Shocks

By the time Rachel heard the click of the deadbolt lock on the door at room three-twenty-two, she’d already worked herself up into a fit of rage. She’d long-since formulated her verbal pre-emptive strike and it was perched to roll off the tip of her tongue the instant that she laid eyes on the fake Duke. She was bound and determined to make him pay for forcing her to chase her client halfway around the world on what in her mind amounted to an unnecessarily drawn-out, miserable, un-air-conditioned, sleepless scavenger hunt.

Then the door opened.

Only wide enough for a naked chiseled chest to block her view inside. But that singular piece of visible artistry in his sculpted arms and shoulders, and the rippling pectorals that tapered to his narrow waist and divine abdominals was all it took to erase everything—even her own name—from her head. She fought the urge to groan aloud and try to touch him.

With her mouth gaping open, she stared at the sporadic dappling