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Can't Buy Me Love
HEATHER MACALLISTER
It will take some "spirited" discussion to bring these two together…Lawyer Alexis O'Hara is tired of the dating, mating, then hating game. She wants to settle down, and this time she's not letting her heart get involved. So when her mentor Vincent Cathardy offers her everything she's ever wanted, she agrees to marry him. And by having the wedding at the world-famous Inn at Maiden Falls, she can almost guarantee her own happy ending. Only, it might not be the ending she's expecting….Lawyer Dylan Greene thinks he's negotiating just another prenuptial agreement–until he learns that the bride-to-be is his first and only love, Alexis. And it's soon obvious that the chemistry between them is just as explosive as ever. Even after years apart, they can't keep their hands off each other. So why is Alexis so determined to go through with the wedding? And will Dylan be able to seduce her into saying no to Vincent– and yes to him?
The Legend of the Inn at Maiden Falls…
There are lots of rumors, but no one is exactly sure why even the crankiest twosomes get so very coosome when they spend time at the historic Inn at Maiden Falls, nestled in the Colorado Rockies. Maybe it’s the beautiful vista of all that rushing water (the falls) outside the windows. Maybe it’s the clean, invigorating mountain air stirring up their blood. Or maybe (as the whispers say) there really are lusty ghosts of shady ladies past floating around the rafters. Old-timers say the inn was a famous brothel more than a hundred years ago; all the “soiled doves” may have mysteriously passed way, but their spirits remain to help young lovers discover the joy of sensual pleasure.
Or so the story goes….
Dear Reader,
I’m thrilled to be part of Temptation’s twentieth anniversary celebration! And I hope you’re enjoying reading about Miss Arlotta and the girls in THE SPIRITS ARE WILLING miniseries as much as I’ve enjoyed working with fellow writers Julie Kistler and Colleen Collins.You probably already caught Colleen’s book, Sweet Talkin’Guy, last month, and Julie Kistler’s story, It’s in His Kiss, will be on the shelves in August.
This July also marks the twentieth anniversary of the year Julie and I first met at a Romance Writers of America conference. So, to celebrate, we decided to come up with a project we could work on together. The idea behind THE SPIRITS ARE WILLING miniseries was inspired by Julie and Colleen’s tour of a former brothel in Denver. Afterward I met them for a hilarious dinner in which we plotted the series and our characters.
Come visit with us in the community message boards at www.eHarlequin.com and stop by my Web site, www.HeatherMacAllister.com, for news about upcoming books.
Warmly,
Heather MacAllister
Books by Heather MacAllister
HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION
785—MOONLIGHTING
817—PERSONAL RELATIONS
864—TEMPTED IN TEXAS
892—SKIRTING THE ISSUE
928—MALE CALL
959—HOW TO BE THE PERFECT GIRLFRIEND
Can’t Buy Me Love
Heather MacAllister
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Julie Kistler and Colleen Collins
Let’s do this again sometime.
The Golden Rules for Miss Arlotta’s Girls
We know rules are not your favorite things, but some things need to be written down.
So here’s your Golden Rules, girls. Abide by ’em and we’ll all do just fine. We weren’t exactly angels when we were here the first time around, but we’ve got another chance. So we want to do what we can to keep the idea of holy matrimony satisfying so’s nobody’s man will be tempted to go lookin’ elsewhere for a good time. It may not seem fair, but them’s the rules. We helped ’em stray.
Now we’re helping ’em stay.
Rule #1: You will never, ever do anything that might come between the bride and groom.
Rule #2: No visibility. You can’t be scarin’ the livin’ daylights out of folks by fading in and out or showing up in bits and pieces at the wrong time.
Rule #3: Never, ever make love with a guest yourself. No exceptions.
Rule #4: No emotional attachments to anyone. You can’t follow them when they leave, so you might as well not get attached.
Rule #5: When you have successfully put a troubled couple on the road to bedroom bliss, you earn a Notch in Miss Arlotta’s Bedpost Book.
Rule #6: Especially good or bad activities may earn you Gold Stars or Black Marks.
Rule #7: It’s gonna take ten Notches before you can advance. All Advancements shall be determined by Miss Arlotta and the Council, who will consider how difficult your couples were, how much work you had to do, your level of creativity, whether your heart was in the right place and those Gold Stars or Black Marks.
Rule #8: Any girl who disobeys these rules shall be punished.
Rule #9: Any and all rules may be changed by Miss Arlotta as she sees fit.
That’s it. Push those couples into as much wedded bliss as they can handle, and we’ll all do fine. You’re all creative ladies when it comes to what happens between the sheets. So let’s get to work and show ’em what kinds of sparks can fly when the spirits are willing!
Contents
Prologue (#u1b25b402-cc6a-5086-a5b8-131e6830db1f)
Chapter 1 (#u7980dd0c-ab9b-5e7a-8521-3c5c42bd9b94)
Chapter 2 (#u0326a162-b569-50ac-9a10-a2321f8c3299)
Chapter 3 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
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)
Prologue
“I HAVE A REAL GOOD FEELING about today.” Sunshine hitched herself onto the window seat in the bay window and retied the drawstring on her white bloomers. “It’s a sunny day and I always have a good feeling about sunny days.”
“You have a good feeling about every day. How you can be so cheerful and so dead at the same time is beyond my figuring. It’s enough to drive a body, if I had a body, to drink. If I could drink.” Flo drew her shawl more tightly around her shoulders.
Sunshine swung her foot and regarded Flo and the rest of the former good-time girls lounging in the parlor of what had once been one of the most exclusive bordellos in Colorado. “You’re just cranky because your corset is too tight.”
“I’m cranky because I’m dead! I’m dead and doomed to spend the rest of eternity in this corset because Mimi never came to loosen the knots.”
Everyone looked at the dark-haired Mimi, dressed in a sumptuous French robe de chambre. She shrugged. “I, myself, was busy dying.”
Over in the corner of a red-velvet chaise, Rosebud looked up from reading Madame Bovary. “Could we please talk about something else? We have discussed the fact that we’re dead every day for the past one hundred and nine years. There was a gas leak. We died. It’s time to move on.”
“I would love to move on!” Flo shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t believe that Belle Bulette, of all people, has gone to the Great Sunday Picnic in the Sky and I’m still here.”
“I miss Belle,” Sunshine said wistfully. But she smiled as she said it.
“You would.”
“It was never this boring when she was around,” said another one of the girls, a strawberry blonde in a lavender chemise.
“Oh, I know. She was always so spirited.”
“Spirited—ha, ha.”
“Oh, Flo, you know what I meant.”
“One makes one’s own excitement and profits, as vell. Is zat not so?” An elegant woman dressed in a Chinese-silk wrapper lounged against the doorway next to one of the brass-potted palms. She gestured toward the guests checking into what was now the Inn at Maiden Falls. “Specifically, I vould like to make some excitement viz zat fine young buck.”
“Countess, you know the rules,” Sunshine reminded her.
“My dear, for him, I vould break zee rules.”
Sunshine watched as a lone male—they all had such broad shoulders these days—checked into the hotel. He had a fine face, sure enough, and held himself with a confidence that promised confidence in the bedroom, as well.
However, everyone knew Miss Arlotta’s Golden Rules, specifically the no hanky-panky rule, and what would happen if a girl broke them—a black mark in the Bedpost Book. Too many black marks and there would never be a chance of earning the ten notches it took to go to the Eternal Picnic.
After decades of bemoaning their fate, Miss Arlotta and Judge Hangen, who had unfortunately been visiting Miss Arlotta at the time of the gas leak, figured out that since they’d sold fake love in life, they could redeem themselves by selling true love in death.
Or something. Whatever the reasoning, their plan seemed to be working.
Sunshine didn’t know if there was exactly a Great Picnic, or an Eternal Picnic, or whatever, but when they were alive, every Sunday Miss Arlotta’s boarders had dressed in their finest and driven the buggy through the town of Maiden Falls to the lovely shaded meadow where they’d picnicked and laughed and sometimes taken a dip in the pool beneath the falls.
Sunshine and the others had loved the Sunday picnics—even Belle, the sharpshooting, whiskey-drinking cynical gambler. It had taken quite a lot of man to handle Belle. And quite a lot of men had.
Anyway, being outside, feeling the grass tickle her bare feet, wading in the pool, even just plain lying around in the shade was what Sunshine missed the most.
She and the others couldn’t leave the inn proper. Oh, they could go out on the roof, but it wasn’t the same.
But what if they didn’t even have that? It could be worse. And now they knew that there was a way to go on to—if not the Great Picnic as they’d taken to calling it—then someplace else fine and good. Someplace Belle had gone. Someplace Sunshine was going to go, too, as soon as she helped one more couple on the path to true love. So fine, face or no, the man wasn’t worth risking a black mark.
“Ooh-la-la. That is a fine one indeed.” Mimi’s accent became more pronounced the nearer a man got to her. It was generally agreed that she more than likely came from Paris, Texas, rather than Paris, France.
“He must be the groom.” Sunshine, along with the others, drifted over to the lobby check-in desk. “There’s a wedding this weekend, you know.” She clasped her hands together. “I just love weddings.”
“Oh, that was canceled,” Lavender said.
“It’s back on,” Rosebud informed them from her place on the chaise. She was more interested in her book, which Lord knows she’d had over a hundred years to read, than she was in men. She simply didn’t know any better. Poor Rosebud had the misfortune of arriving at Miss Arlotta’s just before the gas leak, so her experience of men was extremely limited. Extremely.
“If the wedding is back on, then the bride and groom must need help,” Sunshine said.
“Same wedding, different bride and groom,” Rosebud told her.
“Me, I would like to give that man some very special help.”
Lavender sighed. “Oh, Mimi, wouldn’t we all.”
“I wouldn’t,” Flo snapped. “No man is worth giving up the chance of a loosened corset.”
“Amen to that,” drawled a voice from the door of the secret passage. “Listen up, ladies, and Glory Hallelujah will set you straight. Desdemoaner and I have been on the roof and, y’all, that man is not the groom. Looky yonder at the door.”
At that moment, a distinguished older man with silver temples and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair strode through the lobby as though he owned the place.
Sunshine had seen his type before—usually with a gavel in his hand or a badge on his chest.
“Behold, the groom.”
“Oh, it’s an older couple then. A second marriage maybe? How nice.” Sunshine ignored all the eye rolling. So she chose to look on the bright side all the time. Might as well enjoy life, er, death. Or whatever limbo they were in.
“Not quite.” Glory hooked her thumb over her shoulder as a dark-suited younger woman joined the man at the reception desk.
She had her hair cut in one of those styles that looked as though she’d hacked at it with a dull knife on a windy day. Sunshine patted her own long curls.
“His daughter?” Flo asked.
“The bride,” Glory announced.
“And I say brava!” The Countess clapped slowly.
“And, me, I say it depends on how much money he has.” Mimi rubbed her fingers together.
Flo cackled. “Honey, it wouldn’t take much for me.”
“It never did, Flo, it never did,” the Countess murmured.
“I heard that!”
