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Her eyebrows were high and delicately slanted, her brown eyes enhanced by long lashes, her lips full and red, her skin smooth with pale gold undertones. She was petite, her frame slender, her shoulders small. But her breasts . . . Christ, her breasts. To say she had full breasts was an understatement. She looked to be God’s gift to man; she had an hourglass figure accentuated by high, round breasts that had sent an instantaneous river of heat sliding down his spine.
He’d noticed all this about her in no more than a heartbeat . . . and then she’d glanced up at him . . . their gazes had connected, and he’d seen the volatile nature she possessed in the depths of her eyes. His hard-on had gone from raging to painful, a drop of pre-cum leaking onto his boxers.
Fuck.
He’d known down to his doomed soul that this shit would happen; he’d known she would look good. Hell, she looked even better than he’d imagined she would in his wildest, horniest dreams.
And that was how turned on he’d been before they’d started throwing insults back and forth. So, the little witch thought Courtney was his girlfriend? That was what had set her on the warpath? The idea of anything but a platonic, sibling-like relationship with Courtney was almost laughable—at least for him . . . but then he remembered the look on Nick’s face when they’d been arguing about her. It had been about a month ago, when Courtney had finished grad school. He and his brother had had a disagreement over where her place in the corporation would be; they’d both wanted her for their own divisions. It had somewhat surprised Garrett that his brother had had such definitive opinions about Courtney and her future, but at the time, he hadn’t put much thought into it.
Now, however, Maria’s accusations, although false, triggered something that Garrett had been missing, and the last puzzle piece fell into place. Nick’s feelings for Courtney weren’t platonic. Son-of-a-bitch. Garrett didn’t know how he’d missed it or how he even felt about it. It was the truth that Courtney was like a little sister to him, just like Erin, and if Nick ever hurt her . . . he’d have to answer to him.
But at this particular moment in time, all Garrett could really focus on was Maria and the quandary she presented. There was no question, he wanted to get her naked and horizontal as quickly as he could.
When she’d been snapping at him earlier, he’d been this close, this fucking close to saying ‘you’re fired’, and then picking her up and planting her legs around his waist and pushing her back against the tiled wall. It would have been ridiculously easy to pull her flimsy swimsuit aside and open his pants. He could have been inside her within five seconds flat. That’s what he’d wanted to do. That’s what he’d been about to do.
But then that guy had turned up and she’d taken that goddamn phone call that had screwed with his brain. Even if he hadn’t been fluent in Spanish, he still would have been able to tell how professional and accommodating she’d been, just by her tone. But he was fluent, because he’d minored in the language, and he’d understood every word of her end of the conversation. And not only had he experienced first hand the care with which she’d handled the paying guests, he’d also seen and heard how much the other employees relied on her.
The ramifications hit him all at once . . . he wasn’t going to be able to fire her; there was no way he could cut her loose. The general manager in charge was pure shit, and although Garrett hadn’t had the displeasure of meeting the man, Courtney had been adamant that the guy was on the short-list. So the hotel needed Maria, at the very least, for the duration of the transition. And that left Garrett in limbo, in a purgatory of indefinite blue-balls hell. He hadn’t anticipated that attaining his goal would be difficult in this particular way. He’d been assured the girl was a troublemaker, so he’d assumed he would just terminate her employment. Once that happened, he’d be able to get his hands on her.
Shit.
He was beginning to get a splitting headache.
Who knew that coming here would only make things go from bad to much, much worse?
****
So, the spoiled blonde woman wasn’t his girlfriend. Right. Maria didn’t believe that shit for a second . . . well, maybe for a couple of seconds last night when she’d been poleaxed at her first sight of Garrett Rule. Gorgeous didn’t even begin to describe the man. How tall was he exactly? There was no question that his height and the width of his shoulders were intimidating. And his face. She blew out a breath.
