Some people might say getting married on Valentine's Day is the height of romance, but for divorce lawyer and romance cynic Kiara Hastings it's the height of cliché. But as her sister's maid of honour she must suffer through the cake tastings and tulle. Until an encounter with a sexy gardener leads to a red-hot fling that promises to make the wedding preparations more pleasurable. Kiara is stunned when the man who made her scream with pleasure is introduced to her later as Ashton Cromwell, the groom's brother and the best man!
Ashton agrees to keep their sexy secret and wants to continue enjoying their mind-blowing chemistry behind closed bedroom doors. Since his divorce, Ashton has earned himself a playboy reputation, and when it seems like having Kiara on his arm could be good for business, he proposes a fake relationship until the wedding is over.
But as Valentine's Day approaches, these two romance cynics find they're not immune to all the love in the air, and that their pretence is starting to feel all too real…
Chapter One
If Kiara didn't love her sole sibling, Alice, so much, she could've happily shoved the cake decorator's face into the ridiculously pretty cupcakes.
"What do you think, Miss Hastings? The ginger spice, caramel apple, tropical guava or hazelnut almond?" The decorator handed her yet another plate covered in dainty cakes. "Or perhaps you'd like to try the key lime and pink champagne?"
Kiara would prefer a bottle of bubbly over the fancy-schmancy cake samples. That way, she could drink the entire thing and forget the horrors of the upcoming Valentine's Day wedding.
Being a maid of honour sucked.
There was a reason she was the most sought-after divorce lawyer in Melbourne. She abhorred nuptials and all they entailed. Like stuffing her face with overly rich, ornately frosted cake that would probably last longer than her sister's marriage.
Alice touched her arm. "What do you think, sis?"
Seeing the glint of anxiety in Alice's eyes, Kiara forced a smile. "I love the ginger spice."
"Me, too." Alice visibly brightened and turned to the decorator. "We'll go with that one in the design Greg and I already chose."
"Excellent." The decorator flipped open a folder. "Now, what do you think about presentation—"
Kiara took that as her cue to flee. She needed to escape before she exploded in a cloud of sparkles, bling and frosting.
"I'll leave you to it," she said, dropping a kiss on Alice's cheek before bolting through the French doors and into the garden, not giving her sister a chance to protest.
Bad enough she'd had to finish work an hour early to do cake tasting; she didn't want to be roped into any other last-minute maid of honour duties. After wrangling a particularly acrimonious divorce earlier, she was plumb out of wedding warm and fuzzies.
A quick walk around the immaculate gardens of the Toorak mansion, home to the Cromwells, Alice's future in-laws and the venue for the ceremony in two weeks, to clear her head and she'd bid Alice goodbye.
But she'd barely made it around the corner of the pool house when her steps slowed, her gaze snagged by an expanse of bare skin.
A guy on his knees, his shirtless back glistening in the waning sun, the muscles shifting and bunching beneath tanned skin as his hands delved in the dirt. His movements were fierce, almost primitive, as he shovelled dirt out of the way and shook weeds loose.
Then he straightened and she hissed out a breath, the front view as appealing as the back. Broad shoulders, impressive biceps, defined pecs and the right smattering of dark hair arrowing lower.
He stood, stretched, and Kiara couldn't look away. It had been two months since her last date, five months since she'd last had sex. She needed this. It was therapeutic. Like watching Magic Mike on repeat.
When the gardener turned and shot her a knowing grin she realised her mistake. He'd seen her ogling him, reflected in the pool house window.
"See anything you like?" His eyebrow arched in provocation, framing the wicked glint in his hazel eyes.
Kiara never backed down, ever. So she matched his imperious eyebrow arch and raised him another. "I've seen better."
He laughed, the low, thrilling timbre making her thighs clamp. "You interested in gardening?"
Absolutely not. But after faking enthusiasm through dress fittings, table settings and the search for the perfect shoe, she needed to reassert her antiromance stance.
Starting with a little healthy flirtation with the hottest guy she'd had the luck to encounter in a long time.
So she nodded, her mouth dry and her pulse hammering as he stalked towards her, all glistening muscles and eager stride.
For him, she could be interested in anything
Chapter Two
Ashton stopped two feet short of the bold redhead staring at him like she hadn't seen a semi-naked guy before. Her big blue eyes roved over him with blatant appreciation and he almost flexed his biceps in a double cobra to tease.
"What interests you about gardening in particular?"
This close, he could see a light dusting of freckles on her nose, their innocence at odds with the knowing glint in her eyes. "The tools? The plants?"
He leaned closer to murmur in her ear. "Or getting down and dirty?"
She sighed, a soft, needy sound that shot straight to his groin. He'd always had a thing for redheads.
"Tease all you like. I've had a bad day." She laid a hand on his chest, the heat from her palm branding him, before she shoved him away.
"Boyfriend troubles?"
She shot him a scathing glare that would've made a lesser man back away. "Wedding troubles."
Too bad. They could've had fun, of the horizontal kind. "You're getting hitched?"
"Oh, no." She grimaced. "I'm not that stupid."
He laughed, liking her more by the minute. "A woman after my own heart."
She stared at him with new appreciation. "Marriage is for suckers."
"You won't get any argument from me. Divorced?"
"I'm a divorce lawyer," she said, squaring her shoulders as if about to enter court for battle.
"Fierce. I like it." An exotic fragrance, like frangipani with a hint of musk, wafted over him and he took a step closer. "So how do you blow off steam after a bad day?"
"Wine. Ice cream. Channing Tatum."
He rolled his eyes. "Everyone knows exercise is the best way to de-stress."
Their gazes locked, his daring, hers startled, like she didn't quite know what he meant.
So he made it clearer by snagging her hand and running it down his sweaty chest, starting at his throat and ending just short of his waistband, where she'd feel clear evidence of exactly what kind of exercise he meant.
"I guess the only questions remaining are exactly how stressed you are and how much exercise you need to unwind."
Tilting her chin up, her lush crimson mouth eased into a wicked grin. "By exercise, you mean a roll in the rose petals?"
He loved a sense of humour almost as much as a curvy body. "If that's what turns you on."
She dipped a finger beneath his waistband and he inhaled sharply. "You have no idea what turns me on, hot stuff, but you're about to find out."
Chapter Three
Hot stuff? Could she get any more cringe-worthy? The wedding hoopla was sending Kiara crazy but had she actually called the gardener hot stuff?
Bad enough she couldn't keep her hands off him and imagined riding him behind the pool house. His fault. He'd started with the overt flirting and she'd run with it. Not that she was complaining. Copping a feel of his hard, sweaty chest had made her palm tingle with wanting to caress him all over.
She didn't come on to strangers usually but the divorce earlier had kicked her ass and the mindless cake tasting had pushed her over the edge.
Would it be so bad to have this gorgeous specimen of manhood push her over the edge in a different way?
"Bold, I like it." He stilled her hand and slid it higher up his abdomen. "But can you follow through?"
"Maybe." She patted the ridges of his six-pack in blatant appreciation before removing her hand. If she didn't stop touching him she'd be in danger of following through with her horny thoughts. "Though I'm not in the habit of having sex with strangers."
His slow, sexy smile turned her insides to treacle, warm and viscous, dulling her common sense. "But we're not strangers. You're a divorce lawyer who hates weddings and I hate weddings, too."
He snapped his fingers. "See? We have so much in common already."
"Hmm…" She tapped her bottom lip, pretending to think, trying not to show how much she enjoyed sparring with him. She loved a guy with a killer sense of humour. "What's your stance on romance?"
His nose crinkled, doing little to detract from his handsome face. "It's for suckers."
Another tick in his favour. "What about Valentine's Day?"
He grabbed at his throat and pretended to gag. "Commercialised rubbish. Makes me want to puke."
"Good answer." She folded her arms, studying him with renewed interest. "I think you're the male version of me."
"See? That roll in the rose petals, as you so delicately put it, is inevitable." He reached out and touched her arm, starting at her shoulder and trailing a fingertip slowly down to her wrist. "Fate."
"I don't believe in it. We control our own destiny," she said, her breath hitching as he slipped his thumb into her palm and stroked it in lazy, concentric circles that sent heat flowing through her.
"Are you in control now?"
He stepped in close, the intoxicating blend of citrus aftershave and sweat making her want to bury her face into his chest and inhale.
"Totally," she murmured, making a mockery of her bold declaration when she let out an embarrassing yelp as he nuzzled her neck, nipping at the tender skin with small, precise bites designed to tease.
"What about now?"
His hands rested on her waist, spanning it easily, before tugging her towards him until she could feel hard evidence of how far he wanted to take this flirtation.
"One hard-on isn't going to make me lose control."
She flung it out there as a challenge, well aware guys loved nothing better.
Because she'd come to a decision. This may have started out as a bit of lighthearted banter to take the edge off her lousy day but being visually bombarded by his hotness, followed up by feeling him and smelling him…her body had overruled her logical brain for once.
What better way to rid herself of romance and weddings and all that hearts-and-flowers rubbish than by having hot, meaningless sex with a stranger?
Chapter Four
What was it about this woman that had Ashton so turned on he couldn't keep his hands off her?
He knew why she was here. Considering the extent of the Cromwell fortune, of course they'd hire a lawyer to draw up a pre-nup before the marriage of their son.
So what was she doing wandering the gardens in search of…fun?
The last thing he expected today while blowing off steam in the garden was to be challenged by a daring woman intent on blowing something else.
"My hard-on doesn't do it for you?" He pressed against her, the widening of her eyes and her subtle inhalation telling him more than her bold words could.
She was turned on, same as him.
"I'm sure it's very impressive," she said, taking a tiny step back so their pelvises lost contact. "But I wouldn't want to distract you from your duties."
Laughter played about her lush mouth and mischief danced in her eyes. She liked toying with him. The least he could do was return the favour.
"You're not distracting me at all," he said, injecting enough indifference into his tone to disarm her. "Didn't you know, one of my main duties is to plough?"
A guffaw burst from her mouth. "That is so lame."
"Yet you laughed." Eager to feel more of her, his hands slipped from her waist to her ass. Taut. Rounded. Perfect. "I think we both know wordplay is a great segue into foreplay."
"You're awfully cocky."
"When you check out the size of that hard-on you seem so obsessed with, you'll see why."
She laughed again, a purely natural reaction filled with joy. Not many women laughed like that; not the women he dated anyway. Then again, since his divorce none of them lasted longer than a week so perhaps they put on a front like he did and he'd never had a chance to see beneath it.
"Are we really going to do this?" Her smile faded; the determined glint in her steady gaze didn't. "I mean, I'm all for risqué public garden sex, but what about you?"
She loved being in control; he could see it in the defiant tilt of her chin, in the brazen way she stared him down. He recognised the signs of a fellow control freak, which begged the question, who'd relinquish first when they got naked?
"You had me at risqué," he said, stepping away to offer his hand.
He glimpsed a momentary hesitation, the scantest flicker of wariness in her eyes, before she blinked, flashed him a coy smile and placed her hand in his.