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About The Author
Katharine Sadler
Katharine Sadler lives with her husband in North Carolina. She’s been writing since she was ten and has wanted to be a writer even longer. When she’s not writing or otherwise gainfully occupied, she reads like it’s an addiction, exercises, skis whenever she gets the chance, and adds more books to her wish list.
Books By This Author
The Deadbeat Next Door (Catalpa Creek 1)
Role Play has never been so much fun!
A Fake Fiancé, enemies to lovers romance.
One night.
One drunken mistake of a night that gets the whole town talking.
I have to pretend to be engaged to my obnoxious, loud-music-playing, no-shirt-wearing, unemployed, inconveniently-gorgeous neighbor, Cody Reynolds, or risk losing the job I love.
I can’t stand the guy, but I have an irresistible urge to touch him to find out if he feels as good as he looks. Maybe more than touch him.
All I have to do is remember he’s not the right guy for me, and I’ll get through this sham engagement with my sanity intact.
One plan.
I thought I could spend time with my beautiful, temperamental neighbor without wanting more.
Sure, I’ve been a bit obsessed with her of late, but I’ve got a winery to build, and I don’t have time for romance.
Only problem is, the land I want for my winery, the perfect land to build my dream on, comes with strings.
I have to pretend to be engaged to Carrie Harrison to prove I deserve to own that land. I just have to remember to keep my distance, even when she looks at me with those big, beautiful eyes and puts sex back on the table.
This fun, flirty romantic comedy is the first book in The Catalpa Creek series, but can absolutely be read as a stand-alone.
There is no cliffhanger and there is most definitely an HEA.
The Workaholic Down the Hall (Catalpa Creek 2)
A friends-to-lovers romance with a secret baby.
One night.
One night to forget all the reasons I shouldn’t lust after my boss, all the reasons I should keep our relationship platonic. One night to give in to a desire that’s been heating up for years.
One night to destroy all my carefully laid plans and change my life forever.
One lie.
I told her I’d been too drunk to remember our night together. I hadn’t been ready for our friendship to change. Now she’s all I can think about, all I can see, but she’s pushing me away, shutting me out.
One secret.
It’s not that I don’t want him to know about the baby, but I’ve always done everything on my own and it’s hard to remember how to let someone else in.
One promise.
She tried to run, but I found her and I’m not going to let her go. Even if it means giving up everything I thought I wanted to convince her to give me another chance.
The Good Guy on my Porch (Catalpa Creek 3)
A slow-burn, friends-to-lovers romance.
Sometimes the secrets we keep destroy us.
One smile.
I don’t get close to anyone. Letting people in means letting in their questions, their pity, their concern.
But then my new neighbor smiles at me and is kind to me when I least deserve it. And it’s not just that sexy smile, it’s the undeniable desire I have to run my hands through his messy hair and kiss those smiling lips.
He’s a genuinely good guy and he doesn’t deserve someone as complicated as I am, especially not when he moved to Catalpa Creek to uncomplicate his life.
One woman
No matter how hard she pushes me away, I can’t stay away. She’s a tiny, fragile-looking woman, but she’s the strongest person I’ve ever met.
I want her in my life and I’ll take whatever she’s willing to give, even if I know she’s been lying to me all along, even if I know she has secrets that will complicate everything.
A book involving a genuinely good guy, a secret involving mental health issues, and a rescue dog.
This is the third book in the Catalpa Creek Series, but can be read as a stand-alone. There is no cliffhanger and there is a guaranteed HEA.
The Ice Queen in the Corner Office (Catalpa Creek 4)
Sometimes doing the wrong thing is the only thing that will save you.
A fun, sexy friends-to-lovers romance.
One kiss
One smoking hot kiss on a crowded night club dance floor with a gorgeous man. A dangerous man. Not just because he’s my boss, but because he makes me feel so much.
Feelings are messy and unpredictable. I have no time for messy and unpredictable, too many people depend on me to be the stoic rock who fixes all the problems.
And, yeah, some people call me cold, call me an ice queen. That’s okay with me. I’d rather be called names than flaunt my emotions like everyone should care that I’m sad or lonely or lost.
The only problem is that it’s hard to remember to be stoic or cold when Alex Owings walks his hot, muscular body into my office and flashes his charming, panty-dropping smile. He claims he’s never forgotten that night club kiss either and he wants to do it again.
One need
One kiss that lit me on fire and made the icy hot Jill Reynolds the center of my world.
I tried to forget that kiss. I really did. Jill’s the best CFO in the business and I want her working for my company. I spent a year convincing myself I could keep our relationship professional and platonic.
I failed.
I never fail. So, I changed the plan. I decided to convince her to give in to the simmering lust between us and see where it leads.
I’m not going to back down until I get what I want, but life is never simple or easy and, when my past comes knocking, I just might lose everything I thought I’d won.
A fast-paced, action-packed romance, this is the fourth book in the Catalpa Creek series, but it can be read as a stand-alone. There is no cliffhanger and there is a guaranteed HEA.
HOW TO NAIL A STUD EXCERPT
Book 2 Vegas Billionaires
Available Summer 2020
CHAPTER ONE
Shel stepped away from her motorcycle and wiped one greasy hand on her work jeans. She smiled. The bike looked good. It’d taken some work to clean the air filter, change the oil, oil the chain, and wash the bike, but it was all worth it. Her bike looked practically new. She propped her hands on her hips, Halestorm rocking her ears through her earbuds, and took another step back to look at her bike from another angle.
Stepped back and tripped over something warm and furry. Her body tilted and she wind milled her arms to try and recover her balance. There was no stopping her descent. She yelped and twisted just enough to see Addy’s blond braids and the black and white fur of her St. Bernard, Ozzy, before warm hands wrapped around her biceps and pushed her back up to a stand.
Yanking out her earbuds, she spun to find herself face to face with her insanely hot and rudely aloof neighbor, Max, Addy’s father. Shel felt her cheeks heat and she swallowed hard, doing her best to look cool and aloof herself. Damn it, why had she never learned to be cool? Spending a good portion of her life on the road with rock bands should have taught her, but no dice. She forced a smile and Max’s brow furrowed before he took a step back, his own smile slipping. Damn it, she’d smiled weird.
“Sorry,” Max said, gesturing to his six-year-old daughter, Addy. “She ran over here before I could stop her. Your dog settled right behind you to visit with her.”
Shel didn’t have to force a smile when she looked down at Addy. The sweet little girl was always welcome in her yard to visit with her lazy dog, a rescue she’d picked up a few years ago. Turns out not everyone wants a dog the size of a horse and not everyone questions how big that cute puppy will get before adopting it. It was because of Addy that Shel even knew Max’s name. She’d also learned
from the talkative little girl that Addy lived with Max and his mother, Maureen, that Max worked hard as a construction foreman, and that he gave the best hugs and used funny voices when he read to Addy. Shel had figured out all on her own that Max had piercing blue eyes, a body packed with muscle, and an ass that looked equally good in running shorts, jeans, or cargo pants.
She’d also figured out he had zero interest in saying hello to his neighbor, waving back when she waved at him, or even managing a smile. No man was hot enough to make up for chronic rudeness and she’d long since stopped trying to be polite or making sure to wear her favorite, butt-hugging jeans, when she suspected he’d be around.
Unfortunately, her body hadn’t gotten the message that attraction to him was a no go and that meant she was going to act weird. It was just a given. Talking to guys she lusted after was a skill she’d never managed to master. The guys she felt only sisterly love for, though, those guys she could talk to all day long. “Ozzy’s always happy to see Addy.” There. She’d managed to spit out an entire sentence without sounding like an idiot. Of course, she hadn’t made eye contact, but words were progress. She wasn’t going to give the jerk the satisfaction of knowing he made her uncomfortable, even if he did look damn good close up.
“Ozzy?” Max asked. Damn, he had a deliciously deep voice. “As in Ozzy and Harriet?”
She looked up and met his gaze, those blue eyes knocking her a bit off balance, but he was speaking her language, sort of, and she managed to recover. “Osbourne.”
Max gave her a blank look and her heart sank a bit.
“The metal singer. Black Sabbath. Crazy Train.”
Max stared, still nothing. Well, good. His knowing nothing about music just confirmed her decision to dislike him.
She sighed. “Bit the head off a bat.”
Finally, Max’s confusion cleared, though his frown didn’t lift. “You named your dog after a guy who bites the heads off bats?”
“I like his music,” Shel said, feeling defensive. She’d never personally met the guy, but she’d met plenty of other rock stars. They were an oft maligned and misunderstood breed. “And my Ozzy has a similar personality.”
Max took another step back. “He bites the heads off bats?”
Shel looked heavenward, her nerves finally wearing off. “No, he’s a bit lazy, but given to moments of almost manic activity and bizarre doings, like chewing through a dozen toilet paper rolls and . . .” She met Max’s gaze again and noticed his lips twitching, his eyes twinkling. “You’re messing with me.”
“Partly,” he said. “I’m not a big music fan. I really didn’t know who you were talking about until you got to the part about the bat and then you were so shocked by my ignorance, I couldn’t resist teasing.”
She swallowed back her own smile. The guy was not as funny or as cute as he thought he was. Not at all. She offered him her hand. “Shelley Tinsdale.”
He shook her hand. “Maxwell Mason. It’s nice to meet you Shelley Tinsdale.”
When he pulled his hand free of hers she saw his palm streaked black. She looked down at her own palm and cringed. She held up the offending hand. “Sorry, I got you dirty.”
He smiled. “I don’t mind a little dirt.” His gaze slipped just a bit down her body and her heart started up a mad tempo. Had he just flirted with her? Oh, my god, he’d actually—
Like a record scratching, she looked down at herself to see her raggedy Green Day tank top and jeans were covered in a fresh layer of dust and grease. “Right. Yeah. I’m not always this dirty. I shower every day and I usually do wear clothes that fit me. I was just fixing my bike and . . . Well, you know.” Damn it. She’d been doing so well. Okay, she’d been doing somewhat decently.
“I want to go for a ride on your bike,” Addy said, popping up.
“Oh, well . . .” Shel looked to Max. She had no idea what the rules were about six-year-olds and motorcycles.
“Maybe when you’re older, honey,” Max said. He took another step back and Shel sighed. This guy couldn’t get away from her fast enough. “We’ve taken up enough of your time. Thank you for letting her pet Ozzy.”
“Any time,” Shel said. “Ozzy adores the attention. Addy and . . . Well, you . . . Are welcome here any time. Well, any time I’m home, I mean. Don’t just break in to cuddle with Ozzy. Not that you would . . .” Why, oh, why did she have to be so weird?
Max smiled, one big hand on his daughter’s shoulder, and walked backwards for a few steps, before lifting his hand in a wave and turning to the house. Shel walked calmly back into her own house and managed to hold it together until the door shut behind her.
She gave herself a minute to lean against the door, then she asked her electronic assistant to turn up some loud, heavy music and then, finally, she screamed in utter frustration. She was thirty years old for goodness sake, would she ever learn to act like a normal human being?
Feeling a bit better, she lowered the volume on the music and walked to the bathroom without banging her head against any of the walls she passed. Really, she should get a medal for restraint. In the bathroom, she stripped naked and started the water running. She happened to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she scrubbed the grease from her hands. With a groan, she angled her face upwards, but there was no mistaking the streak of grease from her right ear across her nose and both cheekbones.
With a sigh, she dropped her head and focused on scrubbing. Max didn’t deserve her angst. He’d made no effort to get to know her, and he was definitely not her type. She didn’t need to be dating a guy with a kid, she didn’t need that kind of hassle. She drew on her inner rock star as she did her best to convince herself Max was a whole lot of trouble she didn’t need in her life.
Still, it would be nice if she could learn how to carry on a conversation with a guy she found attractive without embarrassing herself.
After her shower, she found herself dialing her best friend and the drummer in her little rock band. “I talked to him,” she said as soon as Lilah answered.
“Oooh, good for you. Were you wearing that red dress that pushes your tits up and makes you look like you have cleavage?”
“Nope. He kind of caught me by surprise. Besides, we decided I’m not interested in him, remember.”
“I’m putting you on speaker,” she said. “Nate is going to want to hear this.”
Shel rolled her eyes, but didn’t argue. Nate was Lilah’s husband and the lead guitarist in their band. If he didn’t hear the story from Shel, he’d hear it from Lilah and Lilah often got the details wrong. All she needed was Nate teasing her for the next three months about something that never happened. “Hey, Shel-ster, what’s up?”
“Hi, Nate. I was just telling Lilah that I talked to Max and—”
“Did you wear the dress? The red one? Did you bake cookies like you’d planned?”
Shel bit back a sigh. The last six guys she’d dated had each told her, in their own unique ways, that she wasn’t feminine enough. One complained that she’d worn ripped jeans on their date. Another complained about the tattoo of a vine she had wrapping around her arm from shoulder to wrist, said it was too manly for her delicate arm. Another had suggested she grow her pixie cut out and lighten the dark color, of course he’d actually worked as a stylist, so he may have had an ulterior motive. The point was that the message she’d been getting from those six guys, and from just about every media source on the planet, was that guys liked women who acted like society’s stereotype of women. And she could be girly, damn it. She liked girly things like . . . Um, well, she loved baking, mostly because she liked eating sweets. And wasn’t the very idea of defining anything girly sort of sexist in and of itself?
Anyway, she’d decided to put on a dress and offer Max cookies by way of introduction, which might be playing on a stereotype, but damn it, she needed to change her game, because what she’d been doing hadn’t been working and she was tired of being single. She was tired of ordering take-out for one and going t
o bed in an empty bed. She was really, really tired of going to bed alone. She wanted someone to come home to other than Ozzy and she wanted babies, fat, happy babies.
At least that had been the plan, before she’d decided he was a jerk. Since she’d decided she had no interest in dating him, the new plan had been to use him as practice for talking to attractive men, should she ever get the chance.
“He showed up unexpectedly while I was doing some basic maintenance on Lita.” Hell, yes, she’d named her motorcycle after Lita Ford.
Nate and Lilah both groaned. “At least tell me you said something clever and flirty,” Lilah said.
Shel snorted. “Have you met me?”
“Tell us everything,” Nate said. The man was the biggest gossip she’d ever met, but he also gave killer advice, especially concerning men.
So, she filled them both in on the entire conversation. Silence reigned when she’d finished. “Tell me the truth, Nate,” she said. “Did I completely and utterly fail at adulting?”
“Um . . . Were you wearing the Green Day shirt from Dookie, or the one from their American Idiot tour.”
She said nothing. She didn’t need to.
“Right,” he said. “You looked like a greasy derelict and you weren’t even wearing something that might have shown off body parts that could have made up for your lack of witty conversation.”
How to Lasso a Billionaire Page 25