Excerpt of Then He Kissed Me by Christie Ridgway

“So who’s the other guy?” Stevie’s friend Mari asked, as she slid into the passenger seat of the waiting limousine.

“Uh . . . other guy?”

“Tall, dark, and dashing?” her friend qualified. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

She’d noticed. From the moment he’d stepped out of the resort. But tall, dark, and dashing didn’t make up for rich, self-important, and rude. “He’s haughty.”

“I’ll say,” Mari agreed. “My sister gave me a Hottie-of-the-Month calendar for Christmas and I bet he’s in there.”

Stevie frowned. “Haughty, not hottie.”

“That’s what I said.”

“I . . .” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

“Just tell me his name,” Mari urged. “I’ll find out his phone number myself.”

Another frown dug between Stevie’s brows. Her friend had a headful of blond spiral curls and a black book that rivaled any Hollywood bachelor’s. But it was Stevie who had spied tall, dark, and dashing first, and didn’t that give her . . .

No. Hottie, true. But the haughty got him permanently expunged from her own Bachelor Book, if she’d actually had one. And not to forget, there was that very recent New Year’s resolution she’d just made. Men are off-limits.

“I think he’s with the princess,” Stevie said to her friend. When she’d told her clients they had to get moving or miss their tasting appointments, he’d climbed into the back with Emerson and his fiancée. “His name’s Jack.”

Mari gasped. “Jack! Of course! ‘Jack’ is Prince Jacques Christian Wilhelm Parini. I read about him in one of those magazines at the hairdresser’s—you know, the pulpy ones with paparazzi pics of movie premieres and Euro trash boogeying down in flashy discotheques. He’s some kind of notorious playboy and the princess bride’s big brother.”

That made sense. He struck Stevie as a royal pain-in-the-ass because he was a royal pain-in-the-ass. She loved being right.

Though she should have made the Jacques-Jack connection on her own. Blame it on her ex anxiety. She knew of the man, not from a magazine, but because he was college friends with the Bennett brothers, neighbors since birth and not-so-silent partners in the Tanti Baci winery. Liam and Seth, she recalled, knew Jack through the UC Davis Viticulture & Enology program and had mentioned during one of their regular poker nights that their old buddy was coming for a visit.

“It’s a small world of wines,” Stevie murmured.

“Yeah, and—” Mari’s curls swung in an arc as her attention shifted to the side window. “Ooops, gotta go. My peeps are ready to move. Happy New Year!”

She was gone in a blast of chilled air, leaving Stevie alone once again in the driver’s seat. Mari wasn’t soothing company, but she missed her anyway, because now there was nothing else to think about besides that little threat she been putting off contemplating.

Your sister promised that it’s you who’ll handle each and every fine point of the upcoming Parini-Platt nuptials.

Closing her eyes, she groaned. Had Giuliana really made that guarantee? Could she actually expect Stevie to honor it?

The passenger door clicked open a second time. Stevie, eyes still shut, blessed her buddy and the distraction she’d prove to be. “Mari. Thank God, you’re back. I—”

Her throat closed as heat prickles took another dash across her flesh and that weird hyperawareness she’d experienced at the resort tightened her belly. Opening her eyes, she saw a long male body fold onto the seat beside her. “Jack,” she said.

He smiled at her, the wattage bright enough to bring up the temperature in the front seat.

“You remember my name.”

And his scent. It reached her again, subtle and smooth, a top-shelf cologne, one ounce likely costing more than her new boots—and probably her monthly rental check as well.

“What are you doing here? You belong there,” she said, jerking her thumb toward the winery.

“I belong wherever I want to belong,” he answered, smiling that easy smile he had as his body slid nearer to hers on the bench seat. “Just like I do whatever I want to do.”

Stevie crowded close to the driver’s door. It didn’t stop his left thigh from grazing her right, his knee from bumping hers. One long finger reached out to adjust the heater that she’d left running.

Forcing her gaze off his lean hand, she narrowed her eyes at him. “And what you want to do is . . . ?”

Her suspicious tone didn’t appear to offend. He relaxed against the leather seat, sliding an arm across its back, obviously comfortable in his own privileged skin. His charming smile deepened. “Nothing for you to worry about. I only thought we might take these few minutes to get better acquainted, ma belle fille.”

Not for a winter’s worth of bookings would she let him know that just for a second—a nanosecond—she found the soft foreign phrase as disarming as he most certainly intended. Even as her insides recovered from their quick melt, she made her expression blank and raised both brows in inquiry, all tomboy bumpkin.

His smile was rueful, his shrug European. “What can I say? I know five languages and how to compliment a beautiful woman in each and every one.”

Wide-eyed, she pretended to appear impressed. “Wow.” Then she dropped the innocent act. “And to think I only know how to say screw you in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.”

He blinked, then laughed.

“Oh, and in English it’s fu—”

Leaning forward, he clamped his palm over her mouth. At the contact, they both froze and the smile on his face died. Her lips tingled, her skin burned, another shot of adrenaline punched into her bloodstream. Fight or flight.

Uncertain which order to follow, her body twitched.

His hand dropped.

They stared at each other.

Refine that New Year’s resolution, Stevie thought, despising her breathlessness. Stay away from this man.