Double the Heat for Summer
Today there’s two feature excerpts. Yes, TWO!!
Both of these fabulous ladies have offered up two stories for the eReader, so I’ve no doubt the winner of this event is going to be one happy camper. :)
I featured Kate Douglas’s Western earlier , and now you get a peek ayt her suspense. You also saw Gemma Halliday’s High Heels story earlier, and now you get a look at one of her other series, with Unbreakable Bond.
CHeck them out!
Lethal Deception
Monday morning, Pittsburgh
“I KNOW, MR. Hannibal. Please, you must understand why we have to add a five percent risk premium to your usual rate…Mr. Hannibal, there’s no need to be rude. Acme Insurance has paid out a substantial amount…I realize those thefts were unusual…yes, Mr. Hannibal, I agree, otherwise you…I understand you’re upset, Mr. Hannibal. As I said, I agree, you do have an excellent record.”
Rose DeAngelo arched her back and ran tense fingers through her heavy twist of dark hair. It didn’t help a bit. Blast it! Headaches like this one generally didn’t start until after lunch.
A second light on the phone flashed. Rose stared at the little orange square, peripherally aware that it blinked in perfect time with the pounding in her head.
“Mr. Hannibal.” Rose clenched her teeth against the blossoming pain in her skull. ”There is no other option. I’m sorry. I’m going to switch you back to my secretary. You’ll pay the additional five percent? Fine. Please give Denise the route information.”
Rose took the next call, groaning audibly the moment she recognized the patronizing voice. Sighing, she reached into her drawer for two aspirin. James Dearborn was the last person she wanted to talk to right now.
Not a promising sign, Rose. She ignored the quiet voice in the back of her mind. Now was not a good time for analyzing relationships. Rose gulped the aspirin with a swallow of tepid coffee and grimaced at the bitter taste.
“James…hello.” She twisted the large marquis-cut diamond on her left hand. Why was it, lately, all her conversations with James made her ring finger itch?
“Please, James. I don’t have time to discuss this right now.” Rose glanced through the glassed wall of her office into the waiting room beyond. Her boss leaned over Denise’s desk, waving a large stack of folders under the young woman’s nose.
“You want to what?” Line two blinked hypnotically. Line three quickly joined in. She couldn’t possibly have heard James right. What did he say? Set a date? Rose furiously scratched the raw skin under the offending ring. ”No,” she said, well aware of the sense of desperation in her voice. ”I absolutely refuse to plan my wedding because your mother has a free weekend in July! No James…absolutely not…no, we can’t discuss it at lunch with your mother. I don’t have time for lunch today…are you giving me an ultimatum?” Rose pulled the ring off her finger, scratching frantically.
Denise, precariously balancing a huge armload of folders, opened the office door with her shoulder. Frank Bonner, the company president, glared through the open door into Rose’s office, then rudely signaled for her to join him in his. James’s voice droned on, bouncing around inside Rose’s head, thumping in time to the pounding behind her eyes.
Denise set the pile of folders on the corner of Rose’s desk, then quickly backed out of the office. As she closed the door the stack gradually slipped to one side. Rose stretched full length across the large oak desk, holding the phone to her ear with one hand, grabbing for the top of the pile with the other. She felt the snag in her new black stockings open up then run the length of her leg, crawling up her inner thigh at precisely the same rate of speed as the folders slid to the floor.
“We’ll have to talk another time, James.” Rose took a deep breath and broke the connection. She knew she’d hear about her behavior later, but there was no way she could deal with him now.
She signaled for Denise to take the call on line three, then punched the button for line two. James’s mother. Could this day possibly get any worse?
Alicia Dearborn’s shrill voice crackled into Rose’s ear. ”No, Alicia. I can’t go to lunch with you and James…I’m sorry too. I’ll have to call you back.” Rose gritted her teeth. ”I’m very busy. No, nothing special. Just a typical Monday. Good bye.”
Sighing, Rose replaced the handset. She stared at it a moment, daring the phone to ring, then picked the scattered folders up off the floor and piled them on her desk.
She couldn’t put off her meeting with Bonner any longer, no matter how unpleasant the prospect. It had to be about the recent hijackings. Acme Insurance had paid a bundle in settlements the past few months and pressure around the office had been steadily building.
Most of that pressure had come from Rose’s office.
Insuring special loads for long-haul trucking companies had its risks, but lately it appeared as if someone had it in for her clients. Even Hannibal Trucking’s perfect record had been compromised with two major thefts in the past two weeks.
Rose glanced at the heavy oak nameplate on her desk, the one Mr. Bonner had presented to her the day he’d promoted her to manager. ”It’ll make a dandy bookend,” she muttered. She stared at the etched letters of her name a moment longer, then headed out the door for the inevitable dressing down from the boss.
“Ms. DeAngelo.” Denise held up a stack of notes to catch her attention. ”That last call was from your Aunt Rosa. She left you a message, said you must be really busy since she was on hold so long.” Denise flipped through the notes, then held one out to Rose.
“I wish I’d known it was her.” Rose took the slip of paper. ”She’s a lot more fun to talk to than James’s mother.”
Denise laughed, then shrugged her shoulders philosophically as the phone rang again. She turned to answer it.
Rose unfolded the note, suddenly aware of a lump in her throat. She hadn’t talked to Aunt Rosa for over a week.
Please tell Rose the honeysuckle’s blooming. And tell her I love her. She’s working too hard. Rosa DeAngelo.
The honeysuckle’s blooming and I haven’t seen Aunt Rosa in two years. The sweet scent of honeysuckle filled Rose’s mind, the memory of the massive vine covering the porch at her aunt’s bed and breakfast inn out in California a balm to headaches, frustrating clients, angry bosses and disappointing fiancés.
Rose looked through the window into Frank Bonner’s office. He paced back and forth and gestured violently as he argued with someone over the phone, his angry words muted behind the soundproof glass.
Denise answered her phone again, at the same time indicating to Rose she had a call waiting. Rose ignored the blinking light, mesmerized by the ugly shape of Frank Bonner’s mouth twisted in anger, visible but silent behind the glass.
She took a deep breath in a vain attempt to ease the tension in her neck and shoulders, then turned around to take the call in her office. As if mocking Rose, the marquis diamond twinkled at her from its resting place in the paper clip bowl. She picked it up, staring absentmindedly into its icy blue depths before answering the phone.
The door to the outer office opened. Rose paused with her hand over the headset and looked up to see James guiding his mother through the tastefully decorated foyer.
“Why me, God?” she muttered. How had the two of them gotten here so quickly? Lunch was beginning to look like a set-up, with wedding plans as the main course.
She knew better than to think Alicia would ever take no for an answer. Or James, either, for that matter.
Why should he? He was just like his mother.
In fact, Rose had never noticed before how much the two of them resembled one another. Not a flattering observation at all since she thought Alicia Dearborn looked exactly like the ugly little Pekinese tucked firmly under the woman’s left arm.
Suddenly it all fell into place: the rhythmic pounding in Rose’s head, Alicia Dearborn’s strident voice, James’s placating tones, even Frank Bonner’s flailing arms as he carried on his argument via speakerphone in his spacious, soundproof office across the hall.
Then it all drifted away as, once again, the sweet memory of honeysuckle filled Rose. Drawing a deep breath, she inhaled the peaceful, calming scent of her childhood, not the antiseptic, filtered air of her Acme Insurance Company office. Aunt Rosa was absolutely right. She was working too hard.
Rose drew her hand back from the telephone and all its blinking lights, picked up her heavy leather purse, slung her raincoat over her arm and quietly walked out of her office. She closed the door behind her and straightened her shoulders at the solid sounding “click” as the latch caught and locked her chaotic morning behind her.
Ignoring Alicia’s imperious command that she explain herself, Rose smiled calmly at her secretary. ”Hold my calls, Denise. I’ve decided to take the afternoon off.”
“Well. It’s about time you came to your senses, Rose. I’m glad you’ve decided to join Mother and me for lunch. We have to talk.”
Rose turned to James. Why, when she looked into the eyes of the man she’d promised to spend her life with, did she feel nothing stronger than regret?
“You misunderstand, James. I’m taking the afternoon off by myself.” She fumbled for the right words, finally deciding honesty was best. ”Please, I’d like for you to take this back.” She held the heavy gold and diamond ring out to him. ”We both know it’s never going to work. We’ve known it all along.”
He didn’t move. She looked at his face, searching for whatever had made her think she loved him. She’d once been so enamored of his dark blond hair and finely chiseled jaw, in awe of his elegant manners and cultured speech. But the man she thought she loved didn’t exist at all.
I imagined you. The thought struck like a bolt of lightning. Am I that desperate? Self awareness brought a sad smile to Rose’s lips, followed by a sudden urge to giggle. James and his mother, her secretary Denise, even that disgusting little Pekinese, all stared at her with their mouths open!
Finally, a way to silence Alicia Dearborn. Feeling almost giddy with power, Rose tucked the ring into the breast pocket of James’s custom tailored Armani suit, then quietly left the building. It didn’t even bother her that James hadn’t asked her to stay, hadn’t reached out to her, hadn’t disagreed with her. No, it didn’t bother her at all.
Somewhere, a peaceful country road beckoned.
Read the rest of CHapter 1 here:
UNBREAKABLE BOND
Her name is Bond. Jamie Bond. And her life is about to be shaken and stirred in a cocktail of sex, lies, scandal, and one very dead body.
Jamie Bond is a former cover model who switches gears to take over the family business: The Bond Agency, a high-powered P.I. firm located in Los Angeles that specializes in domestic espionage – catching cheating husbands. Jamie’s assembled a team of other disenchanted former models to help her take names and kick derrieres among L.A.’s wealthiest philandering husbands. Her current client: Mrs. Veronica Waterston, the young, distraught wife of superior court judge, Thomas Waterston, known for his tough sentencing, right-wing leanings, and his fondness for blondes with double D’s. Easy target. But Jamie’s simple case takes an unexpected turn for the worse when the not-so-good judge winds up on the ten o’clock news with a bullet through his head. It’s clear that someone has set Jamie up, and suddenly she’s on the run, under fire, and in serious jeopardy of losing it all. With a hot A.D.A. on her trail, a killer on the loose, and her life on the line, Jamie must prove once and for all that nobody messes with a Bond.
Excerpt
“Pick one.”
Two eight-by-ten glossy photos dropped onto my desk.
I looked up. “Excuse me?”
Paul Levine, my weedy looking attorney, sighed, then sank into the
imitation leather chair opposite my desk. “You’ve been running in the
red for the last three months. You’ve got a balloon payment on the
business loan coming up, and this month you pulled in fifty percent
less revenue than last. Unless you want to drown in your own debt, you
need to fire someone.” He gestured again to the two photos. “Pick
one.”
I glanced down at the two pictures. A leggy brunette and an
all-American-girl blonde. I shoved them back across the desk.
“No way.”
Levine did another deep, theatrical sigh. “I had a feeling you’d say that.”
“Look, business is just a little slow.”
“It’s a tortoise, Jamie.”
“It’s been the off season.”
“There’s an ‘on’ season for infidelity?” he asked, doing air quotes
with his fingers.
“We’ll take out some ads.”
“Which cost money. Something, my dear, that you don’t have.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’ll think of something.”
Levine leaned forward, the overhead lights shining unattractively off
his bald spot. “Let’s face it, people just aren’t getting divorced
these days. With the economy the way it is, women would rather turn a
blind eye to their husbands’ indiscretions than try to exist on half
his income. It’s cheaper to stay together and pretend to be happy.”
“No one can pretend for that long.”
“Pick. One,” Levine enunciated.
I looked down at the two photos, which incidentally consisted of 50%
percent of the Bond Agency. The problem wasn’t that I’d over hired.
The problem was I knew jack shit about running a business.
Men. That’s what I knew.
When I was seven years old Chad Fischer’s Mom packed him a Snickers
bar in his lunch. And not those fun size suckers. This was a
king-sized log of nougat, caramel, and sugar induced highs that would
last well past the end of afternoon cartoons. I wanted it. Every kid
in second grade wanted it. But I tossed my blonde hair over one
shoulder, batted my baby blues at Chad, and promised that he could
stand underneath me while my little pink skirt and I did flips on the
monkey bars at recess. I got the Snickers. That was my first lesson in
how easy men were.
Fast forward a few years, and my fifteen-year-old self was hanging out
at the Northridge mall slurping a Jamba Juice when I’d been spotted by
Maurcess DeLine, owner of the world renowned DeLine Models. Suddenly I
wasn’t just working the boys at my school; I was working every guy
that bought a magazine with my body on the cover. And getting paid
handsomely to do it. I’d been DeLine’s top model for over a decade
when Maurcess had started to drop hints that my fresh innocence act
wasn’t cutting it anymore. I was twenty-six. A dinosaur in runway
years.
That’s when I moved back to L.A. and decided to take over the family business.
Domestic espionage.
Really, there was very little difference between making love to a
camera and making a married man forget his vows. In fact, this was
sometimes even easier. Men with adultery already on their minds were
simple targets. It was like taking Snickers from a second grader all
over again.
Unfortunately, getting their wives to pay was a whole other matter.
I glanced at the two photos staring up at me. Truth was, I needed both
of these women.
“Cutting back on personnel only means I can handle fewer cases. I
don’t see how that’s going to help me expand the business,” I argued.
“We’re not talking expansion here, Jamie. We’re talking staying
afloat. We’re talking not filing for bankruptcy.”
“I’ve got a big client tonight. Judge Thomas Waterston. Superior
court. If things go well, I guarantee his wife will have her entire
bridge club in here by the end of the week.”
“Well, you’d better hope that’s true,” Levine said, rising. “Because
your balloon payment is due on the 1st. You’ve got two weeks, then…”
He tapped the photos. “One of them’s got to go.”
* * *
“Caleigh?”
“What?” She swiveled in her desk chair, turning her wide eyes my way.
“You’re on the Peters case. Care to give us an update?” I tapped open
the schedule app on my phone and leaned an elbow across the conference
table.
She cleared her throat and shuffled the notes in her lap. Caleigh
Presley hailed from the south, claiming she was some distant cousin of
Elvis’s. Blonde, blue-eyed and bubbly, she’d cornered the market on
perky. I’d met Caleigh while doing a Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot
in Cancun. She’d smuggled a bag of fat free Cheetos onto the set, and
we’d bonded instantly. Three years later Caleigh foolishly agreed to
go out on a date with Nigel Owens, the top fashion photographer in
London. I say foolishly because everyone but Caleigh knew about his
particular fetish for bondage and tickling. When Caleigh refused to be
molested by his feather duster, Nigel had refused to work with her,
calling her “difficult”. News that quickly spread to other
photographers, her agent, and every high profile account in the
fashion world. They’d dropped her like a skydiver without a parachute.
Luckily for her, that had been just about the time I’d taken over the
Bond Agency, and I’d hired her on the spot.
Not, mind you, that I’d hired her out of any sort of pity. Despite her
innocent-little-thing looks, Caleigh spoke five different languages
and had the computer know-how to hack into the pentagon. Dumb blonde
she was not.
“Right. Peters.” Caleigh cleared her throat again. “Well, so far I’ve
followed him to the Venice Boardwalk, Element, and out to dinner twice
at Formaggio’s.”
“And?”
She shook her head. “Nothin’. I’m beginning to wonder if his wife
isn’t paranoid. So far the guy’s a straight arrow. Both the dinners
were business meetings, and he didn’t so much as glance at a bikini on
the boardwalk.”
I picked up my coffee cup and swished the dregs around in the bottom,
trying to remember if Mrs. Peters had seemed the paranoid type when
she’d come in last week. Or, more importantly, the type who would balk
at the amount of billable hours we’d spent with nothing to show for
it. “What about the club? Element?”
Again, Caleigh shook her head. “Sorry, boss. He ducked in for a drink
with a buddy, danced a little, then ducked back out. No funny
business.”
“Fine. If we don’t have anything by Monday, we’ll call it off. But
take Sam with you this weekend,” I said, gesturing to the woman
sitting next to her, “and tag-team him. Every man has a breaking
point.”
Caleigh nodded and made a note on the yellow pad in her lap.
I turned to Sam. “Where are we with the Nortons?”
Samantha Cross had come to me from Brooklyn last year. Long legs,
perfect mocha latte skin, and thick dark curls, Sam had been a
finalist on the first season of the reality show America’s New Hot
Model and quickly become the darling of the cover girl world. Until
five years later when her boyfriend, Julio, had knocked her up. As if
taking a nine month hiatus from modeling hadn’t been enough to kill
her fledgling career, it turned out Sam wasn’t one of those lucky
ladies whose bodies miraculously snap back after pregnancy. While she
was still a knockout among normal people, the two ounces of fat
hanging around her lightly stretch-marked belly put a decisive end to
her bikini days. So, Sam had packed up the munchkin (Julio was long
gone at that point) and headed out to California to make a career
change. One I was happy to facilitate. Sam had legs long enough to
make husbands forget their vows and, thanks to her military-brat
upbringing, knew more about guns than the NRA. And her aim was
flawless. Sam could shoot the balls off a fruit fly at fifty yards.
“Mrs. Norton’s lawyer,” Sam said, “has requested all of our notes.”
“Which we will gladly copy for him. Mrs. Norton has gone through three
husbands with the agency. What Mrs. Norton wants, we give.”
“Of course.” Sam nodded. “I think Mr. Norton’s lawyers are close to a
settlement.” Her brown eyes lit up, and she leaned in close. “They
offered a 60/40 split plus the house in Aspen.”
“Good for her.” She deserved it. Especially after her husband had
offered to pay Sam fifty dollars for a blow job in the back of his
Jag. Sam had been so insulted that he’d offered less than a hundred,
she’d actually hauled off and punched him. I made a note in my
organizer to edit that part out before handing the footage over to
Mrs. Norton’s lawyers.
“Okay, so get the Norton files to her lawyer, then work Mr. Peters
with Caleigh.”
Sam nodded. “Will do.”
“So… new cases this week?” I asked, turning to the woman on my left.
Maya Alexander handled all of the admin for the agency, including
scheduling appointments with prospective clients. And if her face
looked a little familiar, it was because she was March’s Playmate of
the month. Lucky for me, not many men recognized her with her clothes
on.
“Uh-huh. Two possible new cases. Mrs. Shankmann, who claims her
husband, and I quote, ‘shtupped the freakin’ au pair,’ and a Rachel
Blake who wants us to test her fiancée before the wedding.”
Caleigh raised her hand and bounced in her seat. “Oh, me, me. I love
doing bachelor parties.”
“Done.” I noted it down. “I’ll take Mr. Shankmann if we get the
account. Right. On to tonight. Judge Waterston.”
All three girls leaned forward in their seats.
“We all know how high profile, i.e. high dollar, this account is.”
Three heads nodded.
“So, this needs to go off flawlessly. Mrs. Waterston is a big name.
She has big friends, who all have big cash on the line should they
decide they need our services to bust their pre-nups.”
“We’re hitting him at the party?” Sam asked, checking her notes.
“Black tie benefit at the Beverley Hilton. So, I want everyone to look
sharp, okay?”
Again with the nods.
“I’m personally running game on this one. Sam, you’re camera one.
Caleigh, I want you on two. Danny will direct from the van.” I paused.
“Girls, we need this guy. We can’t fuck it up.”
I didn’t add because without him, one of them was looking at unemployment.
