LITMIR.BIZ

      To my parents, my husband and my conference roommates—for all the times your sleep was disrupted by my sleepwalking adventures. Feel free to “seize the day.” I’ve got the nights covered.

      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

      SHE SPOTTED HIM the moment she stepped onstage.

      There he sat in the front row of the crowded auditorium, his muscular arms crossed, his long legs comfortably extended, his mouth slanted in that slight but infuriating smirk she remembered so well from their college days. Cade Hunter. Of all the rotten luck, why did Cade Hunter have to show up at the most important award ceremony of her life?

      “It’s my pleasure to present this award to the incredible, incomparable, one-and-only Ms. Brynn Sutherland,” the president of the United States had just announced, a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Brynn’s softball coach in seventh grade, “for running the best bed-and-breakfast in the history of the free world!”

      The auditorium had exploded with applause and the audience had risen to their feet. It was Brynn’s shining moment—success beyond her wildest imagining. But as she tried to cross the stage to accept the huge gold trophy—which looked exactly like an Oscar—she found herself moving in slow motion, as if she were walking through dense, soupy muck. And it was all his fault. He was the only one not clapping, the only one not standing and smiling in admiration.

      She tried not to scowl at him. She was supposed to be smiling and approaching the podium to accept her award, not fuming over Cade Hunter’s insolent attitude.

      Before she managed to tear her gaze away from his rugged but oddly appealing face, she saw his lips move. And though she couldn’t hear his voice, she knew what he said. “Prude.”

      Prude! Oh, he knew how to push her buttons! This was an important occasion for her. A business function. A public affirmation of her talent as an innkeeper—not to mention great promo for the Three Sisters Bed & Breakfast Inn. Yet Cade Hunter had taken it upon himself to show up, uninvited, just to rehash old arguments.

      Balling her hands into fists, Brynn pivoted away from him and resumed her slow motion trek toward the podium. The president, she noticed, had morphed into Candice Bergen, and the trophy now looked like a mermaid from a tuna can label. Brynn didn’t mind that too much, though.

      She was still too ticked over Cade Hunter’s gall. Prude, he’d called her. Didn’t he see that she’d changed? Couldn’t he tell she was no longer the virginal teenager he’d known, but a sultry urban adventuress with more notches on her bedpost than the gals on Sex and the City?

      “Prick tease,” he taunted.

      That stopped her dead in her tracks, not three feet from the podium. How dare he? Nine years ago, he might have had grounds to call her such a thing—though he never had, to her knowledge. No, he’d never called her anything worse than a prude, which had been bad enough. But now he seemed determined to publicly humiliate her.

      And he was succeeding. For some inexplicable reason, another man in the audience repeated the accusation. “Prick tease.” Then someone else said it.

      Soon the entire audience took up a chant: “Prick tease. Prick tease. Prick tease.”

      “That’s not fair,” Brynn yelled over the commotion. “I had good reasons not to go all the way with him. I was only eighteen. I wasn’t ready!”

      The audience didn’t listen. Their chanting had grown thunderous. With that cocky gleam in his honey-gold eyes, Cade Hunter uttered, “She’s probably frigid, anyway.”

      “Frigid! Me?” That was more than any self-respecting urban adventuress could take. Shaking with outrage, Brynn stalked past Candice Bergen to the side of the stage and descended a flight of stairs, glaring all the while at the despicable Cade Hunter. “You think I’m frigid, Cade? And a prude? A ‘prick tease’? Well, let’s just see about that, why don’t we?” With every step she took, she jerked open her silk blouse a bit more, popping off the mother-of-pearl buttons like microwave popcorn. “Come on, big boy.” She yanked the blouse off her shoulders and reached for the zipper of her designer slacks. “You want a piece of me? Let’s give it a go, Romeo….”

      She never saw it coming. Out of nowhere, a long, hard protrusion sprang up and hit her in the jaw, knocking her into a wall. Metal clanged around her. Something damp and limp folded over her face. The lights went out, plunging her into darkness, and pain shot through her body.

      It took a moment—a long, agonizing moment of stunned bewilderment—before her eyes adjusted to the dark, her senses fully returned and she recognized where she was.

      In the broom closet. More specifically, on the

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