A Reputation For Revenge by Jennie Lucas Read Free Book Online Page B

through her. “The international playboy?”
    He snorted. “Everyone has a first experience. Mine was Nina. She worked at a PR firm in Moscow, and we hired her to help our new business. She was far older than me—thirty. We dated for a few months. After I lost my half of Xendzov Mining, I went back to Russia to see her. I was floundering. I had some half-baked idea that I’d ask her to marry me.” Hegave her a crooked smile. “Instead, I found her in bed with a fat, elderly banker.”
    Josie gasped aloud.
    He looked away. “I thought I was in love with her.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Virgins usually think that, their first time. But Nina just thought of me as a client. To her, sex was ‘networking.’ And when I no longer was a potentially lucrative PR account, she no longer had reason to see me.”
    “Oh,” Josie whispered. Her brown eyes were luminous with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry.”
    He shrugged. “She did me a favor. Taught me an important lesson.”
    She swallowed, looking up at him. “But just because one woman hurt you, that’s no reason to give up on love forever.”
    His lips twisted sardonically. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me standing outside her apartment in the snow and ice, with an idiotic expression on my face.”
    “But—”
    “You’ll be my only wife, Josie. Because you’re temporary. And this sham marriage will be over in weeks.” Giving her a smile that didn’t meet his eyes, Kasimir held out his arm. “Come, my beautiful bride,” he said softly. “Our wedding awaits.”
    An hour later, Kasimir and Josie exchanged wedding rings, speaking their vows in a simple ceremony in the office of a justice of the peace in downtown Honolulu. Kasimir couldn’t look away from the radiant beauty of his bride.
    Or believe that he’d told her so much about his past. He’d told her about his first experience with love. He’d told her he’d been a virgin at twenty-two. What the hell had possessed him?
    He didn’t care if she looked at him with her weepy eyes and vulnerable smile. He’d never try to comfort her again with a little piece of his soul.
    From now on, he’d keep his damned mouth shut.
    “And do you, Josephine Louise Dalton, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, as long as you both shall live?”
    Josie turned to look at Kasimir, her soft brown eyes glowing as she whispered, “I do.”
    Kasimir’s gaze traced downward, from her beautiful face to her slender neck, to those amazingly sexy curves in the tight, clinging white sheath.
    And he’d keep his hands off her. His forehead burst out in a hot sweat as he repeated the rule to himself again.
    He wasn’t going to seduce Josie. He
wasn’t.
    He had good reasons. All reasons he’d thought of before he’d seen her in this dress.
    Who’d known she was hiding all those curves beneath her baggy clothes?
    He’d nearly gasped the first time he saw her, when he’d been talking on the phone near his rooftop pool, tying up loose ends with Greg Hudson. The man was taking full credit for the way Bree Dalton and Vladimir had left together after the poker game, and wanted a bonus on top of the agreed-upon bribe. “I went to a lot of work,” Hudson whined. “I didn’t just hire the Dalton girls, I got them to trust me. And I managed to get your brother to leave with her. I think I deserve double.” Kasimir had been rolling his eyes when he’d looked up and seen Josie in that tight white dress. “I’ll talk to you later,” he’d said, hanging up on the man in midsentence.
    But he knew the whole story now. Bree had taken Josie’s place at the poker table to try to win back her little sister’s debt. She’d succeeded, and had been walking away from the table free and clear, when Vladimir had taunted her into one last game.
    It was Bree’s fault she was in Vladimir’s hands. Her own pride had been her downfall.
    And it