Hot Touch Read Free

luscious.
    She smirked at him. “Whoever you are, I’m going to kick your sweating hulk off this place so fast that you’ll feel like gumbo in a hurricane.”
    “You will, eh,
chère
?” Paul raked her up and down. “You’re not dressed for anything so physical.”
    She was the epitome of fashion in a white dress with enormous padded shoulders and a skirt that barely came to mid-thigh. Skin-tight pants extended from under the skirt and stopped just below her knees, outlining extremely pretty legs. The legs, cased in white hose, continued in the same curvaceous way all the way down to her high-heeled black shoes.
    “Okay, Tarzan, seen many women lately?” she inquired in a tone that could have frozen a volcano.
    “Not any dressed for the circus.”
    He gazed disdainfully at her knee pants. They had a tiny polka-dot print that matched her scarf. A wide black belt made her waist look too small for her height—she was only a few inches shorter than he was. Paul smiled at the indignant way her lips pursed.
    Her chin came up. “A fashion critique from a wild boar is hardly worth considering.”
    “You look like a piece of candy wrapped up in too much paper. By the time a man got you unwrapped, he’d forget that he was hungry.”
    “I’m here on business with the producer of a movie. You couldn’t possibly work for him. He has good taste. So you must be some sort of hired help at the plantation. Consider yourself out of a job. Now get your lizard out of the road and your face out of my sight.”
    “Ol’ ’gator, he doesn’t move for man nor circus woman.” Paul turned toward the chauffeur and gestured grandly. “Get her luggage out. Let her carry it. She looks capable, like she takes aerobics classes and lifts weights. With her tongue.”
    “Pal,” she interjected, “you can take your attitude and put it where the sun—”
    “The sun shines everywhere down here,” he finished dryly. “And it gets
beaucoup
hot for a woman who runs her mouth when she should be carrying her luggage to the big house.”
    Caroline crossed her arms over her chest. Perspiration was already beading on her scalp. The scarf itched. “Move the alligator,” she ordered.
    Paul stepped back and waved her toward the front of the limo. “You move him.”
    The tension inside Caroline’s chest lightened as she considered that offer. She smiled at him in a condescending way. “All right.”
    They walked to where the monstrous, muddy thing lay dozing in the center of the driveway. Her tormentor threw out a protective arm to halt her. Surprised, Caroline bumped into the muscled barrier at breast height.
    Tarzan might be sweaty, dirty, and bad-tempered, but he was also a walking catalogue of perfect male parts. The pressure of his arm against Caroline’s bosom drew primitive requests straight from her hormones.
We’ll take one of those, and two of those, and lots of that …
    “How gallant,” she muttered, and stepped back. She feigned interest in the alligator. “Well, well, an Izod emblem with teeth.”
    “Big Daddy likes to chase women. You’re not wearing any alligator skin, are you?”
    “Oh, just my underwear.”
    “Seems appropriate.”
    Her face burned with more than the external heat. Watch this, Mr. Macho.
    “Beat it, alligator, before mother nature notices that you flunked the quiz on evolution,” she said aloud for effect.
    Caroline peered at the reptile with a twinge of performance anxiety. She’d never dealt with a mind quite so primitive. Even frogs were sharper than this.
    Big Daddy’s large, dark eyes opened slowly. He rose to all fours. He waddled off the road, his body swinging from side to side. She exhaled in relief. Caroline smiled sweetly at the shocked man beside her.
    “I’m a professional animal trainer,” she explained. “It’s all in knowing how to pitch your voice.”
    Disgust flooded his expression. “Dumb luck.”
    “No, that’s how you get a girl.”
    His eyes flared with amusement