LITMIR.BIZ

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free spirit who liked to chase birds seemed totally at odds with her provocative red dress and her dark eyes full of naughty promise.

      She turned to him now, the dark hair that had earlier been loosely coiled at the back of her head bounced around her shoulders, the dark mass highlighted by intermittent coppery strands that glinted in the warm pink light cast by the rising sun.

      She’d brought peaches to the beach with them and she ate hers with relish, the juice spilling down her chin as she waited for him to catch up.

      He’d been an idiot to invite her out here, to develop any sort of friendship with a woman who might be hurt by a story he crafted on the resort that employed her.

      She turned to walk in-step beside him as he came shoulder to shoulder with her. “The sunrise is gorgeous. I can’t believe how many times I’ve seen the sun come up through the windows of the hotel and yet I’ve never hauled my butt out here to be a part of it.”

      Shading her eyes, she glimpsed toward the eastern horizon, balancing the last of her peach between two fingers.

      He could have stared at her all day, taking in the little details about her full, juice-slick lips or her Sophia Loren curves in the fire-engine red dress. But he forced himself to also listen to her words, to pay attention to what she said and not just what he wanted to do to her.

      “I’ve missed Miami. I always like coming back to the great sunrises.” He hadn’t realized as much until he told her. For years he’d tried to tell himself he didn’t have a home, that he was simply a wanderer by nature.

      But he’d been born here, still had a stepaunt in town who he liked to visit once in a while. He’d lived in Miami for nearly a decade before his mother took him overseas to be with her new husband of exotic foreign descent. Only to be diplomatically trapped inside an ass-backward country that viewed him and his mother as “property” of the man she’d married for more months than he cared to remember.

      He shook off the thought, distracting himself from unpleasant memories by watching another drop of juice roll down Giselle’s chin and drop to her breastbone.

      He might have reached out to swipe the liquid if she hadn’t finished the fruit then. And tossing the pit into a wire trashcan they passed, she turned to him. “You mentioned you were overseas until recently?”

      Pissing off diplomats from a myriad of countries and generally making his editor mad. But he’d written a hell of a story. Not sure how much he should tell Giselle, he opted for the truth. “Yes, but that’s work-related. It’s up to you whether or not we want to open that door. I don’t want you to think I’m mixing business with pleasure.”

      Pausing, she dug her bare bronze toes into the soft white sand. “And which did we say this was again?”

      She made a back-and-forth gesture between them with her finger, referencing the definite spark of connection that linked them.

      He drew close to her, near enough to catch a slight whiff of her fragrance beneath the earthy aromas of the kitchen that still clung to her. “I don’t know about you, but I decided this is definitely pleasure.”

      She nodded, a curly strand of her dark brown hair brushing against her cheek as she did. “Then maybe we could forget the business aspect of this relationship altogether so we don’t have to worry about it. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know a damn thing about the newspaper business, but is there any chance you could hand off the story on Club Paradise to another reporter?” She drew an idle pattern in the sand with her toe. “I’m not just the chef in charge of overseeing the restaurants. I’m also a part owner in the corporation that runs the whole property, so if we were to, you know…take many walks on the beach together, it could get a little awkward.”

      Did she really say what he thought she just said? “Part owner?”

      “The controlling partnership is divided among me and three other women.” She met his gaze with a straightforward honesty too rare in people according to his experience.

      He’d read all about the split ownership in his research, and knew a little bit about it from letters he’d exchanged with his aunt. He didn’t have a chance to mention it before Giselle hastened on.

      “Two of us were working at the club last year when the former owners absconded with the profits, and the other two women who joined us were connected to the old partnership. We pulled together to keep the business afloat and create something bigger and better.”

      Ah, damn. All of which he’d gleaned from the old articles he’d printed off on Club Paradise. Even though he’d never actually met his sort-of distant cousin Brianne to quiz her about the resort, plenty had been written about the embezzlement scandal attached to the hotel’s former incarnation as a popular couples resort.

      But he’d been too furious about an assignment he’d considered beneath him to really pay much attention to the names of the key players.

      Apparently he’d started off his job by drooling over one of them.

      “That might be a problem.” For the first time in his journalism career, he knew a moment’s regret at having so thoroughly aggravated his editor. “I definitely don’t have the option of handing off this assignment.”

      A fact he regretted all the more the longer he stared at the amazing woman in front of him. A guy didn’t stumble into a walking sensual feast like Giselle Cesare every day.

      “But you don’t have an ethical problem with hanging out with me, even though you might have to write about the restaurant, right?” She edged forward a bit, her lips suddenly much too near his own for any rational thought to actually take place.

      “No.” Of course there wouldn’t be an ethical problem if he wrote a simple freaking piece on the food.

      Unfortunately, he’d never written just a simple story on anything in his entire career.

      “Then there shouldn’t be any problem if I decided to do this…” She stretched up on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, planting her mouth to his in a kiss that would have set off fire alarms if they’d been indoors.

      3

      FOR A WOMAN WHO HAD BUILT a career around understanding all the subtle nuances of taste, Giselle marveled that she couldn’t quite define the exquisite flavor of Hugh’s kiss.

      She’d been dying for a drink from his lips since the moment she’d laid eyes on him, and had finally flung herself in his arms for lack of a better strategy. Now that she was right where she wanted to be, she struggled to identify the darkly complex taste of desire as intoxicating as any burgundy wine. Her knees swayed at the onslaught of sensation, and she held on to him for dear life on the quiet stretch of South Beach that didn’t normally see much action until noon.

      Lucky for her, she and Hugh were changing that in a hurry.

      “Giselle.” He murmured her name against her mouth, levered himself away from her by a fraction of an inch.

      She couldn’t seem to clear her head enough to answer. In fact, the only response she could think of involved more mind-drugging kisses. So she simply waited and tried to remember how to breathe.

      “You’re sure you’re okay with this? With me? The article?” He lifted a hand to her cheek and skimmed her jaw with his palm. His fingers toyed with a stray dark curl.

      “I’m very fine with this.” She had faith in her abilities as a chef, and the more she talked to Hugh the stronger her impression that he wouldn’t use his position to hurt her or her business. “I think we can work around the article and not let it interfere with—” she sidled closer, allowing her thigh to graze his. Heat streaked through her like a flash fire “—what we both want.”

      He caught her hips in his hands, steadied her when she would have fallen against him. He closed his eyes for a long moment, providing her with a secret thrill. Feminine intuition told her she was testing the man’s restraint

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