by Megan Hart
That sucked.
He hadn’t known her long enough to feel this disappointed. It was stupid. And lame. And dammit, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
He spent an hour in the basement, cataloging boxes of sugar packets and bottles of mustard and cartons of napkins. By the time he came upstairs, he’d managed to calm himself a little, at least enough so that when the bell jingled again, he didn’t want to jump over the bar and pummel the crap out of the person who wasn’t Colleen.
It was, to both Jesse and John’s surprise, The Fallen Angel’s owner. Rick Benjamin hardly ever came into the bar himself. Now he stamped snow off his boots and off the shoulders of his heavy winter coat.
“We’re closing,” he said to John. To the customers gathered around the tables and sitting at the bar, he announced, “Listen, folks, the weather report says that instead of another inch or so, we’re looking at a possible six to ten, along with freezing rain. I got an update from the power company that outages are likely. My advice to all of you is to head home and stay safe and warm.”
“Again?” John said. “Who pissed off Mother Nature?”
Jesse was already gathering up the few empty glasses and putting them in the plastic bin to take back to the kitchen. At Rick’s warning, everyone in the bar got up and started putting on their coats.
“Scattered like the wind,” John said. “Look at them go.”
Rick snorted with laughter and looked at Jesse. “Leave that stuff. It’s bad out there and getting worse. I’m closing up tonight and for tomorrow, too, just to be safe. I’ll let everyone know how Saturday’s looking. But get out of here.”
As Jesse grabbed his own coat, his phone buzzed. Laila’s school, announcing another day closed. He texted Diane to make sure she and the kid were okay, then headed to his car. Rick had been right. It would’ve been smart for him to head straight home and get out of the storm, but he remembered there was nothing in the fridge but some ready-to-expire yogurt and some limp celery. Jesse frowned as he pulled into the grocery store parking lot. Better stock up, he thought, before he was snowed in—sadly, by himself this time.
* * *
Spring couldn’t get here fast enough, Colleen thought as she snagged one of the last carts at the grocery store and managed to avoid being run over by a woman who’d filled her buggy with bulk packages of toilet paper. The small grocery store didn’t carry a lot of stock as it was, but even so the aisles were incredibly picked over. She was able to grab some salad and a bag of apples, as well as some canned spaghetti and ravioli. Also some sardines, because what the hell, if she was going to prepare for what looked to be the Snowpocalypse, she might as well make sure she had a wide variety of things on which she could survive. Besides, she didn’t have to fight anyone for the sardines. She’d have shoved someone for one of those packages of Oreos, though.
“Oh,” she said, startled. “Hi.”
Jesse turned, the last package of cookies in his hand. He looked good. Beard a little scruffy, hair rumpled where it showed beneath the navy stocking cap. He didn’t smile when he saw her, and that broke her heart a little.
“You’ve got my favorite,” she told him.
He didn’t look at the cookies. Just at her. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Oreos. My favorite. Think we could snag some milk to go with them? The shelves are getting picked pretty bare.” She kept her voice light. Casual. But she made sure to keep eye contact.
Jesse stepped to one side to show her the cart his body had been hiding before. In it, a gallon jug of milk, a few bags of potato chips, some paper plates and napkins. He had a box of white utility candles, too. He didn’t say anything. Just let her look.
“In case the power goes out?” she asked, pointing at the disposables.
He nodded.
“Milk and cookies by candlelight. Could be romantic.”
His mouth twitched the tiniest amount. She couldn’t blame him for keeping his smile tethered down. She couldn’t blame herself for trying to tease one out of him anyway. She held up her sardines without saying anything, just a wiggle of her brows she meant to be deliberately strange and suggestive.
Jesse gave in. He laughed, she laughed with him and suddenly everything seemed as though it might actually be okay. Colleen took a chance and stepped closer. He didn’t move away.
“I missed you,” Jesse blurted out and looked instantly as though he regretted it.
Her heart broke more than a little this time. She moved near enough to touch his face. The way he closed his eyes at her touch told her everything she needed to know. Everything she’d been hoping was true.
“I missed you, too.” Then she kissed him. Right there in the middle of the store, oblivious to anyone who might be watching, not giving a damn if she was making a mistake. She kissed him, kissed him, kissed him.
Jesse kissed her back. His arms went around her, squeezing hard enough to crackle the cookie package. She didn’t care. All that mattered was that he was holding her. That she had a chance to make things okay, if she was willing to take it. It might not work out. She might have to eat crow, like Mark said. And even then it might be too late.
But she had to try.
“Come home with me,” Colleen said against his mouth. “Let’s get snowed in together.”
Jesse drew back enough to look into her eyes. She wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d seen hesitation there, wouldn’t have blamed him for saying no. But, as with everything else he’d ever done, Jesse didn’t disappoint her.
“Yes,” he said. “Let’s go.”
* * * * *
Seize the Night
Tiffany Reisz
Dedication
To Mrs. Colvin, my freshman high school English teacher,
who introduced me to Romeo, Juliet, Paris, The Nurse
and (of course) the one and only Mercutio.
Shakespeare and I have been star-crossed lovers ever since…
About the Author
Tiffany Reisz is an award-winning and internationally
bestselling author of The Original Sinners series (Mills & Boon Spice).
When she’s not writing scandalous tales about naughty priests and
quirky dominatrices, she’s doing sordid things to Shakespeare plays.
She lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her fiancé and two weird cats. Contact her at [email protected] if you dare.
Also by Tiffany Reisz
Cosmopolitan Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon
MISBEHAVING
The Original Sinners Series
THE MISTRESS
THE PRINCE
THE ANGEL
THE SIREN
Novellas
THE MISTRESS DIARIES
THE GIFT (originally published as SEVEN DAY LOAN)
SUBMIT TO DESIRE
IMMERSED IN PLEASURE
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed Misbehaving, my first Cosmopolitan Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon story. Now I’m back with Seize the Night, a new sexy Shakespeare retelling for your reading pleasure.
When Mills & Boon asked me for a second Cosmopolitan Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon story, I went for a long bike ride to think about what I should write. Since Misbehaving was a modern erotic update of the comedy Much Ado About Nothing, maybe I’d try my hand at retelling a tragedy. There’s no more famous romance in the history of English literature than the one between Romeo and Juliet. I live in Lexington, Kentucky, also known as the “Horse Capital of the World,” and as I rode, I saw horses everywhere. There’s lots of drama in horse racing, lots of money, beauty and romance, too. Could I update Romeo and Juliet to fit into this world? Of course I could! I took out the death, added a lot of sex, set it among two rival horse-racing families, threw in a happy ending and turned Mercutio’s infamous line “A plague on both your houses” into my Merrick’s “A plague on both your horses!”
What can I say? I was an English major. This is how I put my degree to use.
&n
bsp; Friends, Romans, Mills & Boon readers, lend me your eyes. I give you the story of Remi O. Montgomery, manager of Arden Farms, and her star-crossed love affair with Julien Brite of Capital Hills Farms.
Happy reading!
Tiffany Reisz
PS Fans of my Original Sinners series will catch a few inside jokes. Sorry Wesley couldn’t come to the party. He was busy up north with a certain green-eyed Damn Yankee of our acquaintance.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
Chapter One
The Winner’s Circle
The boy in blue started the fight but the boy in red finished it. Swearing turned to yelling, which led to shoving and punching within seconds. Remi fished her phone out of her messenger bag, called the security office, and two minutes later the fight was over. Both young men—college kids by the looks of them—were being escorted away. Too much alcohol and testosterone. Too little good sense.
Remi felt the needle prick of her conscience. She couldn’t judge them, tempting as it was. She’d been that age not too long ago, and she remembered being that stupid. Remembered it all too well.
Still, it made no sense to her. Two guys in opposing jerseys fighting at a football game would hardly have been a surprise. Or even a baseball or a basketball game. But this was Verona Downs. When did college boys start getting into fistfights over racehorses? Bizarre. Bizarre was the only word for it.
Bizarre was also the only word for the man who entered the grandstand and strode toward Remi’s seat. He wore all black, as usual. His slacks, his button-down shirt (untucked, of course), leather bracelets on both wrists, shoes, socks and underwear (if he did, in fact, wear underwear), and sunglasses were all black. Under the black sunglasses lurked intelligent blue eyes usually narrowed in suspicion or derision. Most of the women in the stands watched his progress. She didn’t blame them. He was in his mid-thirties, annoyingly handsome and wasn’t smiling. He had an “I can’t wait to rock your world in bed and then make you regret you ever met me” look about him. Women fell for that look often. She hadn’t. She had zero desire to sleep with him. He was Merrick Feingold. Unlike the women who were lusting at him at this moment, Remi had met him.
“Why, pray tell, am I sitting among the plebeians?” Merrick asked as he took his seat next to her. They must have made an odd pair—him in his mysterious all-black attire and she in faded jeans, a tailored plaid shirt and cowboy boots. He looked like a rock star while she tended toward stable girl.
“This is not ancient Rome, and these are not plebeians. These are people just like us,” Remi said as she made a notation in her leather journal. “And you’re sitting here because your boss wants your sunshiny self sitting right next to her.”
“We have that nice Arden Farms private box right over there,” Merrick said, pointing at the clubhouse balcony section where all the horse owners had private air-conditioned boxes. “This ‘man of the people’ routine of yours is infringing on my creature comforts.”
“This is not a ‘man of the people’ routine,” Remi said. “First of all, I am the people, not of the people. We are people. Second, I am not a man.”
“Prove it,” Merrick said.
“Do I look like a man to you?”
“No. You look like a hot blonde with spectacular tits, which are probably fake, since for all I know, you might be a man.”
“I’m not sleeping with you. I’m your employer. You are my assistant.”
“Until I see you naked I won’t know if you’re actually a man or a woman. It’s like Schrödinger’s Pussy.”
“You just used quantum physics to hit on me. I’m almost impressed.”
“Impressed enough to sleep with me?” Merrick asked.
“No.”
Merrick shrugged. He seemed philosophical about her refusal and not the least disappointed. For all his quantum flirting, Merrick’s interest in her was merely mechanical. And she had no interest in him at all. She was twenty-six and he was thirty-six. To her Merrick was like an older brother. An older brother she paid to do whatever she told him to do. The best sort of older brother. The type she could fire.
Remi’s cell phone buzzed in her bag. She dug it out and looked at the name. Now she remembered why she’d hired Merrick.
“Ugh. Help. It’s Brian Roseland.” Remi handed the phone to Merrick.
“You want me to do the thing?” he asked.
“Please and thank you.”
“Yell-o?” Merrick said, taking the call for her. “No, Remi’s not here right now. She’s on a date.”
Remi covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. Her? On a date on a Thursday afternoon? Good thing Merrick was a better liar than she was.
“She’s been gone all week, Mr. Roseland,” Merrick said. “It’s that kind of date. One with traveling and exotic locations and them sticking body parts into each other.”
Remi grabbed for the phone. Merrick jerked it away.
“But I’ll tell her you called once she gets back from her weeklong exotic-locale sex date.” Merrick tugged her ponytail to annoy her. It worked.
Then he ended the call and handed her the phone.
“I told Roseland you were on an exotic-locale weeklong sex date,” Merrick said.
“Yes, I heard that part. Did you have to go into that much detail?” she demanded.
“Look, Boss,” Merrick said, “either learn how to lie to people or leave me alone when you make me do your lying for you.”
“Fine. Thank you for getting rid of him. Third time he’s called me this week,” she said. “Maybe if he thinks I’m on a date he’ll finally get the hint that it’s completely over.”
Remi dropped her phone back in her bag just as the post parade began. The outriders trotted alongside the jockeys astride their racehorses. Her own Arden Farms jockey, Mike Alvarez, in his red-and-white silks, threw a smile at the crowd as he and their three-year-old filly Shenanigans passed the grandstand.
“Boss, are you ever going to tell me why you dumped Roseland?” Merrick asked, as she made a note in her journal.
“Never.”
“Please? I’ll whimper. Don’t make me whimper.” He whimpered.
“Do you really care?” she asked. “Or is this just perverse curiosity about my sex life?”
“I care desperately in a perversely curious-about-your-sex-life way,” Merrick said. “You never tell me anything about your personal life. You don’t hit on me. You ignore me when I hit on you. You keep our work relationship professional no matter how hard I try to make it unprofessional. It’s like you have integrity or something, and quite frankly, I’m sick of it.”
Remi closed her journal.
“If I tell you, will you shut up for two whole minutes during the race?”
“Two minutes? I can do that. Talk,” Merrick ordered.
“When I started dating the handsome Mr. Roseland, I thought he was a really nice guy,” she began.
“No wonder you dumped him,” Merrick said. She glowered at him. He whimpered in response.
“I happen to like nice guys,” she said, and a face from her past flashed in front of her eyes. A young, handsome, smiling face—near-black eyes, dark red hair, a smile both sweet and striking. She kicked the memory out of her mind—a futile gesture. She knew it would only gallop back in her brain. “In fact, I love nice guys. It just turned out Brian wasn’t a nice guy.”
Merrick pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head and stared at her.
“If he hurt you, you tell me right now, Remi,” he said. He only called her Remi in his rare moods of deadly seriousness. He’d probably called her by her first name all of twice in two years. The rest of the time she was just “Boss.” “If he got rough with you I will get rough with him. That prick can watch the horses race from h
is boxed seats in Hell.”
She shook her head.
“No, he didn’t hurt me,” she said, touched by Merrick’s devotion. They harassed and insulted each other, but at the heart of their working relationship was a solid core of respect and loyalty. And near-constant exasperation on her part. “I promise. I’d kick his ass if he tried. It was just that... So three months ago, Brian and I were...you know...”
“Twerking?”
“Fucking. And the condom broke. I’m on birth control, but I still panicked. Abject white-knuckle panic.”
“Is Roseland a heroin addict?”
“Clean as a whistle and so am I. But even the thought of having a baby with Brian terrified me. I couldn’t imagine spending Christmas with him, much less marrying him and having kids. It was a horrible thought. So we broke up.”
She spoke matter-of-factly, but the break-up had been anything but matter-of-fact. Brian had been furious and accusatory, demanding to know if she was cheating on him. He’d been so bitterly angry he’d scared her, and from that moment on, she had refused to see him or speak to him. His ensuing profanity-laden tantrum had proven that her instincts to dump him had been dead-on.
“That’s the whole story?” Merrick asked, sounding skeptical.
“That’s it. I broke up with him. He threw a hissy fit about it. The end.”
“Well, you are easily the second or third most beautiful woman in north-central Kentucky.”
“Thank you for that regionally specific compliment,” she said. “Now shut up. It’s post time.”
Merrick went silent as all six horses were slotted into the starting gate. Any second now the bell would ring and the horses would burst from the gates. It was just an ordinary race on a Thursday afternoon at Verona Downs. Not even a stakes race. And yet it looked like the Kentucky Derby for all the press there and the grandstand packed with fans. At least fifty people had brought homemade signs that bore the words, I Call Shenanigans! Did these people not realize that horses, unlike football or baseball players, could not read?