Description:
Fall in love like a 20 Something….
23 year old Kenley Moran is going through a mid-life crisis… WAY early. Pushed since childhood by a nightmare stage-mom to use her looks to “land a rich man”, she’s reeling from a broken engagement and regretting the day she gave up her career in TV news for a guy.
Now Kenley’s determined to change her life, shunning makeup and fashion and fighting her way back into the highly competitive career she loves, off-camera this time. When she lands a producing job at Worldwide News Network in Atlanta, she plans to keep her head down, work hard, and prove she’s not just another pretty face. And vows NO ONE is EVER going to make her compromise herself again.
WNN anchor Larson Overstreet has it all—old money, good looks, a prestigious job, and more women than he can count throwing themselves at him. Problem is… none of it is real. He’s known his whole life that people are only interested in him for his fortune and his famous family name, in that order. Except for Kenley. The shy news producer isn’t interested in him at all.
Working closely with the anchor of her new show, Kenley’s dismayed to feel an instant spark. Larson’s everything she doesn’t want. He’s too good looking, too charming, and worst of all, too rich. She’s not looking for another big money honey. In fact, she’d prefer a nice little guy from the mailroom, maybe a guy who lives at home like she’s been forced to do.
But when they must travel together for a special report, Kenley realizes Larson’s not the spoiled pretty rich boy she pegged him as, and she’s not as immune to him as she’s pretended to be.
Now, even at the network level, what happens behind the scenes is the real story.
*****
EXCERPT
After killing as much time as possible in the
bathtub, I got out and dried off and stood looking at my two clothing options.
In this corner—Larson’s clean, fire-warmed t-shirt. In this corner, my
repulsive two-day-old clothing. I slipped on the t-shirt and opened the door.
Larson’s back was to me. He sat in a chair, facing the wood stove, listening to
sports talk at a low volume.
I scrambled up the ladder and called out from
the concealment of the dark loft. “Okay—done in there. It’s all yours. I’m
really tired—just going to go to sleep—try not to wake me when you come to bed,
okay?” There. I’d acknowledged the shared-bed necessity and laid the
don’t-talk-to-me ground rule.
“Goodnight,” Larson said without looking up.
Rising from the chair, he lifted the third pot of boiling water from the stove
and carried it across the room toward the bathroom beneath the loft.
I lay in the bed, pulled the quilt over me, and
stared up at the ceiling. The stove cast a dim, orangey light on the wooden
planks above me. The grain of the wood seemed to dance and change as the
firelight flickered from below.
I wasn’t the least bit sleepy, my mind was
fully alert. Certain parts of my body were coming online as well as I listened
to the sloshing water-sounds coming from the bathroom below.
I’d had no idea last night that Larson had been able to hear every time I moved in the tub. It was
impossible not to put a mental image to the noises drifting up to the
loft—splash—Larson’s long legs shifting in the tub, searching for some space to
stretch out. Swish—his bare chest and torso, wet and soapy, the light fur of
blond hair on his chest and forearms glistening in the candlelight.
I squirmed in the bed, unable to find a
comfortable position. The large t-shirt twisted around me as I moved. But it
was so soft—probably one of those designer things that looked like a plain
white tee and cost a hundred-fifty dollars, knowing him. Though he’d washed it
in shampoo, it still retained some of his cologne scent, subtle and mixed with
the fragrances of lavender and wood smoke.
None of it was conducive to a restful mood. In
fact, as the minutes ticked on toward the time he’d be crawling onto the
mattress beside me, I grew more and more restless, charged with a sort of
energy I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I’d almost made up my mind to get up and go
downstairs when I heard the bathroom door open. My eyelids slammed shut. My
heart hammered in my chest. He’s coming.
But Larson didn’t climb the ladder. His footsteps tracked across the main room.
I opened my eyes to a slit and rolled silently
to my side, watching him walk over to the woodstove in only his boxers. He
lifted his arms and rubbed the towel vigorously through his hair, causing the
muscles in his back to bunch and flex in the most fascinating way.
When he turned to face the loft, I closed my
eyes completely but gradually eased them open again, taking in the sight of his
long and lean body, his tight abs moving under his skin as he leaned to the
side over the stove, running his hands through his hair and letting the hot air
dry it.
I’d seen Mark without his clothes on. He was
fine—average-guy-build, maybe a tad extra around the middle like so many frat
boys who took in a few too many liquid calories.
But Larson… something warm and sweet curled
inside my abdomen as I watched him so unselfconsciously displayed there. It
actually gave me pleasure to look at him. I felt a little bit guilty. How would
I like it if I was the one down there almost naked and he was secretly watching
me? And the warm, sweet thing intensified, becoming a tingle that filled me
with equal parts dread and anticipation for the moment when that beautiful male
body would be stretched out here beside me.
When I got in to work the
next day, Larson was leaning against my desk talking to Deb. Shoot. He looked amazing as usual.
His dark suit pants draped
perfectly over his miles-long legs. His arms were folded across his chest,
highlighting some very solid biceps under the fine fabric of his dress shirt.
He hadn’t put on his jacket and tie yet, and the top two buttons of his shirt
were unfastened. He didn’t go to hair and makeup until just before the show—his
hair now was a bit windblown, making him look a little less put-together and a
little more yummy than usual.
He saw me approaching and
gave me a bright crinkly-eyed smile. Shoot,
shoot, shoot.
“Hi Kenley. We missed you
last night—you should’ve come. A certain network veteran stopped by and started
telling war stories from the early days of cable news. It got very colorful.”
“I’ll bet it was
interesting,” I said, keeping my tone polite, but not overly engaged. My gaze
bounced around the newsroom, settling on anything but his face. We were more or
less eye level with each other as he still hadn’t gotten off my desk.
“So what was on the menu for
the family dinner?” he asked.
Why the
heck would you care? That’s what I was thinking. What I actually
said was, “Chicken and dumplings.”
“Sounds tempting,” he
murmured.
And my focus flew to his
face. Blue. His eyes were very, very blue. Not pale like mine, but a deeper,
sort of bluebonnet color. You could tell on camera he had blue eyes, but they
were different up close in person—prettier. I shifted my gaze to my feet.
“Oh, you probably want your
desk back. I guess I’ll move my lazy ass and let you sit down,” he said with a
low laugh.
Which I ignored. I kept my
eyes to the floor and nodded.
Larson stood and took a step
away from the desk, and I took my seat, turning my attention to Deb.
“Hey. How was your morning?
How’s Owen?”
Deb was a single parent to
just about the cutest seven-year-old I’d ever seen. Since I’d grown up without
brothers or even male cousins, her tales of little boy mischief were equal
parts frightening and entertaining—like a good horror movie. And she seemed to
have endless patience. Sometimes I found myself wishing she was my own mom.
“Oh, he’s great. He lost a
tooth this morning when he was brushing. It went down the drain, and he was
devastated for about five minutes until he figured out a solution.”
“A solution?”
“Yeah—for the tooth fairy. He
finally asked me to cut his fingernails and left some in an envelope under his
pillow as a substitute.”
“Lucky tooth fairy.” I
laughed.
“You have no idea—you should
have heard his first suggestion for what to leave under the pillow.”
We both laughed. “Don’t
forget what I said about babysitting. Anytime. You need to get out and take a
little time for yourself. Maybe even go on a date,” I said.
Deb rolled her eyes at me.
“Says one hermit to the other. I’ll leave my cave when you do.” She picked up
her perpetually-ringing desk phone and turned toward her monitor.
I logged on to my own
computer, chuckling to myself and completely forgetting I hadn’t seen Larson
walk away toward his own desk.
His shivery-smooth voice came
from behind me. “Well, okay ladies. I’ll let you two get to work. See you at
the team meeting.”
I lifted a hand in a wave
behind me, but Larson came around to the front of my desk before leaving. He
put a large hand on its surface and leaned down, dropping his voice. “You
really should come out with us next time. I know it’s hard to be new. I felt
kind of strange when I got here last year, too. But everyone would love to get
to know you better.” He gave me an encouraging smile.
Ugh. Why did he have to keep
being so nice? Why couldn’t he just leave me alone? The thing was—everyone wasn’t inviting me out
repeatedly—only Larson. Had I not been clear enough over the past few weeks
about not wanting to know him better?
“Okay, thanks. Maybe next
time,” I said, my eyes darting away.
When he didn’t move, I risked
another glance at his face. Those ultra-blue eyes were narrowed, his lips
twisted like he was trying to figure out a particularly difficult-to-pronounce
name on a script.
He nodded. “Okay,” he said
and started to walk off. Then he stopped and turned around. “You look pretty
today, by the way.” Then he turned and kept going.
My fingers stopped in place
on the keyboard. My gaze stayed locked on his back. Though the newsroom was
always ice cold, a heat spread through my body from my chest outward until I
was blazing with it.
This had to stop—the
invitations, the attempts to draw me into conversation, the compliments.
Especially those. It wasn’t that I felt sexually harassed or thought Larson was
being a lech or something—it’s just that it wasn’t true. I’d made quite sure I
didn’t look lovely or pretty before I’d left the house this
morning, and I didn’t understand why he kept on saying things like that, day
after day.
About the author:
Amy is a two-time Golden Heart finalist (2013 and 2014) who writes Young Adult fiction as Amy DeLuca and New Adult romance as Amy Patrick. She lives in Rhode Island with her husband and two sons and actually craves the heat and humidity of Mississippi, where she grew up. She's been a professional singer and news anchor and currently narrates audio books as well as working as a station host for a Boston TV station.
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