Falling for Mr. Wrong
Chapter One
Three years ago
She was precisely the sort of woman Ross Bencher had vowed to avoid.
Just twenty-four hours before, when he signed the papers that ended his marriage of ten years, he’d made it clear to himself what his future held: sober, predictable women. Women who didn’t have urges for adventure. Women who wouldn’t run away from a marriage, husband, and kids, leaving a trail of heartbreak in their wake.
Women who were nothing like this.
She stood at a table a few feet away, but obviously lived in another world. As far as he could tell, she’d been sent by the universe to demonstrate all of the things he didn’t want in a woman.
Her hair, the color of rich, dark honey, spilled over her bare skin in a shimmer of sun-tipped streaks. The natural highlights provided clear evidence that she spent most of her time outside. Which meant that she didn’t hold down a regular job, or worse, was employed in the outdoor industry like so many other twentysomethings in Boulder, Colorado.
Irresponsible…
She looked a few years younger than his brand new ex-wife Jenna—maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven—though with a body like that, she and Jenna might have been different species. Not that Jenna wasn’t attractive. She was. But Jenna had three babies and now a divorce behind her. This woman was untouched. No dark circles under her eyes from waking up to soothe others’ nightmares.
Immature…
As if noticing for the first time that he was staring at her, she looked up, and their eyes met. He caught his breath. She wasn’t tall—maybe five four or five, but she radiated a bold, intense energy that made her seem bigger. Her eyes threatened to swallow her gamine, heart-shaped face, and pink bow of a mouth. She looked away, as if uncomfortable with the eye contact, but then came back. A faint smile creased her lips, along with the barest hint of an invitation.
Ross’s body snapped to attention.
He warred with his better instincts for a moment and then approached. She held his gaze, unafraid, the entire way. The noise of the bar seemed to dim when he stopped a few feet away, close enough to smell her perfume, a faint mix of vanilla and rose.
“New in town?” she asked, studying him from head to foot.
Her tanned shoulders reminded him of golden silk, while her body seemed to have been created entirely of long, graceful muscles. She wore a swingy tank top of some indeterminate material that draped along the curve of her waist and hip as she moved, and a short skirt that clung to the length of her thigh.
The taut arc of her bottom clearly did not spend all day seated at a desk. She was dangerously beautiful, and he definitely didn’t want that.
He glanced at his tailored slacks, white button-down shirt, and navy tie, all of which were painfully out of place in a bar full of shorts and jeans. “Here for business,” he replied. “I’m guessing you’re a local.”
She folded her arms over her chest, a move Ross found himself enjoying, as her forearms pushed up the firm, high peaks of her breasts. Up close, he could see that the web of scratches stretched from her wrist to her elbow, and the skin on one of her high cheekbones was marred by another scratch. It looked like the kind of road rash his daughter, Julia, had gotten when she’d fallen Rollerblading. This woman must have been in some kind of similar accident, which meant that she had poor judgment. Was probably untrustworthy.
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
He stepped forward and boldly took the hand of her injured arm. He studied her short, square fingernails, the sinewy strength in her hand, the size of her scars. He racked his brain to think of the activities he’d heard people in Boulder did, all of which were alien to him, as a lifelong resident of New York City. “Let me guess how you did this. Mountain biking? Rock climbing?”
The woman’s friend stepped forward. She was of a similar height, but had the sort of hourglass figure you might find in a 1950s pinup calendar, a shape emphasized by her white dress, which was dotted with candy-red cherries and nipped at the waist by a wide red belt. Fiery red hair corkscrewed from the top of her head to her shoulders. She rolled her eyes. “Try tripped while running.”
Ross looked back and forth between them. “I don’t believe it.”
His golden-haired beauty shrugged. “You can believe the rock climbing bit if you prefer.” She squeezed his hand ever so slightly and leaned forward to direct her words into his ear. Her voice lowered, turned husky. “It turns you on, doesn’t it?”
Before Ross could react to the invitation in her voice, the curly-haired woman pulled her friend’s hand out of Ross’s grasp. “Good grief, Kelsey, I think it’s time for us to go.”