Hot and Bothered

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Book: Read Hot and Bothered for Free Online
Authors: Serena Bell
after two years?”
    Just a flick of the smile, one corner. “I decided it was probably time to get laid again.”
    His eyes held hers. Too long. She looked away. She was uncomfortably hot in the pale blue suit jacket, but if she took it off, he’d see the sweat stains under her arms.
    Her panties were damp, too, and she couldn’t blame that on overdressing for the superheated barbershop.
    “Did it work?”
    Wait, why had she said that? She was flirting with him, prolonging the conversation. But she shouldn’t. He was her client. He was—
    Mark Webster, C.D. Certified Disaster.
    He laughed, a rough, lovely sound, like something rusty from disuse. “Yup. The haircut worked the way it was supposed to. All the parts worked, too.”
    She didn’t want to ask any more questions. Talking to Mark Webster about sex, with his eyes so big, long-lashed and luminous, his teeth so starkly white, was a bad idea. Removing all that hair should have made him more vulnerable, but she was the one rocked back on her heels.
    She cast about for another topic. “I made an appointment for Pete to come see me next Tuesday morning in my office at ten.”
    He looked down at his lap, and she was sorry she’d gone there. Bad enough she was making him grovel without making him think about it today.
    “It’s not going to be so bad,” she said. “Wham, bam—”
    Whoops, that sounded like sex again, and the one-sided quirk of his mouth told her he hadn’t missed that.
    “I’ll do most of the talking. You just deliver the line.”
    “I regret any lasting damage my temper has caused you,” Mark intoned.
    She was proud of the non-apology she’d crafted for him.
    He frowned. “I don’t think he’s going to let me get away with it.”
    “Trust me.”
    Their eyes met in the mirror again, and he gave a short, hard laugh. “If I didn’t trust you, do you think I’d let this guy put a straight razor on my throat? And cut my hair off? I feel like—Samson, right? Don’t you sap my strength or something?”
    He didn’t look sapped. He looked...potent. She had to turn away from the mirror because his gaze kept catching hers and not letting go properly.
    Mark Webster had a reputation in the media for saying and doing the wrong things, but he seemed to know the right way to get under Haven’s skin. She was having a difficult time remembering why she shouldn’t exchange smiles, meaningful glances and double entendres with him.
    Right.
Right
.
    Mark Webster was her client, and her job was
not
to land them both in the press as a seedy example of how to become his next castoff. He was a serial womanizer. By definition, that meant he was not interested in anything serious with her. And her job was to clean him up, not let herself be dragged into the mud.
    “What do you think?” Derek asked her, warming some kind of expensive styling product between his palms and smoothing it through Mark’s hair, which was now short enough to be “not long,” but still had a lot of wave. He had really great hair, thick and coppery brown with streaks of lighter and darker colors. Women paid fortunes for hair like that.
    She was not secretly envying Derek for being allowed to run his fingers through Mark’s hair. Not at all.
    Oh, she was such a liar.
    “It looks great,” she said.
    That, at least, was the truth.
    “What do you think of the new, improved Mark Webster?”
    It didn’t matter how she answered, because she couldn’t
not
meet the ferocity of his unblinking challenge in the mirror. So he knew. He knew he looked good, and he knew he was having an effect on her.
    Derek very politely did not roll his eyes at them.
    She wrenched her gaze away, but she couldn’t stop herself from putting her fingers to her wrist to feel the way her pulse raced under the hot skin there, and when she looked up again, Mark’s eyes were on her.
    * * *
    J UDY , H AVEN ’ S FAVORITE personal shopper, kept touching Mark.
    She brushed her fingertips briskly over his

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