LITMIR.BIZ

       One

      Kyle Messena’s gaze narrowed as the bridal car pulled up outside Dolphin Bay’s windblown, hilltop church. The bride, festooned in white tulle, stepped out of the limousine. A drift of gauze obscured her face, but sunlight gleamed on tawny hair that was heart-stoppingly familiar.

      Adrenaline pumped and time seemed to slow, stop, as he considered the stunning fact that, despite his efforts to prevent Eva Atraeus marrying a man whose motives were purely financial, she had utterly fooled him and the wedding he had thought he had nixed was going ahead.

      Kyle had taken two long, gliding steps out of the inky shade cast by an aged oak into the blistering heat of a New Zealand summer’s day before the ocean breeze whipped the veil from the bride’s face.

      It wasn’t Eva.

      Relief unlocked the fierce tension that gripped him.

      A tension that sliced through the indifference to relationships that had shrouded him for years, ever since the death of his wife and small son. Deaths that he should have prevented.

      The unwanted, brooding intensity had grown over the months he had been entrusted with the duty of ensuring that the heiress to an Atraeus fortune married according to a draconian clause in her adoptive father’s will. Eva, in order to get control of her inheritance, had to either marry a Messena—him—or a man who genuinely wanted her and not her money.

      Acting as Eva’s trustee did not sit well with Kyle. He was aware that his wily great-uncle, Mario, had named him as trustee in a last game-playing move to maneuver him into marrying the woman he had once wanted but left behind. Confronted by the mesmerizing power of an attraction that still held him in reluctant thrall and unable to accept that the one woman he had never been able to forget would marry someone else, Kyle had been unable to refuse the job.

      A gust of wind whipped the bride’s veil to one side, revealing that she was a little on the plump side. Her hair was also a couple of shades lighter than the rich dark mane shot through with tawny highlights that had been a natural feature of Eva’s hair ever since he’d first set eyes on her at age sixteen.

      Kyle’s jaw unlocked. Now that he had successfully circumvented Eva’s latest marriage plan, he was ready to leave, but when a zippy white sports car emblazoned with the name of Eva’s business, Perfect Weddings, pulled into a space, Kyle knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

      Eva Atraeus, dressed in a pale pink button-down suit that clung in all the right places, closed the door with an expensive thunk. Cell held to one ear, she hooked a matching pale pink tote over her shoulder and started toward the church doors, her stride fluid and distractingly sexy in a pair of strappy high heels. At five feet seven, Eva was several inches too short for the runway, but with her

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