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Red-Hot Honeymoon: The Honeymoon Arrangement / Marriage in Name Only? / The Honeymoon That Wasn't

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Год написания книги
2019
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She did appreciate a fine-looking man, Callie thought, and they didn’t come much finer than Finn Banning. Sexy, and also very successful She’d researched him and read that he had been an award-winning investigative journalist before switching to travel journalism, where he was raking in the praise.

What had really gone wrong with his engagement? Why had they called it off? Why would any woman walk away from that?

Maybe there was something about Finn Banning that she didn’t know yet—and that worried her. Especially if she was considering spending three weeks in his company.

After she’d called him from Awelfor she’d spent ten minutes convincing him that she wasn’t joking about being his ‘wife’ and avoiding his probing questions around why she’d changed her mind. She’d ended the conversation with the suggestion that if he still thought that taking her along was a good idea he should pop by for a drink at sunset.

And here he was—still hot, still sexy, still sad and still, apparently, wifeless.

He was her get-out-of-the-country card. Okay, the truth was that she didn’t need him to go anywhere—she had enough cash at her disposal to go anywhere she wanted. But since she was taking a month’s holiday at very short notice wherever she went she would be going alone. Normally she wouldn’t mind being alone, but at the moment she needed a distraction from her thoughts—from thinking about Laura.

She’d thought she’d buried those feelings of betrayal and abandonment but apparently it only took the knowledge that Laura was heading home to pull them all back up to the surface.

If she went anywhere alone she’d think and wallow and feel sad and miserable. But if she went with Finn she’d have a sexy man to distract her; she’d have to be happy and flirty and … well, herself.

She could shove all thoughts of Laura back into the box they’d escaped from.

Finn pulled off his sporty sunglasses and held them in his hand as he looked around the complex, eventually seeing her number on the front wall. He rubbed the back of his neck as he stopped a couple of feet from her door—a gesture that told Callie he wasn’t totally comfortable with this idea and was thinking of backing out.

‘Finn … hi.’ She leaned over the balcony to look down at him, not aware that she was giving him a super-excellent view of her hot pink lace-covered breasts. ‘The door is open. Come on up the stairs and hang a left. It’s too gorgeous an evening to be inside.’

Finn nodded and walked through the front door. She heard the thud of the door closing behind him, and his rapid footsteps told her that he was jogging up the stairs. Through the wooden patio doors she saw him entering her lounge, looking around at the eclectic furniture and her wild, colourful abstract art. He dropped his glasses, mobile and keys on her coffee table and looked at her across the room.

His eyes caught hers and a small smile played on his lips. ‘Hello, possible fake wife.’

Callie laughed, immediately at ease. What was it about him that instantly had her relaxing? She felt she’d known him a lot longer than she had.

She watched as Finn stopped, as everyone always did, at the wall of photo frames. She watched his eyes skim over the photographs, quickly taking in her history—her journey from being a daredevil kid to a daredevil teenager to who she was today, whoever that was.

Finn spent more time than people usually did staring at the photos, eventually turning to look at her, his eyebrows raised. ‘You’re up a tree.’

‘I frequently was.’

He pointed to a frame. ‘You look like you’re about forty feet up.’

She grinned. ‘Forty-two feet—my dad measured it after his heart restarted.’ She shrugged and waved her wine glass around. ‘They told me not to climb it, so I did.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Five? Six? Somewhere around there.’

‘You must have been a handful.’

‘You have no idea. I thought I was indestructible. I had zero sense of self-preservation and was willing to try anything once—or four times. And if my brother was giving something a whirl—well, I would too. Surfing, diving, climbing, skateboarding, cycling …’

‘And I thought I was a hellraiser. Your mum must have pulled her hair out,’ Finn said, walking towards her.

Callie swallowed and looked away. Her mum had let her run wild—not particularly worried that Callie might crack her head open or break a limb. She would just shake her head before disappearing into her bedroom and locking the door behind her.

Then one day, a couple of weeks after her seventh birthday, she’d disappeared for ever.

Finn stepped out onto the veranda, gratefully taking the beer she held out to him. She dropped into the corner of her fat couch and tucked her bare feet up and under her bottom, gesturing to Finn to take a seat. When he’d sat down in the chair next to her he looked out at the sea view and the dropping sun and sighed.

‘Nice place. How long have you lived here?’

‘I bought it about five years ago. I love it, but I’m seldom home,’ Callie explained, picking up her wine glass and taking a sip. She turned and looked at his profile, strong in the fading light of the day.

‘So what’s happened that you’re suddenly available to come travelling?’ Finn asked. ‘And why are your eyes red-rimmed and puffy?’

Damn, that cosmetics rep had so lied. The eye cream that had cost the equivalent of a small house did not suck away the bags of fluid left there by a massive crying jag.

Callie couldn’t meet his eyes. Mostly because she felt her own prickling with tears again and she never cried in company—especially not around sexy, fit men. ‘It’s not important.’

Finn shook his head. ‘I suspect it’s very damn important to you.’ Then he lifted one broad shoulder. ‘But, since I hate people prying, I’ll leave you with your secrets.’

Thank you, she thought sarcastically, a little put out that he hadn’t pushed. Did that mean that she actually wanted to tell him her sad tale of maternal neglect? Blergh—she didn’t do sob stories. Especially her own.

Callie pulled herself out of her funk and tilted her head. ‘So, it turns out that I can be free for the next four weeks or so. Do you want to explain your crazy proposal to me again?’

Finn stretched out his long legs, which ended in a pair of battered trainers. ‘As I explained, I landed an assignment to write an article on upmarket lodges, focusing on the honeymoon aspect of said lodges. The magazine is Europe-based, a leader in its field, it has a huge readership and it’s a plum assignment.’

‘Of course it is.’

Finn was hot property—he wouldn’t be writing for just any old magazine.

‘With the wedding imploding I either have to give up the assignment or find someone to go with me.’

‘As your wife?’

‘As my editor said, nobody is going to ask for proof of my marriage. If I take someone who looks reasonably happy to be there with me I think I can get by without having to explain that the wedding was called off two weeks before the big day,’ Finn said, his voice even but his expression pensive. ‘I really don’t want to give up the opportunity to get my foot in the door with Go Travel; they have a bunch of staff writers and rarely issue assignments to freelancers.’

But they did to you.

As she’d thought: hot property, indeed. And not just as a writer. The man had a body that you could strike tinder off.

Callie resisted the urge to fan her face with her hand as a bead of sweat trickled down her spine. Yes, it was summer in Cape Town, but her hot flush had nothing to do with the evening heat and everything to do with imagining him naked above her, his fabulous eyes locked on hers as he pushed himself home. She’d be tight and he’d be big, and he’d reach that special spot deep inside and rock her to screaming …

‘Callie?’

Finn’s voice pulled her out of her side trip into fantasy land and she waved a hand in front of her face, knowing that her cheeks were fire-red. ‘Wow, it’s so hot out here.’

‘Actually, a cool breeze has picked up and the temperature has dropped a couple of degrees,’ Finn countered, sending her a knowing smile. At least she thought it was knowing—for all she knew he could be thinking that she was loopy.

She fumbled for her wine and downed half a glass before resting it on her cheek.

‘You okay?’

Just peachy, trying to deal with the fact that you are the first man I can imagine sleeping with for far too long.
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