Saturday Snippet

Today is an “author choice” day, so I thought I’d give you a peek at JUST WHAT HE WANTED (June, Carina Press), the 4th book in my Holloway series. This one stars Travis, the old soul but young-in-years plant nursery foreman who has been in the last two books. Honestly, I pretty much love this guy. I never intended to write his story. He just showed up on the page in LEAN ON ME and I couldn’t let him go. Take a look at his first meeting with Andie, our heroine, who Travis is expecting to be “Andy” (ie a guy)…

Andie Patterson stomped her foot against the loose ground and patted it down with the back of the shovel. She hadn’t intended to replant the shrubbery, but she’d tripped over the wild branches for the tenth time in two days and, well, that was that.

She’d moved from Philadelphia to the middle of nowhere West Virginia to get back to her country roots. She just hadn’t planned to have those roots all over her. Dirt now streaked across her faded “I’m the Boss” T-shirt. At least she wore a matching look. The clumps of wet mud missed her olive shirts and went right to skin.

If her ex-boyfriend could see her now. He appreciated fine wine and the opera, considered loosening his tie casual dress and practically lived in the office. She had no idea how they lasted ten months.

The sound of tires against gravel grabbed her attention. She had four cabins booked and all but one couple had sprinted out of there early this morning for a climb before the hot sun baked the trails. Cassidy, the woman Spence introduced as Mitch’s girlfriend even though Andie barely knew who Mitch was, led the activities. She was some sort of expert climber, and many of the calls coming in for new reservations wanted to book time with her.

The twosome that stayed behind likely had other activities in mind since they checked in to celebrate getting engaged. Andie put them on the far end for privacy.

A guy climbed out of the pickup. Through the rolled-down window she could make out a dark T-shirt and sandy brown hair. Then he shut the door and started toward her.

Damn. The heavens sure did shine on country boys. This one had a confident walk to match the could-lift-a-bus shoulders. Add in the faded blue jeans and skin that looked smooth enough to eat off of, and a woman could get a bit breathless.

She would have if he weren’t, like, twenty. Good grief, it was a wonder he could even grow that sexy scruff around his chin at his age.

Doing a little dip with her gaze, touring it all over him, made her feel like a dirty old woman even though she was right on the edge of thirty-five. Not that she was quite ready to look somewhere else. Not when the young hottie stopped right in front of her.

He was six-feet of hello-there-handsome. She ignored that and pretended to be a mature professional, though him looking like that didn’t make it easy. “Good afternoon.”

Up close, only a few feet away, she got a nice view. Green eyes, not dark or almost brown. A pale shade of green.

He smiled. “I’m looking for Andy Patterson.”

And he had one of those deep voices with a slight southern lilt. Man, he got sexier by the second. “You found her.”

His smile faltered. “Excuse me?”

The cute one seemed a bit slow. “I’m her.”

“Her?”

The conversation seemed stuck. She tried again because it was either that or look in on the cabin the writer guy checked out of that morning. She never saw him so much as open a window in the two days since she arrived. She seriously considered setting off a disinfectant bomb and hunting down a hazmat suit.

But she had another male to deal with at the moment. “You seem to like asking questions.”

“What?”

Well, that didn’t work. She thought the 38Ds would give him a hint, but she spelled it out anyway. “You’re looking for Andy with a ‘y’ but it’s Andie with an ‘ie’.”

“Ma’am?”

“You don’t need to call me ma’am.” Mostly because it made her feel ninety.

“Okay.”

The poor thing looked like he’d been hit with a big stick. “Andie as in Andrea, but no one ever calls me that. Well, not more than once.”

“Andie.”

“There you go.” He’d stopped frowning and making every response sound like a question. She decided that amounted to progress. Of a sort.

JUST WHAT HE WANTED

Copyright 2013, HelenKay Dimon

All Rights Reserved, Carina Press

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Don’t forget to check out the other snippets:

Caris Roane

Eliza Gayle

McKenna Jeffries

http://shilohwalker.com/website

Taige Crenshaw

Delilah Devlin

Lissa Matthews

Myla Jackson

Lauren Dane

Jody Wallace

Leah Braemel

Mandy M. Roth

Felicity Heaton

Mari Carr

Selena Blake