Wanting Mr Wrong

Chapter 1

I typed in the web address for the official Guy McKinsey fan site, and bang – up popped his face. Gorgeous. Hot. British. Hunk.

I didn't swoon – but I came close. And that was mortifying.

An alien had taken over my body – it was the only explanation. I was not – never had been – interested in actors, rock stars, models, or anyone else you'd find stuck on an adolescent's bedroom wall. Nope. I was the daughter of renowned medical researchers, the sister of a doctor-without-a-border-or-a-freaking-flaw, and my heroes had always been the Nelson Mandelas, the Mahatma Gandhis, the Bill Gateses. Men of peace, activists, philanthropists, scientific discoverers. Entertainers of any kind need not apply.

So what the hell was I doing, at an advanced twenty-two years of age, crushing on an actor?

I'm telling you: Alien. In. Body. It was the only explanation.

The ringing doorbell was a relief under the circumstances – even though I knew it was going to be Drew out there, and for sure he was going to grumble that I was still slopping around in my ratty track pants and one of his cast-off sweatshirts instead of being slinked into the little black dress he'd ordered me to wear tonight.

Drew, in his self-appointed role of wingman, was whisking me off to a hot new bar, hoping to get me laid – something he'd been trying to do for three months without a glimmer of success. Drew's view of celibacy is that it should not exist over the age of eighteen unless you have a valid physical or religious reason for it. He'd generously given me nine whole months to get over my perfidious ex-boyfriend Sam Worth and back in the sex saddle before stepping in to guide me. But now I was at the one-year mark and still stubbornly unlaid, Drew was growing desperate – and hence I was being shunted around bars and clubs all over Sydney, like a meat tray in a raffle.

The doorbell rang again.

'All right already, I'm coming,' I called out, opting not to bother turning off the computer, because I didn't have to hide my Guy McKinsey obsession from Drew. He not only knew about it – being right beside me on the couch a week ago, mid-DVD, when it hit me – but approved of it as a sign that my dormant spark was ready to be reignited. Dormant spark – who spoke like that, really?

At least I had the satisfaction of knowing Drew was partial to a bit of cyber-stalking himself. His latest target was Channing Tatum. Thinking of Drew's unrequited lust for Channing Tatum made me feel marginally less pathetic, enough to have me grinning as I opened the door. I was mid-lurch, my arms reaching towards a hug, when it suddenly registered that the man on the other side of the threshold was not, in fact, my best friend Andrew.

They looked alike, with their tall, muscled frames, inky-black hair and vivid green eyes, but Jackson J Stevens was in a whole different league to his brother. More muscles, blacker hair, greener eyes.

I struggled against the momentum carrying me forward but lurched into Jack anyway, banging my nose on his chest. 'Ouch.'

Reflexively, Jack's arms closed around me. Tightened. Loosened. Released.

I looked up. Blinked.

'Hello, Evangeline,' Jack said, looking suspiciously like he was biting the inside of his cheek. And up went my hackles. 'Evangeline'. In that trying-not-to-laugh voice. After I'd just thrown myself at him like an overeager groupie.

Jack called me Evangeline out of sheer perversity. Nobody else called me by my real name – not even my parents, who'd had the brilliant idea of naming me after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem about some ancient Acadian girl's search for her lost love. The first and only time my parents had descended into the realm of the romantic. Hormones, according to my mother. Obviously hormones hadn't interfered when she'd named my older sister after nuclear physicist Lise Meitner! I ask you, was that fair? Nuclear physicist versus lovesick mooncalf? No wonder I was the dud of the family.