Crystal Green - Mystery Date

Another basket is up for auction!

This one is filled with sweets…and a whole lot of spice!

Stunner TV chef Leigh Vaughn has crafted a basket that includes a home-cooked dinner for one lucky bidder. Who could resist this sexy sauciere? It’ll be a dish—and an evening—to savor….

But there’s a very enigmatic millionaire who won’t be outbid on Leigh’s offering. He’s anonymous. He stays in the shadows, where no one can see his face. Yet his rich, sensual voice is tantalizing—and capable of seducing the clothes from a woman’s body, before beckoning her into a world filled with erotic mystery and sweet, sinful taboo.

Bon appétit….

Bridesmaids Margot Walker and Leigh Vaughn have a wonderful idea to raise money for their friend’s wedding—putting a basket full of spicy date ideas up for auction. But who will bid? And what, exactly , will the highest bidder be getting?

Margot is hoping her college crush buys her basket. Too bad her arch-enemy, Clint Barrows, beats him to it…

Leigh doesn’t have a buyer in mind when she creates her auction offering. Good thing—because even after sharing her basket, she still has no idea who her admirer really is…

Who knew being in a wedding party came with these kinds of perks?

LEAD ME ONby Crystal Green

(July 2013)

and

MYSTERY DATEby Crystal Green

(September 2013)

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the second book in the Harlequin Blaze duet that started with Lead Me On!

In the first story, our heroine, Leigh Vaughn, created a sexy “date basket” for a charity auction—only, the highest bidder refused to reveal his identity. You’re about to find out who he is…and what kind of erotic games he has planned… Whew! Is it getting hot in here? :)

You’re also going to see if Dani and Riley, our wedding-bound lovebirds from Book One, make it to the altar. Does Dani have a case of cold feet that will stop them in their tracks? Read on.…

I hope you have a great time with this book and that you keep in contact with me at my site, www.crystal-green.com, and through Twitter ( @CrystalGreenMe)!

Happy endings to you all.

Crystal Green

Mystery Date

Crystal Green

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CRYSTAL GREENlives near Las Vegas, where she writes for the Mills & Boon ®Cherish ™and Blaze ®lines. She loves to read, overanalyze movies and TV programs, practice yoga and travel when she can. You can read more about her at www.crystal-green.com, where she has a blog and contests. Also, you can follow her on Twitter, @CrystalGreenMe.

To my good friend Nicole (aka Selena Illyria). From squees to geekasms, you are a wonderful nerd-buddy!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

Excerpt

1

LEIGH VAUGHN SAT in a car with one of her best friends, staring at the imposing beach-cliff house where her mystery date was supposed to take place tonight.

As she kept staring, she swallowed. Hard.

Margot spoke from the driver’s seat. “‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’”

Leigh pulled her gaze away from the house. “What?”

“That’s the first line from Rebecca.” Margot raised a well-manicured brow, turning her light green-blue gaze to Leigh. Her high cheekbones and tousled, layered dark hair gave her a look that fell somewhere between a pixie and a wild child, but her designer knit dress was all high-class. “Don’t you get a certain vibe from this place, just like the narrator in that book did after she found out her new husband’s first wife, Rebecca, pretty much haunted Manderley?”

Leigh wished she hadn’t brought Miss Cal-U English Major with her. Better yet, she just wished that Margot would lay off teasing her about tonight. Some moral support would be nice right about now.

“It’s only a date,” Leigh said, echoing the words that had been going through her head all day. She wasn’t sure if she was just trying to shut Margot up or calm herself down.

“A date,” Margot said, a sparkle in her gaze. “In a huge Gothic house. And with a man who won’t tell you who he is.”

“Why don’t you make this sound even more intimidating, Marg? Because I’m not nervous enough.”

“Maybe you should be very nervous.” Margot gave an “ooo, how scary” look to the mansion that loomed above them at the end of the gated driveway under the dusk-burnished November sky. “When Mystery Man bought your basket at the charity auction, I didn’t think you’d actually go through with this. But you’ve surprised me, Leigh. Maybe you’ve got a little adventure in you, after all.”

Adventure.

Good God—that was what she’d come here for, wasn’t it?

She followed Margot’s gaze toward that gray stone mansion again, with its imposing balconies and arches. The man who was waiting for Leigh in there had spent $5,000 to win her basket about a month ago during a reunion for her college sorority, Tau Epsilon Gamma, and its counterpart, the agricultural business–centered fraternity Phi Rho Mu.

Leigh took in a deep breath. Even back in college, smack in the middle of the rural San Joaquin Valley, she’d never done something this crazy—not during pledging, not during all their parties...never. True, she, Margot and their friend Dani had been good-time girls, best friends enjoying their youth, but that was when the silliness was supposed to end—after they graduated and became adults.

But no. She and Margot just had to go and put on that auction at the ten-year reunion. They’d just had to hold out for the highest bids on all those baskets that contained materials for a date with the women who’d created them. Margot had called her basket Around the Girl in Eighty Ways, and after her spicy encounters with the man who’d purchased the basket—her archenemy from college, of all people—she’d ended up getting engaged to him.

Leigh had taken a sweeter route. She’d stayed true to the wholesome country-girl Tau image and named her basket “A Taste of Honey”; she’d intended to give whoever won it a down-home dinner laced with the main ingredient—and maybe more, depending who bought the basket.

But she hadn’t expected what happened next—a fellow sorority sister, Beth Dahrling, had been the highest bidder, and she’d revealed that she was acting as a liaison for a man who refused to disclose his identity.

Leigh would’ve never guessed that she was eventually going to end up in front of a mansion that belonged in some kind of “It was a dark and stormy night” book.

She slid down in her seat. “I can’t believe you got me into this, Marg.”

“Me? How?”

As Margot waited for an answer, Leigh realized that she’d been plucking at the seam of her jeans, and she stopped. Her date had requested that she “dress casual,” just as she did on the country-cooking show she hosted on the Food Network—denim, boots, yee-haw blouses and all.

And what the hell? She’d gone along with it. But now her lacy flowered blouse seemed to show too much cleavage, and her jeans clung too tightly, reminding her of what she’d felt like over a year ago when she’d still been packing extra pounds.

Margot chuffed. “You’re not squirming out of an answer to this one, Leigh. How is it my fault that you ended up in this situation? You’re the one who said yes to the conditions after Beth bought the basket.”