How To Host A Seduction

“You’re brilliant.”

Christopher complimented Ellen. Then he kissed her. One solid kiss on the lips before he shot her that dimpled grin. That grin that made her stomach flip-flop. That grin that made her realize just how much she liked having him kiss her.

That craving again.

Leaning across the table, she kissed him back.

Christopher’s reaction was much more impressive than hers had been. Before she could back away he’d driven his fingers into her hair, locking her against him so he could kiss her once more. A real kiss.

His tongue plunged into her mouth, stealing her breath. Her insides swooped again and her thighs tingled. The only thing she could say was that kissing him back sparked her craving as if she’d tossed a lighted match into a puddle of gas.

Their tongues tangled with urgency. She grew dizzier and giddier as the tabletop cut into her rib cage. Or perhaps it was only his kiss that crushed the breath from her lungs. Either way, Ellen knew she had to have him…now.

Dear Reader,

I lived half my life quite happily north of the Mason-Dixon Line and even have the accent to prove it, which most people catch when I ask for a cup of coffee. Then I moved south and discovered that while I may be a Yankee by birth, I’m a Southern belle at heart. Something about the Deep South just captivates me…and writing One-Night Man, Blaze #42, set in the Big Easy, only sparked my desire to write a romance that took me into the sultry bayous south of New Orleans.

Enter Ellen and Christopher. Ellen is a romance editor who doesn’t believe heroes exist off the written page. Christopher Sinclair is a savvy businessman…a real-live hero who is determined to prove her wrong. To make his case, he has developed a strategy that breaks all the rules, a strategy he calls red-hot pursuit….

Blaze is the place to explore spicy romance, a place where you’ll find steamy journeys to happily ever after. I hope How To Host a Seduction brings you to happily-ever-after, too. Let me know. Drop me a line in care of Harlequin Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada, or visit my Web site at www.jeanielondon.com.

Very truly yours,

Jeanie London

How to Host a Seduction

Jeanie London

For the gypsy.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Prologue

SEX HAD ONLY CLINCHED THE DEAL.

Making love to Ellen Talbot had just proven what Christopher Sinclair had suspected since first meeting this remarkable romance editor at a friend’s wedding—no woman had ever affected him like she did. No woman had ever come close.

Ellen left his heart thundering, his muscles vibrating so hard that he collapsed against the sheets, unable to do much more than press his shell-shocked erection into the cradle of her warm thighs and try to catch his breath. His thoughts raced with the singularity of the event and just how shattering making love to her had been. Their first time. Damn.

Locking his arms around her, Christopher savored the feel of her bare curves, her long, long legs tangled with his, their skin clinging in a thin sheen of sweat. He’d never even realized he could feel the way he felt when he was with her.

The lack had nothing to do with experience. He’d just celebrated his thirty-third birthday and could honestly say he’d lived most of those years, had explored the challenges life tossed his way and added a few variations of his own. He’d experienced his share of incredible lovemaking and mind-blowing orgasms with some very lovely ladies.

Not one of those women had ever left him like this, so demolished he could only hang on tight until he recovered. And he needed to recover to gauge the effect he’d had on Ellen.

Pulling her closer, he inhaled the fresh scent of her hair, a shiny sheet of sable that cascaded over his arm and the pillow, cool silk to the touch. Her full breasts pressed against his chest, the tips he’d explored so thoroughly earlier sealed to his skin as if an extension of him. The lines had blurred. Christopher wasn’t quite sure where he ended and Ellen began.

“Mmm.” She breathed the sound on a sigh.

Even annihilated from the most awesome sex he’d ever had, Christopher managed a smile at the pleasure in her voice.

“Mmm, yourself,” he said.

Forcing his fingers from where they’d been idly threading through her hair, he hooked a knuckle beneath her chin and coaxed her to look at him.

She lifted her gaze…and his heart pounded impossibly harder. Her hazel eyes reminded him of a forest in autumn, a sultry, mysterious place where woodsy greens, browns and golds met in a striking clash of color he’d thought about often in the months since they’d started dating.

But now he found himself staring into eyes he didn’t recognize, eyes that seemed more golden than before, more mysterious. Eyes that reflected how contented Ellen was. And damn if he didn’t have the ridiculous urge to pound his chest in pride that he’d leveled her with their sex as much as she’d leveled him.

This was another singular sensation, and Christopher found himself grinning as her lashes feathered over those incredible eyes and she rested her cheek on his shoulder with another sigh, a breath that expelled across his skin in a soft burst.

He pressed a kiss to her brow, wanted to drift off with the scent of her filling his nostrils, to the whisper of her breathing. “Go to sleep. I want to wake you up with my mouth and make love to you while you’re still half asleep.”

Just the thought of this drowsy eyed beauty unfolding beneath him, of sinking into her moist heat in the quiet of late night, made his blood surge in a valiant effort at recovery.

But Ellen went rigid. The melting softness of her warm curves suddenly vanished, and before his orgasm-soaked brain could even register what was happening, she slid out of the bed.

“I never spend the night with anyone.”

In one fluid move she stood, every glorious naked inch of her bathed in the silvery moonlight streaming through windows that overlooked the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

The sight of her, almost unreal with her long slim curves and pale loveliness, distracted him. By the time he’d thought to grab her, she was halfway across the room.

Christopher shook his head to clear it, then forced himself up on an elbow to watch her snag her hose from where he’d draped them over the armoire after he’d savored the pleasure of peeling them off her shapely legs.

“Really?” Here was an interesting turn of events. “Never?”

“Never,” she shot back.

Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she sent it flowing down her back, then scooped up her cocktail dress from a chair. The black beads caught a moonbeam, glinted in the darkness. Every perfunctory motion belied the repletion she’d just demonstrated in his arms.

He recognized what was happening—Ellen was tossing up invisible walls and putting miles of distance between them.

“Why don’t you ever spend the night with anyone, love?”

Plucking her bra from where it had landed on the floor, she glanced up at him from beneath that incredible fall of hair and said, “Relationship rule number one—Senators’ daughters do not get caught sneaking out of anyone’s bed the morning after.”

Christopher watched her sashay toward the bathroom, an awesome display of moon-glazed skin and lithe motion, before she disappeared inside. The door closed. The lock clicked with a note of finality that echoed through his bedroom. Through him.

He sank back against the pillows, smiled. “Well, Ms. Talbot, damn good thing I’m not just anyone.”

And he wasn’t. He was a man who knew what he wanted.

Ellen.

As Senator Talbot’s youngest daughter, she had to weigh consequences more carefully than a woman from a less visible family. He understood and respected her situation, which had meant easing into their relationship slowly. No problem. Ellen was definitely worth the wait. And three months of dating, and waiting, had only heightened the chemistry between them, had let them become acquainted through very imaginative foreplay.

But Christopher was also a man who’d made a career of seeing possibilities where others saw dead ends, of turning impossibilities into successes. The solution to this problem was a no-brainer. Just like always, he’d meet a challenge with a challenge, play the odds, take the risks and get what he wanted.

Ellen.

When she emerged from the bathroom, completely dressed and coolly distant, he was ready.

“Marry me.”

She stopped short in the doorway, lifted her gaze, those fascinating eyes still glimmering with golden lights.

“Marry me, love.”

She blinked as though he must be some sort of mirage and she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Marry you?”

“Yes.”

She continued to stare, a frown slipping beneath her composure, the slightest crease between arched brows—a slip she’d never have made if not truly shocked by his proposal. “We’ve only been dating three months…we’ve only slept together once.”

“I’m ready to peel off that dress and go for round two.”

That seemed to wake her up again. “Christopher!”

“We’re right together.” Covering the distance between them, he reached out to trace her lower lip, was pleased when she shivered in reply. “Do you doubt that after tonight?”

For an instant, she looked as if the wind had been knocked out of her, but then she backed away so fast she stumbled. He reached out to steady her, but she shrugged him off.

“You’re crazy. No one gets married after sleeping together once. That’s against all the rules.”

He stared hard into those beautiful eyes, hoped she recognized how determined he was. “I’m not just anyone, love. And we need to establish right here and now that rules were meant to be broken.”

1

New Orleans—three months later

CRADLING THE CELL PHONE between her shoulder and ear, Ellen Talbot hitched up the hem of her beaded cocktail dress—a dress she hadn’t worn since he’d stripped it off her the night they’d made love. Of course, that had also been the night she’d received his marriage proposal and ended their relationship.

One very eventful evening.

But as she’d left him two thousand miles away in New York, Ellen deemed it safe to wear the dress again. Protecting her hose from snagging the beaded fabric, she sank into a chair in the bar of the Château Royal, the historic hotel in New Orleans’s French Quarter that was hosting the annual romance writers’ convention.

“Thanks for checking in with me.” She spoke into the receiver. “Have a safe trip home.”

She said goodbye to her mother, disconnected and flipped her phone shut. It might be three in the morning in this time zone, but her mother was currently in Bosnia, where she’d just concluded a breakfast with the Goodwill delegates from several foreign countries. As her mother wasn’t only a loving parent who stayed in touch with all four of her grown children but a United States Senator, phone calls often came at odd hours.

Ellen didn’t mind. She hadn’t been sleeping. Far from it, as she’d just broken free of a post-award ceremony party where both the winners and the nominees had gathered to celebrate. But now the party was over and, for the first time since she’d arrived in New Orleans, Ellen was practically alone. She checked to make sure her battery wasn’t running low, returned the phone to her purse and willed herself to relax.

The muted glow of chandeliers sparked off the floor-to-ceiling windows that reflected the city beyond, shadowed by a black velvet night. Only a few guests still milled through the bar and the adjoining front lobby—stragglers from the award ceremony, she guessed by their formal wear. Ellen closed her eyes and let the calming hush filter through her. She could finally lose this smile that had been plastered on her face since she’d left her hotel room at 7:57 a.m. yesterday morning.

Exhaling slowly, she allowed her smile to fade, felt the tightness in her cheeks begin to ease.

Ah…

As an editor for the Brant Publishing Group, a corporation that published mass-market romance novels, the thick single-title historicals that readers devoured, Ellen’s workdays didn’t usually involve the spotlight or never-ending smiles. Her days involved meetings with the editorial, marketing and art departments. When she wasn’t in meetings, she spent time on the telephone with any one of her thirty authors. Or reading through manuscripts that demanded her skill at recognizing story potential and writing pithy cover copy to entice readers into picking up a book from an already crowded shelf and buying it.

But during these industry conventions, smiling was as fundamental as breathing, because Ellen was a hot commodity—a romance editor with buying power. She spent her days conducting appointments with eager writers, presenting publishing-related topics to rooms filled to capacity, and socializing with people she only recognized by their name tags.

She preferred life out of the spotlight, so this moment alone was welcomed, would have been perfect if not for the thoughts of him that kept intruding on her overworked brain. She sighed. Maybe she shouldn’t have worn this dress, after all.

Hindsight is twenty-twenty, her mother was fond of saying.

Ellen heartily agreed. Had she had clearer vision about him, she’d have turned down his first invitation for a date and saved herself a lot of heartache.

Marriage.

Ellen had thought he’d been kidding. He hadn’t been, so he’d been history. At best, the man was a daredevil who lived life to test limits. At worst, he was certifiable. No person in her high-visibility situation would ever consider marriage after three months of dating, a lot of foreplay and one night of incredible sex. No matter how incredible the sex had been.

And it had been beyond anything she’d ever experienced.

She’d had to get away from him fast. Before his too-blue eyes, dimpled grins and steamy kisses had melted all her defenses. She wasn’t willing to live with the sort of consequences that happened whenever she let her guard slip….

“Here you go.”

Ellen opened her eyes to find a steaming mug of latte on the table. She glanced up at Lennon Eastman, one of her authors and a very close friend, despite the fact that she and her nutty great-aunt were the reasons Ellen kept winding up in the Big Easy, where she’d first met him.

She couldn’t hold that against Lennon, especially not when her friend looked so happy. Even after a long night in heels that by all rights should have crippled her, Lennon looked ready to go for another round of schmoozing.

“Thanks. I so needed this,” Ellen said. “I think my jaw is locked. I can’t seem to stop smiling.”

“Just let me know if you need to see my dentist.” Lennon had settled into a wing chair opposite and shot her a less-than-sympathetic glance.

“I just might. Suffering is not on my vacation itinerary.”

“Then we shouldn’t be drinking espresso at three o’clock in the morning. We’ll pay for this sleep deprivation tomorrow.”

“Are you kidding?” Ellen rubbed her jaw to ease the stiffness. “I won’t make it across the courtyard without the caffeine. The bellhop will find me asleep behind a potted palm.”

“You can always ask him to load you onto his luggage cart and haul you up to your room.”

“Then I’d wind up in a potted palm because I can’t tip him. I gave you the last of my cash for these lattes.”

Lennon laughed. “Maybe we should sit right here and pound espresso while the sun comes up. I’ve got that Regency writers’ panel at eight. Don’t you have plans to meet your new author for breakfast at Café du Monde?”

“I do.” But Ellen couldn’t tackle the thought of another day filled with marathon smiling just yet. Even when there were beignets involved. A favorite.

She raised her mug in a toast, instead. “Saluté. You deserved this year’s RAVE Award for Milord Spy. The publicity should shoot your sales through the roof. The book distributors love that award. And you were very gracious when you accepted.”

“Thank you, but winning hasn’t even hit me yet. I’m still stuck on the fact that you actually let me keep my title.”

“No offense, Lennon, but you’re not title gifted.”

“You say that to all your authors. I know, I’ve heard.”

“No, only to you and Stephanie. Did she tell you what the working title of her latest book is?”

“Lord of the Ravished. I know, pretty dreadful. Tell me mine are never that bad.” When Ellen didn’t reply, Lennon relented with a sigh. “I’ll be satisfied that my gift lies in writing orgasms.”

“No argument there, but take credit where it’s due. You picked a great title this time, born out by your award.”

Lennon beamed. This award was just one more good thing to happen in a run of good things, starting with Lennon marrying her handsome new husband. Ellen knew of no one more deserving.

“Congratulations to you, as well.” Lennon tipped her mug in salute. “Couldn’t have done it without your exceptional editing ability. You were very eloquent while accepting your accolades. I thought we were an impressive team. And we looked so good.”

“Thankfully, because I guarantee you the picture of our acceptance is going to make the cover of next month’s Romance Industry Review Magazine. The RAVE is big, big news.”

Not only for Lennon, but for her, too. A RAVE-winning author meant another feather in her cap, and collecting feathers happened to be one of Ellen’s pastimes. She was currently collecting enough feathers to earn the position of senior editor at Brant Publishing, the goal she’d been working toward since accepting a job as an editorial assistant in college.

“Is the RAVE big enough to get me some perks?” Lennon asked. “Like a renowned cover model or a reprint?”

Lennon might be a creative wonder, a rising star who knew how to write women’s fantasies to the delight of her readers, but she was also a businesswoman who didn’t miss a trick.

Ellen scowled. “I’ll see what I can do. Just don’t forget I was the one who battled the marketing department to print your name bigger than the title on your covers.”

“You know I appreciate it immensely, but that was two books ago. How long do you expect me to let you rest on your laurels?”

Ellen laughed, a heartfelt sound that took her by surprise. By all rights she should be too sleep deprived to feel anything but exhaustion right now, yet she felt more relaxed, more content than she’d been in a long time. Too long.

Lifting her mug, Ellen savored another swallow. It felt so good to be away from home, away from the office, away from him. She was a woman on the fast track—although her family didn’t consider her career to be in the same league as those of her lawyer siblings, chief justice aunt, campaign manager uncle, political analyst and lobbyist cousins…

Or her Senator mother and former Cabinet-member father.

In a clan that boasted enough high-power careers to rival those of the Kennedys, Ellen’s decision to go into publishing—albeit with a Fortune 500 company—still had the ability to make all of her relations scratch their heads in bewilderment.

She deserved a break from the hectic pace, the constant pressure…from thinking about—

“Look, it’s Lennon and her gorgeous editor!”

Glancing up, Ellen couldn’t miss the group that had just entered the front lobby, returning from a night of reveling on Bourbon Street, if their costumes were any indication.

“Oh, bloody hell. It’s Mr. Muscle-Butt and his entourage. Oh, Lennon, look at him, he’s wearing a cape.”

“Be nice,” Lennon admonished. “He’s trying to impress you.”

“By looking like Zorro?”

“By looking like a romance hero. You’re a romance editor—see the connection?”

Ellen saw, all right. Was not interested. Romance heroes didn’t exist outside of books and even if they did, she’d had her fill of men recently, thank you very much. This one swept through the lobby with a dramatic flourish that demanded the attention of every person in the place, including the sleepy-eyed desk clerks.

His brown hair fell to his waist and the black cape flew out behind him as if he were striding off a windswept moor. Not to mention his thoughtlessness—his entourage, a gaggle of model-thin women dressed in outlandishly sexy costumes, was forced to gallop to keep up with his long-legged strides.

“Oh, no. He’s not wearing his name tag. Who is he again? I can’t very well call him Mr. Muscle-Butt.”

“Vittorio,” Lennon whispered beneath her breath while standing to greet the new arrivals. “Congratulate him on winning first place in the cover model competition tonight. He’ll be crushed if he thinks you didn’t notice.”

“Got it.” Ellen set her mug on the table, slapped on her professional smile again and followed Lennon’s lead. “Good evening, Vittorio. Congratulations on your win.”

He extended his hand, and she had no choice but to offer hers, while he smiled what had to be a smile even more professional than her own. She had the unkind thought that he’d probably devoted days to practicing that smile in front of a mirror. Going for charming…dashing…roguish—ugh!

“My lovely Ellen.” He bowed and his mouth grazed her knuckles gallantly, while she struggled to keep a straight face. Lennon rolled her eyes in her periphery. “Congratulations on your success this evening, as well.”

He reluctantly let her hand slip away before turning to kiss Lennon on both cheeks.

“Where’s Josh? Surely your new husband isn’t neglecting you on your special night.”

She waved a hand dismissively. “He came for the award ceremony and offered to stay, but I could tell he was antsy. Too much estrogen flying around for his taste.”

A frown drew Vittorio’s brows together. “Too much estrogen?” He swept an expansive glance at the groupies who’d settled into silence behind him. “No such thing.”

No doubt. Ellen wasn’t sure whether he referred to her or his entourage, but when he flashed another smile—definitely aimed at her—she suspected the former and bit back a groan.

“Lovely Ellen—tell me you’re not planning to run off right after the convention. I want to tour you around the Big Easy. Show you all the secret places only the locals know.”

He may have said secret but he meant intimate, and his suggestive tone made her swallow back yet another groan. “I’m not running off. Not right away,” she said.

“My good fortune, then.” Another roguish smile, this time accompanied by a slight flaring of his nostrils that just screamed testosterone. “You’ll make time for me.”

No question. No politely asking. Just a you-will-make-time-for-me declaration that jump-started her half-sleeping synapses.

“I’m sorry, Vittorio. We’re going to need a day planner to keep up with all we’ve got scheduled,” she said, lying so easily it was scary. “Lennon’s Auntie Q has this murder-mystery thing planned. We’ll be leaving New Orleans on Wednesday.”

That wasn’t a lie. She’d committed to some corporate-training-murder-mystery event for Miss Q’s—Miss Quinevere McDarby’s—latest business venture. Ellen still wasn’t clear on the details, but Lennon and a few of her other authors would be attending, and she figured solving mysteries would provide an interesting diversion.