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have swept Missy off her feet with that proposal. How romantic of you to compile a checklist for the perfect marriage.’
    â€˜Missy knows she can trust me,’ he said firmly, the look on his face delightfully annoyed and confused. Clearly the Sainted Carter wasn’t used to being teased—or questioned about his carefully planned love life. ‘That’s what matters.’
    â€˜Really? What about love and passion and adventure and...’ she groped for another quality that might get the message across to this indomitable and resolutely anti-romantic man ‘...and the promise of multi-orgasmic sex for the rest of your life?’
    His gaze flicked to her cleavage, then shot back to her face and a dull shade of red rose up his neck and made his tan glow on chiselled cheekbones. He looked away, taking a large fortifying gulp of the cola. And suddenly she knew.
    Oh. My. God.
    Carter Price had been eighteen when he’d proposed to his very-appropriate fiancée. And if Missy was as much of a sanctimonious prude as her best friend, Marnie, had been when she’d first arrived from Savannah—wearing a little promise ring on her finger that signified her purity, and had needled Gina no end—then Missy had probably demanded she remain a virgin until her wedding night.
    She searched the long tanned fingers of Carter’s left hand wrapped around the cola bottle. Was it possible that Carter had made a similar promise? Hadn’t Marnie said boys wore them too, when Gina had lit into her for being a disgrace to Women’s Liberation. Gina held back the gasp as she spotted the silver band on Carter’s pinkie, identical to the celibacy ring that Marnie no longer wore when she was at college.
    Oh, no, surely not? A man who was as virile and handsome and overwhelmingly male as he was, and who looked at her with that dark sexual intensity he couldn’t hide? That man hadn’t had sex since he was eighteen? It was just too delicious. And too ridiculous. No wonder he looked so tense and uptight. And no wonder he was far too involved in Marnie’s personal life, because he clearly didn’t have one of his own.
    An intervention was called for.
    The surge of excitement and anticipation gripped Gina’s chest—and some other interesting parts of her anatomy. Suddenly she had the perfect way to bring the Sainted Carter down a peg or two. Prove to him that he was as human and fallible and sinful as the rest of them.
    She was after all an accomplished flirt. And there was no harm in simply flirting with the man. Especially a man as stuffy and controlling and undeniably hot as this one. And once she’d proved to Carter Price that bad girls were people too, once she’d reduced him to a puddle of overactive hormones and sexual desperation, she’d be able to get him to agree to anything.... Even letting his innocent kid sister go on a riotous road trip with three loose women.
    The man was celibate. He hadn’t had sex in four long years. The challenge was simply irresistible. She’d lost her virginity at sixteen with her thirty-five-year-old biology teacher at St Bude’s boarding school, and she hadn’t looked back since. Carter Price wouldn’t know what hit him. And while she wouldn’t do the dirty deed with him, because she never poached on another woman’s territory, why shouldn’t she take her flirtation far enough to get Saint Carter primed and ready for his wedding night? Missy would end up thanking her.
    * * *
    â€˜Would you like another martini, miss?’
    Gina blinked, staring absently at the harassed young waitress as the question brought her spinning back to the present. And the bar at The Standard where she’d gone for a quick fortifying libation. And been blind-sided by too many memories.
    She looked down at her glass, surprised to find it empty, the olive on its cocktail stick lined up on the table. ‘No, thanks, just