The Navy SEAL’s Holiday Fling: Ballybeg Bad Boys, Book 3 Read Free

thought he’d gone back to France.”
    Olivia shook her head. “Oh, no. He came into my café the other day with Darko Dunne. I almost swooned when he told me my cooking was delicious. He’s looking especially gorgeous now that he’s shaved his beard.”
    Jill’s breath came hard and fast. While she had no regrets regarding the demise of her relationship with Ratfink, she was still smarting with humiliation over her fling with Jean-Baptiste. “How dare he show up to my party? What’s he planning to do? Buy a vibrator for his new girlfriend?”
    Olivia’s eyebrows shot north. “It’s not like you to get so irate.”
    “Jean-Baptiste was the first man I slept with after splitting up with Richard. I was stupid enough to believe it meant something to him.”
    “You went out with him a few times over the summer, right?”
    “We went out for six weeks, but I only saw him on the weekends.” Six passion-filled weekends that had ended abruptly one Sunday morning when Jean-Baptiste had received a mysterious phone call. “Then he took off like a bat out of hell, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since he made a half-arsed attempt to apologize two months later.”
    “Well, you’re about to see him now,” Olivia said, straining to see over the crowd. “He’s making a beeline straight for you.”
    Jill’s eyes widened at the sight of the man running toward her. Jean-Baptiste had indeed shaved his beard. He’d also replaced his unruly shoulder-length tresses with a military buzz cut. And there was something different about his eyebrows…
    To her amazement, he halted in front of the alarm box, grabbed a large dildo from a display table, and smashed the glass. Bells pealed throughout the room, bringing the reverie to an abrupt halt.
    Jill’s confusion morphed into anger. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, marching toward him. “That dildo is one of Blush Shoppe’s premium products. Are you trying to wreck my party?”
    “Fuck your party,” Jean-Baptiste said in an American accent. “We need to evacuate.”
    Jill blinked. This man looked like Jean-Baptiste, but where was his sexy French accent? She opened her mouth to voice her confusion, but he cut her off at the first syllable.
    “There’s a bomb in the building, probably in this room. We need to get everyone out. Tell your guests to move fast, but not panic.”
    The urgency in his voice silenced her objections. An icy prickle spread down her spine. The man must be mad. But what if he were telling the truth?
    She turned to her guests and spoke in a carrying voice. “May I have your attention please? The hotel is having a fire drill. Please leave your belongings and follow me.”
    Despite a few grumbles, everyone obeyed. With a minimum of fuss, they filed down the sweeping staircase that led to the hotel lobby, seeming confident they’d soon be back to their champagne flutes and sex toys.
    The protests began in earnest when they stepped outside into the chilly December evening. “If it’s just a fire drill, you could have given us time to fetch our coats,” one lady said in a strident tone. “After standing out here in the cold, we’ll all be sick for Christmas.”
    Jill turned to Jean-Baptiste and placed her hands on her hips. “What the hell is going on? What did I ever do to you to deserve this? Did you deliberately sabotage my launch party?” She jerked a thumb up at the windows of the conference room. “If you were going to play games, you could have had the decency to let us get our coats before ordering us outside in the freezing cold.”
    “There was no time,” Jean-Baptiste said, scanning the crowd. Jill followed the direction of his gaze but could see nothing unusual. “I had to get you out before the bomb detonated.”
    “Why did—”
    In that instant, a blast ripped through the second floor of the hotel, shattering the windows of the conference room they’d just evacuated.

3
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