Wild Action (23 page)
Authors: Dawn Stewardson
late for a super-important meeting, you discover the cat has eaten your panty hose
while you work through lunch, the rest of the gang goes out and finds a one-hour, once-in-a-lifetime 90% off sale at the most exclusive store in town (Oh, and they also get to meet Brad Pitt who’s filming a movie across the street.)
you discover that your intimate phone call with your boyfriend was on company wide intercom
finally at the end of a long and exasperating day, you escape from it all with an entertaining, humorous and always romantic Love & Laughter book!
For a preview, turn the page…
Colleen CoUins’s RIGHT CHEST, WRONG NAME
Available August 1997…
“D
ARLING, YOU SOUND
like a broken cappuccino machine,” murmured Charlotte, her voice oozing disapproval.
Russell juggled the receiver while attempting to sit up in bed, but couldn’t. If he
sounded
like a wreck over the phone, he could only imagine what he looked like.
“What mischief did you and your friends get into at your bachelor’s party last night?” she continued.
She always had a way of saying “your friends” as though they were a pack of degenerate water buffalo. Professors deserved to be several notches higher up on the food chain, he thought Which he would have said if his tongue wasn’t swollen to twice its size.
“You didn’t do anything…bad…did you, Russell?”
“Bad.” His laugh came out like a bark.
“Bad as in
naughty.”
He heard her piqued tone but knew she’d never admit to such a base emotion as jealousy. Charlotte Maday, the woman he was to wed in a week, came from a family who bled blue. Exhibiting raw emotion was akin to burping in public.
After agreeing to be at her parents’ pool party by
noon, he untangled himself from the bed sheets and stumbled to the bathroom.
“Pool party,” he reminded himself. He’d put on his best front and accommodate Char’s request. Make the family rounds, exchange a few pleasantries, play the role she liked best: the erudite, cultured English literature professor. After fulfilling his duties, he’d slink into some lawn chair, preferably one in the shade, and nurse his hangover.
He tossed back a few aspirin and splashed cold water on his face. Grappling for a towel, he squinted into the mirror.
Then he jerked upright and stared at his reflection, blinking back drops of water. “Good Lord. They stuck me in a wind tunnel.”
His hair, usually neatly parted and combed, sprang from his head as though he’d been struck by lightning. “Can too many Wild Turkeys do that?” he asked himself as he stared with horror at his reflection.
Something caught his eye in the mirror. Russell’s gaze dropped.
“What in the—”
Over his pectoral muscle was a small patch of white. A bandage. Gingerly, he pulled it off.
Underneath, on his skin, was not a wound but a small, neat drawing.
“A red heart?” His voice cracked on the word
heart
Something—a word?—was scrawled across it.
“Good Lord,” he croaked. “I got a tattoo. A heart tattoo with the name Liz on it.”
Not Charlotte. Liz!
ISBN: 978 1 472 06336 6
WILD ACTION
© 1997 Dawn Stewardson
First Published in Great Britain in 1997
Harlequin (UK) Limited
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
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All characters in this work have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l.
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