LITMIR.BIZ

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To Scott, aka “Duncan”:

       Thanks for your help with Club Lotus! Now go out there and conquer the world.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Epilogue

      1

      IN GEMMA DUNCAN’S FANTASIES, sweat would bead on her skin. It would trickle down her body to dampen the satin sheets while strangers—bad boys who never turned good—trailed their mouths over her belly.

      They would dip their tongues into a navel pooled with summer heat, drag their kisses upward, over her writhing torso, her ribs, under the tender swell of her breast, drinking her in. They would never leave their names, but they would leave her tapped out physically, filled only with a surging need for more.

      Gemma never talked about these fantasies.

      But there were safer ones she would share with her new friends over happy-hour cocktails. Fantasies such as winning a Pulitzer at the tender age of twenty-six. Fantasies where she would uncover the nefarious activities of crime lords while crusading as a journalist at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Fantasies where she could bake a perfect soufflé, do a triple axel like Michelle Kwan and come home to a Garden District fantasy mansion full of fantasy puppies saved from the pound with her fantasy fortune.

      As far as vivid imaginations went, she was number one. Heck, her fantasies even included knowing how to position a cell phone so that it always received perfect reception.

      Needless to say, reality was a little different for Gemma Duncan.

      “Jimmy?” she asked for the third time, walking five steps to the left and cocking her head to the right as she exited a French Quarter souvenir store. Taunting her, the phone fuzzed and stuttered in denial.

      She’d had her older brother on the line only a second ago. “Jimmy? Can you hear me?”

      The shop’s zydeco music, with its energetic pulse of percussion and accordion, caused Gemma to plug one ear and wander through the muggy July air toward Dumaine Street. The threat of an afternoon rain braided itself with the smell of battered crawfish and spices from a nearby café.

      “Hello?” She clutched her shopping bag, eager to talk to Jimmy and be back on her way to the Weekly Gossip offices in the Central Business District. Today she’d been interviewing a psychic who was integral to her latest headline: “Swamp Girl Finds Love with Tarot Reader.”

      Truly. That was it. This was why Gemma used a pen name—Duncan James—as opposed to her real one.

      As she wandered farther down the street, away from the tourists and toward her second destination, a voodoo shop, her older brother’s voice squawked in and out of range.

      Lunch-hour efficiency, she thought, somewhat proud of her scheduling skills. On Dumaine, she would not only achieve possible reception but also buy gris-gris bag souvenirs for an out-of-town friend. Oh, and then there was the antique shop where she could see if that white-satin-gowned jazz-singer painting was still for sale….

      “Jimmy,” she said again. “I’m trying to… Aw, forget it. If you can hear me, I’m running errands anyway, so I bought that grotesque shellacked baby gator head for your wife. I’ll send it priority mail tomorrow, okay? By the way, tell her happy birthday, you sicko. If I had a husband with a yen for weird gag gifts like you, there’d be some damage. And I say that with all the love in my heart. Talk to you later.”

      In one last, hopeful attempt to achieve reception, Gemma paced near a courtyard. It had a wrought-iron gate, and banana-tree leaves that leaned over the brick wall like a bored woman passing time while watching the street’s infrequent traffic. Beyond the barriers, a man’s raised voice competed with Jimmy’s tinny bark.

      “Gemma, I heard that. When you finally get it into your thick head that you’ve moved to the wrong city, and listen to your family and move back here—”

      Oops. Not…understanding…a…word…you…say….” She snapped shut her cell phone, tucked it into the purse she’d slung crosswise over her chest and rested her spine against the courtyard bricks. She wiped at the heat steaming the straight tendrils of her upswept hair into curlicues while the man’s disembodied voice continued to bluster behind the wall. A fountain tinkled in the background.

      Water. The splashes reminded her of Orange County, California, where the dog days of summer were tempered by beach winds and afternoons by the swimming pool.

      But that’s not where she belonged. She’d visited New Orleans and had never left, especially after the Weekly Gossip job had come along. The tabloid had sounded good because she’d been desperate for income and experience.

      Besides, the “Big Easy” had always sounded adventurous, a bit scary. Naughty.

      The last place anyone who knew “nice” Gemma Duncan would’ve expected her to end up.

      Over the courtyard wall, another male voice had joined the first one. Gemma idly

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