Protective Instincts Read Free Page A

to the mostly white arrangement.
    "These aren't my flowers. I ordered a dozen roses, not a garden." She was punching in the number of the florist as she saw the deliveryman heading toward her door. "Wait, you have to take these back. Someone will be disappointed when you take my dinky bouquet of roses to the person expecting these."
    The man shrugged, waiting for her to set the record straight. "But I ordered ...." Brit paced back and forth in front of the tall, antique telephone table.
    Arguing to no avail, she shrugged at the deliveryman. "Well, I am not paying for this fortune's worth of flowers." Using her read-my-lips tone she slowly enunciated into the phone, then hung up.
    Brit reached for the five-dollar bill she'd put aside for the tip. It was an appropriate tip for the flowers she'd ordered but ….
    "Ma'am," he called over his shoulder, "it's covered."
    Her dining room was redolent with fragrances from Stargazers, Casablanca lilies, or the blooms she couldn't identify. She was glad she'd had the deliveryman put the arrangement on the dining room table. Again, she moved to answer the doorbell. The food delivery?
    "What the … ?"
    Two tuxedoed men stood on her porch. The one in the lead clicked the heels of shiny tux shoes in salute. Too weird.
    "Your dinner, madam."
    "All this for one meal delivered?" She stepped aside to allow the small, formal army access. She reached for her phone. "Wait, what are you doing?" she asked the crew setting her dining table with a white lace tablecloth, candelabra, and expensive looking dinnerware.
    While she argued with someone at the restaurant she'd called earlier, waiters transformed her dining room into a romantic, candlelit dinner table setting. Tantalizing aromas teased her senses and had her stomach growling.
    "I didn't order all this," she repeated. "I don't understand." She shook her head. "Well, be prepared to send out another meal like this when the person who ordered this one doesn't get it."
    The phone barely rested back in its cradle when a waiter escorted her to her seat at the elegantly appointed table. The gleam from delicate white china, glittering crystal, and polished silver reflected candlelight in the darkened room. The two tuxedos stood along one wall of her dining room as she ate, moving to serve her every need.
    Could she be dreaming all this? Where was the handsome man who would come in to tell he'd admired her from afar for an eternity? Maybe a shadowy hulk would materialize and tell her he was an ugly beast who would transform into a prince if she could love him. Brit wove a romantic movie fantasy around the pampering. Soon she'd wake with memory of this dream.
    She enjoyed the succulent lobster, a special favorite, and the salad made with more tender leaves and other ingredients than she'd ever seen in one bowl. Asparagus tips and baby carrots tempted her taste buds. Potatoes swam in delicate white sauce.
    The sinful dessert was made with chocolate, nuts, whipped cream, ice cream, and cake and had to have at least a zillion calories. She'd need a priest for confession, though she was thoroughly Baptist. Within seconds of her last taste of sin on a plate, the room was cleared of the evidence of an expensive error. She was almost glad for the mistakes in delivery and that the waiters refused her puny tip, which would have paid for what she ordered.
    Finally, the tuxedoed men had cleared the carnage. They had departed but the aromas remained, mixing floral fragrances with that of freshly perked gourmet coffee. Now about that bath ... What was left besides a soak in her tub and a hot guy?
    Candlelight cast a glow around a freshly run, now steaming tub of water. Aromatherapy tonight included chamomile and lavender. Stepping into the hot water, Brit felt chill bumps appear on the exposed flesh, so she quickly immersed her body. "Ah!" she sighed, "heaven."
    Reaching over the side of the high tub, she retrieved her wine glass from the faded blue linoleum. Sipping