The Bride Tamer by Ann Major Read Free Book Online

specialized in wounded rich men.
    And Isabela had broken too many hearts to count. Not that Isabela kept a list of conquests or heartbreaks. She was resilient and optimistic. In her mind, the present man was the only one.
    If Isabela pulled this off, Vivian would get to go home to the States. But oddly, Vivian wanted Cash to find true love and be happy and not simply be swept away.
    Suddenly Concho left Cash’s side and trotted over to stand underneath Vivian’s balcony. He lifted his head and began to bark excitedly as if she were a skunk or a raccoon he’d treed.
    â€œGo away! Git!” Vivian whispered.
    At the sound of her voice, Concho leaped against the pomegranate tree and howled. When Vivian heard a man’s footsteps, she quickly shrank deeper into the shadows.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Spot?”
    Spot! Spot? Concho didn’t have a spot on him.
    Cash was underneath her too now. Vivian barely dared to breathe when he planted two large, broad feet squarely underneath her balcony.
    â€œSomebody up there, Spot? A cat, maybe?”
    Vivian’s heart knocked. Just me.
    She felt him, and she knew he felt her. Because he stayed there, even after Isabela called to him.
    Some weird, out-of-body chemistry was definitely going on. The air grew colder and seemed to snap as if it were as charged with electricity as air after a summer storm. The leaves of the pomegranate stirred, as did the tendrils along Vivian’s nape.
    Vivian wrapped her arms around herself tightly and clamped her teeth together to keep them from chattering.
    â€œSomebody up there?” he repeated, his deep voice silky and seductive.
    â€œThat’s Vivian’s bedroom,” Isabela told him. “She’s asleep.”
    No, she’s biting her lips until they bleed and trembling like a crazy woman while wave after wave of wanton heat washes over her.
    Oh dear, if this mad feeling didn’t stop soon, she was sure she’d melt and become a puddle.
    â€œGo away,” she whispered, her legs turning to jelly as she sank against the wall. “Please, both of you—just go away.”
    â€œVivian?” he whispered into the still night air. “Are you up there?”

Four
    V ivian woke up on a shudder of longing to a giant tropical moon flooding her bedroom with magical white light. Slowly she became aware of her hot flesh tingling.
    She licked her lips. Half awake, and breathless from her dream, she scrambled into her bathrobe and dashed to her balcony, where she stared at the moon and tried her best to forget her outrageous fantasy. But the harder she tried to forget him, the more indelibly he became engraved on her mind.
    She’d been dreaming she was naked and sitting on a broad, virile Cash McRay, who was as naked as the day he was born. He’d been solid and warm, sculpted of muscle. His eyes had burned green and bright with tenderness and desire, and even now, just remembering, her body thrummed with longing.
    She could still hear his voice. “Vivian? Are you up there?”
    With shaking fingers Vivian wrapped the thick folds of her robe up high under her throat the way a prim old maid might. But she wasn’t an old maid. She was a divorcée. For the first time, she was fulfilling all her suitors’ fantasies about her.
    Aaron’s words returned to haunt her. “It’s obvious it’s been too long…”
    To get her mind off the possibility of sex with Isabela’s beloved, Vivian decided to go for a swim.
    A swim—the mere thought energized her and had her racing to her bureau and rummaging through a drawer for her red bikini. Even before she shook out the drawer onto a floor already teeming with clothes she hadn’t hung up for the past few days, she remembered she’d left it in the pool house bathroom.
    Five minutes later she was there, tearing her cotton gown and bathrobe off as if demons possessed her.
    She couldn’t believe she’d