Dear Reader,
Welcome to another fun-filled month of Duets.
Duets #27
Award-winning author Kristin Gabriel is back with Bachelor By Design, book 2 in the delightful CAFÉ ROMEO trilogy, about a coffee shop that doubles as a dating service. What better place to find both lattes and love! And popular Superromance author Kay David joins the Duets lineup with the sizzling Too Hot for Comfort. Something is definitely cookin’ in Comfort, Texas, between Sally and Jake—and it isn’t steak!
Duets #28
Talented Jill Shalvis delivers her version of MAKEOVER MADNESS. New and…Improved? questions whether life is any better for the heroine when she goes from geek to goddess—and has to fight off men day and night! New author Jennifer LaBrecque serves up a delicious hero in Andrew in Excess. Andrew Winthrop is gorgeous, filthy rich—and in need of a temporary wife. Kat Devereaux knows just the woman—herself! But can these two make it down the aisle?
Be sure to pick up both Duets volumes this month!
Birgit Davis-Todd
Senior Editor, Harlequin Duets
Harlequin Books
225 Duncan Mill Rd.
Don Mills, Ontario
M3B 3K9 Canada
New and…Improved? & Andrew in Excess
JILL SHALVIS
JENNIFER LABRECQUE
Table of Contents
New and…Improved: Jill Shalvis
Andrew in Excess: Jennifer LaBrecque
JILL SHALVIS
New and…Improved
“Are you going to look this way every day?”
Kent swiped a hand over his face and frowned. “This isn’t real. You do not suddenly look this…hot.”
Becca’s smile widened and he pointed. “Stop that, stop that right now.”
“I’m just looking at you.”
“Yeah, like you want to eat me for breakfast. Now, knock it off, Becca,” he said. “Be good. Speaking of which, I suppose you’re planning yet another adventure?”
She laughed. “Of course.”
“You’re not going to a club, right? Because men are slime, trust me on this.”
“All men?”
“Most definitely all men.”
She actually seemed intrigued by that, but before they could discuss it, Dennis poked his head in and grinned at her. “Pick you up at eight. Wear your dancing shoes.”
The door closed and Kent repeated, “Slime. Complete slime.”
Dear Reader,
It has always been my fantasy to…no, not that! To get totally made over. You know, be turned into Cinderella. But permanently, since I can’t seem to tell time and would never make it home by midnight.
Anyway, my chemist heroine gets this chance when she wins a makeover. Only problem, she’s never had such a fantasy. In fact, she’s a bit of a tomboy, so when all her workmates are now staring at her dazed by lust, it’s a bit baffling. But then, her boss is doing it, too, and he is her fantasy, so suddenly looking like a sex kitten has its appeal.
But is it just lust? Of course not, but don’t tell them yet—let’s let them figure it out by themselves. After all, they are brilliant chemists—but love isn’t a science, is it?
I hope you get a kick out of Becca and Kent’s wild ride into head-over-heels love. Happy reading!
Jill Shalvis
Books by Jill Shalvis
HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION
742—WHO’S THE BOSS?
771—THE BACHELOR’S BED
SILHOUETTE INTIMATE MOMENTS
887—HIDING OUT AT THE CIRCLE K
905—LONG-LOST MOM
941—THE RANCHER’S SURRENDER
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
1
IT WAS JUST ANOTHER DAY in the life of Rebecca Anne Lewis. Work, work, work.
As a chemist for Sierra Scientific Laboratory, Becca did little else. It was in her blood. All her life she’d been a fine, responsible, steady human being. A rock.
And wasn’t that just the problem? Rocks were solid, but boring.
Last month she’d turned the big three-oh. Thirty. And while her life was fine, her condo was fine, her job was fine, she wanted to scream from all the humdrum fineness.
As it had more and more, her secret fantasy came to her, the one where she threw all caution out the window. Where she became mysteriously beautiful and bold, different and exciting.
She definitely wouldn’t have to struggle to remember if she’d had sex in the last decade.
The lab door opened, and steady, confident footsteps headed down the hall toward her. For a moment, Becca closed her eyes and pretended those footsteps belonged to a tall, dark, gorgeous man who was about to make her every fantasy come true. He’d take one look at her and reach out with a powerful swipe of his long, strong arm, sweeping the counter clear. He’d lift her up, then slide his hands down her hips to her thighs, which he’d open and slip between, still watching her with those smoldering eyes. His tennis shoes squeaked and—
Wait a minute.
Her dream man didn’t wear squeaky tennis shoes. Becca sighed as reality intruded on the only sex life she had at the moment—the one in her thoughts.
The footsteps still came. Not her mystery man, but her boss Kent Wright. “A change,” she muttered, fanning herself. “I definitely need a serious change.”
“What? You’re going through the change?” Kent stood in the doorway, looking tall, dark and annoyingly amused.
“Not exactly.”
“You sure? I mean, you are officially old now.” He came toward her, shoulders straight, stride long-legged and confident. Not cocky or full of ego, just incredibly comfortable in his own skin. Laughter twinkled in his dark eyes. “Practically over the hill,” he added.
“Funny.” Jeez, a girl turned thirty and everyone felt free to remind her of it daily. Just yesterday the staff secretary had brought her black roses. “And not that it’s any of your business, but I meant change as in adventure. Not the change of life.”
“Adventure.” He glanced at her speculatively, and she could hardly blame him. She was the epitome of nerdness. In school she’d been voted mostly likely to have her picture used in the dictionary to describe the word dork. College hadn’t been much better, but at least then, with all her various science classes, she’d been surrounded by people more like herself.
“What kind of adventure?” he wondered. “As in blowing up your work station?”
He spoke mildly, with good humor in his deep voice, but Becca blushed all the same at the reminder of how she’d lost her last chemist position. She had an incredible amount of book smarts, always had. But what she more than made up for in IQ, she seemed to lack in good, old common sense. It had gotten her into trouble more times than she liked to admit.
And had lost her more jobs than she cared to think about.
Thankfully she’d had a really good interview with Kent, and he appeared to believe in her. But she didn’t want to press her luck. Outlining her new plan for an exciting personal life might scare him off. Actually, it would scare off anyone that knew her. “And that particular incident with the explosion didn’t count,” she said defensively. “I didn’t mean that kind of adventure.”
“Ah.” He nodded sagely. “So this time you’re going to do it on purpose.”
“Yes. No!” But she laughed at herself because what else could she do? “This has nothing to do with work. I’m talking about my personal life.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s…fine.” She rolled her eyes. “But it’s so boring I can’t think of a thing to say about it. That’s going to change.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Of course not. I’m not your responsibility.”
Thankfully, he let that go. “Saw your report on the TD virus,” he said. “Fine job.”
Fine. There was that word again, and though she tried to not take it personally, she wasn’t entirely successful. “Could you think of another adverb?”
“But fine is the one that fits.”
“I hate that word.”
“Because…?”
“Because it’s as boring as the rest of my life is!”
He blinked slowly. “Which brings us back to this change thing, right?”
“Yes.” She glared at him. “So if you don’t mind, please don’t tell me my work is fine.”
Another man might have looked at her perplexed, or laughed, but Kent merely absorbed her request. Then in a deceptively serious voice said, “I’ll put out a memo. All employees take note, use the words ‘fine’ and ‘Becca’ in the same sentence at your own risk.”
Oh, as if he could understand. He had dark hair, even darker eyes and a lethal smile when he used it. He was tall, lanky but muscled, and stunningly gorgeous in a dangerous sort of way that, according to his staff who were all too happy to talk about him when he wasn’t within hearing range, never failed to garner him female companionship when he chose.
And yet, despite looking like a Greek god, he didn’t choose often. She might have only been at Sierra a short time, but one thing she’d already learned through the watercooler gossip train was that he liked being alone, liked not having anyone to account to, and most of all, liked keeping his feelings and thoughts to himself. It gave him an edge that made him all the more appealing to the opposite sex.
But it wasn’t his appeal that bothered Becca. It was her own lack of appeal.
With one finger, Kent reached out and stroked the spot between her eyes that always wrinkled when she concentrated or frowned. She was frowning now. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you your face could freeze in that position?”
They’d never touched before.
It was only a finger, and yet the strangest thing happened. A bolt of awareness shot through her. It was so strong as to be almost painful. Her glasses fogged. Even her tongue got into the action, tying itself into knots.
And Becca rendered herself completely stupid.
“That was some strong static electricity,” Kent said, staring, perplexed, at his finger.
“Was that what that was?”
“Definitely.” But now he frowned too, and stepped back, slipping his hands in the pockets of his white lab coat. “Couldn’t be anything more.”
“Absolutely not.” After all, Kent had an aversion to “more,” to anything that tethered his precious freedom.
What she didn’t know was why, but she had other things to think about. Such as her decision to make a major change in her life-style. Really, it was overdue.
She’d spent her entire childhood as a mousy, chunky, sharply intelligent child, playing in the shadow of a vibrant, gorgeous, fun-loving sister.
She’d spent her teens pretending she loved to study more than getting noticed by boys.
Little had changed there, she was afraid.
As an adult, she spent most of her time wearing a white chemist coat, thick glasses, her hair stuffed into a backward baseball cap, peering into a microscope trying to find a cure for the common cold. When she wasn’t at work, she was at school learning more, still pretending it was more fun to work than have a social life.
That’s who she was. Plain-Jane, total fashion nightmare, nose-in-a-technical-book, Becca.
And yet…she had the secret heart of a rebel, she just knew it. So she turned away from Kent, buttoned up her lab coat, sat at her stool and thought, someday I’m going to figure out how to knock a man’s socks off.
“I’m sorry.” Innocently, he looked at her with those deep, unfathomable eyes, which should have been her first hint—he’d probably never been innocent. “Did you say something?”
“No.”
“Yes, you did. Something about my socks, which is very unusual, since I’ve noticed on Monday mornings you’re all work and no play. So there must be something…” His fingers swept aside his white lab coat, and he pulled at the soft, faded denim encasing his powerful, long legs. Two white athletic socks were revealed, tucked into white running shoes with frayed laces. “Hmm. They look fine to me.” He studied them seriously and rotated his ankles. “They actually match today, which is new.”
“They have a pink tinge to them,” she said, as if she didn’t care that even his calves were perfect. “You ought to try bleach.”
“Yeah, that’s what happens when they get washed with red lace panties.”
Her eyes went wide as she jerked her gaze back to his. “You’re kidding.”
“Maybe.” He let out another of those killer smiles. “Maybe not.”
“Humph.” She crossed her arms and turned away, unreasonably annoyed with him.
“You could be happy for me.”
“Might be happier,” she muttered, reaching for her notes. “If I was getting some too.”
“To get some, Becca, you actually have to date.” With wry amusement, he leaned back against the counter as she fussed at her station, the picture of rough and ready trouble.
“How do you know I’m not?”
“Well, you told Cookie, who told Tami, who told—”
“Ah.” She ground her teeth. “The gossip mill.”
He smiled, which only magnified the mischief dancing in his eyes. But there was something about discussing her nonexistent sex life that really got her going, and it was only slightly mollifying to know he actually thought she was rejecting date requests, instead of not receiving any.
“Of course you’d have to break away from work long enough to have a good time,” he added conversationally, reaching around her to flip on a second light over her work station.
He smelled good, she noted reluctantly. Not like cologne, but more an outdoorsy, male sort of smell that made her yearn. And that annoyed her all to heck, too.
“I’d ask you what you did this weekend but I could probably guess.” He smiled. “You worked on school stuff, and for some extra excitement, you came in here to put in a little time on your latest project.”
Was that really what everyone thought? That she was all work? No play?
That it was true didn’t help. “How do you know?”
He waggled a daring brow, every single hard-muscled inch of him oozing sin. “Because you have that not-relaxed, still-tired-even-though-I-just-had-a-weekend look.”
A quick glance in the small mirror over one of three sinks confirmed the painful truth. It was there for the entire world to see. Pale skin, paler green eyes rimmed with fatigue, the hair beneath her baseball cap a dull, nondescript brown.
Who had time to worry about hair? The glasses she wore hid most of her face, which was fine since she didn’t wear an ounce of makeup. Not that she didn’t like makeup, she thought defensively, it was just that when she applied it she had the tendency to resemble Frankenstein’s bride.
Her body was blah, not curvy, not lean. Just average. And totally hidden under baggy jeans, T-shirt, sweatshirt and lab coat.
But that was because she didn’t like to worry about what to wear in the mornings. Thankfully S.S.L. provided the oh-so-bulky lab coats, so really, it hardly mattered how she dressed.
Bottom line though—she wasn’t great date material. Not even average date material.
“Another frown.” He sounded surprised and wary, too, as if he knew he was the cause, but didn’t quite know what to do about it.
“Maybe you should work,” he said with genuine concern. “That always seems to cheer you up.”
“Oh yeah, there’s the answer, more work.”
He blinked at her reaction and she felt a spear of guilt. “I’m sorry. I guess I’ve got the Monday blues.”
“No, that’s not it,” he said slowly, cautiously. “You’re different today.”
Yes, she was different. At least, she wanted to be. “Well, to tell you the truth…”
“Uh-oh. You want a raise already.”
“This isn’t about work!”
“Okay.” He leaned back and crossed his ankles, looking totally at ease, while her hopes and dreams gnawed at her. “Shoot.”
But the phone rang, and while Kent studied her thoughtfully, she answered it. “Sierra Labs.”
“Becca!”
Summer, her sister, had a carefree, happy, infectious voice that instantly made people smile. Becca resisted.
“Hey, you there?” Summer asked. “What’s the matter?”
Becca broke eye contact with Kent and shoved her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose. “I haven’t said a word. How do you know something’s the matter?”
“I just know. Work or school?”
“Life,” Becca said without thinking, then wished the words back.
“Well you work too hard. You never give yourself a break, much less a good look in the mirror. But that’s why I’m calling, I have just the thing to fix that.”
“You always have ‘just the thing’,” Becca said. “And the last time I fell for that, I ended up with green hair.”
Kent raised his eyebrows.
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