Jessica Hart - Hitched!

Here comes…

Planning the most talked about wedding of the year is enough to make engineer Frith Taylor break out in a cold sweat. She’s used to construction sites, not wedding fairs! But estate manager George Challoner’s offer of help is one that’s too good to resist.

…the unsuspecting bride!

George may be the rebel of the prestigious Challoner family, but his insanely good looks are giving Frith wedding fever! Charm personified, he’s making her feel things she hasn’t dared feel before. Maybe her little sister’s wedding won’t be the only one Frith’s planning…?

HITCHED!

“I think we should get into character,” said George. “If we’re going to be really convincing when Saffron comes up next, we’d better rehearse.” He lifted a hand to smooth a stray hair away from my face, and my skin burned at his touch. “What do you think?”

My heart was thudding, my mouth so dry I could hardly speak, and I couldn’t have looked away from his eyes if I had tried, but I clung desperately to the shreds of the sensible Frith I knew I really was inside.

“I’m, er, not sure that’s really necessary, is it?” I managed somehow.

“I’ve got a very challenging role,” he pointed out. “I’m besotted with you, remember? I’m going to have to look as if I know what it’s like to slide my hand under your hair, like this,” he added, suiting the action to the words. His palm was warm and persuasive against the nape of my neck. “I should look as if I know what it’s like to nibble your earlobe and kiss my way down your throat.…”

His lips were warm, too, so warm, so sure. A great fluttery rush of heat engulfed me and I sucked in a trembling breath.

“I don’t know.…”

“As for you,” said George, cupping my cheek to hold my face still—not that I was capable of going anywhere. “It’s going to be even harder for you.”

“It is?”

“Talk about tough,” he said as he shook his head solemnly. “You’re going to have to look as if you’re used to me kissing you. I think you’ll need to practice that a lot.”

I was hazy with anticipation. “I suppose it might be an idea to practice a bit,” I heard myself say.

Hitched!

Jessica Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT JESSICA HART

Jessica Hart was born in west Africa, and has suffered from itchy feet ever since, traveling and working around the world in a wide variety of interesting but very lowly jobs—all of which have provided inspiration on which to draw when it comes to the settings and plots of her stories. Now she lives a rather more settled existence in York, where she has been able to pursue her interest in history—although she still yearns sometimes for wider horizons.

If you’d like to know more about Jessica, visit her website, www.jessicahart.co.uk.

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EXCERPT

ONE

I was having a good day until George Challoner turned up.

It had rained almost every day since I had arrived in Yorkshire, but that morning I woke to a bright, breezy day. By some miracle Audrey had started first time, and I hummed as I drove along the country lanes lined with jaunty daffodils to Whellerby Hall.

When I arrived at the site, Frank, the lugubrious foreman, had even smiled—a first. Well, his face relaxed slightly in response to my cheery greeting, but in my current mood I was prepared to count it a smile. Progress, anyway.

The ready-mixed concrete arrived bang on time. I stood and watched carefully as the men started pouring it into the reinforced steel raft for the foundations. They clearly knew what they were doing, and I had already checked the quality of the concrete. After a frenzied couple of weeks, I could tell Hugh that the project was back on schedule.

Phew.

Everything was going to plan. I had it all worked out.

1. Get site experience.

2. Get job overseas on major construction project.

3. Get promoted to senior engineer.

And because I was an expert planner, I had made sure all my goals were Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound. I was aiming for promotion by the time I was thirty, an overseas job by the end of the year, and I was already getting site experience with the new conference and visitor centre on the Whellerby Hall estate.

True, things had got off to a shaky start. Endless rain, unreliable suppliers and a construction team made up of dour Yorkshiremen who had apparently missed out on a century of women’s liberation and made no secret of their reluctance to take orders from a female. My attempts to involve them in team-building exercises had not gone down well.

For a while, I admit, I had wondered if I had made a terrible mistake leaving the massive firm in London, but my plan was clear. I badly needed some site experience, and the Whellerby project was too good an opportunity to miss.

And now it might all just be coming together, I congratulated myself, checking another grid off on my clipboard. I’d won a knock-down-drag-out fight with the concrete supplier, which might account for Frank’s—sort of—smile and now we could start building.

Perhaps I could let myself relax, just a little.

That was when George arrived.

He drove the battered Land Rover as if it were a Lamborghini, swinging into the site and parking—deliberately squint, I was sure!—next to Audrey in a flurry of mud and gravel.

I pressed my lips together in disapproval. George Challoner was allegedly the estate manager, although as far as I could see this involved little more than turning up at inconvenient moments and distracting everyone else who was actually trying to do some work.

He was also my neighbour. I’d been delighted at first to be given my own cottage on the estate. I was only working on the project until Hugh Morrison, my old mentor, had recovered from his heart attack, and I didn’t want to get involved with expensive long-term lets so a tied cottage for no rent made perfect sense.

I was less delighted to discover that George Challoner lived on the other side of the wall, his cottage a mirror image of mine under a single slate roof. It wasn’t that he was a noisy neighbour, but I was always so aware of him, and it wasn’t because he was attractive, if that’s what you’re thinking.

I was prepared to admit that he was extremely easy on the eye. My own preference was for dark-haired men, while George was lean and rangy with hair the colour of old gold and ridiculously blue eyes, but, still, I could see that he was good-looking.

OK, he was very good-looking. Too good-looking.

I didn’t trust good-looking men. I’d fallen for a dazzling veneer once before, and it wasn’t a mistake I intended to make again.

I watched balefully as George waved and strode across to join me at the foundations. The men had all brightened at his approach and were shouting boisterous abuse at him. Even Frank grinned, the traitor.

I sighed. What was it with men? The ruder they were, the more they seemed to like each other.