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Seduced on the Red Carpet
Ann Christopher
MILLS & BOON
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Books by Ann Christopher
Kimani Romance
Just About Sex
Sweeter Than Revenge
Tender Secrets
Road to Seduction
Campaign for Seduction
Redemption’s Kiss
Seduced on the Red Carpet
ANN CHRISTOPHER
is a full-time chauffeur for her two overscheduled children. She is also a wife, former lawyer, and decent cook. In between trips to various sporting practices and games, Target and the grocery store, she likes to write the occasional romance novel, always featuring a devastatingly handsome alpha male. She lives in Cincinnati and spends her time with her family, which includes two spoiled rescue cats, Sadie and Savannah, and a rescue hound, Sheldon.
If you’d like to recommend a great book, share a recipe for homemade cake of any kind, or suggest a tip for getting your children to do what you say the first time you say it, Ann would love to hear from you through her Web site, www.AnnChristopher.com.
To Richard
Dear Reader,
Vintner Hunter Chambers of the Chambers Winery is a simple man. A widower, he grows his grapes, makes his wine and raises his daughter. Period. That’s who he is and what he does, and he doesn’t want—or expect—anything else.
Until supermodel Livia Blake steps off the red carpet and into his life.
Suddenly, this enthralling and complicated woman is bewitching everyone in the Napa Valley, including Hunter’s daughter and his dog. Misguided Hunter first thinks that he can ignore his growing feelings for her, and then, when that fails, deludes himself into thinking she’s not the perfect woman for him.
Poor guy! Why does he have to make things so hard on himself?
I hope you enjoy watching Hunter fall so crazy in love he can’t even see straight…
Happy reading!
Ann
Chapter One
Livia Blake consulted her list again and surveyed the small, neatly packed and nondescript suitcase on her bed. No Louis Vuittons for this little trip to Napa Valley, no, siree; if you didn’t have to make a grand entrance to impress the loitering paparazzi, you didn’t need the expensive luggage. Nor did you need twenty bags crammed with false eyelashes, hairpieces, stilettos and tiny little black dresses that showed off your freshly waxed legs, so she hadn’t packed them.
This getaway was, for once, solely for pleasure. No business. At. All.
Ha!
For the next several days, she could—and would—eat and drink whatever the hell she wanted without worrying about fittings and disapproving remarks regarding the amount of junk in her trunk or her buoyant cleavage (all natural, thank you very much) refusing to be strapped into a postage-stamp-sized bathing suit top. There would be no swaggering runway walks for her, no fake smooches with egomaniacal designers and no over-the-top parties filled with airhead celebrities, socialites or steroid-puffed professional athletes trying to get into her panties.
That’s right. She wasn’t traveling to the Chambers Winery as Livia Blake, Supermodel. Until she had to report to Mexico for the photo shoot at the end of the month, she was plain old Livia Blake, civilian. Hallelujah.
But the question was: Had she packed everything?
Back to the list.
Hiking boots? Check. Bug spray? Check. Sweaters for those cool northern-California nights? Check. Also in her bag? A satisfyingly thick wine-tasting book, because she didn’t want to look like an idiot in wine country; her jogging shoes, because, although she wanted to eat and drink while on vacation, she didn’t want to gain thirty pounds while doing so; and her Jackie Robinson biography, which she was finally going to finish. She did love her some baseball.
Did she need thicker socks, though? And should she throw in one nice dress just in case—?
The muffled bleat of her cell phone came from somewhere in the room.
Uh-oh. Where was it?
Scrambling for the remote, she hit Pause on the DVR (she’d been watching The Dog Wrangler in the background and wanted to hear what he had to say about the neurotic poodle with stress incontinence) and listened again. Aha. Nightstand. Unearthing it from beneath a pile of rejected scarves, she saw that it was her friend Rachel Wellesley—probably calling about her flight time and when she’d meet Livia at the winery—and clicked it on.
“What’s up, girl?” Livia said.
There was no reciprocal greeting. Just a direct launch into the purpose of the call. “We might have a problem,” Rachel told her.
It always made Livia nervous when Rachel used that easy-breezy tone. “Problem as in you broke a fingernail or problem with the trip?”
During the long pause that followed, Livia saw all of her vacation hopes—the walks along the river to enjoy the fall foliage, the five-star accommodations, the wine tastings—go up in a spectacular plume of black smoke.
After a good two or three beats, Rachel cleared her throat, an additional stall tactic that didn’t fool Livia for a second. “Possibly with the trip.”
Oh, no. No, no, no. NOOOOOO. No one was going to rain on her parade and spoil the first official vacation she’d had in years. “Spit it out, Rach.”
“We can’t come,” said Rachel.
“What?”
“Not yet, but—”
“Why not?”
“—we want you to go ahead anyway. We’ll meet you there when filming’s finished.”
“Filming was supposed to be finished today.”
“Trust me, I know. But what can we do? And like I said, you go on ahead. Start without us.”
Wow. She had a comedian on her hands. “Will you kindly explain how I’m supposed to start without you when the whole purpose of this little trip is for you to see your fiancé’s family winery and decide if you want to get married there? Do you want me to try on wedding dresses