Love is a Battlefield: Games of Love, Book 1 (38 page)

She shook her head firmly, the ringlet curls over her shoulder bouncing as she did. “Gorgeous. And you know it.”

His blood heated up even more.

“But I’m not letting you do this. Michael told me about all of it—the record you’re trying to break and the sponsorship you’ve been trying to get. There’s no way I’m letting you toss all that aside for a silly ball.”

A wave of pleasure washed over him at her words, and the physical separation suddenly became too much. He reached out to pull her forward into an embrace, not wanting to crush either of their clothes but not really giving a damn when something silk and floral fluttered to the ground between them.

“I’ve never let you tell me what to do yet,” he said, smiling into her hairline. “What makes you think I’m about to start now?”

“Because this matters to you,” she said, her voice muffled. It sounded thick—he hoped it was with emotion. The good kind. “Therefore it matters to me.”

“I’m glad.” And he was. “But you have to believe there is nothing I want more right now than to take you to that damned ball of yours. I’ve heard about nothing else for weeks.”

He felt soft laughter shaking her body, all her delicious, rounded parts quivering in response.

“But this is your life, Julian. Your passion.”

“No, Kate. You are.”

He brought his lips to hers in a soft kiss, wrapping his hand around the back of her neck to bring her closer to him. Her arms wound around his back, and she let loose a low moan when he slipped his tongue past her lips, exploring the warm recesses of her mouth without a thought for the crowd gathered mere feet away.

The crowd, however, didn’t do the same. Applause broke out around them, accompanied by catcalls and the vulgar appreciation that could only come from so many people wearing skirts and drinking too much whisky.

“Photo opportunity?” a clipped voice asked. Before Julian could respond or pull away, a camera flashed. His first response was to growl in irritation, but Kate laughed and laid her hand gently on Julian’s cheek.

Bonnie stood behind them, a cameraman at her side ready to snap again.

“I have to say, Mr. Wallace. This is not exactly the sort of show I was expecting from you.” She looked pointedly out toward the hammer-throw field.

Julian hugged the suddenly stiffening Kate close by his side. “Not a word out of you, got it?” he whispered. “Nothing you’re about to say is going to change my mind.”

Louder, and with more authority, he turned to Bonnie and the slightly bewildered cameraman. “I regret to inform you, Ms. Horton, that I’m withdrawing from the Spokane Games and from Rockland Bluff’s consideration. I’ve got a pressing matter of business to attend to.”

Bonnie laughed. “You bet your buckskin breeches you do. As of right now, I’m happy to offer you a contract with Rockland Bluff Whisky. And as your first order of business as our official spokesman, I’m sending Randy here with you to that little ball of yours. I want him to capture all the ladies eating you up and the pair of you waltzing across the dance floor like there’s no tomorrow. Is that understood?”

Kate let out a whoosh of excitement beside him. “Really?”

Bonnie smiled at her. “Yes, really. Your boyfriend here has everything we want. He’s charming, he’s an amazing athlete, he’s a man of upstanding honor and he looks damn good in that get-up of yours.”

Kate wrapped a possessive arm around Julian’s waist and pulled him close, sizing up Bonnie with narrowed eyes.

“And the Spokane Games?” Julian asked, inordinately pleased with Kate’s reaction. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the players gathered at the edge of the field, watching them. Michael pumped a fist in the air, and Peterson shook his head with a rueful grin.

Kilroy had disappeared. Julian was happy to let him. He had everything he wanted right here.

“There are always more Games, Mr. Wallace, and much more whisky to peddle. Now go. Dance. Make us both look good.” With a wink, she sauntered away, pulling the cameraman along with her. “I’ll send Randy on ahead. You kids take your time.”

“We should probably go if we don’t want to miss any more of the Fauxhall Gardens than we have to,” Julian murmured into Kate’s hair.

“You’re really coming with me?”

Julian nodded. He planned on accompanying her for as long as she’d let him.

“Does that mean I win?” Kate teased, her head angling up for a kiss.

Their lips touched, and the crowd roared its appreciation. His heart roared it too.

“No, Kate. It means we did.”

About the Author

Tamara Morgan is a romance writer and unabashed lover of historical reenactments—the more elaborate the costume requirements, the better. In her quest for modern-day history, she has taken fencing classes, forced her child into Highland dancing, and, of course, journeyed annually to the local Renaissance Fair. Her long-lived affinity for romance novels survived a B.A. degree in English Literature, after which time she discovered it was much more fun to create stories than analyze the life out of them.

Tamara lives in the Inland Northwest with her husband and daughter. She can be found online at
www.tamaramorgan.com
or, much more often than is good for her, on Twitter at
@Tamara_Morgan
.

She has a deft hand with banana flambé…and a touch that sets his body on fire.

Unnatural Calamities

© 2011 Summer Devon

Janey knows all too well she looks a wreck. What hard-working chef wouldn’t, operating on three hours of sleep? Stuck in a dull Connecticut town, taking care of her beloved niece, Rachel, Janey spends her days looking for a job and her nights working high-end catering gigs.

Just her luck, she runs into Mr. Perfect two days past her designated laundry day. And she’s just found out her niece is passing her off as “Mom” to avoid the embarrassment of admitting her real mother, Janey’s identical twin, is serving time.

Despite Janey’s questionable fashion sense and the juicy gossip about her checkered past, venture capitalist Christopher Dunham finds himself drawn to her spark. And warmed by her obvious affection for Rachel, so like what he feels for his own daughter.

When sexy, way-out-of-her-league Toph offers her a business loan, Janey can’t believe her long string of bad luck with bad boys has come to an end. At least, until a blast from her sister’s shady past turns up the heat on their attraction. And sets off a chain of events that could snuff out the flame just as their love starts to come to a boil…

Warning: A comedy of errors, mistaken identity, poor girl meets rich guy, kidnapping at gunpoint, and hot handcuffed sex in a hotel bathtub—and that’s all before lunch.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Unnatural Calamities:

Janey tucked the phone onto her shoulder so she could rummage through the refrigerator’s vegetable drawer. She glared at the slippery mushrooms. “I’m tired of this discussion. It’s a school night, Rach, so the answer is no. You have to come home for dinner.”

“Jaanneey. We’re working on homework.”

“You will be home in five minutes or you will be grounded. No swim team. No debate team. No band. No Gilbert and Sullivan. Heck, no school. I will force you to watch television for three days straight. Nothing but Cartoon Network.”

“Jaaaaannnnnneeeeeey.”

“Okay, listen. I’m coming to haul you out of the fabulous Cynthia Dunham’s fabulous father’s fabulous house. You will be ready. Do you hear me? I’m leaving here in five minutes to get you. Understand?”

Silence.

“Well?”

Silence. Was Rachel finally turning into a sulky teenager? Janey had been waiting for this moment for years. She held her breath.

Silence.

“Rachel Carmody. I am
talking
to you.”

“Oh, whoops. Hi. Sorry, I put the phone down for a second ’cause Mr. Dunham was talking to me. He said he’ll give me a ride home. We’ll be leaving in about five minutes. Will that be okay?”

Janey sighed with relief. “Yes. Great. See you soon.”

But really, on the other hand, what was America’s youth coming to? Fourteen years old and her niece barely managed a decent whine, much less all-out rebellion. Janey and her sister, Penny, had turned into teenagers soon after they hit double digits. Ten-year-olds with attitude. Twenty years later, Penny still had the ’tude.

Janey chopped up an onion and dumped it into a pan. Of course, Rachel’s clean, wholesome life was probably her form of rebellion. Poor Rachel had to grow up fast with Penny as a mother.

Janey herself had only faced the entire grown-up scene when Rachel needed her, usually on weekends when Rachel stayed in her apartment while Penny partied. Then, after Penny was busted last spring, Janey faced even bigger changes. Like moving to this stultifyingly dull, way-too-wealthy suburb of Penny’s.

No, no, Janey had to give Penny credit for renting the semi-converted apartment over the garage. Even self-absorbed, spacey Penny must have figured out West Farmbrook was the best way to get her daughter the education she deserved. Public schools in West Farmbrook were more hoity toity than private schools in the real world.

But God almighty, let Janey count the ways she hated West Farmbrook as a place to live. She counted as she dismembered the green pepper.

Thump
. One.
Thump
. The thin, chic mothers who stood in closed little circles at the one and only PTA meeting she’d gone to, and gave her the weirdest looks.

Two.
Thump, thump, thump.
The tennis club.

Three.
Thump, thump.
She grabbed another pepper and continued her list. The lack of any kind of life outside the PTA, the soccer team, the lacrosse team and the swim team.

Four.
Thump, thump.
The commute to reach any kind of life other than the PTA, soccer, etc. A half-hour drive, no buses, of course, to any of Janey’s friends and her various jobs and even a decent movie in the center of the city. No sidewalks.
Thump, thump.

She tossed the peppers into the pan and began to clean up. Libra-girl time—rants had to be followed by a counter-balancing “the place could be worse” viewpoint.

The great schools.
Right, did that already.
And at least Margaret Hamilton, a talkative stay-at-home parent of another nerdy girl, was friendly. She provided some companionship and gossip and even better, had an older daughter, a college student, who loved to babysit on the nights Janey worked.

A car door slammed. Then another car door. Oh damn—no,
darn
and blast the child, she was not alone.

Janey rubbed her hands on the stainless steel sink. Someone had told her that got rid of the stench of garlic. She didn’t exactly feel like a toad the few times she met up with the fabulous Cynthia, but she didn’t feel she came across as the right kind of grown-up. The slight narrowing of the well-groomed Cynthia’s blue eyes made Janey wish she had better posture or wore designer clothing or didn’t cut her own hair. Rachel had said that Cynthia’s mother had been a model or something. And Cynthia’s father sounded even worse.

“He has buckets of money and is a mover and shaker of massive proportions,” Rachel had solemnly told her.

“Sounds like a sumo wrestler.” Janey had snickered, which had somehow offended Rachel.

Janey had deftly changed the subject of the two near-perfect Dunham households by asking, “So what do you guess a dance called The Mover and Shaker should look like?”

The two of them had ended up boogeying, moving and shaking, around the tiny kitchen. Give Rachel a chance to sing or dance and she tended to forget everything else.

The door flew open. Rachel and Cynthia thumped into the small apartment shrieking with laughter, as usual. They skittered down the hall to Rachel’s room.

“Hey, you puny, lily-livered, young rapscallion, how many times do I have to tell you to close the door?” Janey called after Rachel. She went to shove the door shut.

“Excuse me?”

The man she’d almost slammed the door on smiled. Perhaps the most gorgeous eyes she’d ever beheld stared down into hers. Deep-set brown eyes. Heavy lidded, with the hint of laugh lines at their corners to add character.

“Is that puny, lily-livered thing a line from a play?” he asked.

Her examination shifted to the smiling mouth again. The rest of his face had character too. His body was nothing to sneeze at either. Too bad he appeared to be fairly prosperous, unlike the men she’d had the instant hots for. He wore a gray suit and burgundy tie instead of the usual greasy jeans her hormones sang out for.

“Um. Well. It’s a thing. An insult thing. A Shakespeare insult page on the net. The ah, Internet. We. Um. So.” She held out her hand and smiled brightly. “You must be Mr…ah.”
Fabulous? Mover and shaker?
She felt fairly moved, and not just because he’d scared the bejeezus out of her. Despite the tie, he was not bad. No, indeed.

She could almost hear Penny’s whisper. “It’s a TD&H, hon. Go ferrit.” Tall, dark and handsome. Except in Penny and Janey’s past men, the “h” stood for hellish, horny, heavy-metal, Harley or ham-handed. Penny still liked bad boys. Janey had given them up years ago, about the same time she stopped smoking and a few years after she stopped drinking too much.