What Have I Done For Me Lately?
Isabel Sharpe
Jenny Hartmann's sizzling bestseller What Have I Done for Me Lately? has made her a minor celebrity, never mind sexually confident and savvy.Women across the country are snapping up her trendy advice book, and men…well, men are avoiding the bookstore altogether! Now Jenny's about to take her own "you go, girl" advice to heart–by indulging in a fantasy fling with Ryan Masterson. Back in college he'd called her boring and unadventurous.Well, Jenny is going to show this former bad boy how dynamite she can be in bed. Except she isn't expecting how good Ryan can be at reading between the lines…
“What do you want from me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Jenny murmured over the phone line.
“Just sex?”
“It’s as good a place to start as any. Tell me, Ryan, what have you done for yourself lately…?”
He frowned even as he started picturing all the possibilities. Like her, moving beneath him. “Why do you want this?”
She took in a long deep breath, let it out and even managed to make that sound sexy. “Ryan…”
He should hang up the phone now. Right now. “Yes?”
“I’ll be at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East Ninety-sixth at exactly 2:00 a.m. this morning in a white Volkswagen Passat. And I’ll be—”
“No.” He was already shaking his head. “I’m not going to—”
“I’ll be wearing a black lace bra, a low-cut red top and high-heeled shoes.” She exhaled on a low mmmm that made him immediately harden. “And that’s all.”
A click and the line went dead.
Dear Reader,
I’ve always loved the juxtaposition between shy/demure and bold/wild. Shy girl meets dangerous bad boy or quiet guy meets hot-blooded vixen. It’s an irresistible opposites-attract chemistry.
So I started thinking, what if you had the shy/wild combination in each character? How about if my heroine, Jenny Hartmann, grew up shy and became wild, and my hero, Ryan Masterson, was a bad boy who sobered up later in life? Add in that they, ahem, knew each other back when they were opposites, and are bumping into each other now, years later, when they’ve switched character traits, and the fun starts.
Enjoy their wild ride!
Cheers,
Isabel Sharpe
What Have I Done for Me Lately?
Isabel Sharpe
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my mom and dad,
whose side-by-side battle against one of life’s
unfair challenges was more romantic
than anything I’ve ever written.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
1
“MY WIFE PATTY has done a lot of needlework in her time.” Mr. Jed Baxter sent the sour-faced woman beside him a look of adoration.
Ryan Masterson raised his eyebrows as if this was the most exciting thing he’d heard in nearly forever, mind spinning over the absolute nothing he knew about needlework to try to come up with a follow-up question. He’d been sitting in the Union Square Café for the better part of two hours with Jed and Patty Baxter, a middle-aged couple who’d just moved to Manhattan from Dallas. The point of the meal was to get to know them, let them get to know him, and to interest them in his firm’s latest venture-capital fund, for female- and minority-owned businesses in the city. However, the ebb and flow of conversation had been heavy on ebb and light on flow. He’d already struck out on the topic of rodeo, a passion of Jed’s. Ditto barbecue, because what could be said after your guest emphatically denied you could have an opinion being from the North? They’d had to resort to a discussion of tax law, a subject he could only b.s. his way through at best.
“Needlework. Really. What kind?” That had to be a safe and relevant question, didn’t it? Wasn’t there more than one kind of needlework? He was pretty sure Jed wasn’t talking about tattooing or body piercing.
Patty flicked a glance at Ryan and went back to staring at something past his head. “Needlepoint, knitting…”
“Sweaters?” He took a sip of water. Sweaters? He was scraping absolute bottom. Times like this he needed a woman beside him, maybe someone like Christine, the woman who lived across the hall. That might sound sexist, but while he was sure there were men into needlework, he was just as sure he didn’t want to date any.
“Yes. And embroidery. Crewel tablecloths.” She glanced at him again and almost smiled, which was the closest thing to an expression he’d seen all evening.
Ryan put on his most impressed face. Whatever cruel tablecloths were, they clearly deserved a reaction. “Well. I’m in awe. Did you ever think of starting a business?”