Tempting Victoria
Breathe Rockstar Romance, Book 2
by
Mina V. Esguerra
About Tempting Victoria
Victoria Bennett is in control and in charge all day every day, but sometimes she needs help. One of those times is when she needs to organize a romantic proposal weekend for her client, and the only person available to help her is the notorious heartbreaker Nathan Grant.
Victoria knows she shouldn’t fall for guys like Nathan, but that hasn’t prevented her from lusting after him all these years. It’s just one weekend on the beach, away from everyone they know, alone with the guy who could cause her perfectly coordinated world to crumble. Shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Tempting Victoria
Copyright © 2015 by Mina V. Esguerra
Cover Design by CT Cover Creations
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Chapter 1
“Absolutely not him.”
“I thought you said you were desperate.”
“Not that desperate, Chris. Not enough to stick myself in an island with your piranha friend.”
Victoria Bennett was on the phone with her friend Chris, someone who might be due for a relationship downgrade. He was laughing at her, clearly on a different page about what he was doing to her. “You said your life depended on it.”
Well, yes, she said that. The “life” needing this wasn’t her actual life, but the future of her little baby of an events business. This project was a milestone of sorts: her first client, paying actual money to let her design and program an important weekend in his life. She was hoping to become the kind of person that rich people called when they needed someone for a grandson’s first birthday; it was the only way she’d make enough money to organize the events that really mattered to her.
The asterisk next to “first paying client” was that the guy was actually her older brother’s friend. And it wasn’t a huge event in terms of audience expected, so it wasn’t her ticket to the big leagues yet. However, it was an actual job, and not the mini conventions she set up at her university, or the music festival she organized every year in exchange for free hotel meals. This was money, and doing well here might lead to something.
“You really can’t do it?” Victoria said. “You can’t fly into Mexico just for this? I’m sure I can get Trent to pay for it.”
“I told you, I can’t. Oliver’s not in the best shape right now. I’m not even going to be home for Thanksgiving, I can tell you that.”
“So this is really it? You’ve seriously moved to New York City to work for a guy you haven’t seen since grade school?”
It was only beginning to sink in how Victoria would have to change her plans now, realign everything once again, knowing that Chris wouldn’t be around to help. Victoria and Chris grew up in the same neighborhood in Houston and met as kids because they were both taking piano lessons nearby. The friendship outlasted their actual playing of the piano. He liked music but didn’t particularly want to do it; she tired of an instrument after studying it for three years, max. But Victoria and Chris stayed in touch, periodically, usually when she needed help with music for an event. Chris may not have continued to play, but he knew people, knew where she could rent or buy anything music-related. She was planning to make the events business a legit thing when she graduated next June and always thought she’d have him help her if she needed it.
He was the helpful kind of friend. So helpful that he had apparently relocated to Manhattan because a friend called and asked him to.
“Oliver calls,” Chris said, somewhat defensively. “I haven’t seen him since we were kids but he calls sometimes.”
“Nice to know that rock stars remember to call their friends, too.”
“You know he’s not like that.”
“I don’t actually know him, remember?” Chris was two years older and Victoria knew of his friends, like Oliver the rock star and Nathan the piranha, but they never actually hung out together.
“Right. Don’t be so hard on the guy; he’s been screwed over. I’m going to try my best to get him back on track.”
“You his life coach now, on top of being his manager?”
“Why not, right? I’m not qualified to do that either. Thanks for offering to cover my plane fare, Victoria, but you shouldn’t spend that much on me. I can only do the song arrangement, at most play it during the serenade you’ve got planned. I’ve never been to Mexico. Nathan’s been to Mexico.”
Victoria had never been to Mexico either. And she was already working on the song. It would be ready in time, no help from Chris required. “We’ll hire a guide.”
“You want a snorkeling trip. I’ve never been snorkeling. Nathan’s a licensed diver. An instructor even.”
“We’ll get a tour package as soon as we get there. I’m sure I can negotiate a good rate for it.”
“You want a goddamn mango cake recipe. I don’t do that.”
“You think I’m that dependent on you? I can make a cake.”
“Nathan can make a cake.”
Oh god. The piranha can bake. “I’d rather get in touch with a local pastry chef.”
“How much money are you doing this for again?”
Victoria was mentally computing with every compromise that she would have to make to insist that Chris accompany her on this, and it wasn’t going to do well for her bottom line or the reputation she was trying to establish. She was getting a fee to plan this for her client, plus an allowance for incidentals, but he would cover all other expenses as charged. She promised Trent that she would handle everything so he could keep his mind focused on his agenda for the trip, and it wasn’t going to look good if she gave him a long list of new expenses he was sure he didn’t need.
“I hope that new job is worth it,” Victoria muttered in defeat.
“Yeah, I hope so too.”
She sighed. “Sorry for being selfish. I really am happy for you. You’re managing the career of a real rock star now. I should have said congratulations.”
“Don’t do that yet. We’re not exactly out of the woods. But I’ll owe you one, how’s that? Let me do something for you, soon. When I can. Right now, the best I can offer you is Nathan’s number.”
***
Victoria had the piranha’s number all right. She’d had it for three days and hadn’t done anything about it. Instead she took her event plan notes and laid them out on her dorm room floor, trying to find ways to scale down her plan, maybe find a cheaper alternative for something, so she could justify bringing Chris along.
She trusted him, see. She did not trust his friend Nathan Grant.
No sane woman would, after everything she’d heard about him. They didn’t go to the same school, but that didn’t stop him from breaking hearts in her school district and others. It wasn’t even that he was parading himself around with a new woman every weekend; they all just knew who the latest girl was, and then they all knew when she wasn’t the girl anymore. Whenever a group gathered in school, or at a party, someone would ask who Nathan Grant was dating. And someone would have an answer.
It was always a different answer.
And it would always be some girl who looked like—not like Victoria. He hung out with gorgeous types. Not that she was chopp
ed liver. Victoria liked her face, her hair, her body, and also liked that she was attractive in a totally different way from those women.
This was not a problem. Shouldn't have been one. Except for the fact that she was helplessly, hopelessly attracted to the guy. After meeting him once. Once!
There was a birthday party for Chris in one of the dorms at his campus. It was the first time she’d actually seen Nathan in person and she smirked, secondhand stories from Chris and their other common friends coming to mind. He was the guy other guys hated but wished they were anyway.
“He's great,” Chris once said about him, “but when I think about how easy it all is for him—women, money, school—I just want to kick him in the nuts.”
Exactly the guy her mother (and her aunt) warned her about. Victoria had heard sob stories about men who loved women and left them since she was a kid but never thought anything of it. She knew she took after her mother. Was just as organized, just as driven, even took on the petite form and wild hair. Victoria's mother was a rock, solid, and there was no evidence that she had ever failed her sense of self-respect. That came in handy because Victoria's aunt, her mom's sister, was a mess. Aunt Pam was twice divorced but had her heart broken more than that, and the Bennett family, who took her in after every breakup, was witness to all of it.
For a long time it didn't matter to Victoria that she wasn't piercingly good-looking like her older brother Josh, or statuesque the way her younger sister Steph was. They inherited more of the Bennett side, tall and beautiful but also somewhat scatterbrained. Victoria was going to be a rock, like her mother. Not so bad a genetic inheritance.
So she eyed guys like Nathan as poison, even if she never really met guys like him. She didn't need to. And when she finally did see him, at Chris's party, she eyed him with undisguised disdain, not even pretending she didn’t know who he was. She fully expected the dark hair that was long and curling, the facial hair needing a trim, the broad shoulders. He’d given her a long look too, and then nodded, like she had passed some sort of exam, and she rolled her eyes.
But something else in her body betrayed her. She didn’t realize how nicely proportioned he was (and if anything made Victoria hot, it was perfectly proportioned things), how nicely they would fit, if they...did anything that required fitting. Her heart began to beat furiously, and it made her neck flush, her breasts tighten, and her breath catch.
No.
And she knew she had to get out of there immediately, and stay away. So she did.
How could Chris be friends with that guy? How could he put her in this position? Ugh.
“You’re ignoring the simplest solution,” her roommate and best friend Haley Reese piped in from her bed on the other side of the room.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Victoria said.
“Because you were in your trance. Did you find another way?”
“I’m trying.”
“Simplest solution. You know it.”
Victoria tossed a pained look at the redhead. “No.”
Haley smiled and stretched out on her stomach on the bed. “Like you said. You pitched a romantic stress-free weekend to your client so he can propose to his girlfriend. You planned all the activities. Apparently Nathan can help you with all of them.”
“Except the cake. I can make my own damn cake.”
Sometimes Victoria got carried away with her own ideas. When architect Trent Thomsen asked her to arrange this weekend in Mexico for him so he could propose to the love of his life in a memorable and meaningful way, she had put together an event concept that involved renting a tastefully decorated oceanfront house and taking a day trip to go snorkeling. Then they’d be welcomed back with a special dinner, serenaded with a string instrument during said dinner, and the engagement ring served with a unique dessert featuring Trent’s girlfriend’s favorite fruit as well as other little things meant to remind Nyssa of how well Trent knew her and what their life could be like together.
She’d toyed with the idea of dropping the snorkeling trip so she wouldn’t need a boat. Or if she hired out a guide for the trip and downgraded the house to a nice hotel room...all of these tweaks would make up for not having an assistant, not having Chris, not threatening to go over budget with Trent, or backing down from the plan she had sold him on.
“If I take Nathan with me, we’ll have to spend for another room.”
Haley laughed so loudly, she actually snorted. “That’s the lamest excuse yet. You were planning to share a room with Chris.”
“I’m sure he would have been okay with a sleeping bag on the floor.”
“So you save on a hotel room if you take Chris, but you pay extra for the plane, the snorkeling. And you make the poor guy sleep on the floor. Make Nathan sleep on the floor.”
Victoria narrowed her eyes at her friend. “Maybe I can convince Trent to cut the snorkeling.”
“They want that, right? Don’t do that to him, Vic. Your idea’s great. This weekend’s going to be special for him and his girlfriend. Don’t forget who’s supposed to be happy with everything.”
Haley was right. Victoria usually was the voice of reason when it came to things like this.
“But he’s Nathan,” she groaned. “He’ll eat me alive.”
Haley didn't know about Aunt Pam, because Victoria didn't tell her. As far as her best friend was concerned, Victoria was just being her type A, controlling, judgmental, overcompensating-middle-child self.
“You don’t have the time or the money to be picky, sister.” Haley was enjoying this predicament she was in. It probably gave her some pleasure to see Victoria out of her element, which was rare. Victoria never really let that happen for long. “And that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, if you’re into that.”
Chapter 2
Hello. You probably don't remember me, but my name is Victoria Bennett, I'm a friend of Chris. He usually helps me out when I organize events, but he can't do this right now and he recommended I get in touch with you. It's okay if you can't though. Just let me know.
Chris, that son of a bitch. Nathan called his friend as soon as he received Victoria's message.
“So your friend sent me a text,” he said as soon as Chris picked up.
“Victoria?”
“What are you trying to pull, Minot?”
He heard Chris laugh and immediately pegged this for what it was—a trap. “Hear her out. She actually does need someone with your qualifications for the event she's doing.”
“What is it? Don't you lift boxes for her and shit? Anyone can do that.”
“It's in Mexico. There's snorkeling. Someone who can play guitar. Make a cake. And lift boxes and shit.”
“Damn, that's specific. What the hell is this?”
“Some rich guy proposing to his girlfriend.”
Nathan remembered Victoria, of course. He wasn't going to admit to Chris that he'd thought about her once, twice, more than twice, in the two years since they'd met. He'd heard about her before; Chris had only good things to say about the girl he'd met while studying music, the one who began volunteering for the music festival she once joined and ended up taking over its logistics when the festival lost funding support. She managed to maintain it year after year, giving career guidance to dozens of young musicians in the greater Houston area. He thought that was pretty badass. She wasn't even done with college.
Then Nathan laid eyes on her for the first time at that party and began breaking several personal rules.
For one, he had always thought of her as Chris's girl. Not that they were dating, but if Chris ever entertained the thought, then she was obviously off limits. Usually their tastes didn't overlap and he'd never had to have “the talk” with Chris. Then he saw her, finally, and before he had even said his name to her, he realized he had begun rehearsing “the talk” in his head.
She was shorter than he'd thought she would be, strangely enough. She would barely see above his shoulders. But that wild curly hair of hers gave her heig
ht and made him think of energy, surrounding her head like the sun's rays. Dark brown, rich, soft sun's rays.
He was thinking of what to say when their eyes met, for a long moment. Then she...gave him that face.
She wasn't interested. She might have been a little disgusted. Now that couldn’t be right.
He continued thinking about her even after she gave him that face. Second rule broken.
Later, when it was just him and Chris, he asked about her.
“You into her, man?” was how he brought it up. “Your Victoria friend?”
“She's great. But no, we're not like that.” Then Chris's eyes lit up, even after hours of drinking like he had just turned twenty-one. “You should ask her out.”
Now if that wasn't a red flag, nothing else was. Chris didn't agree with Nathan's dating choices and would rather tell him to keep his dick in his pants every single time. There had to be a catch, and Nathan had an idea what it was.
So he didn't ask her out. That didn’t stop him from paying attention every time Chris did work for her, or came back from one of her festivals, or shared some photo or announcement of something she was doing. Half of those events he couldn’t have gone to because he was away learning to dive, learning to climb, learning to ski, learning to shoot. The suspicion that Chris was setting him up with someone who could crush him prevented him from seeing her any other time.
“I know what you're trying to do,” Nathan said now. “She doesn't need me. She can hire locals to do all of that.”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“Don’t need a matchmaker.”
“Girl’s on a budget. I'm sure she's thought of it and discovered that she can't afford it. She's a practical person, Nathan. She calls you a piranha.”
“She what?”
“She thinks you eat people alive, man, and she's still asking for your help. Be nice.”
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