One-Click Buy: April Harlequin Blaze

by Kathleen O'Reilly

  “And the shoes themselves are pretty,” she reminded him. God, she loved these shoes.

  His grin was sudden and animal. “I may not know fashion from my ass, but I know that you wouldn’t dress in anything you didn’t think would enhance your appearance.”

  She laughed. “You’ve only known me a few hours.”

  “I call ’em as I see ’em. Your skirt says you’re a fun woman with a frivolous side, and the jacket says you can also be serious. Formal when it suits you.” His gaze met hers. “And, speaking purely as a man, I’m getting a sense of a woman who is comfortable with her sexuality.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “You put that last bit in to be provocative.”

  “Or maybe you’re expressing more than you realize.”

  Before she could sufficiently annihilate him with words, which would of course entail thinking up something sufficiently annihilating to say, he reached over and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  Just a brush of his mouth against hers and she felt her legs go to jelly. He pulled away almost immediately, but she felt as though she’d glimpsed something hot and dangerous. She licked her lips, tasted beer. “What was that for?”

  “Good night.” He gestured behind him. “We’re here.”

  And there was her hotel, as elegant and grand as Cinderella’s fairy godmother.

  “Good night.” She didn’t turn to see if he watched her all the way in. She didn’t have to. She could feel his gaze on her. That man was going to be a serious distraction.

  KIMI WOKE with that wonderful feeling of delights in store. She took a moment to savor the fact that she was staying in a gorgeous room in a luxurious hotel in her favorite city in the world. She stretched against top-quality French bed linens and contemplated her day with Holden MacGreggor.

  She pondered him the way Pygmalian might have studied a lump of clay, foreseeing the possibilities. The build, the intriguing eyes, the rugged planes of the face, that thick, thick hair. When she was finished with him, he’d be outstanding in a city of superlatives.

  She ordered a breakfast of coffee and croissants and fresh-squeezed orange juice, showered and opened her wardrobe. She’d unpacked the second she got into her room, and her closet was organized exactly the way she liked. Casual clothes here, business attire here, dressy there.

  Her shoes were lined up according to outfit, and her lingerie was neatly tucked in paper in several of the drawers. Lingerie was her secret weakness, and while she was here, she intended to replenish her stash.

  She flipped on the TV for the news while she dressed and prepared herself for the day. This was a ritual she enjoyed and one which she never rushed. She’d rather get up early than deny herself the hour it took to dress, do her hair and makeup perfectly.

  At five to nine, she was downstairs in the lobby.

  In her hand was the list she’d made last night of Holden MacGreggor essentials.

  This was going to be a very good day.

  HOLDEN WOKE bleary eyed and short tempered. He could swear his bed smelled like perfume, which was fine if a sexy woman were sharing it, but when he was on his own, not so much.

  He’d stayed up late studying the file on last year’s theft. A dress had simply disappeared. One single dress had caused all this fuss. How could one dress be worth more than most people earned in a lifetime?

  Just confirmed his notion that the world got crazier every day and he was better off in the wilderness, where there was a natural order that made sense.

  He showered, unzipped his duffel, yanked out a clean shirt, fresh jeans and underwear, dressed swiftly and was out the door within a quarter hour of waking. He tried to grab a coffee to go at the first café he passed, but the snooty Frenchman behind the bar couldn’t—or wouldn’t—understand him, and he ended up with a little china cup and saucer. He stood there and downed the coffee, which was at least strong and excellent, before returning the china and heading on his way.

  He entered the lobby of Kimberley Renton’s hotel at precisely nine and looked around for an English-language newspaper, assuming he’d have to wait, but to his surprise, she rose from a lobby armchair, looking fresh and more gorgeous than most of the women he’d seen in that Vogue he’d thumbed through on the plane.

  She was a class act. He’d assumed when he first saw her last night that she was a native Parisian, but half-Italian made sense. She had lustrous black hair with just enough curl to keep things interesting, skin that hinted toward gold, a full-lipped mouth that had tasted every bit as good as he’d hoped, and then those eyes. Deep blue, a complete surprise. That slam of blue took a man back, made him see her anew.

  He liked her height and her long legs. She looked less formal this morning, but no less fashionable. She was wearing a print dress that wrapped around her figure, making him immediately fantasize about undoing the tie and unwrapping her. She had a brownish-colored leather bag hanging from her arm with the name Prada stamped on it, which even he knew was a big designer deal.

  He stepped forward with a smile on his face, thinking he might be able to talk her into coffee and pastries in one of the cafés and then use his manly wiles to get all ideas of shopping out of her head. He got closer and his belly turned to stone when he saw that she had a list in her hand. Lists and women, in his experience, were always a bad combination.

  She took a good look at him and he could have sworn he saw her shudder and close her eyes for a moment. Then she got over herself.

  “Good morning,” she said, perky as all hell. “How did you sleep?”

  “Like shit.”

  If anything, his surliness amused her, which didn’t lighten his mood. “Try melatonin,” she suggested. “It’s a cure for jet lag. Ready to go?”

  He was ready to go back to bed, or, even better, to call Rhett Markham and tell him to find somebody else. He’d imagined this gig as snapping pictures of gorgeous women for a week, which he was definitely up for, while tracking down a ring of thieves. He’d never in his wildest nightmares imagined he’d endure wardrobe fittings and something called fashion boot camp, which he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to enjoy.

  However, he needed this woman’s help, so he sucked it up and said, “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Excellent. We’re heading for the Champs-Élysées. Just a short walk.”

  He glanced at her feet and noticed she had flat shoes on today. They had intertwining Cs at the front, which no doubt meant something fancy.

  God, he hoped CC didn’t make men’s shoes.

  “I think we’ll start with the main pieces first. Suits, shirts. Then we’ll move on to shoes and casual wear.”

  It was going to be a very long day.

  In spite of her bossiness, there was something about Kimi that appealed to him. She was so polished, and yet touchable somehow. All his life he’d stayed away from women like this, with their perfect hair, flawless makeup and overdeveloped fashion sense. But she wasn’t forever fussing over mirrors or excusing herself to go style her eyebrows or something. She seemed like once she was dressed for the day, she didn’t give her appearance much of a thought. Interesting.

  Oh, high maintenance for sure, and definitely not his type, but he liked her. He hated to admit it, but he liked her style. She wasn’t the kind of woman he’d ever see himself with, but she was easy on the eyes. Nothing wrong with that. And, as an accomplice in this job, so long as she could keep her mouth shut, she was ideal.

  He still had to shorten his stride, but not so much today with her in flats. In hiking boots, he had a feeling she could keep up to him pretty well.

  He shook his head. What was he thinking?

  The Champs-Élysées was one of those streets like Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive that would never make his list of top destinations. After walking for a while, she turned off the famous street and he found himself on a quieter and even fancier street. Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. There was a parade of names here, mostly discreetly whispered in gold script. No neon
signs here. No big Sale signs in the windows.

  He half hoped that his guide and fashion cop of the day would be so dazzled by women’s clothing stores that she’d forget all about their mission, but he soon found he’d misjudged Kimberley Renton. She might have gazed with sharp longing in a couple of windows, but she never slackened her pace until their destination was reached.

  The store she took him into was sleek, black-and-white decor, everything minimalist—including the clothing on display. There was hardly anything here. And luckily for him, nothing in blue velvet.

  A sleek balding man, who looked like European royalty, came forward with a polite greeting and then, when he got close, beamed. “Mademoiselle Kimi,” he said, putting the accent on the second syllable. So, she went by Kimi.

  A quick volley of back-and-forth French followed, and the obligatory double-cheek kissing, and then Kimi switched to English, presumably for his benefit, and explained that they needed to get him some clothes.

  After that, they talked about him as though he weren’t there. Monsieur will need three suits for the fashion week, a selection of shirts, ties, the evening wear, bien sur, and before he quite knew how it had happened, he was standing in front of a triple mirror in a dark suit with some poor minion on his knees making markings to hem his pants.

  “Valentino for the formal,” Pierre was saying to Kimi, “Armani, of course, and I think Zanetti for the informal. A nice charcoal two-button suit. Can be dressed up with tie and cuff links, but very nice with an open collar. Yes?”

  She nodded. Looking him up and down like she was planning to sketch him from memory. He very much liked having a woman undress him, but he wasn’t sure he was as crazy about having one dress him.

  “That’s a good start.” She shot him a mischievous glance. “We need him gorgeous.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  Once all the chalk marks were made he was allowed to escape back into the dressing room, where he hauled himself out of the dress shirt and was standing in slacks and an undone Prada belt.

  “Are you decent?” Kimi’s voice came from the other side of the door.

  “Depends who you ask.”

  With a tsk that said she didn’t have time to dawdle, she pushed open the door. When she saw his naked chest she smiled. “Nice,” she said, tapping him on the pec. Her palm was soft and cool. “Exactly as I’d hoped.”

  He could get all puffed up by the compliment, except that she’d said it as impersonally as though he’d been a plastic mannequin she wanted to stick in a store window. But he was flesh and blood and both reacted to her touch. He felt the brush of her skin against his and his blood immediately pumped a little faster. The change room seemed like a very intimate space with the two of them in here and him half-naked. Maybe she caught the direction of his thoughts for she glanced up and their gazes met. He caught the heat of attraction in her eyes and felt the war going on inside her between the bossy fashionista and the warm, exciting woman he knew her to be.

  Then she handed him a pair of sweaters, one black and the other a kind of blue with a pattern in it. They were wool and silk, he found when he peeked at the label, soft to the touch.

  “Try these on,” she said, and disappeared.

  Okay, he thought as she exited, so the bossy fashionista had won this round. The sexy woman in her wanted to come out and play. He’d seen it in her eyes. Maybe having a woman dress him had its moments.

  Especially if it could lead to her undressing him, which at the moment seemed like a very appealing idea.

  4

  “FIND HIM SOMETHING to wear out of the store, will you, Pierre?”

  “But of course, Kimi.”

  “What are you planning to do with my clothes?” Holden asked.

  “Throw them away. Please.”

  He’d been measured, pinned, manhandled and dressed. It was time to assert himself. “But those are my favorite jeans.”

  “You poor misguided man.” She sighed. “I’ll make you a deal. You can keep the jeans if we throw away the blue sweater.”

  “What’s wrong with the blue sweater?”

  “I don’t have time to tell you everything that’s wrong with that sweater. We’re only in Paris for a week.”

  “That sweater is very warm,” he said.

  “That’s the only thing not wrong with it.”

  He squinted his eyes at her, playing for time. There was something decidedly flirtatious about the way she returned his gaze. “You are a very bossy woman.”

  “Darling, if we’re ever in a situation together where we’re in the wilderness and need to survive on berries, believe me, you can be the boss.”

  He handed over his sweater to Pierre but spoke to Kimi. “Don’t forget I also know which berries are the poison kind.”

  She turned to Pierre. “Can you wrap up everything but the sweater and deliver them to the hotel with the rest of his things?”

  “Of course.” He took the sweater and walked into the stockroom as though he were carrying a dead rat. When he returned, he was empty-handed.

  When they left the store, Holden was wearing dress slacks in something he thought was called twill. They were gray in color and over them he wore a black-and-white shirt and the black sweater. He still wore his sneakers, but he had a premonition that he wouldn’t be wearing them for much longer.

  And when their next stop was a shoe store, he knew he’d been right. He didn’t bother arguing. So far, he’d actually liked everything she picked out for him and only used one of his vetoes when she tried to explain that a lavender shirt was not the same as pink.

  He thought it was outrageous to pay those kinds of prices for clothing, though after seeing how everyone else at that party had been dressed last night, he acknowledged he needed help.

  “I only wear comfortable shoes,” he warned her as they walked into a shoe store that looked more like a shrine to rare religious artifacts than a storefront for footwear.

  “Lucky you.”

  “Hey, nobody forces you to wear those crazy ice-pick heels.”

  She shrugged. “We all have our obsessions. You keep your hiking boots. I’ll stick to my heels.”

  “Have you ever even owned a pair of hiking boots, Manhattan? I bet your idea of the wilderness is Coney Island. You’re missing out on one of the greatest experiences in the world.”

  She looked at him, rather amused. “You’d lose your bet. Among other outdoor adventures, I spent a memorable ten days in senior high in a women’s-only survival camp. It included a three-day personal wilderness adventure where we got dropped off in the middle of nowhere, Colorado, each in a different spot. For three days and three very long nights, I had to rely on my wits, scavenge for food and hope to hell nothing worse than mosquitoes ate me.”

  All her friends that summer had gone to dance camps, theater camps. She herself had been accepted to a two-week workshop for budding fashionistas, but her mother had been determined she should balance out her frivolous lifestyle with more serious and presumably useful pursuits. “I know all about camping in the wilderness, my friend, and it is not for me.”

  She loved the way his eyes flickered gold and green when he smiled down at her. “That camp was work. An ordeal.” He shook his head at her. “That’s not how you learn to appreciate nature, by gritting your teeth and eating grubs and berries and shivering alone at night. Your folks should be horsewhipped.”

  “Only my mom. My dad probably wouldn’t know me if he tripped over me.” She hadn’t meant to sound so bitter, so she lightened her tone. “Anyhow, Mom did her best for me. And I bet I can still build a campfire with a bit of broken glass and some dry twigs.”

  “Going out into nature isn’t supposed to be an endurance test. It should be fun.”

  She shuddered. One of the million mosquito bites she’d got on that awful three-day ordeal had become infected. Unfortunately, it was near her eye. Her eye had swelled shut and she’d needed antibiotics. When she’d started school that fa
ll, her senior year, she’d still had some redness and swelling. She’d felt like a freak. “My idea of camping includes valet parking. And room service.”

  “There’s nothing like watching the sun come up over the water, and you look out and watch eagles soaring, and there’s a deer, right there in front of you and you’d swear he was looking at the sunrise just like you are.” He had a nice voice, soothing, so she could almost imagine the moment. The two of them snuggled up watching the sunrise.

  “It’s quiet, so you can hear yourself think and the air is clear enough to breathe. No cell phones, no traffic, no—”

  “No indoor plumbing.”

  He put an arm around her. “One day, when you decide you’re ready, you call me and I’ll take you.”

  “You’ll take me camping?”

  “That’s right. I know a little spot I think would convince even you. We’d hike in, spend a couple of days exploring. If we go at the right time, you see orca whales traveling south. You’d like that.”

  The words whale watching tour flashed through her mind, but she understood he was offering her something that was important to him so she kept her snarky comments to herself. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “But for now, we need to get you some shoes and—I don’t suppose you own cuff links?”

  “At home in my safe-deposit box I have a pair that belonged to my grandfather.” They were gold with pearls on them. And they were staying locked up where Kimi couldn’t get her hands—or his cuffs—near them.

  She gave him the kind of smile old ladies give little kids before patting their cheeks, and then preceded him into the next store on the Rue de Boredom.

  “Oh,” she said, “I’ve also booked you an appointment at my favorite salon for a haircut.” She consulted her watch and looked pleased with herself. “We’re right on schedule.”

  “I suppose I’d be wasting my time if I told you I had a haircut a couple weeks ago?”

  She smiled at him sunnily. “You’re right. You would.”