Head Over Heels Read online

  Head Over Heels

  Paris Brandon

  Book 1 in the Red Stilettos series.

  Bella Jacienski literally falls into sexy philanthropist Rhys Vincent’s arms while wearing her “magic” red stilettos, and wonders if the legend attached to the shoes is true. Has she found her heart’s desire—a passionate, lust-crazed lover who wants only her? Always and forever?

  Rhys can’t keep his big hands off the curvy shopkeeper. Her smile captivates him and her lush body has him behaving like a he-man Neanderthal. Heated glances and sizzling touches turn into a hot office interlude and wild, break-the-bed sex that only makes him want her more. Bella is all the magic he needs.

  Reader Advisory: Though each book stands alone, for maximum enjoyment we recommend the Red Stilettos series be read in order.

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Head Over Heels

  ISBN 9781419927379

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Head Over Heels Copyright © 2010 Paris Brandon

  Edited by Pamela Campbell

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication February 2010

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Head Over Heels

  Paris Brandon

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all women with a penchant for the color red, sexy shoes and men who make your skirts fly up!

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve said it before but life truly wouldn’t be as much fun without friends and family, and as always, I couldn’t do what I do without the support I receive from my wonderful husband and sons and friends who are there for me through thick and thin.

  The Red Stilettos series has been a learning experience that I’ll never forget and I’d like to thank the other authors—Francesca Hawley, Ashlyn Chase and Delilah Devlin—for being so great to work with. You guys rock!

  I’d also like to thank my wonderful editor, Pamela Campbell, for all her hard work and wise counsel. Thanks also to the fabulous Syneca for another very sexy cover.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Band-Aid: Johnson & Johnson Corporation

  Oz: Turner Entertainment Co.

  Prologue

  The Legend of Ava Darling

  Rome, June 1959

  Ava Darling wrapped a scarf around her head and hid the honey blonde locks that Hollywood had dubbed “Darling Blonde” before she slid dark glasses over her signature cat-green eyes. If the world only knew.

  Her signature blonde locks came out of a bottle and she thought her eyes looked better with her natural red hair color. No matter what she did, she knew in her heart that she would always be more of a personality than an actress. And right now her personality would be much improved if she could find the little shoemaker whom her dresser Lidia swore was the answer to her prayers.

  Her Italian director had managed to convey his desire to film her dancing feet wearing very specific footwear—red Italian leather, open-toed, knife-blade-thin heels. Two hours of usable footage required countless hours of standing, walking and dancing. Just thinking about it made her shudder.

  Her foot size changed with her eating habits and right now all her shoes pinched. That’s what she got for making a picture in Italy and not being able to resist pasta in cream sauce or the charming habit of stopping every day at two o’clock for a tiny cup of espresso and a bite or two or fifteen of some delectable pastry.

  She glanced down at the directions Lidia had given her and followed her aching feet down the narrow Roman back street to a tiny shop squeezed between a dressmaker and a bakery. Italians were diabolical.

  The bell over the door of Desiderio del Cuore—Desire of the Heart—announced her arrival. The wizened elf behind the counter glanced up and smiled. She was instantly charmed. A leather apron covered his clothes and his white hair stuck up in curling wisps around his pink skull. His dark eyes held the spark of someone much younger.

  She reached into her shopping bag and fished out her phrase book.

  “I speak very well English,” he said proudly.

  Ava smiled and slipped the book back into her bag. “I’ve been told you make magic shoes that will make me look like a goddess and fit me no matter how much my feet change.”

  He bowed as dramatically as if he were being presented to a queen. “If that is your heart’s desire.”

  She smiled. Her heart’s desire had more to do with finding someone who wanted her for more than a decoration for his arm. She’d always imagined that by now the fairy-tale ending she’d portrayed so many times in Hollywood movies would have been hers. She wanted “happily ever after” with a man who would love her when her looks and demands for her acting skills started to fade. Unfortunately, that kind of head-over-heels, happily-ever-after love had always eluded her.

  Giorgio measured her feet and listened while she described the sexy, red open-toed stilettos she needed. He understood that she didn’t want to be covering up a grimace while the hero, Claudio, twirled her around the dance floor and pursued her through Rome.

  * * * * *

  When she returned one week later, Giorgio insisted that she wear the shoes out of the shop. The arch was perfect and her toes didn’t slide out of the opening. Ava couldn’t remember the last time a pair of shoes had fit so well. He insisted that she walk around for several hours and if they were the least bit uncomfortable she should return and he would make her another pair, free of charge.

  The only thing she enjoyed more than eating in Rome was shopping. She spent the day visiting the shops and by late afternoon the shoes were still exquisitely comfortable but her stomach was growling.

  She’d passed a small restaurant earlier so she backtracked and followed the scent of sizzling sausages. Balancing her packages on one hip, she was counting her money to see if she had enough for a bite when she turned the corner and ran into a solid wall of muscle.

  His name was Charles Stratton III. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever wanted to fall into and it took him a week before he kissed her. Two weeks later he punched out her leading man for saying it was going to take a crane to lift her if she didn’t quit eating pasta.

  They were in bed twenty-four hours later. Three weeks after that, they were married in a tiny Italian church. His parents flew in from Minneapolis. Her dresser, Lidia, brought her father, the little Italian shoemaker, Giorgio. Her agent, Barry, wept until he saw Lidia, who could have passed for Gina Lollabrigida’s twin. Ava could have swo
rn the girl clicked her heels together when Barry zeroed in on her.

  Ava and Charles honeymooned in Paris for two weeks then returned to America. Unlike most Hollywood love stories that ended after the movie was over, Ava and Charles managed to do as they all promised. They lived happily ever after.

  Chapter One

  The Stratton Mansion

  Present Day

  Bella Jacienski inherited her glossy dark hair from her Italian mother and her crystal blue eyes from her Polish father. She got her wasp waist, round butt and height-challenged stature from her namesake grandmother. Which was one of the reasons she was listening to the auctioneer with a carnival-barker smile enthrall the crowd with the legend of Ava Darling’s red stilettos.

  He promised that the spike heels would bring the wearer her or his heart’s desire. Bella didn’t care. They were ruby red and would make her look several inches taller. No one was getting between her and those shoes.

  Her only competition was the burly gentleman who could barely keep his swaying hips still. She wondered briefly if his thong were lace or silk because her mind wandered to the damndest things at the damndest times. She refocused on the shoes, raised her hand and started the bidding at twenty dollars.

  Mr. Thong looked as if he had deep pockets in his expensive suit but no one was keeping her from those shoes. Jolie was laughing and Erika was shaking her head. Lexie was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. She’d already realized that she would look as though she were wearing stilts. The fashion police could just bite her.

  “As long as you’re not going to click your heels together and wish for that asshole Martin back, I brought some cash,” Lexie whispered.

  “I keep telling you. Martin was never my lover. He had problems.”

  “If they all didn’t have problems, I wouldn’t have a column,” Lexie sighed.

  “Twenty-five, do I hear twenty-five.” His rapid-fire delivery inspired excitement in the small crowd. “How much would you give to have your heart’s desire?” he teased.

  “Thirty,” Mr. Thong said, as precisely as a Hollywood voice coach, if a Hollywood voice coach were freezing his ass off while bidding on legendary wearing apparel inside the Stratton mansion just outside Minneapolis, Minnesota on New Year’s day.

  Bella frowned. “Thirty-five,” she yelled, stuffing her hands in her pockets and watching her breath curl.

  “Fifty,” Mr. Thong bit off and Bella caught Erica mouthing, “What are you doing?” Jolie was whispering into Lexie’s ear and digging into her purse.

  Mr. Thong’s pockets didn’t give out until the grinning auctioneer asked for two hundred dollars and they’d scraped up just enough between them. Mr. Thong shook his very large head and looked down at her. A smile curved his full lips.

  “All you’d have to do is put your lips together and blow. You don’t need the damn shoes,” he said, his husky voice revealing an amusement that surprised her. “Am I going to have competition for the fur coats?”

  Bella grinned up at him. “Totally out of my price range.”

  He waggled his dark, bushy brows. “Good. The shoes work fast, so if you have any unfinished business, take care of it now,” he advised with a wink before he followed the small crowd that trailed after the auctioneer.

  “He’s probably a plant,” Erika muttered with the slight accent that still marked her as plainly Minnesota born and bred. “You know—someone who runs up the bidding.”

  Bella watched him until he disappeared around a corner. “Did you hear what he said about taking care of unfinished business?”

  Lexie grimaced. “Well, your last bit of unfinished business took care of itself so all you have to concentrate on is figuring out your heart’s desire, which I hope includes someone—”

  “Here we go,” Erika muttered.

  Lexie stuck out her tongue before she continued, “Someone you’re crazy enough to consider having terrific make-up sex with after he does something stupid.”

  “Which they all do at some point,” Jolie remarked. “A more immediate problem however is that we’re out of cash. Do you want to follow the crowd or go back to the Blue Loon?”

  “At least there’s a roaring fire and lunch sounds pretty fabulous at the moment,” Erika said.

  Bella paid the cashier and collected the stilettos before they all traipsed back to her mid-size rental car. Lexie rode shotgun because she was the only one whose legs wouldn’t be cramped. Erika and Jolie stretched out in the back.

  “What I want to know,” Jolie quipped, “is whether you believe that load of crap the auctioneer was dishing out or have aliens abducted my lifelong, extremely frugal friend and replaced her with a pod person?”

  “And will this pod person,” Lexie asked, “be lending out the ruby slippers?”

  “What a great idea.” Bella laughed.

  “Yah,” Erika muttered, “like I could squeeze my eight Ds into something that would fit your size six.”

  Bella caught a glimpse of Lexie carefully untying the brittle pink ribbon wrapped around the pristine shoebox with its gold embossed heart logo and Desiderio de Coure printed in neat script. Desire of the Heart. There was a whisper of crinkling tissue paper before she held up one of the sexiest ruby slippers this side of Oz.

  She glanced at Lexie. “Uh, what size are they?”

  “The box doesn’t say,” Lexie mused, inspecting the shoes next, looking first inside and then flipping them over. “The printing has been worn off the inside and there’s nothing on the bottom.”

  From the back seat Erika chimed in, “I can definitely tell you that they’re smaller than an eight D. I can spot my size from across a crowded store.”

  Jolie chuckled. “Are you telling me that you paid two hundred dollars for a pair of shoes that you didn’t know would fit? Now I know that aliens have abducted Bella and left a pod person.”

  “I think there’s a law, something about buyer’s remorse and having three days to return them,” Erika offered with a shrug that Bella caught in the rear-view mirror.

  “I’m not sorry and I’m not returning them,” Bella said. “Those shoes mark the first time I’ve been excited about anything in a long time. I say whoever the shoes fit best keeps them.”

  * * * * *

  They were having their final toast when Bella dangled the shoes from her fingertips and dared them. They slid easily onto Bella’s feet, as she knew they would. No one was surprised.

  Lexie’s feet were just a tiny bit bigger but she pronounced the shoes comfortable, Jolie made a production out of it but looked stunned and announced the shoes didn’t pinch when she glided across the room. Erika’s smirk died a quick death and everyone agreed that her legs looked amazing as she strode, fashion model perfect, across the room.

  They all decided they might have been hasty about their last toast being final. They were halfway through another bottle of champagne when they came to the conclusion that only magic could explain how the shoes fit all of them. It wasn’t a stretch to believe the shoes also possessed the power to grant them their heart’s desire.

  The stiletto custody pact was born. Each of them would retain the shoes for three months, passing them around until next New Year’s Eve. Bella would keep them from January through March, Erika would get them April through June, Lexie, July through September and Jolie from October to December.

  As for Bella’s heart’s desire, she’d known instantly what she wanted, the one thing she’d never experienced in all of her thirty-nine years—a passionate lust-crazed lover. And as long as there was magic involved she might as well wish that he’d want only her—always.

  Chapter Two

  Rhys Vincent ground his back teeth and took Veronica Smith–Hathaway’s elbow as they crossed the street. It was snowing and not for the first time did he wish he were wearing boots instead of dress shoes with his tux. Ronnie didn’t seem to notice the puddle that soaked her designer heels or the frigid wind that tore at the edges of her flimsy black evening coat.
Neither had been designed for January in Kansas City.

  Veronica—Ronnie—was his best friend Brian’s estranged wife. She had insisted she knew a shop that had the fedora they needed to complete the scavenger-hunt list—right after he’d politely refused her offer to give him the best sex of his life. Was it too much to ask for a woman who didn’t have an agenda to want to have sex with him? He’d been down the revenge-sex path years ago and it was one he didn’t want to take with a woman he’d known for twenty years.

  He’d promised Brian that he’d keep an eye on her and that meant he couldn’t very well let her walk around alone in the Crossroads art district after dark.

  As CEO of the Vincent Foundation, he’d put Veronica in charge of the annual event as a favor. One he was coming to regret. He was still trying to figure out why Brian was so worried about a wife he’d clearly been neglecting for the past year when Ronnie leaned over and peered into a dimly lit shop.

  “There it is,” she hissed, pointing at a weathered brown fedora, jauntily perched on a torso mannequin’s head. Before he could figure out why she was hissing, he glanced through the window, started to shout and everything went into slow motion.

  He saw a pair of curvy legs that ended in sexy red spike heels leaning forward and overbalancing a rickety ladder. The bell over the door jangled as he pushed it open and sprinted three full strides. He reached her before she finished screaming.

  “She” was an armful of black and white fluff he grabbed and swept out of the way as the ladder fell.

  Maybe he couldn’t breathe because she’d smacked him square in the chest but he didn’t think so. Although it could have been because her arms were wrapped solidly around his neck, as if she didn’t intend to let go anytime soon. Fine by him.