Too Wild

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.”