Taming Tess (The St. John Sibling Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

rooms. She needed that house remodeled to the upscale esthetic preferred by the modern day buyer, and she needed it on the market ASAP.
    A whiff of smoke wafted up off her clothes. With The Castle a charred, water-logged ruin, there would be no sale, speedy or otherwise. So much for proving to her father that a woman was as capable in this business as a man, thanks to Roman St. John and his band of merry men.
    "Forget St. John," she muttered, stripping off her clothes. "Forget him and his amazing blue eyes, muscled arms, and …and his damn burgundy towels."
    She sank into the hot bath, trying not to think about his very broad shoulders in bubbles. She needed to unwind so she could think this latest problem through without letting her emotions muddle the process. Any decision emotion based could only prove her father right about women not belonging in business.
    #
    Roman stared at the wall above the stove as he sliced an onion into a hot skillet, the wall that partitioned the kitchen from the bathroom. The water had stopped running and he swore he could actually hear her sinking into the bathwater. But that was impossible. He'd insulated these walls himself. Had to be his imagination and under-used of late libido picturing Tess Abbot in the buff climbing into his bathtub.
    The knife slipped and sliced into the pad of his thumb.
    "Dam n!"
    He scowled at the blood bubbling along the thin cut. First aid kit was in the bathroom…where the inhospitable Miss Abbot soaked naked in his tub. He wondered if she'd used his bath salts, if she was buried up to her stubborn little chin in suds.
    He cursed again and tossed the knife and onion remnant onto the countertop next to the stove. If his thumb were hanging by a cord and blood spurting from an artery, he wouldn't knock on that bathroom door for her help. Nope. No way. No how.
    "Get that notion out of your head right now, Roman my man, because the acid-tongued Tess is strictly off limits."
    H e wrapped a paper napkin around his thumb then retrieved a platter of meat from the fridge. All day he'd anticipated eating the sirloin steak he'd seasoned last night and left marinating. He'd planned to celebrate the end of working with the impossible Ms. Abbott with that hunk of meat. That is until her third floor caught on fire, flames devouring her roof and the billowing smoke making her house look like a smudge pot.
    That quickly, a job done had turned into a new nightmare. Instead of putting the client from hell behind him, he now had her as a houseguest. To add insult to injury, he had to cut his steak in half and share it with his uninvited houseguest.
    A loud splash drew his attention back to the wall behind the stove and spurred his imagination into a space it had no business visiting, not when that space involved soapy bubbles and a fresh-faced harpy. Had she slipped? He banged the platter down next to the knife and cursed yet again, a speech pattern he seemed to be using with far more frequency since starting work for the tyrannical Tess.
    She could drown in there for all he cared , considering what she'd put him through. Still, he listened for movement, just in case. Given their none-too-private verbal sparring, an accident might not be the first cause of death the local sheriff suspected. And her family? They'd want to know what she was doing naked in his tub first then they would sue him for so much he'd owe them his soul.
    But, if he scooped Tess Abbot's unconscious body--slick with soap--from the tub and breathed life into it, he'd be a hero. Tess might even say something nice to him.
    Running w ater trickled beyond the wall between bath and kitchen and his fantasy evaporated.
    "You are pathetic," he muttered into the stinging vapor of frying onions and potatoes.
    His stomach rumbled in protest. He hadn't eaten all day. He'd been too busy scrambling to finish the last minute changes her royal pain in the butt had wanted. For a woman who found his company so irritating she