Hot August Nights

Hot August Nights
Christine Flynn

ONE NIGHT. ONE MAN. ONE BIG MISTAKEWas there a woman alive who could resist Matt Calloway? If given a choice, most would have said Ashley Kendrick, the eldest daughter in the Kendrick dynasty. Ashley's poise and reserve were world renowned. But the night Matt reappeared, Ashley's inhibitions had ended up on the floor next to her clothes!The one-night stand was coming back to haunt her. Ashley had to work with Matt on a charity project building houses for the disadvantaged. She knew too well how good Matt was with his hands, his success as a contractor notwithstanding. But Ashley was a public figure, watched by the world. A scandalous affair with her brother's best friend would be completely inappropriate…and somehow inevitable….

THE CAMELOT CRIER

ABOUT TOWN: Richmond, Virginia

A proposition to remember!

It seems that the prim-and-proper princess of Camelot, Ashley Kendrick, has been snagged by rugged contractor Matt Calloway. But it’s not what you think! Ashley, who was running a gala dinner to benefit the East Coast Shelter Project, was well and truly mystified when Matt unexpectedly put another item on the docket: Miss Ashley Kendrick herself! Sources who attended the event state that Matt offered up one hundred thousand dollars for Ashley to actually help build a Shelter Project house. And Ashley has risen to the challenge. She is scheduled to work in Gray Lakes, Florida, in August. It’s also been confirmed that the handsome bachelor Matt will be joining her there. Clearly, their days will be spent on the construction site, but just how will these two be spending those hot August nights?

Dear Reader,

Well, June may be the traditional month for weddings, but we here at Silhouette find June is busting out all over—with babies! We begin with Christine Rimmer’s Fifty Ways To Say I’m Pregnant. When bound-for-the-big-city Starr Bravo shares a night of passion with the rancher she’s always loved, she finds herself in the family way. But how to tell him? Fifty Ways is a continuation of Christine’s Bravo Family saga, so look for the BRAVO FAMILY TIES flash. And for those of you who remember Christine’s JONES GANG series, you’ll be delighted with the cameo appearance of an old friend….

Next, Joan Elliott Pickart continues her miniseries THE BABY BET: MACALLISTER’S GIFTS with Accidental Family, the story of a day-care center worker and a single dad with amnesia who find themselves falling for each other as she cares for their children together. And there’s another CAVANAUGH JUSTICE offering in Special Edition from Marie Ferrarella: in Cavanaugh’s Woman, an actress researching a film role needs a top cop—and Shaw Cavanaugh fits the bill nicely. Hot August Nights by Christine Flynn continues THE KENDRICKS OF CAMELOT miniseries, in which the reserved, poised Kendrick daughter finds her one-night stand with the town playboy coming back to haunt her in a big way. Janis Reams Hudson begins MEN OF CHEROKEE ROSE with The Daddy Survey, in which two little girls go all out to get their mother a new husband. And don’t miss One Perfect Man, in which almost-new author Lynda Sandoval tells the story of a career-minded events planner who has never had time for romance until she gets roped into planning a party for the daughter of a devastatingly handsome single father. So enjoy the rising temperatures, all six of these wonderful romances…and don’t forget to come back next month for six more, in Silhouette Special Edition.

Happy Reading!

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

Hot August Nights

Christine Flynn

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To Pam Wede, a wonderful friend whose strength and easy charm I admire so very much.

CHRISTINE FLYNN

admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships—especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women—is fascinating.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

Ashley Kendrick’s day had started out badly and gone downhill from there. She’d thought the worst was the snag she’d hit at noon when a paparazzo had followed her into a deli and drawn so much attention to her that she’d left without her lunch. She figured it had actually hit rock bottom about twenty minutes ago.

She had learned to live with people who unsettled her. Strangers on the street routinely pointed or stared. Paparazzi and reporters emerged from nowhere, startling her with the flash of their cameras, assaulting her with questions inevitably designed to expose something—anything—personal or sensational about any member of the Kendrick family.

She was accustomed to the attention. She wasn’t always comfortable with it, but she had come to accept the near constant publicity that came with being a Kendrick. Her baby pictures had appeared in the national press, as had those of her siblings each time her wealthy, now-retired senator father and her mother, a princess who had given up an entire kingdom to marry him, had produced more progeny. America had watched her grow up, and over those years she had learned to handle the disconcerting situations that occurred with astounding regularity.

She pretended she could handle them, anyway, which was the best she could hope for considering how unsure of herself she often tended to be. But when Matt Callaway had answered her knock on her brother’s door, she had been forced to admit that no one had ever unsettled her more than her brother Cord’s best friend.

She hadn’t seen Matt in ten years, but he still disturbed her. Not the way strangers did when they encroached upon her privacy. But in a far more fundamental and primitive way. The man was six feet, two inches of sandy-haired, carved and sculpted muscle, tension and testosterone. His steel-gray eyes had a way of looking at her that made her feel totally exposed, totally vulnerable. And she had never once been in his presence without feeling she would be totally susceptible to him if she didn’t keep her guard in place.

He had also just become the only man who’d ever driven her to drink.

Granted, the drink was a rather excellent California chardonnay that she’d found in her brother’s wine cellar. And having a glass gave her something to do while she waited on Cord’s deck for him to get home. But discovering that Matt Callaway could still make her uneasy enough to seek the first available excuse to avoid his company had her frowning at the nearly empty crystal goblet. That, and the fact that she didn’t want to be where she was to begin with.

She had planned to work tonight. As far behind as she was, she desperately needed those uninterrupted hours. But her father had insisted her work could wait. He considered it far more important that she used her time to track down her brother and have Cord sign a trust amendment he had forgotten to sign when he’d been in Richmond last week. Her dad, who ruled the Kendricks’ multimillion-dollar empire from a suite of offices ten stories above her decidedly more modest one, had informed her she could work late tomorrow night.

Having to make a two-hour drive from Richmond to Newport News frustrated her enough. In the time she spent on that round-trip alone, she could have done serious damage to the piles on her desk. But her mother had started exerting her considerable influence on her time, too. Just that morning, her mom had informed Ashley that she would have to give up her position as director of the scholarship program she helped administer if she intended to assist with fund-raisers like the gala charity auction she was currently working on twelve hours a day to have ready for next week.

It hadn’t mattered that the auction was for the East Coast Shelter Project, her mom’s new favorite charity. Or that Ashley had insisted that she truly could handle both. Her mother had said there was absolutely no need for her to work that hard.

What Ashley did had nothing to do with need as her mother had meant it. It had to do with feeling that she was earning her own way.

Smoothing the hem of her short red jacket over her white slacks, she settled back in the deck chair. Not liking her mood, hoping to change it, she told herself she might as well enjoy the break.

The effort lasted long enough for her to cross one knee over the other. One low-heeled sandal dangling from her French-manicured toes, she restively swayed her foot and glanced past the wide, tiered deck and her brother’s sailboat moored fifty feet beyond the cedar railing.

She knew that working for her family must be like working for any other employer. Suspected it was, anyway, as she watched the sun set on the sailboats in the long inlet on Chesapeake Bay. She’d never worked for anyone else to know for certain. She loved her family. She truly did. But she was twenty-eight years old, had never in her life done anything that wasn’t by the book, and she was getting really tired of being told what to do and when she could do it.

Ten feet away, the glass deck door rumbled open in its track.

“Do me a favor, will you?”

The sound of Matt’s deep voice had her foot going still an instant before she carefully uncrossed her legs. Knees together, she automatically crossed her ankles, abandoned her mental mutiny and set her wine on the glass-topped table beside her. As she did, she glanced toward the blond jock filling the doorway.

Matt was still dressed as he had been when he’d answered the front door. His loose gray tank top exposed enough of his beautifully cut arms, shoulders and pectorals to leave no doubt about what had to be an impressive six-pack of abdominal muscle. Below the baggy hem of his navy gym shorts, his powerful thighs glistened with sweat.