Too Wild

“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?”