The Temp gets a new outing!

It's always fun to see a new outing for a favourite book.

I wrote this novella the year I went to the RWA conference in New York. I had the idea before I went and then did everything that my heroine would. It was a brilliant few days even though Debbie Macomber beat me to the Rita that year.

Here's the blurb -

Talie Calhoun had briefly met billionaire Jude Radcliffe whilst working as a temp at the Radcliffe Group. It was a rare holiday away from nursing her invalid mother. But when she's asked to accompany Mr Radcliffe to New York, she is over the moon.

Radcliffe isn't so pleased with his secretary's choice of temp, but Talie is a force of nature, hard to ignore and her zest for life draws him out of the shell he;s built around himself.

Here's a snip -


‘WAIT for me!’
      Talie Calhoun sprinted across the marble lobby of the Radcliffe Tower as the lift doors began to close. The occupant of the lift obliged by holding the lift and she beamed a grateful smile in his direction.

‘Thank you so much! It’s my first day and I am sooo late,’ she said, all in a rush as she checked her wrist watch and let out a tiny wail of anguish before looking up at her fellow passenger. Nothing unusual there. Looking up was what she did, mostly. Her grandmother had warned her. If she didn’t eat up her spinach and crusts, she wouldn’t grow tall and her hair wouldn’t curl.

One out of two to granny.

Oh good grief. It was just her luck that the man was a serious babe magnet. Slate grey eyes, cheek bones to die for, a mouth that you just knew would melt your bones. If you were in the market to have your bones melted, that was. In short, the kind of man that you wouldn’t want to meet unless your makeup was perfect, your clothes elegant – but sexy – and your hair was totally in control. Instead, she was pink in the face, dishevelled and flustered. She wasn’t even going to think about her hair…

‘That’s not good is it?’ she said, offering a smile, but if she’d been hoping for reassurance, she was out of luck.

‘It does suggest a certain lack of enthusiasm,’ he replied, coolly.

Would it have hurt the wretch to smile?

‘Which floor?’ he enquired

‘Oh…’ She consulted the card she was holding. ‘Thirty-two, please.’ Then, as her knight errant pressed the button for her floor. ‘It’s not true, you know,’ she said. ‘I am incredibly enthusiastic.’

He lifted his left eyebrow no more than a millimetre. It expressed a world weary lack of belief that she found totally galling.

‘No, honestly!’ she protested. Then, ‘But you’re probably right. This may be the shortest temp job in the entire history of temping.’

‘If it was important, maybe you should have set your alarm a little earlier.’ Her outraged response to this calumny was still a fledgling thought when he said, ‘Who are you going to work for?’

‘The Finance Director.’

‘Then you are in trouble.’

A twinge of unease tightened her stomach. She couldn’t be that unlucky...

‘Look, it wasn’t my fault. My alarm was set for six o’clock. I was almost here an hour ago.’

‘I should perhaps warn you that the Finance Director never accepts “almost” as good enough.’

‘Please… Tell me that you’re not him…’

‘No. You’re safe for another couple of minutes.’ His smile was definitely worth waiting for. Tiny creases appeared at the corners of his mouth and eyes to demonstrate that although it was more ironic than ha ha ha, it was the genuine article.

‘Whew!’ she said, flapping her hand as if to cool her cheeks – actually it wasn’t wholly pretence... ‘That would have been a really bad start.’

‘Late is bad enough. Have you got a good excuse prepared? Delay on the Underground is a favourite I believe.’

‘With good reason,’ she declared, ‘but it wasn’t anything that simple. I wish it was.’

The eyebrow did its job again, inviting her to elaborate. Or maybe in disbelief... ‘Look, it’s just me, okay? I seem to have this fatal attraction for calamity, mayhem and misadventure. Today it was some poor man having a seizure down in the Underground.’

‘That’s a reason for him being late, not you,’ he pointed out.

‘Yes, but I will get involved.’

‘Oh. I see.’

For a moment she suspected that he was laughing at her. No, his mouth was perfectly straight…

She dragged her gaze from the kind of lower lip that sent a rush of hormones to her brain.

‘He’d, um, collapsed on the platform. People were walking right past him. I suppose they thought he’d been taking drugs or something. It wasn’t exactly a rerun of While You Were Sleeping –‘

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The movie? Where the girl rescues the guy when he falls onto the track and then everyone thinks she’s his fiancee…’ She stopped. Clearly he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. ‘Obviously I couldn’t just leave him there.’

‘Obviously,’ he said. And then he did smile. Really smile. He was clearly killing himself with the effort not to laugh out loud.

Why did men always do that?

Because she was only 5’3 in her thickest socks and twenty pounds overweight according to some stupid height/weight chart in one of her aunt’s slimming magazines?

Why was it that only tall, thin people were taken seriously?

‘You find that funny?’ she demanded.

‘No! No, absolutely not,’ he said, rapidly losing the smile. ‘You weren’t afraid?’ Then, ‘I suspect that’s why none of those people stopped.’

‘Of course it was, but he was sick. He needed help. I grabbed the nearest person and wouldn’t let go until the poor woman got out her mobile phone and called for an ambulance, then I did what I could to make him comfortable. Of course it took the paramedics forever to get through the rush hour traffic and then I had to stay and explain what had happened, what I’d done.’

‘Is he going to be all right?’

Okay. He’d smiled at the wrong moment, but he had asked the right question…

‘I think so. He was a bit dazed, but he seemed to have pretty much recovered by the time I finally got away.’ The lift stopped, the doors slid back. ‘Uh-oh. This is my floor. Well, thanks for holding the lift.’

‘Any time,’ he said, and then he smiled again. And her bones… melted. ‘Just yell.’

Oh good grief. She’d yelled…

In the hallowed precincts of the Radcliffe Tower.

 

This edition of The Temp and; the Tycoon is a LP library edition and quite expensive. The idea is that you ask for it at your local library - anywhere in the world. It is also available to download as an eBook atAmazon, Mills and Boon or any other eBook provider for little more than the price of a daily newspaper - £1.31.

Hacked off...

To add to the cold misery, which finally seems to be taking pity on me and retreating a little, I've been hacked. If you received a weird email, FB or twitter message from me with a link, please ignore it. Meanwhile I've changed all my passwords and hopefully have stopped it.

A pox on all hackers. Something very itchy and disfiguring...

A "Kiss" that's Anything But Vanilla

And it's also available direct from Harlequin US and Harlequin Mills and Boon in Australia

A very uncommon cold...

I've been laid low with a cold but here's a picture of the hellebores in Courts Garden where I spent a happy hour a couple of with a friend a couple of weeks ago to be going on with.

Normal service will be resumed ... eventually.

First Page Friday - Joss Wood's Top Pick "KISS"

My First Page Friday guest this week is fellow KISS author, Joss Wood, who is giving us a taste of her 4.5 star TOP PICK debut book IT WAS ONLY A KISS.

Here’s the blurb!

Luke Savage never failed! Ok there was the marriage thing, he’d dropped the ball on that one, but in his defence he’d been duped from the beginning. Now he was divorcing Satan’s sister, so everything was back on track. That was until a beautiful, cocky twenty-something interning in his marketing department waltzed into his office and announced his marketing plan, for his recently inherited family vineyard, sucked!

Jess Sherwood was bright, ambitious and a know-it-all. She was also gorgeous as sin and made Luke feel things he shouldn’t. But that didn’t excuse her intrusion into his office and her blatant disregard for his authority in his own company. So after kissing her senseless, Luke fires Jess and kicks her out of his office. No way was an arrogant little madam with all of five minutes experience going to tell him his business would fail!

Eight years later, Luke’s family vineyard is failing. With the insurmountable debts he’s inherited from his father to pay off, Luke is struggling to keep St Sylve Vineyards afloat. A successful businessman in his own right, it would be so easy to sell up and return to his own thriving company. But how can he sell off the work of his many fore-fathers and generations his family’s history? Luke has never failed in business before and he isn’t about to start now. What he needs is a hip new marketing strategy… and he knows just the woman for the job! Their only problem is how to keep their minds on work and off that kiss!

And here’s the first page…

Eight years ago…

‘So, in conclusion I think the marketing strategy your people presented to you is hackneyed, stupid and asinine and plays absolutely no attention to your demographics, to the market research and to where your competitors are placing themselves. It’s under researched and knocked together and if you follow it I guarantee that you will lose most of your market share in five years time, if not your business.’

Luke Savage looked across his messy desk at the earnest young woman perched on the edge of her chair, her face animated with youthful zeal and healthy dose of arrogance. What was her name again? He glanced down at her file in front of him─ Jess Sherwood. She was twenty-two, he read and was currently doing her MBA in marketing. The file did state that she was over blessed with brains, her school and university achievements were─ to put it mildly─ impressive but it failed to mention that she was solidly gorgeous as well.

A true brown eyed blonde.

She was quite a parcel and boy, did she know it…

Luke kept his face impassive as she draped one long, slim leg over the other and lightly linked her hands around a bare knee, an index finger tapping away. She wore a short, flouncy dress falling off one shoulder and showing a thin purple bra strap; belted at slim hips by a broad leather belt. Falling to mid-thigh, it was too short, too casual and too sexy an outfit for work but she wore it with careless confidence.

Luke, who was seldom surprised at much, was taken aback by her self-importance and her balls-to-the-wall chutzpah.

 ‘Wood’s tortured hero is believable and compelling and the story takes readers on a passionate, emotional rollercoaster ride.’ Sabrina Madan RT Book Reviews Top Pick for May. 


Click to read on  in the US                                          Or at Harlequin Australia

Anything But Vanilla goes Sexy in Oz

Anything But Vanilla... by Liz Fielding

Sorrel Amery is determined to make her summer event the talk of the town, and she knows just the way into people's hearts - Champagne sorbet! It's the perfect strategy…until the ice cream parlour's owner runs off, leaving Sorrel's plans melting faster than a sundae in the summer sun.

When the luscious Alexander West arrives to help pick up the pieces, Sorrel's life gets shaken up more than ever before! Especially as this globe-trotting adventurer is determined that nothing in her life should ever be boring old vanilla again…

It Was Only A Kiss by Joss Wood

For driven businessman Luke Savage success is the only option. So when gorgeous marketing intern Jess Sherwood waltzes into his office and casually informs him that his newly inherited vineyard has an image problem, he's outraged! She's naïve and overly ambitious, all Luke can do to stop her talking...is to kiss her.

Eight years later the vineyard needs a boost - and Luke needs a hip new marketing strategy to save it. Jess may drive him crazy but she's the right woman for the job. Their only problem is how to keep their minds on work and off that kiss!

 You can buy here

 

First Page Friday - The Secret Wedding Dress #KISS

It's time for another First Page Friday - this time from the fabulous Ally Blake and her new Harlequin KISS title, The Secret Wedding Dress. I've already read this and I can tell you that it's brilliantly sexy, funny, and totally engaging. But don't just take my word for it...

Here's the blurb - 

On maid of honour duty with her best friend, Mae, fiercely independent Paige Danforth finds herself surrounded by hundreds of bridezillas at a factory outlet wedding dress sale when something catches her eye...  Suddenly, there's a tightening of her throat, a lightness in her head…. A glimpse of chiffon in dark champagne. And before she knows it, self-confessed cynic, Paige, the girl who swears blind that happy ever after is an evil myth perpetuated by florists and bakers, has just bought herself a wedding dress! One problem… no groom… or wedding!

Determined to put this wedding dress debacle down to a deliriousness caused by her 'dating drought', Paige decides she needs a man and fast. Enter dark, brooding adventurer Gabe Hamilton... the very next man to step into the lift in their apartment block. So against her type, Gabe is dark and diabolically hot... and only in town for a few weeks! She doesn’t have to have a relationship with the guy. She needs a date. A kiss. A night. A good and proper tumble. A way to find her dating legs again. No promises made, no promises broken. And after witnessing her parents messy divorce and her cricket star dad's notoriously philandering ways, Paige is determined to never let herself be hurt in the same way and this fun-only fling with Gabe is perfect... for now.

Until Paige begins to realise that by purposefully keeping Gabe - the guy who inspires all these new, exciting feelings in her - from getting close, she's creating her own unhappy ever after.

And here's the first page -

Paige Danforth didn’t believe in happily ever afters.

     So it was a testament to how awesome a friend she was that she stood freezing her tush off outside a dodgy-looking Collingwood warehouse in the grey half-light of a misty Melbourne winter’s morning with her best friend Mae who was there to buy a wedding dress.

     Wedding Dress Fire Sale! Over 1000 new and used dresses, up to 90% off! read the massive hot pink banner flapping dejectedly against the cracked brown bricks of the old building.  Paige wondered if any of the other women in the line, which by that stage snaked all the way around the corner of the block, saw the irony of the hype masking the depressing reality.  By the manic gleams in their eyes they all bought into the fantasy, for sure.  Each and every one of them convinced they were the ones for whom the love songs and sonnets rang true.

And here's a link for iTunes, Australia

Sexy Duo/The Secret Wedding Dress/Driving Her Crazy - Ally Blake

"Fast paced, funny, warm and deliciously hot, this is the kind of can't-put-down story Ms. Blake is famous for writing. What's more, she has a magical way of making it feel like the heroine is a best friend who is telling her story over cocktails instead of within the pages of a book. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS ONE!"

 

...Trish Wylie, Goodreads

 

 

"If you enjoy fun, flirty, contemporary romances, you'll love The Secret Wedding Dress.  Paige is ballsy and quirky, Gabe is flawed and incredibly sexy. Thoroughly enjoyed!"

 

...Nicola Marsh, USA Today Bestselling author

 

How many stars...? Online reviews.

All authors love great reviews that give us four or five stars and we truly appreciate any reader who leaves an honest and thoughtful review, even if the book wasn't to their taste. Word of mouth is what makes a book fly.

But there are moments when a writer just wants to beat her head against her desk.

This morning I had an "alert" for my book Dangerous Flirtation at Barnes and Noble. I clicked to see what it was about and discovered I had three new reviews. Two were five star. Great.  Well, not so great, actually. They weren't reviews at all, but a couple who appeared to be using my book page as a contact site to fix up an illicit date - no doubt inspired by the book's title. :)  Interesting. A story idea...

But then, someone who objected to them using the review system as a dating site, ticked them off. To do that, she had to give the book a "star" - you can't leave a comment without one. Since she hadn't read the book, didn't give a hoot about the author, or the fact that writing happened to be the way she paid the bills, she casually gave it a 1 star review just so that she could make her point. This is like giving a coffee shop a bad review because you didn't like the customers sitting at the next table.

Instead of having no reviews - no problem - I now had three non-reviews that made the book look like a 3 star read.

Reviews are for those who have read the book and have something specific to say about it, even if it's just that they hated it. For everything else there is a button on the site specifically designed for reporting this kind of inappropriate use of a review site.

I've just used it. Three times.