again. What, did he have X-ray vision? Jenna ran, and the sound of footsteps quickened. He caught up with her as she rounded the corner of the next street.
“Kathryn said you’d resist helping, but she didn’t tell me you were crazy,” he said over her shoulder, and something about the perplexed tone of his voice made Jenna stop and look at him.
He was even more gorgeous in person without his features distorted by the peephole. Up close, he was half a foot taller than her, and he stood with the kind of assurance that suggested he was accustomed to being in charge. Jenna’s fear was suddenly overcome with a pang of desire. Wow, did she ever need to pay more attention to her love life, if her would-be assassin was suddenly turning her on.
His clothes—a navy wool sport coat, an open-collared white oxford and a pair of beige summer wool slacks—were tailored, expensive. The way they fit, the way he looked so carefully put together, gave Jenna the urge to muss him up.
He was studying her, probably trying to make sense of the differences between herself and her high-society identical twin. “You are Jenna Calvert, right?”
Jenna kept her hair long and dyed various shades of red—this month it was Auburn Fire—while Kathryn had always been fond of short debutante haircuts in their natural blond color. And Jenna had always asserted her independence and uniqueness from her twin through her wild wardrobe, while Kathryn’s taste tended toward the classic and exorbitantly priced.
“Yes,” she said, secretly thrilled that she’d managed to distinguish herself from her identical twin so well.
“I’m Travis Roth. It’s good to finally meet you.” He withdrew a business card from his pocket and offered it to her. Jenna took it and read the raised black lettering on a tasteful white linen card. Travis Roth, CEO, Roth Investments.
Whoopee. Any bozo could get business cards made up and call himself a CEO.
Jenna stuck it in her pocket.
“What color are Kathryn’s bridesmaid dresses going to be?”
“Excuse me?”
“The colors in the wedding—dresses, flowers, everything. If you know that, I’ll talk to you.”
He appeared to be giving the matter some thought. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”
Jenna wished she’d remembered to grab a kitchen knife on the way out the window. “If you know Kathryn, you’d know what colors are in her wedding.”
A look of understanding softened his features. “Some kind of purple? Lavender, right?”
Lavender was Kathryn’s signature color. Ever since they were kids, she’d worn lavender, while Jenna’d had to wear identical outfits in pink. But that was one of their many differences—Kathryn had embraced being dressed up as a sideshow act by their mother, while Jenna had hated every moment of it. She still couldn’t look at the color pink without feeling slightly nauseated.
Kathryn could never understand why Jenna had felt the need to differentiate herself from her twin with wild clothes and different hair colors, while Jenna couldn’t understand her twin’s obsession with being one of an identical pair.
“Okay, so what’s your connection to my sister and her wedding?”
“I’m her fiancé’s brother, and I’ll explain everything if you’ll just give me a half hour of your time.”
Her curiosity was piqued now that she had some assurance this Travis guy wasn’t a hardened criminal. What sort of urgent matter could bring Kathryn to turn to Jenna for help? And why had she sent her fiancé’s brother to talk to her?
She looked Travis up and down. Okay, considering his sex appeal, he was a pretty good messenger. She could stand to spend a half hour with him, though she could think of much more interesting things to do with him than talk about Kathryn and her prenuptial problems.
“I’ll listen, if you’ll buy lunch,” she said, her stomach rumbling because she’d skipped breakfast. “There’s a diner around the corner.”
TRAVIS DID HIS VERY BEST to focus on the business at hand, but Jenna Calvert had thrown him completely off track. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Yes, Kathryn had described her as a rebellious type, as someone who liked to shock others and be contrary just for the sake of conflict, but she hadn’t mentioned how damn sexy Jenna would be.
A waitress with three nose rings and threads of purple in her braided hair arrived to take their order, and Travis tried to take his mind off Jenna long enough to choose a lunch. His gaze landed on meat loaf, and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever even tasted it, but he’d seen it on TV and decided that’s what he was having.
“I’ll have the meat loaf, and…” Certainly wine wasn’t the appropriate beverage. “Iced tea.”
“You want green tea or black?” This was San Francisco, after all.
“Green will be fine.”
He caught himself staring at Jenna’s lush pink lips as she placed her own order for a cheeseburger, chili fries and a chocolate shake, and when the waitress disappeared, he forced his gaze back to Jenna’s eyes.
The gorgeous redhead had managed in the space of ten minutes to muddle his thoughts and set his senses on high alert. It took a monumental effort to keep from letting his gaze fall even lower than her sensuous mouth to the front of her tight black tank top—to keep from thinking about the fact that she apparently wasn’t wearing a bra.
And curse the guy who invented bras if all women could look like that without them.
She wasn’t even remotely his type. Her look wasn’t classic Coco Chanel, as he’d always preferred, but rather rebel-without-a-Nordstrom-card. With her dyed burgundy hair; her short, unpolished fingernails and her tight, faded jeans, she was about as opposite to Kathryn Calvert as she could get and still be the woman’s twin sister.
When he looked into her ice-blue eyes, he saw sparks of fire that weren’t present in her sister’s. Perhaps Jenna had spirit, something he suspected lacking in Kathryn. Travis was undeniably intrigued by this wilder twin, and he was curious to know her in spite of his suspicion that she probably had a tattoo hiding somewhere on her body.
Where and what that tattoo might be—the possibilities were endless. A little red rose on the satin skin of her inner thigh, or a tiny heart hiding beneath her panties…Whoa, mama.
What on earth was going on here? He didn’t like tattoos, and he didn’t even know if Jenna had one. But she certainly had his imagination in the gutter all of a sudden.
There was no sense in fantasizing about Kathryn’s bad-girl twin anyway, because if she agreed to his offer—and he knew she would—then she would be transformed in the next few days into an exact replica of her sister. It was his unwelcome job to make that happen.
Jenna sat across from him with her elbows propped on the table, her slender arms sporting two chunky bracelets in various stones and faux gems, displaying an utter lack of grace that Travis found oddly charming. As he explained his acquaintance with Kathryn Calvert and her engagement to his younger brother, Blake, she listened closely, never taking her gaze away from his eyes.
But
