Fashion student Lacey Weston is desperate to leave the city and go home
to Jumbuck Springs. Her three older brothers are adamant she’s not. They
made a death bed promise to their mother that Lacey would stay the
distance at design school and Ethan, the oldest, takes this
responsibility very seriously. But Lacey is deeply homesick and
determined not to be dissuaded again. She’s also impulsive enough to try
anything - even faking a pregnancy.
Ex-cop turned mechanic, Cooper Grainger - one of Ethan’s oldest
friends - agrees to watch out for Lacey in the city even though he has a
history with her he’d rather forget. How hard could it be, right? But a
couple of years later, Coop is over pulling Lacey out of scrapes and
cleaning up her messes as she tries to outrun her grief and sense of
dislocation. He takes her back to Jumbuck Springs so she can persuade
her brothers to let her come home. But things don’t go according to
plan. Before Coop knows it Lacey’s pregnant and he’s putting his hand up
as the fake baby daddy, filling in for the town mechanic and moving in
with her at the local pub.
Lacey is thrilled to have won a reprieve but nothing about the
situation sits well with Coop. Least of all having sweet little Lacey
Weston as his new roomie…
Scene set-up
This is from the opening scene where Lacey and Coop meet for the first time at a pub. She's lied about her name and age....
Lacey didn’t ask him his age — she figured it started
with a three — because there was just something about the man that drew her. Besides
his broad shoulders, blond hair and crooked nose. Something sad and broken in
his light blue eyes and that she
could relate to.
She took another swallow of her beer, conscious of
those eyes fixed on the bob of her throat. “So what’s a guy like you doing in a
place like this?” she asked.
He raised his gaze to her face and laughed. “I think
that’s my line.”
Lacey shrugged. “Told you I was forward. And
besides, if you don’t mind me saying, you’re kind of sucking at the pick-up
lines.”
“You want a line?” His mouth quirked up at one side.
“How about this? You have impressive ball skills.”
Lacey hadn’t been expecting something so blatant and
she was stunned for a moment before she laughed. “Play your cards right and
I’ll give you a personal demonstration.”
He laughed too and it vibrated through her belly
with all the subtlety, finesse and potency of a jackhammer. Lacey squirmed
against the stool as heat flooded her abdomen.
She’d never
been this hot for a guy.
“Seriously,” he said, sobering and his intense blue
gaze caught and held hers. “Where’d you learn to shoot a combo?”
The laughter from earlier dried up from the inside
out. She shrugged. “A girl with brothers learns a lot of useless things. How to
hook a worm and gut a fish … how to make cricket stumps out of just about
anything … how to skip stones … light a fire …”
How to never
ever cry lest they get that stricken helpless look and send you away.
“I imagine a girl with brothers would also learn not
to let some guy pick her up in a bar,” he murmured.
Hell yeah, she’d learned that one too. It’d been
drummed into her—by Ethan particularly—just before he’d driven her two hundred
kilometres from the only home she’d ever known to the college they’d insisted
she still attend, despite her overwhelming grief.
But they couldn’t have it both ways. They couldn’t
send her away and expect her to still live by their rules.
“Hey,” he said as he pushed a stray lock of hair off
her forehead with his index finger. “Where’d you go?”
Lacey blinked as his blue eyes searched hers,
frightened he could see everything—her hurt, her pain, the nagging homesickness
that never seemed to go away.
No.
She would not think about home tonight. Quickly, she tipped her head back and
drained her beer in three swallows. “You want to get out of here?”
Lacey could tell Coop was deciding whether or not to
push her further on the subject. When he, too, drained his beer Lacey she almost
sagged in relief. “My place is three blocks away.”
She smiled at him. “Perfect.”
He
was ushering her through the entrance doors to his apartment complex ten minutes
later. Lacey had no recollection of the trip. Not with his hand in the small of
her back, his thumb stroking a lazy pattern through her shirt, streaking heat
like a fork of lightning up her spine.
He pushed the lift button and Lacey glanced at him.
The urge to kiss him pulsed inside her.
“If you keep looking at me like that,” he said, his
voice full of gravel, his gaze firmly fixed on her mouth, “we’re not going to
make to the apartment.”
Lacey’s gut clenched as the rumble in his tone
abraded the hairs at the back of her neck, rubbed like sandpaper against her
nipples and tingled between her thighs. It was only the ding of the lift that
saved them from making out on the parquetry floor.
But the second the doors closed and they were alone,
he was pushing her against the wall and she was grabbing his shirt and nothing
could have stopped her from accepting the full-frontal assault of his mouth as
it slammed hot and hard onto hers.
Lacey moaned as his fingers tangled in her hair and
his tongue tangoed with hers. He groaned against her mouth and her belly
tightened.
Crap, if
the man screwed like he kissed she was a goner.
The lift dinged again and Lacey whimpered as Coop
dragged his lips away and pressed his forehead to hers. Their heavy breathing
filled the lift as the door slid open. “Don’t plan on getting any sleep tonight.”
For a chance to win a digital copy (must have an Amazon account) of Some Girls Do talk to me about age differences. Lacey is 19 and Coop 32 when they first sleep together in the scene you' ve just read. Does that age difference squick you out? Is it something that makes you want to throw the book against the wall or not even buy it to begin with? What is an acceptable age difference - what's your limit? (I know you have one! :-)
