It was the result of repainting the interior of her bakery, without question the most grueling labor she had ever done. She had chosen an absolutely posh shade of pink. Okay, after four whole days of doing nothing but working with it, it was not nearly as appealing as she found it at first, but that was perfectly understandable.
And she really didn’t care for it as a fashion accessory, but she reminded herself firmly, no sacrifice was too great to make for her bakery, and for her successful entrance into the Miracle Harbor business community. She had been given a brand-new chance. A brand-new life, really, and what was a little pink paint in the face of that?
Bang, bang, bang.
If whoever that was didn’t quit knocking on the door, she was going to scream. Except maybe successful business people weren’t allowed to scream.
She’d settle for leveling them with a look, whoever was at her door, impertinently ignoring her request for just a little more time. No doubt it was the escort, rounded up for her by her sister, Abby. With the bakery reopening next week, Brit simply never had enough time anymore for anything.
So, how had Abby found time between her seamstress job, and raising a baby, and getting married to find a date for her sister for the wedding?
Given Abby’s schedule, Brit thought it would be unreasonable on her part to expect much for an escort. How humiliating, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, being subjected to her first blind date. How dreadful that for her first Miracle Harbor social outing her companion for the evening might be less than stellar. Old. Ugly. What if he was wrinkled?
On the other hand, this was Miracle Harbor.
Look what had happened to Abby.
What if the very same thing happened to her? What if, within a week of arriving here, Brit met him. The one. Her very own Prince Charming to escort her to the ball, and through life ever after.
With one last resigned glance in the mirror, and one more sigh about the paint, she whirled and moved determinedly in the direction of her front door. She tried not to notice how humble the furnishings of her apartment were, tried not to see them through the eyes of her escort. Her place was an apartment above the bakery and it had come furnished. On her best days she could see that as a blessing, on her worst she hated to think about the rump that had left that worn dent on the fading sofa.
“Oh,” she muttered to herself, “he’ll probably be too decrepit and wrinkled to even notice anything beyond me.” And my pink paint, she added wryly to herself.
He banged again. The click of her high heels might have conveyed just a touch of her impatience, but she pasted a cool smile on her face before she flung open her front door.
“I said just a min—” her voice stopped in her throat. “You.”
Was he going to show up every single time she contemplated wedded bliss? Did that mean something?
It meant the pink paint, and the furniture mattered.
She stepped out onto the narrow wooden landing with the delightful view of Main Street’s back alley, and pulled the door mostly closed behind her.
He looked down at her, and for a moment she was so mesmerized by his eyes that she was frozen. They were a shade of blue that reminded her of a sleepy ocean on a hot day.
“I’m Mitch Hamilton,” he said, in that voice, a voice that could make a perfectly proper girl like her think very naughty thoughts of exactly what being married meant.
It meant his lips and his hands claiming her, holding her, owning her. It meant that deep voice in her ear growling incredible endearments. It meant waking up to his face every single morning, the sharp hollows of his cheeks shadowed with whiskers.
“Mitch Hamilton,” he said again, faintly bemused.
She drew herself up short, stunned at where her thoughts had gone, stunned by the force of the attraction, stunned to see nothing reciprocated in those ocean eyes.
Miracle Harbor or not, she decided, she was not making a fool of herself over any man.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said formally, diamond-edged ice in her voice.
Still, despite the small victory over her voice, she could not look away. It wasn’t just that he was compellingly handsome, or that he, of course, looked unnervingly perfect, in a navy blue suit with a fine pinstripe. Custom tailored, she guessed, to encompass the immense broadness of those shoulders. He had on a crisp white silk shirt, that made his skin look bronze and sun-warmed, a dark tie, the knot perfect and square. His legs were long, the slacks just hinted at the ridged cut of a very muscular thigh.
He looked every inch the successful man. Still, for all that sophistication, for all the obvious expense of the suit, she still saw it there. A glint in those amazing eyes that hinted at a part of him untamed. Perhaps even untamable?
Inwardly, she wondered how Abby could do this to her. She suddenly found herself wishing for what had moments ago seemed like it would be her worst nightmare. Someone old and wrinkled and ugly.
A man she could handle with one arm tied behind her back, and several gallons of paint splashed over herself.
But this man…he was a man out of a dream. Handsome. Well-made. Oozing male confidence and subtle sensuality. He was the kind of man who simply took a woman’s breath away, made her go weak with strange and forbidden longings.
And she had pink paint in her hair, and reptilian spots all over her arms. Which, to give her credit, Abby didn’t know about.
Yet.
“How could she do this to me?” she murmured, to herself, but out loud this time. She gave her head a rueful shake, hoping to clear the spell she was floundering under and become herself. Cosmopolitan. Sophisticated. Witty. In control.
“Pardon?” He took a step back and glanced hopefully for an apartment number, as if he were suddenly wishing he was in the wrong place.
There was no number. Hers was just one set of stairs in a long line of them that came up from the back lane to the stuffy little apartments located over the main street businesses.
“Are you Brittany? Brittany Patterson?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I’m sorry. Who did what to you?” He cocked an eyebrow at her, tilted his head.
“My sister. You.”
“My father, Jordan Hamilton, asked me if I would escort you to your sister’s wedding,” he said with a certain stiff dignity.
She realized he had been roped into the task of escorting her to Abby’s wedding. And that he obviously was not nearly as swayed by her, as she was by him.
Adjectives kept running through her head, as she gazed helplessly at him. Gorgeous. Stunning. Dazzling.
Because she wanted more than anything else for him to want to take her to her sister’s wedding. And because that made her feel weak and silly, and the way she least liked to feel—vulnerable—she said, “I’m sure everyone’s intentions were great, but I certainly don’t need an escort. I’m quite happy to go by myself.”
His eyes narrowed and she felt a funny shiver go down her spine as she recognized that his will was at least as strong as hers. Perhaps, heaven forbid, stronger.
“My orders are to get you to the church on time.” He slid back an impeccable sleeve and glanced at a watch. A Rolex watch. “Which means we have to leave. Now.”
She noticed again his voice, deep-timbred, even more sensual with that note of implacable sternness in it. But for all the smooth confidence of his voice that same hint of something wild ran at the edges of it.
Of course, the