Read [4 Seasons 01] Seducing Summer Online
Authors: Serenity Woods
[4 Seasons 01] Seducing Summer
| [4 Seasons 01] Seducing Summer |
| Serenity Woods |
| (2016) |
Callie Summer, CEO of The Four Seasons lingerie business, is in shock. She’d expected her new PA to be a middle-aged frump, but Jean turns out to be Gene, and he’s neither middle-aged, nor anything like a frump. When the gorgeous Bond-lookalike insists he’ll be the perfect companion on her business trip around the country, Callie agrees to give him a trial. Having recently found her ex in bed with another woman, she’s not looking for love. But a little bit of private lusting never did anyone any harm.
Once a military journalist with the New Zealand Army, Gene now runs his own security firm. Hired by Callie’s mother, Phoebe, to secretly protect her daughter after Phoebe receives death threats against her family, Gene finds his work cut out for him. Callie’s as delectable as she is infuriating, and his urge to seduce her fights with his duty to keep her safe.
It’s not long before they give in to their passion, and the weather isn’t the only thing that turns hot and sultry as they travel further north. But Gene can’t keep his identity a secret from Callie forever. And when an attempt is finally made on her life, the truth threatens to break them apart.
Seducing Summer
The Four Seasons Book 1
By Serenity Woods
*
Copyright 2016 Serenity Woods
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and
incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or
organizations is coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Five years ago
“Whose stupid idea was this?” Neve
grumbled.
Callie Summer glanced to her right and
chuckled at the sight of her friend tugging up the bodice of her bridesmaid’s
dress. “Will you stop fidgeting? You’ve got a ton of tit tape on—it’s not going
to fall down.”
“One sneeze,” Neve stated, “and I swear my
boobs will pop out.”
“Along with the best man’s eyes,” Bridget
said.
Neve snorted, and the rest of the
bridesmaids laughed. The best man, Rhett, appeared to have the hots for Neve.
They’d been teasing her all morning that he’d make a move on her by the end of
the day.
“I understand why men can’t take their eyes
off us. I think we look fantastic,” Rowan said.
Callie had to agree. When Rowan’s twin
sister had first told the four of them that she wanted them to be bridesmaids
at her wedding, they’d all been super excited, as none of them had been a
bridesmaid before. Then Willow had revealed that the wedding was to take place
in Matamata, at one of the sets from the movie
The Lord of the Rings
.
“Please don’t say you want us to dress up
as hobbits,” Bridget had begged.
“No, silly.” Willow had rolled her eyes. “I
thought you could be the four seasons, with gorgeous, flowing Elven dresses.”
“There are six seasons in the Elven year,”
Liam, the groom-to-be, had pointed out.
Willow had thumped him. “We’re not making a
Tolkien documentary. I just want them to look beautiful.”
“I’d rather be an orc than wear a
bridesmaid’s gown,” Neve had grumbled. “Can’t I have a pantsuit?”
But Willow had asked her sister to design
their dresses, and as they stood together waiting for the photographer, Callie
thought that even Neve couldn’t deny what a marvelous job Rowan had done. All
four gowns were the same style—simple and strapless with a tight bodice and a
full-length satin skirt—but they differed in their color and in the pattern on
the flowing layers of tulle.
With the surname Summer, Callie’s choice of
season had been obvious. She had a dress of sunshine yellow, and the tulle of
her skirt bore a gold-and-orange pattern that looked great with her pale,
English-rose complexion.
Between the four of them, they’d decided
that Rowan should be autumn because the foliage of the tree after which she’d
been named turned red at that time of year. A rich gold-and-red tulle covered
her russet gown, complementing her brown hair.
“My name’s Latin for snow,” Neve had
suggested. So she’d become winter, with a pale blue dress covered in a
shimmering white tulle flecked with blue to make sure she looked different from
the bride.
That left spring for Bridget, and as her
nickname was Birdie they thought the season fitted her rather well. Tiny pink
and purple flowers covered the tulle over her pastel pink dress.
Together, the four gowns made them look
like a row of flowers, and Willow had cried when she’d first seen them all
together at the rehearsal. Rowan had made her dress, too—a flowing white gown
based on Galadriel’s, with thousands of beads and glittering thread. She’d also
made all their underwear—beautiful lacy, strapless bras and matching panties—and
it was when Callie had stood in front of her mirror and admired the garments
that she’d had a revelation.
“I’ve had an idea I want to talk to you all
about,” she said as they watched the photographer taking the final shots of the
bride and groom. “I think we should go into business together.”
The other three looked at her with raised
eyebrows. “Doing what?” Neve asked. “Running a circus?”
“No, silly. The Four Seasons Lingerie
Shop.”
They all stared at her.
“What?” Bridget said.
“After we finish university, we should open
a lingerie shop. Rowan can design the clothing, I’ll manage the business side
of things, Birdie—you can run the shop, and Neve can be in charge of promotion.
She can hold naughty lingerie and sex toy parties and spread the word.”
“I like it,” Neve stated while the other
two burst out laughing.
“You’re serious.” Rowan’s smile faded when
Callie didn’t join in.
“Perfectly. Don’t you think it would be
fun? Between us, we have all the skills we’d need. We get on really well, and
I’m sure we’d work well together, too. It would be fantastic. I can just see us
all in five years’ time—rich, successful businesswomen, happily married, babies
on the way… It’ll be great.”
Rowan smiled, Bridget looked thoughtful,
and Neve rolled her eyes, but Callie could see she’d sown the seeds.
She turned her gaze back to Willow and her
new husband. The photographer had finished their shots and beckoned to the
bridesmaids and best man to join them, so they all walked forward to surround
the bride and groom. Callie watched Rhett bend his head and whisper something
in Neve’s ear. She shook her head, but a smile played on her lips.
Callie’s stomach bubbled with excitement
and hope. She knew the lingerie shop would be successful. With Rowan’s artistic
talent and the combined fashion and business knowledge the rest of them were
amassing from their university degrees, they’d make it work through sheer
effort and determination.
All the girls were warm-hearted and
sincere, and Callie knew it wouldn’t be long before some decent guys snapped
them up. Bridget had her eye on one of the ushers, Callie herself had plans to
chat up the hot guy in charge of the catering, and even Rowan—with all her
hang-ups—was casting sidelong glances at one of Liam’s cousins.
Five years
,
she thought as the photographer gestured for them all to move closer together.
It would be five years, maximum, before their business was super successful,
and they’d all settled down with roses around the door and babies in their
arms.
Just wait and see
.
Present Day
Callie sat at her desk, her chin in her
hands, and read the email that had just popped up on her computer screen. It
was from Willow, thanking Callie for the anniversary card she’d sent the
previous week.
“I can’t believe Liam and I have been
married five years,” the email read. “Where does the time go? And yes, baby’s
due on February 29th—typical! The poor thing will only have a birthday every
four years. Hey, I know my baby shower is going to be the day before
Valentine’s Day, but I really hope you can come.”
Yeah, Callie thought, she’d go. It wasn’t
as if she had anything better to do.
She pushed her chair away and walked over
to stand at the window of her office, looking down at the bustling city center
of Wellington, capital of New Zealand. Many of the shop windows were decorated
with red hearts and Valentine’s Day gifts, and the usually quiet boutique
chocolate shop across the pedestrianized high street had a queue out the door.
Love was in the air. Allegedly, anyway.
Callie had yet to see any evidence of the fat baby archer and his bow.
So much for her predictions on the day of
Willow’s wedding. She couldn’t have been more wrong if she’d tried. She sighed
as she contemplated not just her own disastrous love life, but also the failed
relationships of her three friends. Maybe she’d jinxed them with her
prophecies.
Neve’s brief fling with Rhett had ended
abruptly—Callie had never discovered why, and since then Neve had moved from
one relationship to another without any sign of them being serious. Rowan had
proven useless with men, having no clue as to what made them tick, and had yet
to stay with any guy for more than a few months. Bridget’s on-off relationship
with her boyfriend seemed more off than on lately. None of them appeared close
to settling down and having families.
Callie’s own love life also seemed doomed.
After a couple of failed relationships, she’d eventually moved in with Jamie,
and she’d thought things were going well right up until the moment she’d walked
in on him in bed with his secretary.
Her eyes stung, and she swallowed hard.
She’d done her crying over Jamie Verne—over any man, in fact.
She lifted her chin. Not every prophecy
she’d made had been wrong. The Four Seasons lingerie shop in Wellington had not
only come to fruition, it had been hugely successful. They’d leased a shop toward
the busy end of Cuba Street, and although it hadn’t been cheap, it had proved
to be a worthwhile investment, especially as it came with a couple of rooms
above, from which Callie was able to run the business. As well as selling
well-known brands of lingerie and swimwear, they distributed Rowan’s own brand
that specialized in lingerie for “real women,” built on the belief that all
women liked to wear pretty undergarments, no matter what their shape or size.
And now she was about to embark on the next
phase of the business. Today was Thursday, and on Monday she was setting off
for a countrywide tour of high street clothing shops to promote Rowan’s Four
Seasons brand of lingerie with the hope that a large proportion of the shops
would agree to stock it. It was an ambitious move that could propel their brand
from small scale to nationally recognized, and might even mean expansion to
Australia and beyond.
She had far too much on her plate to even
think about romance. She should have been thanking her lucky stars that Jamie
had shown his true colors before she’d done anything really stupid like gotten
married or—horror of horrors—fallen pregnant. Now she could concentrate on the
business, which was what she was best at, when it came down to it. Finding love
would stay at the bottom of her to-do list, where it belonged.
Checking her watch, she realized that
several minutes had gone by since she’d buzzed Neve to send in the next
interviewee. Becky, her heavily pregnant PA, had unfortunately had to start her
maternity leave early when her blood pressure had shot up, and Neve was sitting
in for a day or two until the temp agency came up with a replacement.
Callie turned and, to her surprise, saw
someone waiting in the doorway.
She’d expected a middle-aged woman with
graying hair, glasses on a lanyard, frumpy clothes, and possibly a hairy lip.
This person was neither middle-aged nor
frumpy. He was about six-foot-two with short brown hair, and wearing what
looked like a tailored charcoal three-piece suit with a sparkling white shirt
and a stylish sky-blue tie. He stood with his hands behind his back, his head
tipped a little to the side as he surveyed her, suggesting he’d been there for
a while.
He was also the most gorgeous guy she’d
seen in… well, possibly ever, if you liked your men hard and rather dangerous.
He looked as if he could complete a million-dollar business deal for a piece of
land, build a shelter on it with his bare hands, and drag a woman to it by her
hair. Callie hadn’t thought that kind of guy appealed to her, but she had to
admit that if she’d ordered herself a late Christmas present, or an early
Valentine’s Day present, or indeed any kind of present, this was the kind of
parcel she would have hoped for. All he needed was a bow tied around… somewhere
interesting.
“Oh,” she said, confused, and flustered at
his steady gaze. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here for the interview.”
She stared at him. Part of her was aware
that her jaw was sagging, but her brain couldn’t process the information he’d
just given her.
He raised a hand to scratch his cheek. “Ma’am?
Is there a problem?”
Ma’am.
That
one word melted her a little inside.
She looked at the name she’d scribbled on
her notepad. “I understood that the next candidate was called Jean Bond.” She
looked back up, confused. “As in Simmons, Harlow. Miss Brodie—the Prime of.”
“It’s G-e-n-e,” he clarified. “As in
Hackman, Wilder. Kelly—who sings in the rain.” He brushed a hand down himself,
drawing her attention to his suit again and the undoubtedly male physique that
lay beneath it. “I’m a guy, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
As it happened, Callie
had
noticed.
And that was where the problem lay.
She put her hands on her hips and pursed
her lips. “Neve, get your butt in here!” she yelled.
Gene’s eyebrows rose, and then he moved a
few steps to the side to leave the doorway clear.
Neve’s head appeared around the door. Her
innocent expression informed Callie that she was well aware of what had just
transpired. Neve sidled in and cast a quick glance at the man still standing in
the center of the room before saying, “How’s the interview going? Not
progressed to sitting down yet?”
“I’m supposed to find a replacement for Becky
today,” Callie pointed out.
Neve nodded and gestured with both hands at
the man standing by her side as if he were a magician and she was his assistant.
“And here he is… Ta da!”
“It appears that 007 here is a man,” Callie
stated.
“007?” Neve queried.
“Mr. Bond.”
“Ah.” Neve looked him up and down. “Do you
know, I think you’re right.”
Callie gave her a wry look. “You knew damn
well he was a man and you didn’t tell me.”
Earlier that morning, when Callie had
complained about how useless the three temps they’d already sent her had been, Neve
had told her, “Don’t worry, the agency’s sending someone called Jean.
Apparently the best they’ve got. Came in early this morning after a long
vacation, looking for a new post.” It was only now that Callie realized her friend
had carefully avoided using pronouns.
She glared at Neve. “You told me they said
‘Efficient, organized, and
hot as
office skills.’”
“And?”
“Hot piece of ass is what you meant. Deny
it.”
“I’m standing right here,” Gene said.
Callie ignored him. Since she’d broken up
with Jamie, her friends had tried to fix her up on no fewer than three
occasions with someone new. Callie had refused each time, but she was certain
this appointment was another of Neve’s attempts to pair her up. “This morning,
you’ve brought me a sixteen-year-old whose only experience was working in a DVD
rental shop on a Saturday afternoon, another girl who spelled the word lingerie
with a ‘j’, and a woman whose typing speed was twenty words a minute.”
“I can type faster than that with my feet,”
Gene commented.
She glanced over at him. He raised his
eyebrows. She was tempted to laugh, but she wasn’t about to give in yet.
“Did you pick the other three on purpose?”
she asked Neve suspiciously.
“Not at all.” Neve looked affronted. “When
you leave it to the last minute, these are the kind of people left on the
shelf.”
“Gee, thanks,” Gene said.
“I didn’t mean you.” Now Neve was laughing.
“Come on, Callie. Give the guy an interview at least. He comes with great
references, and he can do shorthand.”
Callie blew out a breath. It may have been
old-fashioned, but she enjoyed dictating letters and reports while she paced
her office looking out at the view. She’d been doubtful that she’d find anyone
these days who could still do shorthand. That at least worked in his favor.
“You really can type?” she asked him.
“I can.”
“What’s your speed?”
“Ninety words a minute.”
That wasn’t bad at all. “Shorthand speed?”
she queried.
“A hundred and thirty words a minute.”
Maybe not as fast as Becky, but still
pretty good. She tried not to look impressed. “Anything else?”
“I can use old-fashioned Dictaphones and
the new digital ones. I’m proficient in all the major word processing,
spreadsheet, and presentational packages. I can book flights, organize
meetings, make coffee, charm customers, and unjam printers. And I know my
alphabet and can tie my shoelaces on my own.”
Neve burst out laughing. Seeing Callie’s
glare, she turned and walked out of the office, still chuckling.
Callie turned her glare on Gene, whose eyes
danced with humor. “Do you really think I’m looking for a smart-mouthed
man
to be my PA?” she demanded.
Pursing his lips, he looked at his shoes,
giving her a moment to admire him. He had boyish good looks, but there was a
touch of toughness to his hardened features, as if he were a guy she’d known
since childhood that had been away to war and seen terrible things, returning a
changed man. His face was grave and serious, and she had the feeling he didn’t
smile much—and yet the corners of his eyes were creased with laughter lines,
suggesting his seriousness hadn’t been there since birth, but had crept upon
him as life took its toll. It was difficult to see what kind of physique he had
beneath the suit, but he had wide shoulders and a broad chest, suggesting he
worked out. His short hair stuck up at the front, although it was unclear
whether it was natural or if he’d styled it like that.
He cleared his throat before looking back
at her. This time, his amusement had faded. “I apologize. I assure you, I’m
usually very respectful and good at my job. I’m organized and efficient, quiet
and hardworking, and I promise I’ll make your life easier.”
Callie highly doubted that. The man had
trouble written all over him. It could have been the steely glint in his eye,
or the way he was standing, still and watchful, like a coiled spring… She
couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was definitely something dangerous
about him.
How the hell was she supposed to work with
Mr. License-to-Kill at her side all the time providing the ultimate
distraction?
“Ma’am?” He looked concerned. “Can we start
over again?”
She picked up a pen and notepad, walked
over to the armchairs on one side of the room, and indicated for him to take
one. She sat opposite him, taking care to keep her knees together so he didn’t
get an eyeful. “Let’s start by you calling me Callie,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
Her lips twitched. And then suddenly it struck
her. The metaphor of a childhood friend who’d been away to war hadn’t been so
far from the truth. “You’re ex-military,” she observed.
He leaned back in the chair, resting an
ankle on the opposite knee, and nodded slowly, either amused or surprised she’d
guessed. “Yes. What gave it away?”
“The way you stood with your hands behind
your back. The deferential manner. And the MAG 58 machine gun I’m sure you’ve
got rammed up your backside.”
To his credit, he gave a short laugh.
“Don’t tell me you’re into guns.”
“Dad was in the Army.” She chewed her lip
while she surveyed him properly for the first time.
He bore her perusal calmly, and to his
credit his gaze stayed firmly on her face. She let hers slide down him, though,
knowing she was being rude but too interested not to pay further attention.
He’d fashioned his tie in a complicated Windsor knot, if she wasn’t mistaken.
His shoes bore a shine, also reflecting his military background. As he’d sat,
he’d unbuttoned his jacket, and it hung open now to reveal a dark gray matching
waistcoat over his white shirt. She could count the number of men who wore a three-piece
suit to work on the fingers of one hand. Suave, a little old-fashioned, and
incredibly sexy at the same time. What a combination.
