Gentlemen Prefer Nerds
Read Gentlemen Prefer Nerds Online
Authors: Joan Kilby
Gentlemen Prefer Nerds
By Joan Kilby
Self-professed nerd Maddie Maloney is an expert on jewels. Jewel
thieves
are another matter entirely! So when a mysterious Englishman warns her that a thief known as The Chameleon is after the rare pink diamond on display in her aunt’s shop, she tells herself it’s just a joke. Even if she can’t get Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome out of her mind…
But Fabian Montgomery doesn’t give up easily. He’s everywhere she goes, convinced the thief will strike. And when the diamond
does
go missing—and Maddie is suspected of stealing it—he whisks her away from the police and together they pursue The Chameleon.
Fabian plunges her into a glamorous world far from her humble workshop and transforms geeky Maddie into a sophisticated siren capable of espionage. Her mission: to seduce The Chameleon and steal back the diamond.
But Fabian isn’t telling her everything—like who he works for, and why he’s so interested in The Chameleon…
86,000 words
Dear Reader,
It’s hard to get excited about the month of March. The weather in this part of the world isn’t quite spring, and if it’s still cold, can make a long winter feel even longer. There are no fun holidays to look forward to except the green beer, corned beef and cabbage of St. Patrick’s Day, and the school season is at a point where the kids are starting to whine about having to wake up in the morning and go.
That’s why I’m excited about our 2012 March releases at Carina Press. The variety and excellence of the stories give us a reason to anticipate and enjoy the month of March! The rich diversity of these books promises a fantastic reading month at Carina.
Kicking off the month is mystery author Shirley Wells, returning with her popular Dylan Scott Mystery series. Joining her book
Silent Witness
at the beginning of March is BDSM erotic romance
Forbidden Fantasies
by Jodie Griffin; Christine Danse’s paranormal romance
Beauty in the Beast;
and a romantic steampunk gothic horror that’s like no steampunk you’ve ever read,
Heart of Perdition
by Selah March.
Later in the month, fans of Cindy Spencer Pape will be glad to see her return with another paranormal romance installment,
Motor City Mage,
while Janis Susan May returns with another creepy gothic mystery,
Inheritance of Shadows.
Historical romance lovers will be more than pleased with
A Kiss in the Wind,
Jennifer Bray-Weber’s inaugural Carina Press release.
I expect new Carina Press authors Joan Kilby, Gillian Archer and Nicole Luiken will gain faithful followings with their books:
Gentlemen Prefer Nerds,
an entertaining contemporary romance;
Wicked Weekend,
a sexy and sweet BDSM erotic romance; and
Gate to Kandrith,
the first of a fantasy duology that features wonderful world-building. Meanwhile, returning Carina authors Robert Appleton and Carol Stephenson do what they do best: continue to capture readers’ imaginations. Grab a copy of science-fiction space opera
Alien Velocity
and hot romantic suspense
Her Dark Protector.
Rounding out the month, we have an entire week of releases from some of today’s hottest authors in m/m romance, as well as some newcomers to the genre. Ava March kicks off her entertaining and hot m/m historical romance trilogy with
Brook Street: Thief
. Look for the other two books in the trilogy,
Brook Street: Fortune Hunter
and
Brook Street: Rogue,
in April and May 2012. Erastes, who can always be counted on to deliver a compelling, well-researched historical, gives us m/m paranormal historical romance
A Brush with Darkness,
and science-fiction author Kim Knox makes her debut in the m/m genre with her sci-fi romance
Bitter Harvest.
KC Burn gives us the stunning m/m contemporary romance
First Time, Forever.
Joining them are new Carina Press authors Dev Bentham, with a sweet, heartfelt m/m romance,
Moving in Rhythm,
and Larry Benjamin with his terrific debut novel, m/m romance
What Binds Us.
As you can see, March comes in like a lion but will not go out like a lamb. All month long we offer powerful stories from our talented authors. I hope you enjoy them as much as we have!
We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Executive Editor, Carina Press
www.carinapress.com
www.twitter.com/carinapress
www.facebook.com/carinapress
To Mike, for all your love and support. I couldn’t do what I do, be who I am, without you.
My deep gratitude goes to David Fortier of tiptopgem.com for his generosity and expertise in answering my many questions about pink diamonds and other gems.
Thanks to Nancy Warren who came up with a brilliant title off the top of her head.
Thanks also to Sarah Mayberry, who was willing to discuss my story endlessly, offered terrific insights and made me laugh.
Finally, thanks to Carina Press, Angela James and Deborah Nemeth, for giving the book of my heart a home.
Maddie Maloney flicked the page of her graphic spy thriller. God, she would love to be kick-butt Modesty Blaise.
Wham! Blam! Look out, Ape Man!
She would look so hot in black leather.
Whirrr. Click.
The cuckoo bobbed out of the wall clock and chirruped mechanically. One o’clock. Lunch over, Maddie closed the book and tossed it in an open drawer on top of chunks of quartzite and gemological tools.
She was no femme fatale spy. She was a science nerd who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with Geology Rocks. And she wouldn’t know a karate chop from a pork chop.
But she did know gemstones.
Scooting her chair up to the microscope, she pushed her glasses up her nose and peered through the stereo eyepieces. Twenty million dollars’ worth of pink diamond glowed in a tiny pool of light. In a few days the Rose would go on display out front—right here in Aunt Grace’s jewelry shop. Until then, it was Maddie’s to drool over.
She rotated the zoom knob to deepen the focus, moving through layers of facets in the heart-shaped gem. The Rose was huge for a fancy pink, and flawless, not a feathery fracture or a mineral inclusion anywhere.
The sheer sensuality of the jewel held her captive, the deep raspberry color as rare as it was seductive. Even the tick of the clock faded as Maddie lost herself in the lush pink glitter of facets so numerous they resembled the petals of a real rose. A sigh of pleasure escaped her lips.
“Did you know that the Contessa Antonia Licciardo, of eighteenth-century Venice, could reach orgasm simply by looking at a beautiful gem?” a cultured English male voice enquired from directly behind her.
With a yelp, Maddie spun her wheeled chair around so fast she almost tipped over. A tall dark-haired man in an impeccably tailored charcoal gray suit loomed over her. “Where did you come from?”
“Do you mean just now? Through there.” With a slight movement of his head, the intruder indicated the door leading onto the alley.
The electronically locked security door with the brand-new state-of-the art alarm system.
A cold trickle slid down Maddie’s spine. “Impossible.”
“Clearly not.” His alert gaze scanned the room, from the floor safe in the corner to her cluttered workspace to Kim’s bench with his neat array of jewelry-making tools.
Maddie reached under the desk and hit the panic button. Aunt Grace was at lunch and so was Kim. Tiffany, Grace’s assistant, was in the shop but she plugged into her MP3 player when unsupervised. A bomb could go off back here and she’d be grooving to dance music.
The stranger’s dark eyes swept back to Maddie. “Don’t think I didn’t see you press that button.”
“Security guards will be here any second.” She groped the bench behind her for a weapon. Her hand closed on a half-inch chasing hammer. Wedging herself between the intruder and her precious charge, she brandished the tiny jewelry-making tool. “Back off!”
Her snarl was an empty threat, of course. Mr. Savile Row was at least six foot three and, judging by the way his broad shoulders filled out his suit, he could probably break her in two with a snap of his elegant fingers.
Ignoring her, he took a step forward and planted a hand on the bench to peer through the stereomicroscope. At his wrist a gold monogrammed cuff link gleamed against snowy cotton. “Pretty.”
“Pretty?” Heat surged into Maddie’s cheeks. Her grip tightened on the hammer. “That’s like saying the Hope Diamond is a trinket.”
“Very pretty,” he conceded, straightening away from the microscope to dust his hands. “It’s in imminent danger of being stolen.”
Stolen by him? Was that a threat? Where the hell were the guards?
“Kim will be back any moment,” she warned. “He knows tai chi.”
“Tai chi?” The stranger’s mouth quirked up in a combination of curves and angles that was both disturbingly sexy and extremely annoying. “Perhaps you mean tae kwon do.”
Shoot. She knew that. “He can break a brick in half with his forehead.”
“I could use a sparring partner.” The man flexed long fingers on powerful, well-shaped hands.
Maddie bet if she were pointing a gun at him he wouldn’t be so nonchalant. But of course she didn’t own a gun and wouldn’t know what to do with one if she did. “I’m calling the police.”
She reached behind her on the workbench, feeling for her cell phone. It wasn’t in its usual spot. Frantically, she turned around, her searching fingers scattering grading reports and gem certifications.
“Is this what you’re looking for?” He held the slim purple cell out to her. “Do you see how easy it is to take something literally from under your nose?”
Maddie snatched the phone and jabbed in the number for emergency services. Quickly, quickly…
“If I may offer some advice—”
“No!” She waved her little hammer at him. “Get out!”
“As you wish.” Leisurely, he crossed the workshop to the alley door.
Sirens wailed to a stop out in front of the shop.
“No, I mean, stay!” Maddie said.
“Trust no one,” he warned, one foot out the open door. “You never know when the Chameleon will strike.”
“The who?”
“Emergency Services.” A tinny voice came from the cell.
“Just a minute,” Maddie said into the phone, harried. “Wait!” she called to the man. “Who’s the Chameleon?”
“A jewel thief who’s after your pretty pink diamond.” The stranger lifted a hand in farewell. With the glint of a gold cuff link on white cotton he was gone, closing the door behind him with a firm click.
Maddie threw down the hammer—she’d have been lucky to blacken his baby fingernail with it—and quickly reported the intruder to Emergency Services. She went out to the showroom. A bewildered Tiffany was tugging on one long bleached lock as she greeted two private security guards in brown uniforms who’d been summoned by the panic button.
Maddie hustled the guards through the workshop. “The intruder escaped into the alley. He’s tall with dark hair, wearing a gray suit. Hurry!”
The men split up and went in either direction down the cobbled lane, rattling locked doors and peering into windows, shining flashlights inside the delivery truck parked at the back of the antique store. A police car with flashing lights screamed to a halt, blocking one end of the alley. A pair of uniformed cops leaped out and joined the search.
Maddie went back inside, her heart racing. The Rose was still beneath her microscope. On Kim’s bench the diamond’s pendant setting hung around a mannequin neck. Nothing had been taken. It should have been reassuring. She closed the alley door and rearmed the security alarm.
Grace’s heels clicked on the marble floor as she hurried through the showroom carrying her purse and shopping bags. Blonde and chic, she wore a sleek black dress adorned with a fire opal in an abstract gold setting. “What’s going on? Tiffany said—Maddie, you’re white as a ghost!”
“A man broke in through the alley door. I was looking at the Rose under the microscope. Suddenly he was standing right behind me.”
Speaking of orgasms in that deep sexy voice. Was he a pervert? He hadn’t acted like one. He was sophisticated and cultured. And dangerous. Maddie shivered.
Grace dropped her bags and reached for Maddie’s hands, chafing her cold fingers. “Did he hurt you?”
“No, just scared the wits out of me. The security guards and police are searching for him now. He didn’t steal anything.”
“Who was he? What did he want?”
“He warned me about a jewel thief called the Chameleon.” Maddie gave a shaky laugh. “Who has a silly name like that? It sounds like something from a spy movie.”
“A jewel thief? Oh, dear. Can you imagine what William Franklin would say if we lost his diamond?” Grace fretted. “We would also lose any sales commission if we were to sell it.”
“I’ll put it away.” Maddie loosened the stone holder on the microscope and removed the diamond with a pair of padded tweezers. She placed the Rose in its black velvet nest molded into a specially made wooden box, shut the brass padlock and carried the box to the floor safe. She punched in the digital code, put the box on the top shelf and relocked the safe.
The security guards returned and reported nothing suspicious. Same story from the police. Whoever the intruder was, he’d gotten clean away.
Constable Linley, a female in her thirties with a stubby brown ponytail, questioned Maddie and took down details in a dog-eared notebook. “So nothing was taken. Was he threatening in any way?”
Did being too sexy count? “No, but…” Maddie told the policewoman what the man had said about the Chameleon. The story sounded odder with each retelling.
“Haven’t heard about any thieving reptiles lately.” Constable Linley fixed Maddie with a sharp gaze. “Did anyone see this man besides you?”
“No.” Maddie didn’t like what the cop was implying. “I didn’t imagine him.”
Linley’s partner, a young male officer, was examining the electronic security panel next to the door. “Could this have been left unarmed?”
“No one but Maddie, Kim and I know the security code,” Grace said. “I haven’t gone through that door today.”
“I didn’t leave it unarmed,” Maddie said. “And Kim is the most conscientious person I know.”
Footsteps scraped on the stones outside in the alley. Constable Linley held up a hand for silence then crossed to the door, motioning her partner to the other side of the exit. Maddie reached for the chasing hammer. Grace grabbed a pair of pliers.
The code lights on the alarm pad flashed red, then green.
The door opened.
The cops pulled their guns.
Kim, a slight figure in a tan jacket and gray slacks, instinctively raised his arms in a Tae Kwan Do block.
“Stop!” Grace said. “This is Kim, our jewelry maker.”
Relaxing their stance, the cops holstered their weapons.
Kim lowered his arms. His black hair was cut so short it stuck straight out. Tiny beads of perspiration glistened among the strands. “What’s going on?”
Maddie gave him a brief account of events. “Is it possible you accidentally left the security system off when you went out for lunch?”
“I always rearm,” Kim assured her. “Every time. I never forget.”
The officer tucked her notebook in her back pocket. “There’s nothing more we can do for now. If anything goes missing, or if the intruder returns, give us a call.”
The police officers showed themselves out. Kim pulled up a stool at his workbench, once again a mild-mannered artisan. He reached for a soft cloth and began polishing the Rose’s gleaming gold setting.
“There must be something wrong with the alarm,” Grace said, studying the electronic panel. “Maybe it’s an intermittent fault.”
Maddie slumped into a chair, drained. “What if the stranger knew how to disarm it?”
Grace laughed nervously, her fingers twisting her opal brooch. “He’d have to be some kind of James Bond.”
“Maybe he was a nut who tried to scare you.” Kim rubbed more polish onto the gold.
“He succeeded.” Maddie rubbed her bare arms, still prickly with goose bumps.
“I’m going to call the security firm to ask that they check the alarm right away,” Grace said. “In the meantime, we’ll all be extra cautious.”
“Don’t worry.” Maddie scooted her wheeled chair to her bench and started to straighten up the scattered grading reports.
Tiffany poked her head in from the showroom, her hair falling into her heavily made-up eyes. “Maddie? There’s a couple here to choose the diamond for her engagement ring. Grace, can you help a lady who’s looking at pearl necklaces? I’m busy with another customer.”
Grace gathered up her shopping bags. “I’ll put these away and be right there.”
Maddie set aside the stack of reports and went to the floor safe. She took out small boxes containing diamonds ranging from 0.2 to 1.0 carats and followed her aunt into the showroom.
A well-dressed woman was bent over the pearl necklaces in the glass cabinet. At the other end of the counter a businessman was comparing watches while Tiffany fingered the cord of her earphones. In the far corner of the store, a young couple was seated at the consulting desk, holding hands. It was an everyday scene in retail jewelry, reassuringly normal.
Maddie started toward the couple. Grace put a hand on her arm. “Before I forget, I had lunch with my friend Pia. Her son just moved down from Sydney. He’s single and good-looking. Wealthy. Apparently he’s very big in futures trading. I thought you and he could have dinner.”
“I don’t know, Grace. He doesn’t sound like my type.” Her aunt meant well but the men she tried to set her up with were Suits, more interested in their share portfolio than in rocks, and they totally didn’t get her. “If I can’t talk to a guy about crystal formation in the lithospheric mantle without his eyes glazing over, what hope is there for a relationship?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Grace tucked a lock of brown hair that was falling in Maddie’s eyes back behind her ear. “You could make so much more of yourself if you only tried. You could have men beating a path to your door.”
“Grace, you’re a darling but no guy you consider eligible is ever going to see me as attractive. And that’s okay by me. Honestly.”
“I think you’re afraid to be beautiful.”
“Why would I be afraid of something like that?”
“Because then you’d have to deal with the attention and you’re uncomfortable under the spotlight.”
“I…” Maddie racked her brain for a quick rebuttal but came up with nothing. Giving her a sad, knowing smile, Grace kissed her cheek and walked away to serve her customer.
The mysterious dark-haired intruder was a Suit too. Of course it wasn’t the article of clothing Maddie disdained. She could appreciate fine Italian cloth and superb English tailoring. No, it was the attitude that went with the expensive clothes she disliked. Nothing irked her more than that old school, born-to-rule mentality.
So what if he radiated a sharp intelligence? Who cared if he had the most beautiful hands she’d ever seen on a man? He was supercilious, condescending, rude, not to mention he’d forced an illegal entry to the shop. He’d frightened her and made her feel like a fool. She wouldn’t waste another second thinking about him.
Summoning a smile, Maddie walked over to the seated couple. “Phillip, Elaine. I’ve got some gorgeous diamonds to show you.”