Handcuffed in Housewares: Tulle and Tulips, Book 3 (13 page)

Evan continued, needing no encouragement to divulge what he had planned. “There’s only one way I can show you how much we appreciate everything you’ve done to make this event perfect.”

She turned away from scanning the room and focused fully on Evan. The outer edge of her right eye squinched a little as she attempted to predict what her unpredictable friend would say. Her attempt to brace herself eked into her tone. “Evan.”

“I have someone I want you to meet.”

The two ominous notes of the Jaws score played in her head. She knew what was coming. The two dreaded notes were replaced with two dreaded words.

“A man.”

Yep. Just as she had expected.
“Evan.”

She tried to warn him. They’d shared enough apple martinis for him to know she didn’t want to be set up. The family event-planning business had suffered too much while she had been taking care of Sabrina. With things finally on an upswing she couldn’t afford the distraction that came with a man.

Even if she had the time, the hanging grief of loss didn’t give her the heart. “Don’t think for a second that I want you to set me up.”

He cocked a hip with a fist lightly planted above the blinged-out belt he was never without. “Don’t you think I know that?”

“I would like to, but you’re being overly dramatic. That always gets me a little scared.”

“Try to introduce a friend to a potential client and she gets all suspicious.” Evan rolled his eyes as he grabbed her arm and propelled her through the crowded room. “Where’s the appreciation?”

“I have plenty of appreciation.” Relief flooded her. A personal referral was exactly what she could use, especially to the kind of client who could afford to attend a five-hundred-dollar-a-plate fundraiser. “Tell me about this potential client.”

“He’s the CMO of a local hospital and has wanted to plan a special series of events for some patients who are finally healthy enough to enjoy them.” Evan smiled and nodded to people they passed, all the while talking low enough that their conversation was almost private. “Until now he’s had to prioritize his focus on other things.”

“What kind of patients?”

“Kids.” Evan inclined his head toward a small group of people mingling near a bar table.

A handsome man and a pretty woman, maybe in her fifties, faced Jennalyn. Recognition settled uncomfortably. The man’s smile was pleasant. The woman she remembered from her visits to the Ronald McDonald House in Riley. Amanda loved the house that love built and all that it stood for. She lived for the pleasure of making sure families had what they needed while their children were in the hospital.

Amanda was a wonderful person, but neither she nor the man facing Jennalyn held themselves as if they considered themselves powerful. The man with his back to her did. After seeing the woman, Jennalyn knew who the man was from his perfectly trimmed hair to the way he stood with understated power.

Then he turned.

He wore a black suit. The matching tie had a single row of red dots made from silk thread. At six foot two he was taller than her by seven inches. Square jaw and high cheekbones, blonde hair with silvery eyes that smiled when he smiled, the man robbed her of breath.

Ryland Davids.

Evan made the introductions, but Jennalyn heard nothing. She could only recall the times she had seen Ryland walking the halls of Riley Hospital for Children. He was an executive as dedicated to the comfort of the families of his patients as he was to the patients themselves. He was personable. So much so that he had been the one to offer warmth when her world went dark.

Jennalyn’s head tingled. The sensation was subtle at first. Then it grew until the entire surface beneath her skull became a tingling mass. The pressure of memories swamped her and had her resisting the urge to turn and flee.

“Jennalyn?” Evan’s questioning concern and the weight of his hand coming to rest at her waist pulled her from the morass. “I would like you to meet Ryland Davids, Brad from his PR department, and Amanda from Ronald McDonald House.”

Amanda smiled a smile that said she remembered Jennalyn and that she understood how painful this reunion could be. The sympathy had Jennalyn resisting the urge to crack her knuckles. It was that look that had kept her from returning to the hospital as a volunteer. Turning from it, she faced Ryland.

He stepped forward with a hand extended and a gentle smile that curved his mouth and crinkled the edges of his eyes. “Jennalyn.”

She flattened her palm over her chest where heat was spreading deeper. She’d seen him often, met him twice. The first meeting, she’d found him on the floor of the hospital library. In his expensive suit, in front of some amazing stained glass windows, he’d sat on the thick rug that covered a marble floor with his legs crisscrossed. He and Sabrina had broken away from their seemingly serious conversation.

He’d looked up at Jennalyn with the same gentle smile. It had stolen her breath then too.

In the water-themed banquet space, with her heart filling her throat, Jennalyn moved her hand into Ryland’s. An electric jolt shot up her arm and had her jerking free.

Rubbing the palm of her still-tingling hand with her thumb, she searched for her voice. When she managed to push words up her lump-filled throat, she was proud to hear that she sounded somewhat level.

“Ryland.”

“It’s… You look… You look good.” His guarded greeting suggested that he too remembered their last meeting and he found this reunion equally awkward.

The second and last time she’d met him… He’d sat across Sabrina’s bed holding one fragile hand while Jennalyn held the other.

Flying too close to love could get her heart burned.

Flight Risk

© 2013 Nicole Helm

Antiques in Flight, Book 1

After losing his mother to cancer, Trevor Steele has taken a leave of absence from the FBI to get his little sister through her last months of high school. But once she’s settled in college next fall, he’s leaving Pilot’s Point and heading back to Seattle.

Now if only he could keep his mind off childhood friend Callie Baker. Especially since she’s asked him for a big chunk of his spare time to help save her family business.

Once the town bad girl, Callie has had to get her act together to keep Antiques in Flight airport from falling apart.
Swallowing her pride to ask for Trevor’s help is the hardest thing she’s ever done—next to trying to forget the sizzling kiss they shared two years ago.

Working side by side leads to a complicated dance of almost-moments, until their repressed urges finally break free. But just as Trevor begins to think staying for good might be the right path, Callie closes herself off, afraid to believe in promises…even Trevor’s.

Warning: A woman who’d rather face an airplane engine than falling for her best friend, a man who’d rather face a gun to his head than going home, and a love that will test what they both want.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Flight Risk:

“What do you think?”

She looked at Trevor, really looked at him. The way his black hair was starting to grow out, enough that if she ran her fingers through it, it wouldn’t feel scratchy. His eyes were focused on the mess of the basement, and they were so blue it didn’t seem natural.

Broad shoulders tapered down, and his white T-shirt clung to his flat stomach, hard muscle under smooth skin. From all the work outside at AIF, his previously fair skin was now tanned.

What was so wrong with wanting him? With, for once, taking what she wanted? New leaf? Fuck it. She wanted something more than this new leaf of feeling sad and doing the right damn thing, she wanted to
feel
something besides all the bad.

Changing? Yes, she was changing. Healing from years of loss and pain and not knowing what to do with it all. Why not do something good, experience something amazing in the midst of all this new, hard stuff?

“I think you should kiss me.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out other than something akin to a squeak. It made her smile because it made her feel powerful. And it made her feel
good
.

She didn’t give him a chance to act or not act beyond that little squeak. She fisted her hands in his shirt and pulled his mouth to hers.

There was nothing tentative in her movement, much like her grief-fueled kiss years ago. But, it was different. She felt different. There was no alcohol prompting her decision, no debilitating sadness weighing down her limbs. This wasn’t desperation. No, this was freedom, and as Trevor’s lips began to move against hers, as his arm banded around her waist, she felt only one thing.

Good.

Callie gripped Trevor’s arms, enjoyed the hard muscle there as his teeth scraped against her bottom lip. Some sound came out of her she wasn’t familiar with, almost akin to a whimper as Trevor pushed her against the cement wall.

His hands roamed down and cupped her ass so that they were pressed hard together, center to center. She could feel his erection, and the thought of having him inside her had that strange noise escaping her throat again.

His tongue tangled with hers and his hands slid back up, over her sides and across her ribcage. She arched toward him, desperate for something, anything more. One hand cupped her breast and explored it until he found the sensitive nipple, while his other hand cupped her neck and pulled her mouth harder to his.

“Callie.” Her name from his lips, said so rough, so desperate, had the heat in her core exploding to something almost unbearable. Then he let his teeth scrape down the side of her neck and she was sure she was going to explode right there.

“Put your legs around me,” he instructed in a voice she had never heard. It was dark and authoritative and pretty much the sexiest thing ever.

She wasn’t used to following orders, but she was pretty sure she’d do just about anything for that voice.

When she hooked her legs around him and he lifted her off the ground, it was kind of hard to catch her breath. Until they crashed into the long table full of random rusty airplane parts.

Parts rattled onto the ground, Trevor all but dropped her, and she awkwardly found her footing before falling on her ass.

A laugh bubbled up through arousal as she found her balance by gripping the table. “Well, shit.” But his hands were on her again, on her waist, pulling her back into him and any laughter was forgotten. “Hold on a sec,” she muttered, narrowly missing stepping on a few pointy screws.

“I know, I know.” His hands dropped from her waist and he stepped away, strangely agitated. “You’re going to say we shouldn’t do this because it’ll wreck our friendship and I’m leaving in a few months and—”

Shocked at the sudden change in everything, and that he was putting words in her mouth, Callie stood where she was and put her hands on her hips. “Actually, I was going to say we need to be careful or one of us will need a tetanus shot.” She gestured at the mess around them and watched as he looked at it, his eyes refocusing on something other than her.

When he looked up at her, eyes dark and intense and so incredibly blue, she let out a long, steadying breath. She could practically read his mind. And his mind was shouting
abort.

Without a shadow of a doubt she knew Trevor was about to pull the rug out from her. Again.

Handcuffed in Housewares

Nikki Duncan

Some couples just click. Others require a hard hat and a stud finder.
 

Tulle and Tulips, Book 3

Monday mornings have a reputation for sucking, and today is no different for Burton Anderson. One year ago, his “perfect” life full of prestige, money, success and travel crumbled in the glaring light of betrayal.

This morning?
This close
to making his new construction business a success, a date gone awry has left him handcuffed to a toilet in a housewares store. Naked. And the first customer of the day is coming down his aisle.

Planning and shopping for other couples’ Big Day is about as wild and crazy as buttoned-up Leigh Schyuler gets. Until she gets an eyeful of Hearth and Home’s daily special. He’s definitely a “designer” temptation while she’s “off the rack”.

But there are risks, and then there are
risks.
Burton isn’t sure he can once again trust his heart to a woman who holds the power to ruin him. And Leigh discovers too late that indulging in a little no-strings sex is tying her dream of Devoted Love into hopeless knots…

Warning: Contains a hard-hatted, hard-bodied hero who’s good with his hands, and a woman who’d like him to build a bridge over her sexual boundaries. Nuts and bolts never had it so good.

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