I slam the steering wheel again, this time making the horn honk at another couple of pedestrians. They glare at me; I stare a hole through the window. I should be careful, I know. In a neighborhood like this, being a brown dude throwing a tantrum in his shitty car is enough to get me arrested, and I cannot afford to have a record that’s anything but squeaky clean. It would throw everything I have lined up in jeopardy.
But instead of acting calmly, I spring into action. The Jeep screams away from the curb, and there’s only one path on my mind: drop this hunk of junk off with the buyer––I don’t even care how much they want for it. At this point, I’d pay them to take the thing off my hands. Fuck this car. Fuck the party. Fuck California and all three-thousand and some miles in between me and the girl I’d tear through steel doors to get to. I just want it all gone so I can get my ass to the airport and onto whatever red-eye flights they have available.
K.C.’s going to have to make the drive by himself. I gotta get back to New York.
To Be Continued...
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Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I have to thank my dude, C, for his never-ending support. I’ll never forget your face when you walked in the day after my third book launch to find me typing again: “You’re writing another book?” Always another book, hon, and you take it like a champ. I love you. Thank you for being a constant inspiration to me. You are everywhere in my stories. Always.
Second of all, to my editors and beta readers extraordinaires: Patricia, Ava, Jessica, thank you for reading through this piece and telling me I wasn’t crazy for writing it. Patricia: I miss Nico too. He’s coming back, I promise. A special thanks to Michelle, who swooped in at the end to remind me about the Look of Death and chancletas. I loved listening to your messages––they took me right back to the people and neighborhoods that inspired this story. Julie, thank you for proofreading and helping the manuscript shine. And Kim, thank YOU for giving it one last pass to make it perfect.
Third of all, to the #squadpod: CL, Paige, Kim, Jessica, Liv, Jane, Harloe, Ava, Meg, JL, and Brooke. I am SO grateful to be a part of such a valuable network of strong, female writers. You guys make me laugh like crazy and embarrass myself on a regular basis in the middle of coffee shops full of Very Serious Hipsters. I love you like whoa (spelled the right way, Meg). One day we will all meet, and our collective energy will make the earth stop spinning.
To my readers who have slowly been making their way through my books (yes, I know that Spitfire is a lonnnnng series) and who find me on Facebook, email, Instagram, or Twitter, THANK YOU. La Merde, my reader group, who make me laugh out loud every single day––thanks for making Facebook more than bearable, and an actual pleasure. Most of all, thank you to those of you who take a moment to leave a review, however short, for the books you read, or message me with your reactions and sometimes minor corrections. You guys are the bomb.
xo,
Nic
About the Author
Nicole French is a lifelong dreamer, Springsteen fanatic, and complete and total bookworm. When not writing fiction or teaching composition classes, she is hanging out with her family, playing soccer with the rest of the thirty-plus crowd in Seattle, or going on dates with her husband. In her spare time, she likes to go running with her dog, Greta, or practice the piano, but never seems to do either one of these things as much as she should.
Connect with Nicole French
For more information about Nicole French and to keep informed about upcoming releases, please visit her website at www.nicolefrenchromance.com/.
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Other Works by Nicole French
The Spitfire Series
Legally Yours
Skylar Ellen Crosby is a typical redhead: blunt, passionate, with a bit of a temper. Okay, so maybe she gets in her own head sometimes. At the end of her third year at Harvard Law, all Skylar wants is to figure out her next steps: ones that will hopefully include a job, an apartment, and enough money to help her father stop getting into trouble. She simply has no room for romance, especially the kind that might break your heart. But on a dark, snowy night, when she's stranded in the living room of the notorious CEO of Sterling Ventures and one of the best attorneys in Boston, all of those boundaries are about to be knocked down.
Brandon Sterling never believed in fate. A man of his own making, he firmly credits his successes to hard work. How else could you explain his rise from the poorest of backgrounds in South Boston to becoming one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the city? Now he's living in the lap of luxury, and it's never mattered to him that increasing success meant increased isolation in his big house on Beacon Street. After all, when you have everything, everyone else always wants something. Then he walks in to find a feisty redhead sitting on his windowsill. Suddenly, the idea of love at first sight seems like the most plausible thing in the world...if only the one person he wants to give his heart to would actually take it.
Legally Mine
What's the point of falling in love if it only breaks your heart?
Skylar Crosby should be on top of the world. She's just graduated from the best law school in the country and is supposed to kick-start a career at a new law firm. But with her father still recovering from his addictions, her flaky mother suddenly reappearing in her life, and the stresses of studying for the bar exam, Skylar feels more like she's holding the world up rather than standing on top of it. And then, of course, there's the matter of her utterly smashed heart.
In just a few short months, Brandon Sterling, brilliant legal mind and all-around tycoon, quickly became the sun to Skylar's universe, only to twist it upside down and inside out, leaving her with a decision that will change both of their lives forever. And although Brandon can't forget the girl who gave him back his heart, sudden changes in his complicated life will make getting her back that much more difficult. Luckily, Brandon Sterling has never been one to walk away from a challenge.
Even when the whole world seems united against them, it's possible that these two are their own worst enemies. Legally Mine, the second book in the explosive Spitfire series, continues the saga of Skylar and Brandon as two stubborn, intelligent, damaged people trying to learn how to let themselves love and be loved return.
Legally Ours
Skylar Crosby knows betrayal. She knows that deep stab when those closest to you deceive your fragile trust. And she knows what it's like when your secrets cost you everything––including the love of your life.
Now kidnapped, scared, and alone, Skylar has no reason to believe in her rescue. Not when she can still see Brandon's face as she smashed his heart to pieces. Even if Skylar can get out of her physical prison, can she escape the cage created by her guilt?
Brandon Sterling spent the last fifteen years desperately trying to reinvent himself: as a lawyer, a businessman, and now a candidate for public office. But as these daily stressors mount alongside a dangerous threat to his family and loved ones, the old Brandon reemerges: a ruthless hoodlum who'd rather use fists than brains to solve his problems.
Now, when the one he loves most is taken, can Brandon move past her deceit in order to find her? And if he does, will Skylar still want the man he's become in order to protect her?
Please Enjoy the First Three Chapters from Legally Yours
Chapter 1
I glanced over the top of m
y cubicle toward a window about ten feet away. Snow was coming down hard, in big, fat flakes that shone white against the black night and stuck to the pane whenever a sudden gust of wind slammed against the building. I looked at the clock on the opposite wall and sighed. You'd never know by the looks of the office that it was almost nine p.m.
“The Pit,” as everyone called the group of cubicles that housed temps and interns, included a pod of hopeful, over-achieving, third-year law students like myself. The four of us still had one week left on the job. After working the standard summer internship at Sterling Grove’s full-service firm, I had been asked, along with the other three interns, to stay on when the firm took on a major trial case. The trial had finished up last week, and the firm had won, with some thanks due to the countless hours Steve, Cherie, Eric, and I had put in over the last four months. Our hard work paid off when we were offered full-time positions after we finished school and passed the bar exam. It was no small carrot—the firm was one of the largest in Boston, and the positions some of the most coveted for any new grad.
But unlike the other interns, I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to work at Sterling Grove. It wasn’t that it wasn’t a good firm (despite the first-year associate hours that would be undoubtedly hellacious). There was simply something missing. Two and a half years ago, I had left a job in investment banking for law school, hoping to find a career that would make me feel, well, complete. Law had seemed like a good idea. It was lucrative, analytical, and I had the potential to do more for the world than just stockpile money. And upon starting my classes, I quickly learned that I loved the philosophical side of justice just as much as the practical. Law school was a practice of existing somewhere in the middle.
The difficulty was in choosing a focus. Two and a half years later, when most of my classmates already had jobs locked for the following year, I still had absolutely no clue what I wanted to do with my degree. I had excelled in my classes and attracted three job offers already, but had turned down all of them. Although I was interested in almost everything I had participated in, nothing made me feel that “oomph,” that one-hundred-percent knowledge that this was what I was supposed to do. Two and a half years later, I was still looking.
“I see you looking for a cab, Crosby.”
A pair of thick black glasses, bright white teeth, and a mop of curly black hair popped over the cubicle barrier. I smiled, careful to avoid my co-intern's eyes.
“I’m not looking for anything, Steve,” I said. “Anyway, I’m not sure I’m going either.”
“What?!”
Steve Kramer, a student at Boston College, looked around briefly to make sure none of our supervising associates were in the common room before skittering around to sit on my desk, disregarding the legal pad under his butt. The two temps who shared my cubicle glanced up with mild annoyance before leaning back to their work.
“Dude,” Steve said as he grabbed the arms of my desk chair and rolled me to face him. “You gotta come. The trial is finally over. It’s our last drunken hurrah as interns together.” He didn’t seem to notice when I immediately rolled back to my original position.
“I know,” I said. “But it’s already so late. Plus, the weather is turning to shit, and I really need to finish this brief tonight.”
“Finishing a brief” was legal equivalent of telling someone you needed to wash your hair or walk your dog. Unfortunately, for all the promise Steve showed as a cutthroat attorney, he never seemed to clue into basic social cues from women.
“Come on, Crosby,” he cajoled, again pulling my chair close. “I’m not letting you go until you say yes. It’s our only opportunity to celebrate the end of this insane internship. You don’t even have to pay—Cherie knows the owner at Manny's and can get us comp’d pitchers.”
It wasn’t really the end yet—we still had a whole week. But considering the fact that classes were starting on Monday, it was more fitting to celebrate the end now instead of next Friday, when most of us would be more interested in getting ahead on our reading than tipping back shots.
Manny’s was a well-known bar in Chinatown and just a short cab ride away from the office. I wasn’t much of a drinker, which made me less than excited about going. Nor was I particularly interested in fending off the odious advances of Steve, who had been trying to talk me into a date since September. He was okay-looking, but, like most of the men I’d been out with, just didn’t quite do it for me. Apparently, I seemed to have the same problem with men that I did with choosing a job.
I sighed.
“You know he’s not going to leave you alone until you say yes.”
I glanced over to a neighboring cubicle, where Eric, my classmate and neighboring intern, hadn’t even looked up from his work to make the dry comment. I looked back at Steve, who waggled his prominent eyebrows. I sighed again.
“Fine!” I said, and turned back to my desk. “I’m going, I’m going. Can I get back to work now?”
~
We arrived at the tail end of Happy Hour while the band was finishing their sound check. We weren’t alone—Manny’s attracted the twenty-something young professional crowd of Boston, most of whom consisted of lawyers, bankers, and grad students working around Beacon Hill. The men wore a standard after-work uniform of suit pants and striped, button-down shirts, matching jackets tossed over the backs of chairs and ties loosened as they tossed back cheap beer. The women were dressed much like myself, in pencil skirts or pantsuits, their blouses undone one extra button to make it clear this wasn’t an interview. I kept my buttons where they were.
I filed into the small booth that had been claimed by my cohort and allowed Steve to hang my coat on the hooks next to us. Steve and Cherie jetted off to the bar and returned shortly with a tray full of tequila shots and a pitcher of PBR. Everyone eagerly took one of the shot glasses and the accompanying limes. I was the last to take one after Steve looked pointedly at me. With a quick eye roll, I raised my shot along with everyone else.
“This is the end,” Steve intoned, mimicking the words of Jim Morrison. “My only friend, the end.”
“Shut up and drink,” jeered Cherie.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Steve protested, stopping everyone from drinking. “I bought the shots, I get to toast. Okay. It’s been a pleasure working with you all, and I’d just like to say: may you finish the year without flunking out of law school in your last semester. May you all succeed and get filthy rich like I know you want to with these overpriced degrees. May you all make name partner within five years. Except not at Sterling, because that’s going to be me.”
We all yelled and threw balled up napkins and cardboard coasters at him before gulping down the harsh liquor. It was the cheap stuff, of course, but it would no doubt get everyone trashed while liquor was half price. Steve began to dole out PBR-filled pint glasses.
“Thanks, but I’m good,” I said, slipping out of the booth to his obvious disappointment. “Don’t worry, I’m just going to get my own drink.”
“Too good for the blue ribbon, huh?” Steve teased.
“Everyone’s too good for that horse piss,” I retorted with a grin before making my way over to the bar, where I ordered a whiskey with a splash of water.
“Not a PBR fan?”
I turned to find a good-looking guy next to me, leaning against the bar. Like the other men, he also wore a button-down and suit pants, with his sleeves rolled up his forearms to reveal an expensive and ostentatious watch. Flashing with a bright band and even a few small diamonds encrusting the edges, it was the kind of watch meant to tell people he had money. The top button of his shirt was undone, and his dark blue tie was slightly askew. He was cute, in that young M.B.A.-kind of way, with close-cut brown hair and a square, goatee-lined jaw. He also held a glass of brown liquor, which he raised.
“Not so much,” I said as I slipped the bartender my card and nodded that she could cash me out.
“Trevor,” he said, reaching out a hand.
“Skylar,” I
said as I accepted the firm handshake. That watch really was bright and shiny. I took a sip of my whiskey and closed my eyes momentarily with pleasure.
“What are you guys celebrating over there?” Trevor asked.
“The end of a trial,” I replied. “We’re all interns at Sterling Grove.”
“Ah,” Trevor said knowingly, although his lack of further response made it clear that he knew little more than the name of the firm. “I’m an analyst over at Chase.”
He said it in a way that was obviously meant to impress me. While he probably didn’t know much about my life, I was extremely familiar with his. One year on Wall Street had been more than enough to convince me I needed to do something for a living wouldn’t cost my soul and sacrifice others’ in the process.
But despite his occupation, Trevor had a nice face. I was in no hurry to return to Steve’s attention, and after talking with Trevor for two more drinks, I started thinking about other places we might go.
It had been a long time—too long for someone my age who had no attachments and no hang-ups about casual sex. But I would have been lying if I said that any of those encounters were more than barely satisfying. Most of them had simply scratched a strong, primal itch to be with another person, but also ended up with me scratching myself better, later, alone.
It didn’t help that when I did get attached, it was with the worst people on the planet. Out of the two major relationships I’d had, the first, my high school sweetheart, was currently serving time for aggravated assault. Poor Robbie hadn’t stood a chance, growing up with the remains of the Brooklyn mob living within a five-block radius of his house. The second…well, let’s just say I avoided talking about him at all. Patrick’s serial philandering had left a scar that was still fairly raw.
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