From USA Today Bestselling Author
Dani Collins
Dani Collins
Small town secrets. Big time heartache.
NOT IN HER WILDEST DREAMS
Dani Collins
Series: Secret Dreams, Book One
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publication Date: January 1, 2017
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publication Date: January 1, 2017
Paige Fogarty never believed Liebe Falls’ golden boy, Sterling Roy, could want a No Good Fogarty, but one magical night, they kissed—ruining her already murky reputation. Fifteen years later, she’s still shunned, now as a professional accountant auditing Roy Furnishings. It’s a daunting task even before she’s forced to work with him.
Sterling made a fool of himself over Paige once. Never again. He only returns to the factory his mother calls his ‘legacy’ to ensure Paige doesn’t pull a fast one. When their chemistry blazes hotter than ever, he wonders if he misjudged her, but secrets come to light, including an embezzler she tries to protect, proving she’s still the wrong girl. So why does holding onto her feel so right?
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Excerpt:
Fifteen years ago, Sterling kissed Paige and her dad beat him up for it. They haven’t talked since, but Sterling now wants her to talk her father into selling out his share in the local factory to his father. They’re in her father’s kitchen and Paige has just realized he hasn’t come all this way to apologize for the past, but is trying to forgive her. Here’s how she tells him he’s the one who is in the wrong. Side note: she has an icepack over her eye for other reasons.
“You just said you blame me for the talk about you, but I had nothing to do with it,” he pointed out.
“You told your mother I had sex with you! And that you weren’t my first!” Her tone rang with, WTF?
“That’s not what I said.” He held up his hand, still feeling a pinch of guilt over the way his mother had interpreted his ‘I didn’t get her virginity’ remark: that he’d completed the act, but there’d been no virginity to be had. “And people were talking already, Paige. You started that yourself.”
“No. That’s not fair.” She held up a finger, stern and strong and with an anger that was deep enough and genuine enough to earn his full attention. “I was a kid, being teased by my brother and his friend about still being a virgin. They turned it into me wanting to lose my cherry to you and you’re the one who made it real by showing up and making me think you liked me.” She pushed the ice pack back onto her face and turned her head to hide her expression behind it.
He had liked her, in the way that was ninety-percent youthful lust. But he’d barely spoken to her before that evening.
“I guess putting it out all over town is what everyone expects from a Fogarty, though. So that made it okay to call me a whore?”
“Paige.” She was exaggerating.
“Men offered me money. Men. A forty-year-old stranger propositioned me in the grocery story. Do you have any idea how scary that is when you’re seventeen? So, yeah, thanks for coming all this way to forgive me for that. You’re a helluva guy, Sterling.”
She flipped him her middle finger then went the long way around the partition and came back into the kitchen, opening the freezer again to pull out a loaf of bread.
He drilled holes in her back, trying to ignore the unease crowding out his righteous anger.
“Maybe I should thank you,” she said, turning with a magnanimous smile that went flat very quickly. “Since Dad finally took out a loan and sent me to Seattle, once he heard I was the town bike.”
He winced. “You didn’t act like a virgin,” he reminded in a mutter and watched her eyes bug out.
“I kissed you back so I deserved to be treated like a paid sex provider? Called out as a slut and turned down for honest work?”
No, he begrudgingly acknowledged, squirming at the picture she was painting, but she had kissed him back. She’d seemed damned willing to have sex with him in his car in her father’s driveway.
He could still recall the way his heart had pounded like a pile-driver from the moment her brother had said, ‘She wants you to be the one.’ He’d been planning to just ask her on a date. Somehow a few laughing, excited comments had turned into a kiss and that had turned into so much trembling heat pressed against him, he’d nearly lost his mind.
Did she have any idea how much of a betrayal it had been when the yank on his collar had come, as Grady had dragged him from the car and wailed on him? She had set him up for that insanity. Had to have.
“You and your brother wanted to take me down a peg. That’s why you set up your Dad to find us like that.”
“I didn’t know Dad was here!” She made a contemptuous noise then needed two tries to put the bread in the toaster. “Lyle brought his car home from work to fix it and I thought Dad was at the bar or something.”
Her hand was shaking, making him realize that for all her bravado, she was deeply rattled. Which shook him, making him feel even more of a bully when he was the injured party.
“I didn’t even know you were coming over,” she reminded. “How could I have arranged for Dad to show up right then?”
Sterling didn’t know, and he didn’t want to believe her. If she was telling the truth, it meant he’d been wrong. Worse than wrong.
…made me think you liked me.
If she hadn’t been setting him up, she might have been genuinely carried away that night. Didn’t that blow a man’s mind? If their necking had been purely natural reaction, they’d been positively volatile.
His heart took a few staggered, clunking steps as he absorbed that.
All this time, he had been telling himself she had felt nothing for him, but what if she’d been attracted in the same hormonal way? He’d not only rejected her, refusing to return her call, he’d been downright cruel, not caring about her shredded reputation. He’d been so busy wallowing in resentment that it had taken years for him to notice that the debacle had brought about the best thing that ever happened to him: Harvard and a life beyond Liebe Falls, Washington.
While the seventeen-year-old virgin had been fielding offers for horizontal work.
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
Really?
Judging by the filthy looks she was sending him, yeah, really.
How long had it taken Grady to figure out what was going on and put a stop to it? At least six months, because Paige had still been here when Sterling had come home for Christmas. She’d been hollow-cheeked and defensive looking when they’d pretended not to see each other in the grocery store. She’d been buying no-name spaghetti while he’d been picking up cranberry sauce and a pecan pie for his mother.
Oh, Christ.
She pulled a tub of margarine from the fridge, dropped it and swore.
Fortunately, the lid stayed on. He bent and handed it to her. “Are you okay?” he asked, realizing how pale she was.
“No. I get clumsy when my blood sugar is low. I was going to eat at this café on the way to Seattle, but—” She sighed and turned to set the margarine on the counter, then took out a plate and a butter knife.
He took in her bowed shoulders. Her delicate build. He wanted to brace her, set soothing hands on her shoulders.
“Are you diabetic? Christ, you’re not pregnant, are you?” He was not a bully. Didn’t mistreat women. Ever.
“No,” she said, mouth curling disdainfully. “Just a stress case who drinks too much coffee and forgets to eat. And my reluctance to get pregnant is the reason my divorce was finalized last Monday. It’s been quite a week. You. This delightful conversation? It is such sweet icing on top of everything else, I can barely stand it.” Bitter loathing coated her voice.
“Are you serious?” She was divorced? That news cold-cocked him so thoroughly, his mind blanked for a full three heartbeats.
“About what? That talking to you is icing? No, that’s sarcasm.” Her knife scraped over the toast as she buttered, then she pushed a corner into her mouth and bit, slapped the cold pack onto her face again and turned to regard him, the light in her eye defiant, but sad at the same time.
“I hadn’t heard about your divorce,” he said, really, really thrown. Divorced.
Not married.
Available, a sick voice whispered deep in his brain.
What was it about her?
Other Books by the Author
Also, don't miss Book 2 in the Secret Dreams series by Dani Collins.
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Only In His Sweetest Dreams
Secret Dreams, Book 2
When Mercedes takes in her confused niece and nephew, jeopardizing the job she loves at a retirement community, she turns to the new handyman for advice. L.C. can fix anything and he’d love to be part of this misfit family, but he has a secret back home that Mercedes will never forgive.
Available on February 1,2017.
Pre-order Buy Link: Amazon
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$10 Amazon Gift Card + Only In His Sweetest Dreams ebook (Secret Dreams Book 2)
About Dani Collins
USA Today Bestseller Dani Collins is the author of thirty romances for Harlequin Presents, Montana Born and herself. Dani lives in Canada with her high school sweetheart. Join Dani's newsletter and receive Cruel Summer, a short ebook romance, as a welcome gift: http://danicollins.com/free-book/
Connect with Dani Collins on social media:
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Google Plus | Amazon | Goodreads
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This sounds good! I've added it to my TBR on GR. Thanks for the giveaway! :)
ReplyDeleteThe book sounds interesting. thanks.
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