by Katie Allen
“When are we getting married?” she asked, and his eyebrows shot up.
“I’ve been asking you that about a hundred times a day, and you never give me an answer,” he said with a pout that made her want to bite his lower lip.
“Well, I needed to wait until I saw you completely naked,” she said, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “You don’t buy a honeydew melon without examining it first. I wanted to make sure all parts of you were acceptable before I decided to keep you.”
The way his mouth fell open with exaggerated shock made her lose her hold on her straight face, and she laughed out loud. He pressed his lips together in a poor attempt to hide his amusement as he huffed.
“A honeydew melon?” he said, making her laugh harder. “Of all the produce to compare me to, and you picked the worst melon in the world?”
Leaning forward, she kissed him quickly before raising her head again. “You know you’re my favorite melon.”
It was his turn to laugh. “You know I’ll marry you anytime.” He started to sit up, making his abs flex deliciously underneath her. “Let’s do it now.”
As tempting as it was, she pressed on his chest, urging him to lie back down. “Maybe we need to shower first. Also, we need to give Leah and Ham time to get here. She’d kill me if we got married without her.”
“Fine.” He relaxed back on the table and gave her his best pleading puppy-dog eyes. “But soon?”
“Soon.” It wasn’t a hard promise to make. She wanted to stay with Louis forever. Leaning down, she paused with her mouth right above his. “I love you, Louis Dumont. Every part of you.”
“I love you, too, Annabelle Shay.” His hand found the back of her head again. “Now let’s see how edible this paint really is.”
Chapter Twenty
Annabelle stood on the porch of their cozy rented cabin, watching fat snowflakes fall from the dark sky. After all the excitement and craziness of the day, she enjoyed the stillness of the cold mountain night. She heard the door open and close behind her before Louis wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back against his wonderfully warm front. He was quiet for a few moments before he spoke.
“Are you disappointed that Elvis wasn’t at our wedding, after all?”
“A little.” She leaned back against him. “It was still very nice.”
“Even though Ham tried to murder me?”
“Can’t really blame him for that.” When he huffed, she laughed and patted his arm. “You go out of your way to annoy him.”
“Yeah, I do.” Even though she couldn’t see his face, she knew he was smiling.
She shook her head, more amused by him than she probably should be. “I can’t believe we’re actually married.”
“I can’t believe it took you so long to ask me.”
She pinched his forearm.
“Ow! Is that how you treat your husband?”
“When he needs a pinch, sure is.” She smoothed her fingertips over the spot. “When he’s good, I have a surprise for him.”
“A surprise?”
“I may have brought along some of that body paint.”
He really liked that idea. She could tell by the hard bulge pressing into her lower back. Tipping his head forward, he pressed his mouth to her ear. “What do you say, my beautiful wife. Want to go inside and paint your angelic husband?”
She made a skeptical sound. “You’re more devil than angel.” Turning her head, she kissed him hard on the mouth. “It’s one of my very favorite things about you.”
* * * * *
Available now from Carina Press and Katie Allen
Read on for a sneak preview of Baking Lessons, the second book in Katie Allen’s Off Guard series.
Baking Lessons
by Katie Allen
Chapter One
There was something so irresistible about frosting.
Of all the things Leah made in her bakery, this simple whipped frosting was her absolute favorite. It wasn’t just the taste or the rush as a bite of straight sugar hit her bloodstream, although both those things were amazing wonders. What made it so utterly tempting, the Pied Piper of foods, was the glossy sheen it got when she’d beaten it long enough to fill it with air. As she slid her finger across the rubber spatula, she marveled at how light it was, how perfectly silky and shiny, like a wedding dress—an edible, sweet-tasting wedding dress. Lifting her finger toward her mouth, she closed her eyes, anticipating the moment when it touched her tongue.
“I hope you’re not going to put that utensil back in the frosting after touching it.”
Leah froze, the sweetness just short of her mouth as her eyes popped open. After the initial start, she recovered, sucking the frosting off her finger as she turned toward the intruder. The perfect moment was ruined, though. Occupied with presenting a bland, carefully unbothered face, she barely tasted the frosting.
Anthony Fitzgerald Hamilton III. As uptight and prissy as his name promised he’d be, her landlord was a thorn in her ass. Eyeing him, Leah took her time, slowly pulling her finger out of her mouth as she licked every last trace of frosting from it. As he watched, one corner of his mouth tucked in as it always did when she aggravated him. She added a hash mark on her mental scorecard. If she managed to get his eyelid to twitch, that was an extra five bonus points.
“Good morning, Mr. Hamilton.” She kept her voice as sweet as the frosting she’d just sampled, the frosting that still coated the spatula she was holding. “Going for a run?” If he was heading out for his daily 5:00 a.m. jog, she was running late. A glance at the clock reassured her that it was barely four. “You’re early today. Busy day ahead?”
His eyes flickered ever so slightly, his gaze dropping to the ground briefly, as if she’d thrown him off his judgmental course. Quickly, he recovered. “Yes.” He didn’t clarify which of her questions he was answering. “Well? You’re not putting that back in, are you?”
She smiled at him. “Of course not.” Making a big show of it, she dragged her tongue across the surface of the spatula. “I need to lick it clean first.”
His eyelid twitched.
Giving herself a mental fist-bump, Leah added five points to her total.
“You’re joking, of course.”
“Yes.” Running her finger over one of the flat sides of the utensil, she popped her frosting-laden digit into her mouth. Taking her time cleaning it off, she slowly drew her finger out. Hamilton watched the entire time. Now both of his eyelids were twitching. Leah debated whether that was ten points or twenty-five. Had she just annoyed him doubly or exponentially?
A tiny thread of guilt wove its way through her, as it always did when she talked with him. She wasn’t wired to torment someone, even a person as completely humorless and aggravating as Anthony Fitzgerald Hamilton the Third. Guilt punched holes in the enjoyment she was taking in torturing him, and she caved like an over-proofed loaf of bread. Using the spatula, she waved at the long butcher-block table, where an army of naked cream-filled cupcakes were lined up, waiting to be iced. “I made your favorite.”
His gaze flashed to the unfinished sweets and then back to her, and she saw a spark of red-hot desire that made her own body flare with heat in response. Cool it, she warned herself. Even though he was hugely attractive in an uptight sort of way, and more fit than a man with his sweet tooth had any right to be, Leah needed to nip her lustful impulses toward her landlord in the bud, especially because he wasn’t perving on her. That hunger in his gaze was all for the cupcakes.
She tossed the spatula into the bin of dirty dishes and washed her hands thoroughly, using the time to breathe and remind herself that crushing on her landlord would be a stupid, stupid thing to do. Grabbing a paper towel, she dried her hands and allowed herself to look at Hamilton. She immediately knew it had been a mistake. The raw want was still there, but he’d
pulled it back, covered it with an expression that was almost tentative, like a shy kid who was dying to ask for a treat but was too timid to ask.
Once Hamilton saw that she was looking at him, his face regained its austere lines, but it was too late. Leah had been well and truly turned into mush. “Let me ice one for you.”
“I shouldn’t eat sugar before I run.”
Ignoring the protest, since Hamilton quite obviously didn’t mean it, as he was still staring at the cupcakes with longing, Leah grabbed a clean small metal spatula. “Why not? You’ll burn it off in the first five minutes.” She slathered frosting on top of two of the cupcakes, glanced at Hamilton, and then iced one more. The man ran for two hours every morning, and his fine—and huge—arms and chest meant that he visited the gym a lot, too. He could handle three small cupcakes. “These won’t be as pretty as if I’d used a piping bag, but this is faster.” She swirled the spatula around the top of the third cupcake, noting with satisfaction that the frosting was almost as tall as the cupcake beneath it. “Here you go.”
When Hamilton didn’t move, she picked up the cupcakes—two in one hand and one in the other—and carried them over to him. She held them out as he eyed them with that same mix of bone-deep hunger and wavering self-control he always wore in her bakery, whether in the front during the day or in the kitchen in the pre-dawn hours. Leah wasn’t sure why, but Hamilton had gotten into the habit of stopping by before his morning run. His loft was right above her bakery, and her theory was that he couldn’t resist the smells of the cookies and cakes and croissants. She always fed him when he stopped by, so she was perpetuating the problem. He was her own very rich, very hot, very uptight stray dog.
Finally, his hand reached toward the cupcakes, slowly, as if he was still fighting with himself. Once he took one, though, it was gone in two bites, a look of absolute bliss spreading over his face. As soon as the first one was eaten, he was reaching for the other two. Any hesitancy had disappeared—as did the final cupcakes. As always when she watched Hamilton eat the food she’d made, Leah felt both gratified and startled at the speed at which he consumed her baked goods. He was normally so restrained that, when he finally gave in, it felt as if he lost all control. It always made Leah uncomfortably warm and a little melty inside.
“Thank you.” His words were stilted, his whole body held as stiffly as a G.I. Joe doll. The only thing that revealed his recent slip was a smudge of frosting on his lower lip.
Before she could reconsider, Leah reached out and cupped his chin. He froze as her thumb swept over that bit of frosting. His skin against her palm was hot and rough with stubble, but his lip was silky soft under her thumb. Without thinking, she released him and popped her thumb into her mouth, licking off the stolen taste of frosting before she realized what she’d just done.
Don’t miss Baking Lessons by Katie Allen, available now wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.
www.CarinaPress.com
Copyright © 2018 by Katie Allen
Also available from Katie Allen
and Carina Press
Off Guard: Acting Lessons
Off Guard: Baking Lessons
Research & Desire: Erotic Experiments
Research & Desire: Natural Selection
Research & Desire: Carnal Chemistry
Research & Desire: Double Dose
Also available from Katie Allen
writing as Katie Ruggle
Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue: Hold Your Breath
Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue: Fan the Flames
Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue: Gone Too Deep
Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue: In Safe Hands
Rocky Mountain K9 Unit: Run to Ground
Rocky Mountain K9 Unit: On the Chase
Rocky Mountain K9 Unit: Survive the Night
Rocky Mountain K9 Unit: Through the Fire
Rocky Mountain Cowboy Christmas
About the Author
Katie Allen is the fabulously filthy-minded alter ego of romantic-suspense author Katie Ruggle. She lived in an off-grid, solar-and wind-powered house in the Rocky Mountains until her family lured her back to Minnesota. When she’s not writing, Katie rides horses, shoots guns (target shooting only, since killing anything other than paper makes her ugly-cry), cross-country skis (badly), and travels to warm places where she can scuba dive. A graduate of the police academy, Katie is a self-professed forensics nerd. A fan of anything that makes her feel like a badass, she has trained in Krav Maga, boxing, and gymnastics. You can connect with Katie at katieruggle.com, Facebook.com/ katierugglebooks, or on Twitter @KatieRuggle.
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ISBN-13: 9781488097096
Marriage Lessons
Copyright © 2018 by Katie Allen
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This is a work of fiction. Nam
es, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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