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It’s In His Kiss
Eve Devon
Who do you turn to when things go wrong?Your best friend. Obviously.Sephy King’s worked flat-out to make her new lingerie business a success, only there’s a tiny snag – the marketing photos for the launch party are a disaster.Luke Jackson will help her, won’t he? They just need to strip off, model gorgeous, sexy underwear together and take more photos! So what if the stunning body he’s been hiding makes Sephy’s eyes pop out? And when he holds her, she suddenly wishes they were in her bedroom…alone? He’s her best friend.Then Luke asks Sephy for a return favour: to pose as his fake fiancée to get his parents temporarily off his back. It’s a risky strategy – but she’s sure she can pull it off.Until he kisses her…
It’s In His Kiss
EVE DEVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2016
Copyright © Eve Devon 2016
Cover images © Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com)
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Cover design by Cherie Chapman
Eve Devon asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
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and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
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Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780007558476
Version 2016-03-30
For Lana and the oodles of joyful ‘Darth Daisy’ inspiration you supply and because one day you will be old enough to know what your ‘Mad Auntie Eve’ does for a living!
Table of Contents
Cover (#uaafeebc5-a0a5-5f2e-ab27-7d7380892d32)
Title Page (#ub4a20935-89b5-57ea-a12a-d17e16000e48)
Copyright (#u8d7de93d-95d4-5502-ac9b-d1066ee759e3)
Dedication (#u3532073c-54d4-5e76-aab7-da267233840f)
Chapter One (#u089419f0-894c-5e0f-acd4-53c61d83fe18)
Chapter Two (#u560c76a8-a1e2-5d9f-9171-4e158080c206)
Chapter Three (#u5ca4b3a6-b0fb-5978-9d2b-f61a3efaea76)
Chapter Four (#u3f05d904-d55d-5a76-b060-ae1cf6bf5430)
Chapter Five (#ub5f2b2b2-6e85-5f4c-b4ef-cac04eff20aa)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Eve Devon (#litres_trial_promo)
About HarperImpulse (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ubb881ea2-9388-550c-aac5-b8e62c800f99)
‘Wait – what? Did you just ask me to sell sex at the launch party for your lingerie line?’
Luke Jackson’s usually reserved tone had taken on a new, gruff edge that trickled over Sephy King’s senses, making her heartbeat spike alarmingly. As if her heart needed any more of a workout.
Standing on the newly constructed catwalk in the large ballroom of the King’s family estate, it turned out that T minus two weeks to the launch of her new lingerie collection, Seraphic, and with her stress levels higher than the Shard with the Cheese Grater building stuck on top of it, Sephy’s heart was skipping, dipping and nose-diving quite enough, thank you very much.
Lord, could this go more spectacularly wrong? She should never have attempted to ask him without first practising. She already found his rock-solid approach to their friendship way hotter than she should, without introducing words like ‘sex’ to their banter.
She flicked a look to Luke and saw that her friend had gone from slouching in one of the two hundred gilt-framed chairs surrounding the catwalk, to sitting up a little more straight and a lot more alert.
Damn. There was now no way to retract her garbled plea.
Sephy tried to remind herself that she was good at thinking on her feet. That she excelled at rolling with the punches. But this was Luke she had just made a fool of herself in front of and embarrassment was brought to her on a whiff of defeat that had her shoulders dipping a little.
Clearing her throat she went with a lame, ‘It’s not that I want you to sell,’ she paused and flapped a hand about, creating a new and interesting gesture to indicate the word ‘sex’, ‘specifically – it’s more, the idea of it.’
‘The idea of it?’ Luke’s eyebrows remained in the region of his hairline. ‘I thought you asked me over here to check out how well it was all coming together before getting around to asking me to hand out a few catalogues on the night?’
‘Actually, I have someone for that. What I’m asking for involves a more,’ she licked her lips and searched her head for a tactful phrase, ‘hands-on approach.’
‘Hands-on?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Okay. So, then, you’re going to have to be more explicit about the sex thing.’
Sephy blinked as Luke relaxed back against the chair he was sitting on, his arms stretching out to rest against the backs of the chairs either side of him in a pose that practically shouted, ‘and Honey, I’m all ears.’
She forbade herself to drop her gaze to where his olive-green tee now stretched across his impressively honed chest. Friends weren’t supposed to notice things like that and it was bad enough that the tips of her ears had grown hot at hearing the words ‘explicit’ and ‘sex’ coming out of his mouth. No way did she need her eyes getting in on his act.
And it had to be an act, didn’t it? How could Luke not be as mortified as she to be having this conversation? But as her eyes disobeyed her, and tracked back from their circuit around the vaulted-ceilinged room to land on his face, she caught the unmistakable edge of a grin creeping on to his expression.
Double-triple-quadruple damn.
This had to mean the dimples were about to make an appearance.
Sephy steeled herself for their impact.
Mortification wasn’t even on his radar, was it?
Figured.
Okay, so she was going to have to pull on her big-girl panties and get explicit.
She could do that, right?
She’d already had to employ her most fierce expression while using words of one syllable to get the printer to correct all the signage she wanted for the launch party. Then, in order to get the contractor to finish the catwalk ahead of schedule so that she could see how it all looked and make any changes to the layout in good time, she’d had to go from a winning smile and cajoling tone to being downright expletively explicit.
Neither experience had made Sephy feel great. She didn’t usually have to operate by getting all up in a person’s face. Usually all she had to do was smile. She tried one out for Luke, now.
Just ask him, her sister Nora had calmly advised her when Sephy had told her that she had figured out what would absolutely fix the problem she had with her advertising campaign.
Sephy wanted to roll her eyes as she remembered exactly how many times Nora had thought her sage ‘just ask him’ advice bore repeating. It was at least once every time Sephy tried to think what else she could do to get around the fact that the problem with her marketing campaign was now perfectly encapsulated in the sleek banners that draped down from the ceiling either side of the catwalk and against the walls of the room.
She glanced at the banners now, hoping against hope that what she’d see would somehow have changed.
But no. The models on them, while looking gorgeously every-woman, like she had insisted upon, all made her lingerie look…okay.
Just – okay.
Sephy’s head dropped to her chest.
