The Bliss Factor Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  chapter 31

  chapter 32

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF

  Penny McCall

  Packing Heat

  “A great story, nonstop action, snappy dialogue, witty humor, and chemistry between the hero and heroine that is white-hot. I’m very happy to give Packing Heat the highest possible recommendation.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “This action-filled novel will knock your socks off with intense chemistry and intrigue that holds your attention from the first page. An awesome read!”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “[A] fast-paced thriller . . . Action-packed romantic suspense.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Ace Is Wild

  “Humor and witty repartee are sure signs that you are reading a McCall romance.”

  —Romantic Times (4 stars)

  “This story is a keeper . . . Don’t walk but run to the nearest bookstore and pick up Ace Is Wild.”

  —Night Owl Romance

  Tag, You’re It!

  “The characters are smart and witty, and the chemistry between them is crackling, making the happy ending well worth the wait. I can hardly wait now for her next book.”

  —BellaOnline

  All Jacked Up

  “An amusing romantic suspense thriller starring a delightful pairing of two souls.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “A fast-paced bumpy ride with some surprising twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat. The chemistry between [Jack and Aubrey] was HOT.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “A fast-paced story full of suspense and excitement. Sure to get your pulse racing and keep your interest all the way through.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  MORE PRAISE FOR PENNY McCALL

  “Smart, sexy, and fun, McCall knows how to deliver!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Enoch

  “A terrific new voice in romantic suspense: snappy dialogue, nonstop action, and sexy writing.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster

  “Penny’s writing is pure fun!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Ruth Ryan Langan

  “Lots of witty dialogue and some laugh-out-loud funny scenes.”

  —Booklist

  Titles by Penny McCall

  ALL JACKED UP

  TAG, YOU’RE IT!

  ACE IS WILD

  PACKING HEAT

  THE BLISS FACTOR

  Anthologies

  DOUBLE THE PLEASURE

  (with Lori Foster, Deirdre Martin, and Jacquie D’Alessandro)

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THE BLISS FACTOR

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / February 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Penny McCusker

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18487-5

  BERKLEY® SENSATION Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. BERKLEY® SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To all the Renaissance faire

  re-enactors, vendors, and volunteers:

  You are crazy and wonderful people!

  Thank you for the hours of enjoyment you’ve given me.

  I’ll see you in September!

  chapter 1

  “STEP LOIVLEY THERE, DARLIN’.”

  “Yeah, c’mon, milady, move yer arse.”

  Rae Blissfield gave the loudmouth behind her a baleful look. Not surprisingly he sported full facial hair and Robin Hood tights. Thankfully he had a big enough belly to hide what his tunic didn’t. She stepped forward, handed the buxom wench her admission ticket and walked through the stone entry arch of the Michigan Renaissance festival in Holly Grove, knowing it was going to get worse than grown adults sporting mock homespun and bad British accents. A lot worse.

  And boy was she right.

  Quasimodo, hump, gimlet eye, rags, and all, handed her a booklet and a map, but she couldn’t go anywhere because she had to wait for the Queen of England, waving regally to her lowly subjects, to parade by. Her Majesty was followed by her ladies-in-waiting, court jesters, bag-pipers, tradespeople with signs hawking their wares, and an assortment of kooks wearing costumes from four different centuries and every socioeconomic group imaginable, including leprous beggars.

  It wasn’t all bad, Rae told herself, taking a mental stab at optimism. It was early October, Indian summer, and the sun was shining in a cloudless blue sky. The air was the kind of crisp that followed a week of rain, and although she should have been thrilled to be outside in a wooded grove instead of stranded in an office staring at a computer screen, really she was in hell.

  Hell was populated by crowds of tourists gnawing on roasted turkey legs, and otherwise sane artisans wearing medieval dress in a desperate attempt to unload wooden swords and plastic Celtic crosses on consumers caught up in medieval fever. Hell was women who thought it was attractive to have their breasts cinched up to their clavicles, and men
who hadn’t thought through all the ramifications of an outfit that included a short tunic and tights.

  Rae had on a cream linen suit, the skirt a perfect inch above her knee, and bone-colored pumps with a sensible heel, and she was the one getting the weird looks. But then she’d always felt out of place at these things, even as a kid wearing whatever getup her mother had dredged up out of her imagination—which could have been anything from a fairy costume, complete with gossamer wings, to the rags of a fourteenth-century beggar. The woman could have been a successful costume designer, but instead she chose to live in hell.

  As always this thought made Rae roll her eyes and smile indulgently at the same time. Despite her residual childhood resentments she loved her parents. Why else would she take an afternoon off with quarter-end rapidly approaching? Now if she could only figure out where they were.

  The place was a maze of food stands, small stages where comedians or dancers performed, and booths with vendors selling everything under the sun. Annie Bliss would be painting faces or braiding flowers into wreaths. Nelson Bliss would be selling the beautiful hand-screened textiles her mother designed and he made. Rae did their taxes every year, and only because she ignored her father’s tirades about the demon government. Amazingly they did all right, very little overhead, traveling around in a camper, more often than not parking in some friend’s yard between shows. It wasn’t right for her, but it suited her parents.

  She pulled out Quasimodo’s map and unfolded it, working her way through the place in an efficient, methodical manner, until she came to a crowd that stretched from one side of the wide dirt path to the other. And it was all women. That didn’t pique her interest; she was a goal-oriented kind of girl, and her goal was finding the Blisses and getting back to work. It barely registered that most of the women were in advanced stages of hormonal upheaval, staring slack-jawed, fanning themselves, sighing. One glimpse of sweaty, flexing muscles, and Rae made the fervor unanimous. She was focused, not undersexed.

  She lifted onto her toes and managed to spy a carefully banked fire within a shedlike opening, decorated with intricate metalwork pieces and medieval weaponry, and filled with a half-naked man. A tall, bare-chested, rugged-looking man with dark, shoulder-length hair and arresting blue eyes. Of course, it took her a minute to get to the eyes. No sense rushing things, she thought, dropping her gaze to the dirt floor of the shed and working her way up over knee-high boots with homespun britches tucked into them. He wore a leather apron over the britches—disappointingly—but the scenery improved from there. Six-pack abs, pecs the size of dinner plates, and biceps she couldn’t have spanned with both hands. His neck was corded, his face was square-jawed, and then there were his eyes, bright blue and laser sharp against his black hair and tanned skin.

  He looked up, their gazes met, and Rae felt it all the way to her toes, where it boomeranged back up and clamored for notice in body parts she ought not to be thinking about. Those body parts would only get her in trouble, and anyway, her feet seemed to be in charge at the moment because she found herself standing between the front of the crowd and a wooden railing with no idea how she’d gotten there except that raw impulse had had something to do with it. She didn’t usually let impulse anywhere near her. But she wasn’t moving. She’d look up her parents, she told herself, just as soon as she found her way out of those impossibly blue eyes.

  He gave her directions by smiling. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, white teeth behind a smug grin, and she began to feel something besides lust. She felt foolish. She felt her feet again, too, but unfortunately she was surrounded by a solid wall of women, most of whom were just a hormone surge away from jumping the railing and trampling her in the process.

  The object of everyone’s attention wasn’t helping the situation any. He turned to face the fire, the back view just as impressive as the front, consisting as it did of wide shoulders, tapering down to a narrow waist and hips, his lower half clothed in buff-colored pants so tight they appeared to be painted over a really, really nice butt. He started working the bellows, the muscles in his back and arms flexing impressively.

  The fire wasn’t the only thing whipped into a frenzy.

  The crowd lunged forward, shoving the front row, including Rae, into the railing. The entire enclosure shuddered; the man spun around and scowled. The onlookers froze, then took one step back. In unison.

  Rae rolled her eyes. Sure, he was drop-dead gorgeous in a medieval, man-is-the-master-race kind of way. The attitude could probably be overlooked, or at least ignored if she chose to concentrate on the form-fitting pants and bare everything else. But he was counting on that.

  “Whatever he’s selling,” a woman behind Rae said, “I’m buying.”

  Tall, dark, and sweaty met Rae’s eyes, just the hint of a smirk lifting the corners of his mouth.

  She popped up one eyebrow and shook her head slightly, unimpressed. It was a bit more work not to get swept up in the silent conversation they seemed to be having. He saved her again by turning back to the fire. He took a red-hot piece of steel out of the flames with a set of pincers, and carried it to a crude-looking table facing the audience. Rae managed to ignore his raw sexual magnetism long enough to see that he was making something intricate, a gauntlet or maybe a chain mail hood.

  He might have the body of a blacksmith, but he used the careful touch of a watchmaker, bending over a small anvil and working the steel into something that resembled a wafer-thin leaf. He quenched the leaf in water then straddled a bench, legs spread wide, apron hiking up. Everyone but Rae let out a sigh. There was so much air moving it was a wonder he wasn’t blown onto his ass in the dirt. But then, that would have ruined the show.

  Two men burst through the back of the booth and added the only other ingredient that could have made the situation more irresistible to a bunch of lust-stricken women. Danger.

  The men were dressed like Disney’s idea of pirates, scruffy beards, pantaloons, bad teeth and all, and they were brandishing swords. They split, coming at the blacksmith from either side. He jumped onto the bench, balancing on the thin plank of wood while both his attackers raised their swords and rushed him. They nearly chopped each other’s heads off when their target spun out from between them, tore the red-hot poker from the fire, and turned in time to face off against them.

  He parried one pirate with the poker, slashing at the other with a two-foot blade he plucked from the wall, then changing up to thrust with the poker and block with the sword. The pirates traded a look and then attacked simultaneously. The blacksmith’s arms were a flurry of motion almost too fast to follow as he danced around to keep either one of the men from getting behind him.

  The fight was staged, but the peril seemed so real the crowd’s reaction might as well have been choreographed, too. They swayed and flinched on cue, gasped and sighed in chorus, clutching at each other when one of the combatants made a particularly good attack or defense.

  Rae had the urge for a tub of buttered popcorn and a box of Jujubes. It was just like an action flick, complete with the cut hero facing off against superior forces . . . Okay, it was only two to one, and they couldn’t compare with the armorer’s skills, but there didn’t really seem to be any contest. Yet, just when she was sure he was going to fight them off with no trouble, he faltered. His legs went wobbly, and he shook his head a couple of times, like he was trying to clear it. One of the attackers took advantage of the seeming weakness, his slashing stroke leaving a thin line of red along the armorer’s biceps.

  Fake blood. Or was it? Rae leaned close. Hard to get a good look at the wound, what with the guy snapping back to full alertness, and dancing around the other two men. But she could have sworn the wound was dripping, slowly, and fake blood didn’t drip. She lifted her eyes to the armorer’s face, but there was no pain there. He didn’t acknowledge the wound in any way. If possible he moved even faster, beating the two men back by sheer force. And when he managed to return the favor by singeing the man who’d pinked him, th
e pirates apparently had enough. The wounded man took off, his partner hot on his heels.

  The armorer stood there for a moment, his impressive chest heaving as he watched his attackers disappear into the crowd. Then he turned, and his eyes met Rae’s again, piercing blue, primed for violence. Or maybe sex because he vaulted over the low rail directly in front of her, slipped one arm around her waist, and took her mouth.

  She should have protested, her brain was instructing her to take issue with this . . . assault. She even raised her hands, intending to shove him off. Instead, her fingers flexed into rock-hard muscle, and she sank into the kiss. Her breath oozed out with a little sigh, her tongue tangled with his, and she lost track of her body aside from the fact that it was pressed tightly to his and tingling from head to toe. Then he let her go, so quickly she stumbled before she found her feet again.

  He bowed to the audience and stalked off, leaving the fire to tend itself—the one inside the enclosure and the one outside, most of which seemed to have moved up into Rae’s face.

  Shutting out the giggles and whispers of the crowd, Rae turned on the heel of one Italian leather pump and strode off in the opposite direction, to find her parents. She needed to solve whatever problem they were having and get back to work, in that order. But it was going to be hell concentrating on numbers.