she would be transformed in the next few days into an exact replica of her sister. It was his unwelcome job to make that happen.
Jenna sat across from him with her elbows propped on the table, her slender arms sporting two chunky bracelets in various stones and faux gems, displaying an utter lack of grace that Travis found oddly charming. As he explained his acquaintance with Kathryn Calvert and her engagement to his younger brother, Blake, she listened closely, never taking her gaze away from his eyes.
But next came the sensitive part, the reason he’d driven all the way from Carmel in the hope of bringing Jenna back with him.
“The wedding plans were moving along just fine until last week, when Kathryn flew to Los Angeles for what she claims was supposed to be a week-long spa treatment. She decided to get some minor plastic surgery while she was there, and—”
“What kind of plastic surgery?” Jenna’s eyes had grown perfectly round.
Their conversation was interrupted by the waitress delivering their meals and drinks. Jenna continued to watch him as she dug into her burger.
When the waitress left, Travis continued. “Some kind of procedure where the doctor takes fat from one part of your body and injects it into the cheeks and lips. Kathryn is outraged with the results, and she refuses to come home until the problem has been corrected.”
Jenna laughed out loud. “What, her face is too fat now?”
Travis smiled. “Something like that. She says she looks lumpy.” He couldn’t begin to understand why anyone would endure such a procedure, especially not for beauty’s sake, but of all the people he knew, Kathryn was the easiest to imagine having fat injected into her face.
“Now I’ve heard it all.”
“The problem is, we can’t postpone the wedding or any of the prenuptial events. For one thing, Kathryn doesn’t want my family to know she was off having facial enhancements done. My mother hasn’t exactly welcomed her into the family.”
“I can imagine how important it is for Kathryn to impress her future mother-in-law.”
“She has a long list of people to impress, I’m afraid. Kathryn initiated a project with Blake to establish a women and children’s shelter through the Roth charity foundation, and she is supposed to meet with a couple interested in donating land for the project later this week.”
“So reschedule.”
“They’re already hesitant about the project thanks to Blake’s reputation for flakiness. Kathryn doesn’t want to give them any reason to back out, because such a prime piece of land so central to the Bay Area is nearly impossible to come by.”
Jenna frowned. “Sounds like she’s got herself in a real bind.”
“Not just herself, but my business, too. Our family’s investment firm has suffered recently as a result of Blake’s inability to handle responsibility, and this wedding is our chance to give some of our clients a better impression of him, to leave them feeling warm and fuzzy about Roth Investments. We need everything to come off without a hitch.”
Jenna’s expression turned wary as she bit into a French fry. “Why can’t you just tell everyone that the bride has come down with pneumonia or something and is too sick to go through with the wedding?”
Travis took his first bite of meat loaf and decided he’d been missing out all these years. He made a mental note to ask the family chef to prepare the dish regularly.
“Any postponement will look like flakiness on the family’s part, no matter what the excuse, and that’s an image we have to avoid at all costs. Several of our biggest clients have threatened to leave because of Blake’s unreliability. This marriage will show them that he’s settling down and becoming a family man.”
“Why doesn’t someone just fire your brother?”
If it were only so easy. “My father has forbidden it. Blake is Dad’s favorite.”
“This all sounds a little crazy, and I don’t understand how you think I can help.”
“The doctors have assured Kathryn that her face will look normal before the wedding, but she still refuses to come home until the damage has been undone.”
“So you just have to hope she’ll come back in time for it.”
“And that’s exactly what I’m doing, except that still leaves us without a bride for the prewedding events my parents have planned, along with the land donation meeting.”
“Does your brother know about Kathryn’s little problem?”
“No, and he cannot find out. He’s awful at keeping anything secret. He’s expecting Kathryn back from her trip on Monday, but she obviously won’t be back.”
“Isn’t he going to notice when his bride doesn’t show up for the rehearsal?”
Travis took a deep breath. “That’s where you come in. We need you to impersonate Kathryn until she returns.”
Jenna dropped her cheeseburger onto its plate and stared at him as if he’d just sprouted antennae.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said matter-of-factly, her cheek full of half-chewed cheeseburger.
“You haven’t even heard my offer yet.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not going to help Kathryn or the dimwit who agreed to marry her.”
Kathryn had never explained why she and Jenna were estranged from each other. Apparently the rift was a deep one, judging by Jenna’s reaction, but Kathryn had mentioned how she and her twin had switched places many times as children—how it had in fact been one of their favorite games.
“You’ll be quite well compensated.” He noted a gleam of interest in her eye that she quickly subdued.
“I’m earning a good living already. I don’t need anyone’s charity.”
From the looks of Jenna’s neighborhood, Travis was willing to bet she was barely scraping by on her meager freelance earnings, and that she could definitely use the money he had to offer.
“Not charity. Payment for a job completed.”
“Yeah, whatever. I still won’t do it.”
“You don’t even know what the compensation will be.”
“Not enough.” She turned her attention to her milk shake.
He could tell by the tenseness in her narrow shoulders that he had to pull his final punch. “Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Chocolate milk shake spurted from her mouth across the table and onto the lapel of his favorite jacket. She stared at him wild-eyed.
He dipped his napkin into a glass of ice water and dabbed at the spot until it disappeared, and when he looked back up, she was scooting out of the booth.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you and whatever crooked scheme you’ve cooked up.” She stood and shrugged on her small leather backpack.
Travis stared after her as she headed for the door.
He hadn’t anticipated her walking away once he’d started to talk money. Nor had he imagined he’d be so mesmerized by the sway of her hips in those faded Levi’s that he’d be frozen in place, speechless and unable to form complete thoughts. No, things weren’t going the way he’d planned at all.
2
JENNA CLIMBED THE STAIRS to her apartment, her mind playing over and over Travis’s proposal. Had she made too rash a decision? Twenty-five grand was a lot of money to walk away from, yet the thought of not only helping Kathryn, but actually taking over her life, was just too much to contemplate all at once.
Jenna had spent every moment since she’d left home ten years ago trying to forget that she was not unique in the world, that she had an identical twin out there and that she wasn’t even the best liked of the two. Kathryn had always been their parents’ favorite, their teachers’ favorite and the one who had more friends and more boyfriends. Kathryn knew the art of getting along to get along, while Jenna had been born with a rebellious streak that angered authority figures and scared away the faint of heart.
An image of Travis Roth popped into her head. A perverse little part of her wondered if he was faint of heart, or if he’d be the kind of guy who could hang on when life with Jenna got unpredictable. Crazy thoughts, considering a guy like Travis and a girl like Jenna would never get together, not in a thousand years—unless, of course, some sort of paid services were involved.
Like being hired to impersonate her sister.
The thought gave Jenna a shudder. Impersonating Kathryn would be like taking a giant leap backward in time. She’d be admitting that all her rebellion in the past ten years had been for nothing—that with a bottle of dye, some scissors, a change of clothes and a bit of makeup, she was just a duplicate of her ever-so-proper sister.
The wild hairstyles, the sexy clothes, the wild men, the wild nights out…
All for nothing.
The choices she’d made to prove herself an individual could be wiped away in one fell swoop.
Jenna reached her floor of the apartment building, and the first thing she saw was her door standing ajar. She froze, and her stomach contracted into a rock.
Could Travis have gotten it open before he came outside and found her trying to escape? Possible, but how could he have so quickly gotten around the couch she’d jammed up against it earlier? That, along with getting past the locks, would have taken more time than he’d had to come back outside and catch her sneaking away.
She took a step closer and saw that the locks hadn’t been broken, and an image of the open fire-escape window flashed in her mind. In this neighborhood, no one left fire-escape windows open unless they wanted to find all their valuables and not-so-valuables for sale at a swap meet the next weekend.
Her heart raced. Should she go in or just leave and call the police from a neighbor’s place? Common sense told her to leave, but curiosity had her aching to peek inside, if only for a moment.
Her computer—she had to know that it was safe.
Jenna held her breath and stepped into the doorway, thinking of how she was going to pitch Guard-Dog-In-A-Box out the window at Travis Roth’s head if she saw him outside her building again. Slowly, she eased her head around the half-open door, until she could see the interior of the apartment.
It took her a moment to make sense of the changes since she’d last been there an hour ago. Couch overturned, cushions ripped open, papers and books strewn everywhere, bookshelves emptied and her laptop missing from her desk.
Jenna’s heart pounded in her ears as she realized the months—the years— of work saved on her hard drive that now might be missing, and she didn’t see her box of floppy disks anywhere among the mess.
She gripped the door frame and resisted the urge to rush in and search for her laptop and files before she knew for sure that the intruder was gone. She needed to think, make a plan…. First she’d go to Mrs. Lupinski’s and ask to use the phone.
She backed away from the door and crept up the stairs.
Damn it.
Was Travis Roth a diversion for someone to break into her apartment? No, that didn’t make sense. He hadn’t come expecting that she’d flee out the window, that they’d end up having lunch at a diner down the street…But he could have had some other plan to get her out of the apartment. Could that whole story about her sister have been an elaborate charade?
Her mind raced from thought to thought, and her hands began to shake as the reality of what she’d likely just lost sank in.
Jenna raised her fist to knock on Mrs. Lupinski’s door, but the door swung open at that moment and her neighbor, in mint-green curlers and a red satin robe, peered out.
“Shouldn’t have left your window open, huh! Saw some guy climbing up the fire escape, and twenty minutes later he walked right out the front carrying a black bag full of stuff.”
“Did you call the police?”
“How was I supposed to know if he was up to no-good? Could have been a friend of yours for all I knew.” Mrs. Lupinski’s robe slid open in the front to reveal a black lace nightgown. The sounds of a daytime soap opera could be heard in the background.
Jenna shuddered. She knew better than to argue with her cantankerous neighbor. “I need to use your phone. My apartment has been robbed and ransacked.” While you were up here minding your own business.
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
She wanted to throw up or kick something. Or both. Tears burned her eyes, but she blinked them away, determined not to let her neighbor see how upset she really was.
The elderly woman eyed her suspiciously but stepped aside and motioned her in. Jenna had never actually been inside the apartment before, and she half expected to see a heart-shaped bed in the living room, mirrors on the ceiling, maybe a few pieces of emergency resuscitation equipment in case any of her lovers went into cardiac arrest at an inopportune moment.
What she saw instead was a two-room flat almost identical to her own, except for the matter of décor. Mrs. Lupinski had stopped decorating sometime in the late sixties, when she’d apparently been enamored with orange-and-green flower prints.
She pointed to a telephone next to the couch, and Jenna was surprised to note that it actually had a rotary dial. The feel of catching her shaky fingers in the small holes as she dialed 911 took her back to childhood for a fleeting moment, until an operator came on the line and she found herself recounting the relevant details of the break-in.
The operator warned her not to enter her apartment again until the police had secured it, so Jenna was stuck waiting for them to arrive in the company of Mrs. Lupinski. Luckily, her neighbor didn’t see any need for small talk. Without saying a word, she simply planted herself in front of the TV and watched with undivided attention the plight of Rafe and Savannah, a couple who seemed to be very upset over the resurrection of someone named Lucius.
Jenna, left to her own thoughts, didn’t want to consider what might be missing from her meager belongings. Nor did she want to contemplate whether the break-in was connected to her research of the pageant industry. If it was, and if her files were missing—
A sense of violation rose up in her chest. How could they? How could someone have taken her things, violated her privacy, stolen her work—the thing that mattered most to her?
It was bad enough that she’d taken to cowering behind her apartment door, afraid to venture out in public like a normal person. Now her home had been invaded, and she had nowhere to cower.
No, she had to stop thinking this way. This was exactly the kind of fear they wanted her to succumb to.
She shook herself mentally and her thoughts landed instead on Travis Roth. Where did he fit into this puzzle? Her gut told her he was telling the truth, and her libido told her he was an undeniable babe. But what if he were a hit man, hired to lure her away and kill her, then dump her body in a shallow grave? There was one way to find out, even if it meant calling her mother, Irene Calvert-Hathaway.
She picked up the phone again, dialed directory assistance, and went through the motions of placing a collect call to Palm Springs. Moments later, she heard her mother’s voice on the line. It should have been a comforting sound, in light of the circumstances.
“Mom, it’s Jenna.”
“What’s the matter, dear? Are you dead? Did you get thrown in jail?”
“No, Mom. If I were dead, I’d have trouble dialing the phone. My apartment was just broken into and I can’t go back in yet, but that’s not why I’m calling.”
She heard her mother’s put-upon sigh. “I told you not to move to that crazy city. Probably drug addicts—I’ve read how they steal things to support their habits.”
“I’m calling about Kathryn, actually. I hear she’s getting married.”
“To an absolutely magnificent man!” Her mother’s voice had changed from nagging to dreamy in an instant. “The wedding is in two weeks. I told Kathryn to send you an invitation, but the way you two fight…”
Yeah, yeah, whatever. No need to invite the black sheep of the family to the social event of the season. Kathryn probably couldn’t imagine her lowlife sister rubbing elbows with her country-club friends. Not that Jenna considered herself a lowlife, but she knew her lack of a six-figure income and her less than glamorous lifestyle were a major embarrassment to her family.
While Kathryn had stepped right into their mother’s social climbing footsteps, Jenna had never been much impressed by status symbols and excessive wealth. Her rejection of the material life was a constant source of discord between herself and her family, and Jenna imagined Kathryn and their mother shaking their heads and tut-tutting every time the subject of Jenna’s rattletrap car or seedy apartment came up.
“It doesn’t matter. Do you know anything about Travis Roth, the brother of Kathryn’s fiancé?”
She could almost see her mother’s surgically youthful eyes narrow. “Why do you ask, dear?”
“He, or someone claiming to be him, contacted me today.”
“About what?”
“First, tell me what you know about him,” Jenna said, already feeling relieved that at least there was a Travis Roth.
“I’ve only met him a few times, but he seemed like quite the gentleman. Handsome, too. He has a stellar reputation, from what I hear. Runs the investment branch of the Roth family empire, isn’t married, lives in Carmel near his brother and their parents.”
“What does he look like, exactly?”
“Tall, sandy blond hair, green eyes, nice physique, in his mid-thirties.”
“Do you happen to know if their family is connected to any beauty pageants?”
“No, and why on earth do you ask?”
“Never mind.” Jenna relaxed back onto the sofa, releasing a mental sigh of relief. It sounded as if her lunch companion wasn’t a fraud and knew nothing about the break-in.
“What are all these questions about?”
“I can’t say, but don’t worry. I’m not going to ruin Kathryn’s wedding or anything.”
Soon after Jenna ended the call with her mother, the police arrived, checked out her apartment, took statements from Jenna and Mrs. Lupinski and dusted for fingerprints. The biggest clue the police found was a note scrawled on the bathroom mirror in red lipstick that read, “Don’t write the story, bitch.”
The only story Jenna was working on was the beauty-pageant exposé, so she’d given the police all the information she could remember about whom she had contacted during her research and promised to let them know if she remembered anything else. They’d advised her to take some time off and leave town, maybe stay with family or friends, but to give them an address and phone number for wherever she went.
An hour after they’d left, Jenna sat alone in her ransacked apartment, nervous and depressed. Her laptop and all her files had indeed been stolen. She didn’t allow herself to think about the years of work that were now gone. Instead, she focused on the mess. She wandered around and around the small space surveying her once orderly surroundings.
And strangely, her thoughts kept going back to Travis Roth. His offer wasn’t sounding so outrageous, now that her normal life had suddenly turned into a bad dream she wanted to wake from. As if she hadn’t been scared enough before, now she knew for absolute sure that someone didn’t want her writing the beauty-pageant exposé.
Jenna twirled a strand of hair between her fingers in a nervous habit she’d engaged in since childhood. Any minute now, she figured her eye would start twitching, and then some outrageous behavior wouldn’t be far behind.
Her entire life, she’d always relieved tension by doing something wild. In elementary school, there’d been that incident with Mrs. Joliet’s desk chair right before the big Little Miss Twin America finals. In junior high, there had been the liberation of the science-class rats after her mother had filed for divorce from her father. In high school, there’d been the time she’d cut class and gone cruising with the biggest badass hunk in school, right before refusing to ever do another beauty pageant.
Later, she’d discovered a little fun in bed had the same effect. Preferably, outrageous fun in bed. And here she was with the greatest need for a tension reliever she’d ever had, and no boyfriend or even the prospect of one in sight.
Jenna sank onto her bed, fighting back the big melodramatic sob that threatened to escape her throat.
Not now, not when she had to think.
Two weeks and twenty-five thousand dollars. She’d get to leave town, forget about her own mess of a life for a little while. Maybe that would give the police enough time to catch the scumbag who’d just trashed her apartment. Or maybe not.
But she’d get to leave town. Even if it meant impersonating her sister, perpetrating a fraud, it was an offer she couldn’t turn down now.
And maybe the offer had advantages she hadn’t even considered yet. She envisioned Travis Roth in all his tall, blond, broad-shouldered, suntanned glory. Maybe a few weeks in close proximity to him was just what she needed…and maybe a little negotiating was called for.
She smiled, and an outrageous impulse came bubbling up from her subconscious.
Negotiations, yes.
Something to take her mind off her worries. Something to remind her that she was still Jenna, still in control of her own destiny.
Something wild.
Yes.
A calm settled over her for the first time since she’d laid eyes on her ransacked apartment, and an idea formed in her head. An outrageous idea, guaranteed to make her forget her problems, sure to dwarf all the other outrageous stunts she’d pulled over the years.
She withdrew Travis’s business card from her pocket and stared at it. After a few moments and a silent prayer, Jenna dialed his number.
TRAVIS HAD DECIDED to drop in on an old college friend at his office downtown before leaving the city. He was just starting the car, wondering what his next step with regard to Jenna should be, when his cell phone rang.
“Travis Roth,” he answered.
“It’s Jenna Calvert. I’ve been thinking about your offer, and I may have changed my mind.”
“So you’re willing to help?”
“Maybe. I have a condition of my own I’d like to discuss, in person.”
“Of course. I’m open to negotiating.”
“I’d like you to come here to my apartment and pick me up, if you don’t mind.” She sounded almost…scared. And far less sure of herself than she had a few hours earlier.
“Is something wrong? You sound upset.”
She expelled a strained laugh. “You’ll see when you get here.”
“I’m just leaving downtown, so I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes if traffic is light.”
Travis pressed the end call button on his phone with no small sense of satisfaction. Mission accomplished. Now there was some hope of saving the wedding from ruin, once they’d overcome the next big obstacle—transforming Jenna into an exact copy of her polished, elegant sister.
No matter how daunting the task, it had to be done, and quickly—without any more getting distracted by sexual attraction. Travis drove back to Jenna’s apartment reviewing the necessary steps in his head and trying damn hard not to be thrilled at the thought of a weekend alone with the redheaded vixen.
Before they returned to Carmel, he’d be taking her to a house among the vineyards of Napa Valley, where he’d have the privacy to school Jenna on Kathryn’s life without raising any eyebrows. But for the life of him, he couldn’t stop the images of other things they might do alone at the country estate from invading his thoughts.
There was the matter of the condition Jenna mentioned placing on helping him, but whatever it was, he couldn’t imagine it being much of a problem. More money? He’d pay it. A new car? Consider it done. A nicer apartment? She clearly had the need for one.
The central San Francisco neighborhood where Jenna lived was an urban jungle of decrepit Victorians, tenement apartment buildings and seedy business fronts. The people who walked the streets weren’t the sort who hung out at wine-tasting parties or attended charity art auctions. Rather, many looked as though their favorite forms of entertainment might get them arrested.
Travis questioned his own sanity when he found a spot on the street for the second time that day and maneuvered his Mercedes into it. His car had gathered plenty of looks as he’d driven along, and now he’d be lucky if it were still here when he returned. He activated the security system and hoped there weren’t any smart car thieves around.
The door of Jenna’s building was propped open with a brick, so he went inside and climbed the stairs to her apartment. After knocking on the door, he took time to note the peeling paint on the door frame, the worn hardwood floors, the dingy walls. Jenna’s landlord needed to do some building maintenance, that was for sure.
After several minutes, there was still no answer, and Travis fought the sneaking feeling of panic in his gut that Jenna had changed her mind. He knocked again and waited some more. No one came.
He tried knocking harder, then heard a door open on the floor above.
“You trying to get in to see that red-haired girl?” A woman’s voice called down.
Travis looked up the stairs toward the source of that voice, but all he could see was the landing, lit by what must have been a twenty-five-watt bulb.
“Um, yes,” he said.
Then came the sound of footsteps, and the sight of fuzzy pink house slippers descending the stairs. Next came a red satin robe, and finally he had a full view of a small elderly woman with green curlers in her hair.
“She told me to let you in,” she said, eyeing him with interest. “I’m supposed to ask what your name is.”
“Travis Roth.”
“Yep, you fit the description.”
“Did she have somewhere to go?”
“Don’t ask me what that crazy girl’s up to.” She put a key in the door, unlocked it, then presented the key to him.
“I’m supposed to give this to you so’s you can return it to her.”
Travis took the key, then stared at it in his palm, dumbfounded.
“You get finished with her,” the woman said, “and I’m available right upstairs.” She waggled her eyebrows at him and flashed what must have been her version of a seductive smile.
“Thanks,” he said, forcing a neutral expression. “I appreciate your help.” He pushed the door open and stepped inside Jenna’s apartment before their encounter could get any more bizarre.
“The thing about us older women you can’t get with a young one like that,” she said, nodding in the direction of Jenna’s apartment, “is that we know more.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Honey, I could play your body like an accordion.”
Travis shuddered at the image.
“Have a good night,” he said as he closed and locked the door.
Turning away from it, he looked around the small room. Jenna was nowhere in sight, much as he’d expected, but the sound of running water came from behind a nearby door. Light was visible in the space between the door and the floor, so he figured Jenna had decided to take a shower.
He took in the mess that surrounded him. Either Jenna Calvert was a lousy housekeeper and a woman with violent feelings toward her sofa, or someone had trashed her place. But, if there had been a break-in, maybe even a struggle, it could have only just happened. Maybe Jenna wasn’t even alive and well in the shower. An image of her murdered body being soaked in a bloody shower flashed in his mind, and he panicked.
“Jenna!” He raced to the bathroom door and flung it open.
There, behind the transparent shower curtain, was the unmistakable silhouette of Jenna’s body, standing up, seemingly alive and well. He couldn’t help admiring the perfect proportions, the tantalizing curve where her waist met her hips. Steam from the shower dampened his face, and he caught the scent of her shampoo, something feminine and fruity.
“Jenna? It’s me, Travis.”
She peeked out from the edge of the curtain and smiled. “Oh, hi. You got here faster than I thought you would.”
Even the sight of her bare shoulder and her crimson hair, slicked back away from her face, aroused Travis. He’d definitely been working too hard lately, neglecting his social life, because instantly, he had a hard-on.
Cardiac arrest was the only appropriate reaction to what she did next. As Travis struggled to keep his jaw from sagging, she slid the curtain open and smiled a wicked half smile.
“Care to join me?” she asked, her tone playful, but her gaze leveled at him with a look of absolute daring.
There was simply no way not to look. He admired the full, round perfection of her damp breasts, the small pink nipples forming tight peaks; the narrow expanse of her waist; the incongruous but tantalizing triangle of blond curls at the peak of her thighs; the delicious shape of her long legs. Not a tattoo in sight. Rivulets of water formed all over her skin, and the only coherent thought Travis could form was that he wanted to lick them off.
Finally, he recovered the ability to speak. “It’s a tempting offer….”
She sighed. “But you don’t think it would be appropriate.”
“Um…” Surely he could say something more profound than “um,” but nothing came to mind.
Instead, he could only think of pinning her to the shower wall and burying himself deep inside her. To hell with propriety, to hell with everyone’s expectations—he could do something wild and improper for once in his life, couldn’t he?
Couldn’t he?
Apparently not.
“I’ve shocked you speechless, I can see.” She slid the shower curtain closed again. “I’ll be finished in a minute, if you want to wait in the living room.”
Travis closed the bathroom door, then leaned against it, barely resisting the urge to bang his head on the wall. His inability to seize the moment was so typical, so thoroughly Travis Roth, it made him want to yell.
Everything he’d accomplished in life had been through careful study and hard work. Never risk taking. His lack of daring had slowly brought the family investment firm out of a slump and into steady profitability, but as his little brother frequently pointed out, the risk takers were the ones who dominated the business world. Calculated risk, their father had always preached, was the hallmark of success. Since he’d been the man who’d built the family fortune, he had the right to preach.
And here was Travis, presented with the erotic invitation of a lifetime, and he couldn’t take it. But so what? Business and personal matters weren’t the same, and risk taking had entirely different kinds of repercussions for each. He wasn’t going to beat himself up for not hopping into a shower with a woman he’d only just met. Getting involved sexually with Jenna would be a huge mistake anyway.
He glanced around again at the mess of her apartment, finally remembering why he’d rushed into the bathroom in the first place. At least he knew now that she was unharmed, but that didn’t explain the chaos in her apartment.
Was she just the world’s lousiest housekeeper? Was she mentally unstable? That could explain the shower incident, too…. Yet he had the feeling this was definitely a mess someone else had made.
On the other side of the door, the water cut off, and he heard the shower curtain slide open. Travis pushed aside thoughts of Jenna’s naked, wet body and walked across the room to look at the books strewn around the bookcase. He bent and picked up some of them, placing each one on a shelf after reading the title. Classics, mysteries, biographies, romance novels, memoirs, philosophy—Jenna seemed to read it all.
He supposed he shouldn’t have found that surprising, since she was a freelance journalist. That career suggested a certain intelligence and curiosity, both traits Travis had to admit he considered incongruous with her wild image.
He’d just bent to pick up a copy of the Atlantic Monthly— definitely not typical vixen reading material—when Jenna emerged from the bathroom dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a white sleeveless top that laced up the sides. Her damp hair had been pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup except for a hint of red on her lips.
Her gaze lingered on him, and rather than looking embarrassed by the shower incident, as Travis imagined he did, Jenna seemed amused.
“I guess Mrs. Lupinski let you in, no problem?”
“She offered to play me like an accordion, but yes, she let me in.” He winced at the image and held out the key that was still in his hand. “Here’s your key back.”
“Thanks. Don’t worry, my place doesn’t normally look like this.”
“What happened?” He was almost afraid to ask.
“While we were having lunch today, someone came in the open window and ransacked it. They stole my laptop and all my backed-up files.”
A sense of outrage rose up in his chest on behalf of Jenna. “I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.”
“But why would someone take all your files? Do you have other copies anywhere?”
“It’s a long story, and yes, I do have some hard copies and disks of some of my work, but a lot of the newer stuff is lost. I’d hidden emergency backups in my closet, but I wasn’t very methodical about backing up regularly.”
“We’ve got a long drive ahead, so you can tell me on the way why someone would want to steal your files.”
“A long drive where?”
“To Napa. My family has a country home there, a private place where we can get you up to speed on impersonating Kathryn.”
“We haven’t even discussed my condition for helping you yet.”
Up until a few minutes ago, he’d been pretty sure whatever she wanted wouldn’t be a problem, but now he knew firsthand that Jenna could be…unpredictable. Outrageous. Wild.
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
She stepped over a mangled couch cushion and sat on the arm of the sofa next to him. He could smell the fruity shampoo scent from her hair, and that, combined with her proximity, was intoxicating.
“First, I want to apologize for my behavior in the bathroom.”
She certainly could have done worse. “Apology accepted.”
“I have these sort of urges when I get stressed out.”
“Urges?” He couldn’t wait to hear her explanation.
“Yeah, urges.” She paused, giving him a once-over. “Whenever life gets stressful, I tend to react by following my impulses, which can lead to rather outrageous behavior, as you saw in the bathroom.”
Travis shrugged. “No harm done.” Other than the image of her lush body burned in his memory for eternity.
“I’m getting this vibe about you.”
“What sort of vibe?”
Her eyes sparked mischief. “An uptight one.”
“Thanks, that’s just the impression I was going for.”
“You strike me as one of those guys who’s going to die at an early age from a heart attack or a stroke, before you ever get to relax and enjoy life.”
Travis ignored the protests of his ego and bypassed her insult. “I’m still waiting for your condition on the deal.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. You and I, we have a mutual need. I’m stressed out by crazy people stalking me, and you’re stressed out by your job or my sister’s wedding or whatever. We both need to let off some steam.”
He thought of the way he’d snapped at his brother that very morning before coming to meet Jenna. Blake had simply been acting like his usual irresponsible self, turning in a report late, and even though Travis always set artificial deadlines for his brother to make sure the work really got to him when he needed it, he’d exploded right there in the office, in front of his secretary—which meant the entire office building knew about it by now.
Yeah, he definitely needed to let off some steam.
“So what does that have to do with the deal?”
“I’ll impersonate Kathryn starting next week. But until then, I’m Jenna. You can coach me on acting like Kathryn, but after hours, I’m still me. All weekend long, we work on unwinding.”
Travis didn’t quite see where she was going, but he played along. “Okay, I’ve always found the wine country to be relaxing. Slower pace, quiet—”
“That’s not what I mean. The most effective place I know to relieve stress—to really relieve it—is in bed, and I don’t mean sleeping.”
Travis blinked. He couldn’t argue with her there. Nothing like sex to put the spring back into his step. But he hadn’t even had a serious date lately, let alone—
She continued. “You’re single, I’m single, we’re attracted to each other, I think. No one will have to know.”
“Let me get this straight. You want to make a sexual relationship part of our business agreement?”
“Not when you put it like that. I’m just saying I need a little companionship this weekend, and I think you do, too.”
Travis frowned. A weekend alone, letting off steam, as Jenna put it, with one impossibly sexy woman. It was either the best idea he’d heard in a long time, or it was absolutely nuts.
3
JENNA SURVEYED THE apartment she’d called home for the past year, feeling yet another burst of anger at the person who’d invaded her privacy and stolen her most valued possessions. It took all her willpower not to kick something—more proof that she needed to unwind. She glanced down at the duffel bag and backpack that held everything she planned to take with her, then up at Travis Roth, who apparently was stunned silent by her proposition.
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to…unwind,” he finally said, “but don’t you think it might be awkward?”
“If it is, we won’t do it. Just give it a chance tonight, and if it feels wrong, we’ll pretend we never had this conversation. Deal?”
If he turned her down, Jenna really was going to kick something. Namely, him. In the ass. Right out her door.
“Okay.” He smiled, and the sexy gaze he pinned her with warmed her body in all the right places. “You have a deal. I’d be crazy to turn you down, after all.”
She did a mental happy dance. Look out Travis Roth, you’re in for the weekend of a lifetime.
Jenna switched off all the lights except the one near the door, then started to pick up her bags, but Travis grabbed them first. After he took them out the door, she switched off the last light and locked up her tiny apartment, with the odd feeling that when she returned, her life was going to be very, very different.
While Travis loaded her bags into the trunk of his pristine silver Mercedes, Jenna settled back into the plush gray leather of the passenger seat and tried not to think too hard about what she’d just gotten herself into. She’d focus on the fun part for tonight—do a little flirting, find out what had put all that tension into her companion’s shoulders, and do her best to work it out.
It seemed her desire to focus on the positive was not to be fulfilled though. They’d barely been on the road for five minutes when Travis brought up the one subject she most wanted to forget for the weekend.
“Care to tell me why you think someone broke into your apartment and ransacked it?”
“I guess you won’t leave the subject alone until I do.”
“Probably not.”
“I’m researching a story that someone doesn’t want written. This was supposed to be the piece that established my reputation as a serious journalist.”
“What’s the subject?”
“An exposé on the beauty-pageant industry—on the exploitation and behind-the-scenes stuff most people don’t know.”
Travis nodded. “Sounds interesting. How can you be sure that’s why your apartment was broken into?”
“Pretty quickly after I began researching the story, I started receiving threatening phone calls, then other strange things started happening.”
“Like what?”
“I was nearly run down by a car earlier this week. It actually drove up onto the sidewalk where I was walking, and it didn’t have license plates on the front or back.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You don’t think it was an accident?”
“An almost identical accident happened with a different car the day before.”
“Who knew you were writing the article?”
Jenna pressed her fingers to her temples. Her left eye was starting to twitch, a sure sign that she was overstressed. “More than a few people. Let’s talk about this another time, okay? Right now, I just want to pretend I have a normal life.”
“So tell me why you and Kathryn don’t speak to each other.”
Yet another pleasant subject. Jenna stared out the window at the city lights passing by on the East Bay. The eye twitch was getting worse.
“I think I have a right to know what I’m dealing with here. Kathryn said she had no idea why you hated her so much, but I’m betting she wasn’t telling the whole story.”
“You’d win that bet.”
“She has a tendency to only remember stories that make her look favorable, doesn’t she?”
“Yep, that’s my sis.”
“So tell me your side.”
“My mother used to enter my sister and I in these horrible beauty pageants all the time—Little Miss Twin California, Little Miss Twin U.S.A., Little Miss Twin America—we did the whole circuit.” She scoffed. “I hated it, and Kathryn adored it. That basically sums up our differences.”
“You didn’t ever want to be Little Miss Twin America?”
“I hated dressing up, wearing makeup, being gawked at by crowds, the whole bit. By the time we were eight, we knew how to apply mascara flawlessly.”
“Makeup on an eight-year-old?”
“You think that’s young? I have photos of myself wearing lipstick at the age of three.”
“So that explains your interest in the beauty-pageant story.”
“I’ve wanted to do this story as long as I’ve been a journalist.”
Travis nodded. “I had no idea your mother was such a…”
“Wacko? That’s why I’m not exactly close to her, either.”
“Wacko is not quite the word I was looking for, but if you had the kind of mother who dressed you up in matching twin outfits, why not matching names, too, like Kelly and Nelly?”
“It’s almost as bad, Jenna Kathleen and Kathryn Jennifer.”
“Oh.” He fought a smile. “But these pageants were when you were kids, right? Why all the bad feelings after so many years?”
“That was just the beginning. Kathryn always resented me for dropping out of the pageant circuit during our freshman year in high school, thereby ruining her chances of being Miss Twin Anything. It was her big dream to win a pageant, and she never did.”
“And that made your mother angry, too?”
“She never said so in so many words, but I knew she was disappointed. She always identified more with Kathryn, and by the time we were teenagers, my sister and I had an all-out rivalry going. She stole my boyfriends, my favorite sweaters and my study notes.”
“So you rebelled?”
“In a big way. Where Kathryn was always Miss Perfect—at least to the outside world—I turned into the wild one. I started dating the bad boys she wouldn’t dream of being caught with, wearing clothes way too sexy for her taste and I dyed my hair whatever color suited my mood.”
“I have to admit, that sounds like an effective way of solving your problems with her.”
Jenna smiled nostalgically. “She never once stole one of my black lace see-through tops.”
“How long has it been since you’ve spoken to Kathryn?”
Jenna frowned, unable to immediately recall. “Maybe at a family Christmas get-together a few years ago. And even then, I doubt we said more than ‘pass the turkey.’”
“That’s too bad. I know Kathryn isn’t the deepest person in the world, but she seems to have matured in the time she’s been dating my brother. Maybe this wedding will give you a chance to reconcile with her.”
Reconciling with her sister sounded about as appealing as diving into a pit of snakes, but she kept silent as she mulled over the possibility. Maybe it was time to let go of her resentment, forgive Kathryn and move on. Or maybe it was just time to get a good laugh at her sister with her new jumbo lips and chipmunk cheeks. Part of Jenna did secretly hope they remained permanently inflated.
“What about you and your brother?” she asked, not ready to discuss something as heavy as forgiveness. “Your relationship with him can’t exactly be normal if you’re going through all this trouble to hold his wedding together, and I remember you saying he’s your father’s favorite.”
“Blake has never grown up. He’s still a little boy playing office at our family business, and our clients can tell.”
“So you have to cover for him?”
“In his business life only, up until now.”
“You don’t have to go around covering for my sister’s mistakes, too, you know.”
“If I want this wedding to go smoothly, I do.” His grip seemed to tighten on the steering wheel.
Jenna stared at his profile as he drove, trying to fathom exactly how much loosening up Travis needed. Definitely more than she’d first suspected.
“What about the rest of your family—do they know what a screwup your brother is?”
“Everyone else finds his boyishness charming. Father wants him at the forefront of the company because he says Blake has the personality to win clients and keep them. He thinks I’m too stiff and serious.”
“Hmm. Do you agree with him?”
“I’ve brought in most of our newer clients myself. When people look for someone to invest their money, they want to know they’re leaving their savings in stable hands.”
Stability. Why did that quality suddenly sound so sexy, when applied to Travis? Okay, so he could probably make doing a crossword puzzle look sexy, and maybe recent events were causing her to crave stability in her life, but still…
“Have you ever let things slide? Just relaxed and not worried about other people’s mistakes?”
“Not when it comes to business—no.”
Jenna studied his profile again. He seemed to be in deep thought, and she imagined him fantasizing about suddenly not being so responsible. Maybe she was helping him loosen up already. She settled back into her seat and stared out the window, content with the silence after such a harrowing afternoon.
They’d been driving for almost a half hour when Jenna came out of her trance and glanced over at Travis again. His gaze dropped to the dash as they passed a sign for a town in another mile.
“We’d better stop to find some dinner and a gas station. Are you hungry?”
“Starved. I know a place at the next exit that has great ribs.” She’d stopped there once with a friend on their way back to the city after a weekend hiking in the mountains.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
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Jamie Sobrato
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: When researching her latest story puts her life in danger, freelance journalist Jenna Calvert decides she needs to get out of town. And the opportunity presents itself in the form of sexy Travis Roth. In exchange for two weeks in Carmel, she simply has to pretend to be someone else–not a problem for this spontaneous wild child.But a seriously tense Jenna makes the agreement conditional–she′ll spend the weekend with Travis rehearsing her role, if he′ll help her unwind by indulging in a little sensual stress relief! After all, the gorgeous but uptight businessman looks as if he could do with a little sexual healing himself. And Jenna′s not foolish enough to think that one wild weekend will blossom into a real love affair–until it does!