LITMIR.BIZ

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TWO

      DANNIE sat in the back seat of the cab, fuming. The next time I see Melanie, I’m going to kill her, she decided.

      Thinking such a thought felt like a terrible defeat for a woman who prided herself on her steady nature and unflappable calm, at least professionally. To think it toward Melanie showed how truly rattled Dannie was. Melanie, in just a few short months, had become so much more than an employer.

      But the truth was that a steady nature was not any kind of defense against a man like Joshua Cole. He was a complete masculine, sexy package, with that brilliant smile, the jade of those eyes, the perfect masculine cut of his facial features, the way he carried himself, the exquisitely expensive clothing over the sleek muscle of a toned body. All of it put together would have been enough to rattle Mother Theresa!

      Dannie had known Melanie’s brother was attractive. She had seen two pictures of him in the Maynards’ home. Not that those pictures could have prepared her for Joshua Cole in the flesh.

      Melanie’s two framed photos showed her brother through the lens of an ordinary family. Nothing extraordinary about Joshua at twelve, on the beach, scrawny, white, not even a hint of the man he would become. In fact, whatever had been behind that impish grin seemed to be gone from him entirely.

      The other picture showed Joshua in a college football uniform, posed, looking annoyingly cocky and confident, again some mischief in him that now seemed to be gone. Though he was undeniably good-looking, that photo showed only a glimmer of the self-possessed man he now was.

      “He never finished college,” Melanie had said, with a hint of sadness, when she had seen Dannie looking at that picture. For some reason Dannie had assumed that sadness was for her brother’s lost potential.

      Melanie had seemed to see Joshua as the exasperating kid brother who was an expert at thwarting her every effort to interfere in his life with her wise and well-meaning sisterly guidance. From Melanie’s infrequent mentions of her brother, Dannie had thought he managed a hotel or a travel agency, not that he was the president and CEO of one of the world’s most up-and-coming companies!

      So, the article in People to Watch had been a shocker. First, the photos had come a little closer to capturing the pure animal magnetism of the man. The little-boy mischief captured in his sister’s snapshots was gone from those amazing smoky-jade eyes, replaced with an intensity that was decidedly sensual.

      That sensuality was underscored in the revealing photos of him: muscled, masculine, at ease with his body, oozing a self-certainty that few men would ever master.

      Melanie had certainly never indicated her brother was a candidate for the World’s Sexiest Bachelor, though his unmarried status seemed to grate on her continually.

      Again, the magazine portrayal seemed to be more accurate than the casual remarks Melanie had tossed out about him. The magazine described him as powerful, engaging and lethally charming. And that was just personally. Professionally he was described as driven. The timing of the openings of his adventure-based adult-only resorts was seen as brilliant.

      In the article, his name had also been paired with some of the world’s wealthiest and most beautiful women, including actress Monique Belliveau, singer Carla Kensington and heiress Stephanie Winger-Stone.

      By the time he’d stood them up at the airport, Danielle Springer, the steady one, had already been feeling nervous about meeting Joshua Cole, World’s Sexiest Bachelor, and had developed a feeling of dislike for him, just knowing he would exude all the superficial charm and arrogance of a man who had the world at his feet. He would move through life effortlessly, piling up successes, traveling the globe, causing heartbreaks but never suffering them.

      She had already known, before the plane landed, that Melanie had made a terrible mistake in judgment sending them all here. That knowledge had only been underscored by the fact the Great One had not put in an appearance at the airport, and she had not been able to penetrate the golden walls that protected him from the annoyances of real life.

      Which begged the question: Why hadn’t she jumped at the opportunity to go to Whistler when he had offered it? It was more than the fact small children and hotels rarely made a good combination, no matter how “child-friendly” they claimed to be.

      It was more than the fact that the children were exhausted and so was she, not a good time to be making decisions!

      It was that something about him had been unexpected.

      He had not been all arrogance and charm. Something ran deeper in him. She had seen it in that unguarded moment when she had thrust Jake upon him, something in his face that said his life had not been without heartbreak, after all.

      Stop it, she told herself sternly. They would spend the evening with him. Tomorrow, rested, she would regroup and decide what to do next. The original plan no longer seemed feasible. Spend a week with him? Good grief!

      What she was not going to do was call Melanie and Ryan, who needed this time together desperately. At a whisper of trouble, Melanie would come home.

      Still, could it really be in the best interests of the children to spend time with their uncle? He’d made it clear he was uncomfortable with children. In fact, his success was based on the creation of a child-free world! There was no sense seeing anything noble in his sudden whim to play the hero and spend time with the niece and nephew he’d invited here in the first place.

      And how about herself? How much time could any woman with blood flowing through her veins spend with a man like that without succumbing?

      Not, she reminded herself sourly, that there would be anything to succumb to. He was rich and powerful and definitely lethally charming. There had been no pictures in the article of him accompanied by women like her.

      Women like her: unprocessed, unsophisticated, slightly plump.

      She touched the locket on her neck and felt the ache. Only a few weeks ago, the locket would have protected her. Taken.

      Brent had given it to her before leaving for Europe. “A promise,” he’d said, “I will return to you.”

      Perhaps it would be better to take the locket off, now that it represented a promise broken. On the other hand perhaps it protected her still, reminding her of the fickleness of the human heart, and especially of the fickleness of the male human heart.

      And besides, she wasn’t ready to take it off. She still looked at the photo inside it each night and felt the ache of loss and the stirring of hope that he would realize he had made a mistake ….

      Though all along maybe the worst mistake had been hers. Believing in what she felt for Brent, even after what she had grown up with. Her own parents’ split up had been venomous, their passion had metamorphosed into full-blown hatred that was destructive to all it had touched, including their children. Maybe especially their children.

      Thank God, Dannie thought, for the Maynards, for Melanie and Ryan, for Susie and Jake. Thank God she had already been welcomed into the fold of their household when this hurricane of heartbreak had hit her. She would survive because they gave her a sense of family and of belonging, a safe place to fall when her world had fallen apart.

      Bonus: loving them didn’t involve one little bit of risk!

      Though since Brent’s call from London, “I’m so sorry, there’s someone else,” now when Dannie saw the way that Melanie and Ryan looked at each other, she felt a startling stab of envy.

      “Hey, lady, are we going somewhere, or are we just sitting here?” the cabbie asked her, waiting for her instructions, impatient.

      “When you see the horrible yellow car, follow it,” Dannie said. Delivering the variation on the line “Follow that car” gave her absolutely no pleasure.

      “A yellow car?” he said, bemused. “Do you think you could be a little more specific?”

      Dannie looked over her shoulder. “It’s coming now.”

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