look at her now and see her as she’d appeared on that Sports Illustrated cover when she was nineteen: sun-kissed and dewy, wearing a white triangle scrap of a bikini bottom with the strings undone and dangling on one side, and a loopy crocheted top that displayed every inch of her upper body—except for her nipples—in vivid detail. She’d had her windblown hair in her face, her hips cocked to one side, her lips and thighs parted, and sand dusted across one side of her body while the blue waters off Fiji lapped in the distance.
She’d been a young dingbat then, but as beautiful as she’d ever been—or probably ever would be—in her life. This man, whoever he was, remembered all that. He’d looked at that cover shot and now thought he knew her, but he knew nothing about the girl inside that shell.
Men never did, and she was used to their snap judgments.
What she wasn’t used to was the responsive curl of heat in her belly and the tug she felt toward this jerk, as though she’d been secretly magnetized and he was the North Pole.
Shake it off, girl.
“You might know who I am,” she said, painfully aware that her Georgia accent was thickening the way it always did when she was upset, so that might became maht and I became Ah, “but you don’t know me. I don’t travel with an entourage when my job doesn’t require it, and I only brought one suitcase.” She snatched it up from the ground before he could touch it again. “And I will carry it myself.”
Propelled by her wounded dignity, she stalked off toward the house, well aware of the surprised widening of his eyes. She’d put several feet between him and his mangy dog when he spoke again.
“Whatever you want.”
The subtle mockery made something snap in her brain, covering her vision with red. Halfway to a graceful exit, she discovered that she couldn’t let this jackass have the last word. It just wasn’t in her.
So she marched back up to stand in his face, suitcase in tow, and pointed her free index finger right at his perfectly straight nose. “You’re very rude,” she informed him. “You better believe I’m going to complain to the owners about you.”
To her further annoyance, this pronouncement only amused him, if the slow smile creeping across his face was any indication. “You do that,” he said. “They’ve had problems with me before. Make sure you tell them my name’s J.R.”
It would have been so nice to smack that wicked smirk right off his face and teach him a thing or two about the right way to treat a) women and b) paying guests, but that would have required moving and she found she couldn’t do that. There was something so sexy about this man, so unabashedly masculine and unaffected, that he made her breath hitch and her heartbeat stutter. And that was something that athletes, actors and rock stars alike hadn’t been able to do to her in more years than she cared to remember.
The amusement slipped off his face, leaving something altogether more disturbing and intense. Something that, as the old folks liked to say back home, scared the stuffing out of her.
Time to go, Livia.
Pivoting, she walked off toward the house.
The dog scrambled to his feet and ambled along after her.
Chapter Two
Man, what a day.
Hunter Chambers Jr. edged the pickup onto the road and beneath the cool tunnel created by the elms’ outstretched branches overhead, heading home after a quick trip to the neighbor’s winery. Rolling all the windows down, he enjoyed the rush of air on his overheated face and arms, although the refreshment came at a steep price: now he could smell himself. It wasn’t pretty. Atop the mild funk of clean sweat was the not-so-clean aroma of mud. What a winning combination that was. It was like he’d rolled several miles in the muck rather than merely walked the vines, picked a few bunches of cabernet—almost ready now; another couple days should do it—and carried the load on his head.
Braking as he went into a switchback, he slid the baseball cap back and swiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Mistake. Big mistake. A glance in the rearview mirror showed an unfortunate brown streak across his skin, adding to the general pigpen effect.
Nasty.
Just the way he liked it.
There was nothing like a hard day outside from dawn to dusk to make him feel like he’d done something, and the sweat and dirt were badges he wore with honor. You couldn’t grow grapes sitting nice and clean in the airconditioned inside—no, siree. Today had been especially productive, especially grueling, and he couldn’t be more pleased.
Especially since he’d worked off some of the agitation caused by that woman this morning.
Livia Blake—aka Trouble with a capital T.
Having put her out of his mind only through a lot of sweat equity, he wasn’t going to think about her now. No, he wasn’t. He would keep his mind on, ah…he’d keep his mind on…
Oh, yeah. Shower.
Yeah. An emergency shower was in his immediate future; possibly two. And then it’d be time to open a nice bottle of—
Holy shit.
He came out of the curve and had to cut the wheel hard and stomp the break to keep from plowing into a stupid-ass biker stopped on the shoulder. Hell, it wasn’t even the shoulder. Biker and bike were standing on the edge of the road, which was where you hung out when your fondest wish was to be launched three hundred feet into the air and then smashed into roadkill beneath the tires of an oncoming truck.
The biker dropped the bike and jumped aside, way too late, with a shouted “Hey!”
Dumbass. Like he was the reckless one. And Hunter would have been at fault if he’d hit the idiot and culled a weak and clearly stupid member from the herd. Was that fair? Giving the horn a furious honk, he glanced in the side mirror to see if the fool needed help and that was when he realized who it was.
Oh, shit.
It was her. Livia Blake. Trouble.
His gut lurched with a crazy excitement that had nothing to do with playing the Good Samaritan and everything to do with her. Keep going, he told himself, but the damn truck was already reversing as though it’d been caught by an invisible tail hook and reeled in. A smarter man would’ve sent someone back for her, but he and smart hadn’t been on speaking terms since he laid eyes on the woman that morning.
Stopping the truck properly on the shoulder, where all stopped vehicles belonged, he got out and took his time about walking back to her. Like the worst kind of Peeping Tom, he sent up a quick prayer of thanksgiving that his shades allowed him to study her with something like discretion. Which was shameful, especially for a man who had a mother and a small daughter. Women were not objects, and they should not be ogled. He was ashamed of himself. Truly. Deep down—deep, deep, deep down—in the farthest reaches of his soul, he felt like pond scum for checking her out so thoroughly. God would probably punish him later, and he’d deserve it.
He stared anyway.
That was the funny thing, not that it was really funny. He’d been aware of Livia
