One Hot Summer by Melissa Cutler Page A

shone with challenge, highlighting to him just how artificial her previous expressions with the groomsmen had been. This, the real Remedy, was who got his blood pumping. This was the woman who’d consumed his thoughts all week.
    She shouldered past the groomsmen. Her hips cocked as she swaggered his way. He tore his attention from her body and locked gazes with her, his pulse pounding. A fire kicked to life inside him. Time for some fun.…
    â€œHow is it that you have the power to wrap every man you see around your little finger?” he said.
    â€œExcept you,” she tossed out with a shrug.
    â€œI’m impervious to your feminine wiles.” He nodded to the groomsmen who still stood in a cluster where she’d left them, as though they couldn’t accept that they’d been dismissed. “Unlike those half-wits.”
    â€œThat wasn’t my feminine wiles you were witnessing with those guys. That was my finely honed skill of wrangling drunk people.”
    â€œThat’s something you’ve devoted a lot of time to practicing, like at one of those California party colleges? I wouldn’t go bragging about that if I were you.”
    â€œNot college. Weddings. Drunk wrangling is a big part of my job. Huge.”
    So much for the romance of weddings. “You’re kidding.”
    â€œEvery week, every wedding.”
    Now that he was considering it, she had a point. Near about every wedding Micah had attended produced an overabundance of drunkards by the end of the night. “My condolences, though the drunk wrangling doesn’t explain why every single groomsman at this reception was hitting on you.”
    With a wry smile, she ran her hands down her dress. “Look at me. I’m unobtainable and dressed like a virgin librarian. All those guys you saw want to be the one man with the macho power to corrupt my innocence and introduce me to the world’s many wicked pleasures.”
    He laughed at the deprecating self-descriptor. Yeah, her getup was drab as hell, but still, a virgin librarian she was not. “It’s a good thing they didn’t see you prancing around in that bikini last weekend at the river or they’d realize they’re the ones in danger of being corrupted by your wicked ways.”
    An image rolled through his mind about the way her water-slick, tanned curves had writhed and bounced as Chet and Dusty had dragged her into the river shallows and tried to teach her how to two-step. Shifting, his body turning restless, he locked his jaw and set his focus on the stars lifting up from the dark silhouettes of the hilltops. He could not have this woman. He had rules against that kind of fraternization for a reason. He should have followed his gut and made that U-turn to home instead of returning to the resort tonight.
    Her voice cut through his self-flagellation. “Are you making a crack about my virtue?” She set her hands on her hips and thrust her chest out. “Because my virtue happens to love this season’s Dolce & Gabbana swimwear collection, thank you very much.”
    That was the most ridiculous sentence he’d heard uttered outside of his TV set. He pinched the bridge of his nose against smiling, but a snort of laughter still managed to escape. Man, was she out of place in Ravel County. “For your information, California, I was making a crack about the groomsmen’s narcissism, not you.” He flicked a glance in her direction, valiantly fighting the urge—and failing—to rake his gaze over her body. “But don’t get me started about how those itty-bitty pieces of fabric you were wearing at the river threatened to corrupt my virtue.”
    He braced himself for a witty retort or scathing commentary on the irredeemable nature of his virtue, but she didn’t take the softball pitch he’d tossed her.
    From the corner of his eye he watched her shoulders lift as she inhaled deeply. On a purr of