“Ally,” Chris whispered, the sound slowly filtering though the erotic haze around her, and she shivered at hearing her name on his lips.
She opened her eyes to find him staring intently at her, his fingers still tangled in her hair and his thumbs gently stroking her temples.
“If you plan on actually having dinner tonight, we should probably stop.” His fingers slid out of her hair; a rueful smile played on his lips.
Dinner? She didn’t give a tinker’s damn about dinner. The only thing she was hungry for was the man plastered against her like some kind of fantasy in the flesh.
Chris shifted his weight and Ally tightened her grip to keep him from moving away. Indecision nibbled at her. She should let him go. A lifetime’s experience of responsibility and rationality told her to backtrack to the getting-to-know-you steps they’d leapfrogged over with that kiss.
I don’t want to.
The realization shook her to the soles of her plain brown sandals. Her sandals that were practical, boring, and suddenly symbolic of her entire existence. She didn’t even have sexy, pretty shoes in her life—much less men like Chris.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, dithering with herself. When she looked up to meet his eyes she saw the heat and the question there, and her decision became crystal-clear.
“I’m not in the least bit hungry. But if you are I do know a place that delivers to my hotel.”
Dear Reader
My home has a deep philosophical divide. It doesn’t stem from the fact that my husband is an engineer and I’m a writer, or even the fact that he’s British and I’m American. No, our home is deeply divided over the fundamental nature and purpose of boats. I firmly believe that boats should have powerful motors so they can go very fast, preferably while they pull a water skier, and he thinks boats should have sails. There’s no easy way to meet in the middle on that one.
I have to admit, though, there is something amazingly romantic about a sailboat, and it was easy enough for me to identify with my heroine, Ally, when she fell in love with a sailor. Ally and I also share an ignorance about all things sailboat-related, so I’m deeply indebted to my husband, my father-in-law Jayk, my baby brother-in-law Jono, and Jay Cook from the Charleston Ocean Racing Association for their help with the sailing technicalities of this book. Any mistakes you find are mine—they tried very hard to educate me, but my learning curve was steep.
Ally and Chris were so much fun to write—I just loved their chemistry and spark. I hope you find it as easy to fall in love with Chris as I did—ahem, I mean Ally. Ally falls in love with Chris.
(And, you know, the whole sailboat thing is really starting to grow on me…)
Happy Reading!
Kimberly
Kimberly Lang hid romance novels behind her textbooks in junior high, and even a Master’s programme in English couldn’t break her obsession with dashing heroes and happily ever after. A ballet dancer turned English teacher, Kimberly married an electrical engineer and turned her life into an ongoing episode of When Dilbert Met Frasier. She and her Darling Geek live in beautiful North Alabama with their one Amazing Child—who, unfortunately, shows an aptitude for sports.
Visit Kimberly at www.booksbykimberly.com for the latest news—and don’t forget to say hi while you’re there!
Recent titles by the same author:
THE MILLIONAIRE’S MISBEHAVING MISTRESS
THE SECRET MISTRESS ARRANGEMENT
MAGNATE’S MISTRESS…ACCIDENTALLY PREGNANT!
BY
KIMBERLY LANG
To my beautiful, clever, and all-around
Amazing Child—although it will be many years
before you are old enough to read this book
(thirty, at least, if your father has any say in the matter), let me remind you that tonight, at dinner, you told me you wanted to be a romance writer like me when you grew up because it was ‘cool’.
You know what? I think you’re cool, too, and you can be
anything you want to be when you grow up—
well, except maybe a flamingo.
CHAPTER ONE
NOTE TO SELF: never prepay your honeymoon.
Ally Smith sat on the beach under a tattered umbrella nursing her watered-down piña colada and wondered why that caveat didn’t make it into any of the wedding planning books. Probably because no one plans a wedding with escape clauses.
She should write her own book for brides-to-be. She’d definitely include a chapter on cancellation clauses, the folly of prepayments and how to mitigate the financial toll of lost deposits. Oh, and some fun stuff like how to build a nifty bonfire with three hundred monogrammed cocktail napkins.
And a chapter on how to know you’re marrying the wrong guy.
She dug her toes into the warm sand and watched the sailboats bobbing on the waves as they made their way into and out of the marina just down the beach. Why hadn’t she pushed harder for the trip to Australia where she could at least be snow skiing right now? June in Oz was supposed to be fabulous. Why had she let Gerry talk her into this when they lived just twenty minutes from the Georgia coast—a popular honeymoon destination in and of itself? She could go to the beach anytime she wanted. She didn’t have to fly to the Caribbean for sand and surf.
Because I was too happy to finally be engaged.
In the four months since she’d happened home at lunchtime to find Gerry having a nooner with their travel agent—which explained why he’d insisted they use her to begin with, and probably also why Ally was booked into the worst hotel on the island—she’d come to realize some hard truths: she’d picked good looks and charm over substance, and she should have dumped Gerry-the-sorry-bastard four years ago.
Now, two days into her “honeymoon,” she was bored out of her mind.
“Is this seat taken, pretty lady?”
The low, gruff voice pulled her out of her reverie. Shading her eyes from the late-afternoon sun, she turned to find the source of the question.
And nearly spit out her drink as she ended up eye level with the smallest swimming trunks ever made, straining over a body they were never designed to grace.
In any decent movie, the voice would have belonged to a handsome tennis pro with a tan and bulging biceps. This was her life, though, so while her admirer did sport a tan, his body bulged in all the wrong places—like over the waistband of his Speedo. Ally bit her lip as her eyes moved upward, past the gold chain tangling in his furry chest hair to the three-day salt-and-pepper stubble, the ridiculous iridescent blue wraparound sunglasses and wide-brimmed Panama hat.
She was being hit on by a bad cliché. This horrible vacation experience was now complete. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You look like you could use some company. How about we have a drink and get to know each other?” Without waiting for her response, the man lowered himself into the adjacent lounge chair, took off his sunglasses and stuck out his hand. “Fred Alexander.”
With no excuse to deny the tenets of her proper Southern upbringing, she shook the proffered hand. The palm was damp. He held