Free Wicked Heat by Nicola Marsh Page A

celebrated every new client, toasting our success, when Reeve must’ve been laughing
     at my gullibility.”
    “He sounds like a real piece of work. And an asshole.”
    He chuckled. “Yeah, though in Oz we say arsehole.”
    “Sounds cruder somehow.”
    “Exactly. Fitting for an arsehole like Reeve.” His smile faded. “So now you know why
     I have to win this campaign. My entire career depends on it.”
    Fuckity-fuck.
    Allegra had no choice but to go all out to win the pitch campaign for Kaluna Resorts.
     And that meant beating Jett.
    If she won, he lost his career.
    If he won, she lost hers.
    Talk about a lose-lose situation.
    Not to the mention the tiny salient fact that she hadn’t told him what she did for
     a living, and if she blurted it now it would look like she’d withheld the truth because
     she’d been up to no good. He’d think she’d been spying on him or trying to get inside
     info or some such thing.
    “You have no other options?”
    He shook his head. “That’s why I was in LA, putting out feelers among old contacts.
     One of them came through for me with an early tip-off about the Kaluna project so
     here I am. ” He tapped his temple. “Have a killer concept right here, ready to go.
     Going for the glamour angle. Hot babes. Cute kids. Happy families. Aimed at all spectrums
     of the wealthy market.”
    Allegra’s stomach somersaulted and landed with a sickening thud.
    Jett had just verbalized her concept in a nutshell.
    No freaking way.
    Not only were they pitching for the same campaign, they were using the same idea.
     Disastrous. Unless…
    The guilt at not telling him the truth about why she was on the island niggled at
     her. What if she could help him? Not to ease her guilt as much as do something for
     a guy who’d been nothing but lovely to her. Something to give him a fighting chance
     at resurrecting his career.
    She could change her pitch.
    Come at it from a different angle. Scrap her initial ideas and come up with something
     completely new. Leaving Jett with a clear shot at winning the campaign squarely and
     fairly, without Kai Kaluna having to make comparisons between two similar campaigns.
    She wouldn’t take it easy on him—that wasn’t what this was about. She’d be fighting
     just as hard to win but this way, if he ever found out the truth, God forbid, he couldn’t
     accuse her of stealing his idea or committing professional sabotage.
    Just the thought of him thinking of her that way made her break into a cold sweat.
    She wanted to tell him. Had to tell him they were competitors for this campaign. But
     the expression on Jett’s face stopped her.
    She’d seen him cocky and confident and charming. She’d seen his eyes glazed in passion
     and fiery in foreplay. But she hadn’t seen him look so…vulnerable. And that one glimpse
     of defenselessness made her reevaluate the wisdom of telling him anything.
    Guys didn’t take too kindly to being helped. They saw it as interfering at best, emasculating
     at worst. She’d seen it firsthand in the corporate world too many times, her good
     intentions misread by guys with massive egos and pea-sized brains.
    While Jett seemed more evolved than some of the Neanderthals she’d worked with, how
     well did she really know him? She didn’t. She should be thinking professionally now,
     should be doing her usual self-talk along the lines of “you owe him nothing, he’ll
     be out of your life in a few days, this is business and has nothing to do with your
     fling.”
    Sadly, her voice of reason sounded callous and cold. Because Jett wasn’t a stranger,
     no matter how many times she tried to couch it in those terms. She knew his body intimately,
     from the jagged scar high on his right thigh from a surfing accident, to the line
     of freckles shaped like a crooked arrow to his heart underneath his left armpit.
    She could’ve dismissed theirs as a physical bond, if only he hadn’t told her about
     his partner fleecing him, his