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Smooth Moves
Carrie Alexander
Legendary bad-boy Zack Brody comes home and the women of Quimby are on the warpath. The charming rogue has broken every heart in town…except one. Newcomer Cathy Timmerman is just the bait they need to get even–they'll give her a sexy makeover, help her seduce Zack and then, according to plan, she'll dump him in the most embarrassing way possible.But Cathy has a secret–she's no stranger to Zack Brody. In fact, she probably knows him better than any other woman in Quimby. And so the seduction goes very wrong… or possibly very, very right.
“What did you see?”
Cathy blushed, coming across a tad too indignant for a woman who was half out of her bra.
“I saw everything.” Zack’s lips grazed her tilted chin, followed the line of her neck to her delicate collarbone. “I saw these.” He closed both hands over her breasts, kneading until an arousal nearly as hot as his own was radiating from her in shimmering waves. “I saw you.”
She gave a deep sigh and leaned against him, her body lax. “Kiss me again,” she said, parting her lips and cutting the last string of his control.
With a groan, he covered her mouth with his and ground his body against hers.
“I can’t take this,” he said, wrenching away. “Either we go home now or wind up flat on the dirt floor.”
She glanced down, then lifted her gaze to his. “I guess I’m too practical not to prefer a bed.”
He pressed his fingertips to her swollen lips. “Then hold that thought,” he said, silently thankful that he still had the Jaguar parked outside.
Zero to ninety in a matter of seconds sounded almost fast enough….
Dear Reader,
Remember your first crush? Maybe it was on Davy Jones or Kevin Bacon or Brad Pitt. And maybe it was on the cutest, most popular boy in the fifth grade….
Cathy Timmerman remembers her first crush, Zack Brody. And when she returns to the town where they first met, she learns that he’s grown up even better than she’d imagined—in fact, the man is a legendary Romeo! It turns out that a group of Zack’s old girlfriends are looking for a woman to give the “Smooth Operator” a taste of his own medicine. Cathy—no longer the chubby social outcast—finds herself volunteered. But can she really seduce Zack…and then leave him? Especially when he’s even better in person than in her dreams?
Happy reading!
Carrie Alexander
P.S. Please let me know if you liked Zack and Cathy. You can write to me in care of Harlequin or by e-mail at www.tempationauthors.com.
Books by Carrie Alexander
HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION
536—FANCY-FREE
598—ALL SHOOK UP
689—BLACK VELVET
704—A TOUCH OF BLACK VELVET
720—BLACK VELVET VALENTINES
HARLEQUIN DUETS
25—CUSTOM-BUILT COWBOY
32—COUNTERFEIT COWBOY
38—KEEPSAKE COWBOY
Smooth Moves
Carrie Alexander
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Prologue (#u80e06c65-e80a-5ac3-9aaa-2512c2fa5223)
Chapter 1 (#u142a298c-c120-50ac-bc2c-84108d51f303)
Chapter 2 (#u3c304be3-44cf-51e3-9384-bd55e82bc9ae)
Chapter 3 (#u223956c4-8196-5b84-9978-b7b98782d007)
Chapter 4 (#u85829a14-1bb2-54fb-aa7d-d417b3338f3c)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
FOR SUCH AN ordinary middle-American town, Quimby had its share of legends. There was the ghost who haunted the clock tower of the old stone courthouse. There was Eunice LaSalle, the 1962 prom queen who’d gone to Hollywood and costarred in an Elvis beach flick. Reputedly, a monster muskie lived in Mirror Lake and nibbled on the toes—or various other bobbing appendages—of unwary skinny-dippers. And on one unforgettable night in 1985, the Quimby Kingpins had beaten the Buxton Bluejackets with a half-court lob at the buzzer, 53 to 52.
Then there was Heartbreak.
Zachary “Heartbreak” Brody, aka The Smooth Operator.
A man who was a legend in his own time, according to the female half of Quimby’s populace.
And they would know.
As it happened, the five women who’d been most seriously “Heartbroken” gathered every Wednesday evening at Cathy Timmerman’s arts and crafts shop. Scarborough Faire—formerly known as Kay’s Krafts—was at 1208 Central Street, Quimby’s version of Main Street, U.S.A. An innocent setting for the chicanery to come. Although, as it would turn out, appearances were decidedly deceiving.
The weekly meeting of the five women in question was purported to be an informal craft class. Local ladies signed up left and right for Cathy’s other classes, even woodburning and china painting, but the Wednesday-night calligraphers had closed their ranks to the uninitiated. Group therapy hadn’t been their initial intention, yet nearly every week the talk turned to Zack Brody: What he’d done to them, how they still hadn’t recovered, where he was now, whose heart he was currently breaking with his deceptively charming and oh, so smooth and seductive ways.
Which was not to say that the five women hated the man. Goodness, no.
It was Zack’s particular skill that he’d left even his jilted bride harboring certain feelings—definitely more than fond—for him. In fact, if the truth be known, several of the women maintained a secret fantasy that someday she would be the one to capture the legendary Lothario’s heart for good. The likelihood that the rest of his perfect male specimen body would be included in the deal was…not unpleasant.
Be that as it may, there were also times, when the hour grew late and strong ink fumes had gone to their heads, that the five women bandied about a suitable revenge. ’Twas only fair, they said. Heartbreak should have a taste of his own medicine.
Thus, upon the fateful evening of Heartbreak Brody’s prodigal return to Quimby, a scheme was afoot. A nefarious plot that would turn out to be neither as easy nor as simple as intended. But far more effective.
And it all began at Cathy Bell Timmerman’s arts and crafts shop….
1
“YOU’LL NEVER GUESS,” Gwendolyn Case boomed as she sailed through Scarborough Faire’s aisles toward the long farmhouse table where the rest of the Wednesday-night calligraphers had already taken out their pens and papers. “Guess who’s coming back to Quimby!”
Cathy Timmerman, the shopkeeper and head calligrapher, stifled her sigh of frustration. Calligraphy required concentration, hard to come by with this group.
Faith Fagan, a wan blonde, looked confused. “But you said we’d never—”
“Guess!” With one forceful word, buxom brunette Gwendolyn easily silenced meek Faith. Suffused with the power of her knowledge, Gwen put her hands on her hips and smiled broadly at the group. As self-appointed doyenne of the post office, she had her ear to the grapevine…and her mouth perpetually set to gossip mode.
Looking as peaked as Faith, Laurel Barnard slumped against the spindle back of one of the wooden chairs Cathy had picked up at rummage sales and then painted with colorful, whimsical patterns of swirls, dots, stripes and stars. Laurel, the pretty owner of the dress shop next door, opened her mouth, then couldn’t seem to summon words. Only one man was legend enough to evince such an announcement.
“Heartbreak,” said a calm voice.
Gwendolyn’s head spun around. Air huffed through her open mouth.
Carefully Julia Knox lifted the point of her pen off the paper. She shook her head so that a misplaced strand of honey-brown hair fell neatly into place in her precision-cut bob. “Yes, ladies, it’s shocking but true. Zack Brody is returning to Quimby.”
Somewhat deflated now that she’d been beaten to the punch, Gwen plopped into a peppermint-striped chair. “Yeah. You’re right.”
Allie Spangler said, “Boy-oh-boy-oh-boy,” and then suddenly all five of the Heartbroken were talking at once, even Faith.
Only Cathy Timmerman, whose position with the Wednesday nighters was often less that of a crafts teacher than a therapist, was silent. And it wasn’t because she didn’t know Zack “Heartbreak” Brody, although as far as these women and the rest of the town were concerned, she didn’t. Never met him at all.
Presumably.
Cathy had moved to Quimby only seven months ago, and Zack Brody had been gone for approximately a year. All she knew of him as an adult were the praises sung by the townsfolk and the frequent yet affectionate complaints lodged by the Wednesday nighters.
A year should have been enough time to heal a broken heart—even five of them—but of course Heartbreak was a legend unto himself. Ordinarily, Cathy might have believed that in Zack’s case time and distance had served to heighten, even exaggerate, his reputed lady-killer charms. She would have taken the women’s words with not just a grain but an entire shaker of salt.
Ordinarily, she might have.
If not for her secret.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Allie Spangler shouted above the fray. The women quieted. “Personally, I can’t believe it. Only last week—” Allie scrambled for her purse to a quartet of groans. “Okay, only a month ago, I had a postcard from Zack. He didn’t mention—aha, here it is!” She pulled the item from her disorganized saddlebag of a purse, blissfully unaware that the worn card’s continuing presence in her happily-married life was telling in its own way. Waving a red-rock canyon river scene at the other women, she said, “Zack’s still in Idaho with his brother.”
“A month ago, Allie.” Julia checked the postmark. April 6th. “Make that nearly two months ago.”
“So there,” Gwen said. “Kelly Thompson heard from the Rickeys in Florida who are neighbors to Eve Brody’s sister. Heartbreak’s coming home. Soon.”
“Julia?” Laurel’s voice was reedy. “Is this true? What do you know?”
With the excuse that she didn’t want anyone fainting in her store, Cathy was watching Laurel Barnard closely. The fellow shopkeeper’s face had gone from stark white to a mottled rosy pink. There was a fine trembling about her mouth. Though Cathy’s own emotions were in turmoil, she girded herself to minister first to Laurel.
Poor, poor Laurel. Heartbreak’s jilted bride.
Pale, feminine, maidenly slim at twenty-eight, Laurel’s air was delicate—misleadingly so, in Cathy’s opinion. Then again, at hearing the news, Laurel had believably gone from merely delicate to fragile as antique porcelain. The panic in her eyes seemed very real. While Cathy had never been sure if she entirely believed Laurel’s side of the cancelled wedding, she did sympathize with the woman. Being forever known as Quimby’s resident jilted bride couldn’t be easy.
Julia Knox capped her bottle of ink, her strong features drawn together in thought. She had been Heartbreak’s long-term girlfriend—from high school through a few years of college—and yet was still the most philosophical about him. While stingy with details, she claimed their breakup had been amicable. However, she also seemed to take little serious interest in the men she’d dated in the years hence.
“I’m afraid it’s true, Laurel.” Julia placed her manicured hand on the other woman’s sleeve. “Zack told me to take the Brody house off the market months ago.”
“Months?” Gwen was outraged. “And you kept it to yourself?”
Laurel sniffled. Faith handed her a tissue.
Julia was a Realtor. The Realtor, insular Quimby-style. “Zack and I haven’t spoken. He sent me a fax, Gwen. It didn’t provide any information concrete enough to share, except that he was planning to eventually return to town.”
Whatever Julia’s inside information, Cathy was certain that the real estate agent wouldn’t have shared inappropriate details. And definitely not with Gwen, whose heart was in the right place beneath her bluster, but whose restraint was suspect.
Upon her arrival in Quimby, Cathy had purchased her business and leased a house through Julia Knox’s small but exceedingly professional agency. She’d soon seen that in business dealings, Julia was cool, efficient, responsible. Once earned as a friend, she was warm, thoughtful and unquestionably loyal. Cathy valued Julia’s word above all others.
“I heard he’s arriving tomorrow,” Gwen said, dropping the bomb.
Faith squeaked. Laurel gasped. “Tomorrow!”
Allie’s freckles stood out in stark relief; she looked like she’d swallowed a frog. “Urg,” she said thickly, waving her hands.
“There’s no need to get crazy over this,” Julia counseled the agitated women. “Zack has every right to come back to Quimby—”
“Huh!” Gwendolyn crossed her arms over her chest, looking combative.
Laurel spoke. “I’ll say this—the town’s not big enough for both of us.”
Cathy was startled by the seething resentment evident in Laurel’s voice. Admittedly, being jilted by your catch-of-a-lifetime groom at the very altar of your dream-come-true wedding was not something a woman gets over in a week’s time. A year later, though…
Cathy shrugged inwardly. Who was she to question Laurel’s animosity toward Zack Brody? She, herself, had known him for only the one school year. Fifth grade, at that. And his memory had lingered for nearly two decades.
The man’s charms were potent.
It stood to reason that his betrayal would be poisonous.
