Slightly Foxed

by Jane Lovering

  “Are you any good with goats?”

  “Um.”

  “So, that’s a ‘no’ then.” I hustled Katie to one side with my elbows. “It’s fine, Cal. I’ve spoken to Luke, he’s explained. It was something personal.”

  “Anyway. The brother in Boston? I’ve got the phone number, if you wanted to ring and introduce yourself.”

  “What a great idea.” Katie derailed the nearest elbow and slotted herself in beside me again.

  “Have you got something in your eye?” I asked her suspiciously.

  “No, I’m fluttering my eyelashes, can’t you tell?”

  “I don’t think Cal’s impressed by fluttering eyelashes, Katie.”

  “No, but I’m mightily impressed by anyone who can move my goat.”

  Katie’s appraising stare narrowed. “Is that some sort of code, Willow? Is he chatting you up in code? Because if he is, that’s really unfair. No one chats me up in code, not even Dan—not that he chats me up anymore. Doesn’t even chat much, if you want to know the truth. He sort of grunts and points. I think he learned it off the twins.”

  Cal and I shared a baffled shrug. “So, do you want to call him now? You can borrow my mobile.”

  “Well, not right this second. I mean, I’m at work and everything and it’ll be the middle of the night in Boston, won’t it? Tonight. I’ll do it tonight.”

  “Why are you putting it off?” He tipped his head on one side. “Are you worried about what he might say?”

  “No! I told you, Luke and I have sorted everything out. If I ring James and he tells Luke that I called, then it looks as if I’ve gone behind his back and don’t trust him.”

  “But you don’t, do you?” The words dropped into a clanging silence. I stared at Katie who didn’t even look ashamed of herself. “Come on, Willow. If you trusted him, he wouldn’t need to explain himself to you because the situations would never arise in the first place. I mean”—her voice became gentler—“you know I love you, Wills, but you can be a complete and utter zombo where men are concerned.”

  “Is that a real word?” Cal asked.

  “It is on Planet Katie,” I answered, a little bitterly. “Kate, you’re warping things again. Luke and I are fine. We…oh, sod the pair of you. Give me the number, Cal. I’ll call after lunch when it’s a civilised time in Boston. Katie can earwig all she likes to make sure I ask the right questions. There. Are you both happy now?”

  The two of them agreed that, yes, in this instance they were fairly satisfied with my reply, and Cal left the office, Katie watching his every move. When she noticed his limp, her eyebrows almost twanged.

  “Christ Jesus, he even manages to make that look sexy. Aw, do an old married woman a favour. Before you marry Luke, shag Cal just the once”—a libidinous look—“and tell me all about it.”

  “Katie! I will do no such thing. Anyway, Luke’s sexy too, isn’t he?”

  She stopped boiling over and switched down to simmer. “Yeah, he’s sexy, too. But it’s different with Luke. He’s macho sexy, all swagger and cock-first into a room. Your man there, you can tell he’s the kind who’ll make you wait, then lick you till you’re screaming.”

  A pause while we thought about this.

  “You really do need to get out more, don’t you?”

  “Tell me about it,” she sighed.

  ’Tis the season to get deadly…

  Still Waters

  © 2008 Kate Johnson

  It’s a week before Christmas. Sophie is out of work, out of love and out of her depth—literally. Stuck in Cornwall on the holiday from hell with her ex-boyfriend, her boyfriend’s ex, and two intimidating colleagues. If that’s not enough, Sophie’s got her hands full trying to prevent her best friend’s perfect engagement from blowing up in her face.

  When a corpse turns up in the local harbor it’s the perfect distraction…at least until someone tries to add Sophie to the body count.

  Tangled love, tangled lives, tangled clues. Now there’s a holiday menu Sophie can’t resist.

  Warning: This title contains bad language, bad behavior and bad puns. There are scenes of violence, gore, and unashamed sentimentality.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Still Waters:

  Here’s a piece of advice, direct from me to you: it’s never a good idea to go on holiday with your ex. Especially if you’re behind the wheel, or you have a habit of getting lost easily. Or he’s navigating.

  Or all of the above.

  The roads were hardly wide enough for a bicycle and so steep the accelerator was getting decidedly jealous of all the attention my foot was paying to the brake. The village seemed to be spelled differently on every sign we came across, and we frequently took the wrong turn because “Turn right towards Polzeath” can mean a lot of things when there are a million right turns on the road. All signposted Pol-bloody-zeath.

  Eventually I snapped and stopped the car, ramming the handbrake on so my right foot could have a bit of rest.

  “That’s it.” I turned to the back of the car. “Maria, will you navigate for me?”

  “Maria?” Luke said in tones of disgust. “She’s a girl.”

  “I’d quite forgotten.”

  Maria was already heading to the back door. “If it’s good enough for the SBS…”

  Luke was immovable. “Look, if you’d just do what I tell you—”

  “Since when did she ever do that?” asked the fourth occupant of the car, a big black man called Macbeth. He was covered in dog hairs from Norma Jean, the beautiful but incredibly stupid dog I’d been saddled with for the week. Norma’s father had been a retriever and her mother, apparently, a ball of cotton wool. She tended to leave a film of blonde hair over everyone and everything she went near.

  Maria was at the passenger door now and she’d opened it. She tapped her foot on the road and arched a perfect eyebrow at Luke. If I didn’t like her so much, I’d really hate her. She’s stunning to look at—all toned curves and glossy dark hair and big brown eyes and perfect clear skin. Cow.

  But she is so nice. And she’s a good navigator. And Luke, for want of a better expression, was getting right on my tits.

  Not that he’d been near them for months. Maybe that was the problem.

  “Look,” Maria said, “either you get in the back or you stand in the road and make your own way there.”

  “Or home,” I added helpfully.

  “Whose bloody idea was this sodding holiday anyway?” Luke fumed.

  “Do you want to be a part of the SO17 team or not?” Maria asked perkily.

  “Sometimes I wonder,” Luke replied, his tone dark.

  I said nothing.

  Luke glared at me and, with a final mutter of “for God’s sake,” he stomped out of the car and round to the back, slamming the door shut behind him.

  “Why’d we bring your stupid car anyway?” he asked bad-temperedly, glaring round the interior.

  I patted the steering wheel of my Land Rover Defender to comfort him. “It’s okay, Ted. Ignore him.”

  In the back, Norma Jean made a muffled noise somewhere between a bark and a howl.

  “You tell him, Norma.”

  Port Trevan was one of those little Cornish villages that would be impossible to modernise completely. Ted, my lovely, battered old friend, could hardly get down some of the streets, which were narrow and so steep I really thought we’d just plunge straight into the sea if the brakes failed. Which they never would. Ted might look like he’s in bad shape, but that’s just surface scarring. He’s a trooper.

  “It’s down here.” Maria pointed, looking almost as excited as Norma Jean, who was jumping around in the back of the car while Luke and Macbeth tried to hold onto her.

  “How does she know?” Maria asked, twisting round to look at Norma Jean, all fluffy and blonde and heartbreakingly pretty.

  “Instinct. She always knows when we’re getting to the end of a journey.”

  “One of those animal things,” Macbeth said, catching
Norma’s collar and trying to get her to lie down, or at least sit. “Bitches always know.”

  “So how far are we, Sophie?” Luke asked, and if the road hadn’t been so tricky, I’d have reached back and hit him.

  Eventually we found the cottage, hiding away on a little alleyway that was, according to the sign, Rose Street.

  “That’s a street?” I said in disbelief, staring at the gap between two buildings that were about six feet apart.

  “Narrowest in Britain,” Maria said with some pride. “The locals call it Squeeze-ee-belly Alley.”

  “No kidding.”

  I parked the car at the entrance to the alley, and we unloaded as quickly as possible so I could remove Ted to the harbour just down the road, where he would be less of an obstruction.

  When I came back and walked in through the stable door, I found a little hallway with a bedroom off to one side, and stairs leading straight up. I followed the stairs past a pretty, white bathroom to a large living room with a small, open kitchen. Maria was there, opening cupboards, checking the fridge.

  “You’re downstairs,” she said.

  “Don’t I get a choice?”

  “Well, no.” She stood up and smiled. “Because it’s my aunt’s house I get first choice, right?”

  “Right,” I said, “but there are—”

  And then I realised, and I smiled too. There were two doubles, one of which Maria had obviously earmarked for her own. The other held twin beds. And since I wasn’t likely to share with either Macbeth or Luke, and they wouldn’t sleep in the double, that meant they got the singles. And I got the double.

  “Excellent,” I said.

  “I put your case in there. Where should we put the dog basket?”

  “Kitchen. She hates being out on her own.”

  Norma Jean was scrambling up the steep stairs that led off from the living room, and I followed her. Up here were the other two rooms: Maria’s large, pretty double and the boys’ twin, which already looked crowded and it only held Macbeth.

  “Floral duvets, huh?” I said.

  “You don’t want to swap?”

  I shook my head rapidly. “Can you honestly say you think it’s a good idea for me and Luke to share a room?”

  He looked me straight in the eye.

  “Yes,” he said, “and you know it.”

  First impressions can be dead wrong.

  Close Quarters

  © 2008 Denise A. Agnew

  Hot Zone Book 4

  Neena Williamson is positive the man who just walked into her favorite café is all wrong for the local charity’s new hot male calendar. For starters, he’s wearing the most butt-ugly Hawaiian shirt on the face of the earth. He doesn’t fit anyone’s image of a smokin’ hardbody, even if her friend insists he’s perfect for Mr. December.

  When a gunman robs the café, Mr. December proves that underneath his bad taste in clothes, he knows how to bring it.

  Clarksville, Wyoming is the perfect place for Mitch Gilroy to hide in plain sight. He enjoys his low-key handyman job, and no one pries into his former life. But in an instant, Mitch is forced to remember everything he’s tried so hard to forget.

  Thrown together by sudden violence, Neena and Mitch quickly discover how tangled their emotions can become. And the only way to banish the monsters that haunt them is to do the one thing they fear most. Become vulnerable—to each other.

  Warning: This title contains a hot nekkid calendar boy shoot, heroic rescues, explicit, multiple orgasmic sex, and graphic language.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Close Quarters:

  She undid the first button of her utilitarian, short-sleeved white blouse. She slipped a hand through her hair. It had started to slide from the artfully arranged bundle at the back of her head. She removed the brown clip from her hair and her wavy strands fell about her shoulders. She felt his stare and dared look up. Undeniable male appreciation sparked in those mysterious eyes, smoldering with sexual interest. Hunger. Shocked, she allowed her mouth to drop open, her gaze locked with his as an unexpected response tumbled and built within. She didn’t expect him to be interested, number one. Number two, the tight heat coiling in her stomach, the way her nipples beaded against her bra…oh, boy. Not what she expected either. Now was so not the time to get aroused.

  Neena hastened to speak, to say anything to block her unwanted and unexpected response. “And I have to thank you. You kept that creep from taking me with him.”

  “You’re welcome.” He sighed, the sound long and weary. “I vowed I wouldn’t be around this shit anymore and now here it is.”

  “What shit?”

  He shook his head. “Never mind. It’s a long story.”

  “Come on, you can’t leave me hanging.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not a criminal.”

  “I know.”

  “How could you know?”

  “I…I just know.”

  “Humph.”

  “Do you want me to think you’re a criminal?”

  “Hell, no. Look, I don’t like violence.”

  “Who does?”

  “Believe me, there are people who eat it like candy.”

  “You mean like in books and movies?”

  “No. That doesn’t bother me. It’s not real.”

  Disturbed on a fundamental level, she backed off. Maybe, for once, her instincts were wrong. Maybe he lied and he did like violence. And she was caught in here with him.

  No. Her instincts had rarely proved her incorrect. After another long pause assailed them, she said, “If we’re going to stay here forever, I guess we should make conversation.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, first, we don’t know each other’s names.” She held out her hand. “I’m Neena Williamson.”

  He clasped her hand in his warm, large grip. His eyes held genuine curiosity and a probing intensity that stirred unidentified insecurities inside her. “Pleased to meet you Neena. I’m Mitch Gilroy.”

  Mitch. Well, the name certainly fit. Tall. Strong. She hadn’t expected the name or the strength. Even in high heels, her five-foot-eight didn’t top his height—he was easily six- foot-three. When he’d held her all along his body, she’d felt his potential, a tensile strength. Another point shifted within as Neena allowed her mind to open. Whether she wanted to admit it or now, she found Handyman attractive.

  Mitch wiped his forearm over his forehead. “It’s hot in here.”

  She wanted to unfasten one more button, but thought the better of it. “That’s for certain.”

  “Since we’re stuck here, tell me this…what brings you to the coffee shop?”

  “Stress. I work in the mayor’s office. I’m his executive assistant. Since he’s up for reelection soon, things have gotten a little…hairy.”

  He nodded, his gaze assessing once more. “I can understand why. He’s not too popular these days.”

  She couldn’t say too much, though part of her wanted to express, with perfect vehemence, how much she disliked the mayor. “I’m looking for a lower stress job.”

  “Good idea.” He lowered his legs and sprawled them in perfect male abandon. “Most people worry too much.”

  “Including you?”

  He grunted. “Me? Never.”

  “Never?” She was incredulous. “Everyone has worries. It’s un-American not to worry.”

  He shrugged. “With the exception of tonight, I’ve had low stress for almost two years.”

  “And before that you had a lot of stress?”

  “Yep. More than a lifetime worth.”

  “You live out in Slanta Forest. That’s a beautiful and tranquil place. I wouldn’t mind living there. It’s so lush and the high altitude is fresh. I really like it.”

  “Yeah, how did you know I live there?” Suspicion laced his voice, and when she took a chance and looked into his eyes, she saw it there as well.

  “I’ve lived in Clarksville almost ten years. I hear things. Don’t worry. I’m not some so
rt of mad stalker.”

  One of his brows quirked. “Uh-huh. So you didn’t know my name, but you knew where I lived?”

  She shifted on the hard floor, none too comfortable physically or mentally. “My friend Kat who was sitting with me in the booth told me. She’s in real estate.”

  He leaned his head back against the wall again, and a strand of almost black hair fell over his forehead. “What else did she tell you about me?”

  “What makes you think she told me anything else?”

  His gaze hardened, all sign of the temperate side lost. He looked unrelenting. A granite stonework determined to learn answers. “Why were you talking about me in the first place?”

  She swallowed hard, an odd embarrassment making her hesitate. “Because she said you might make a good model for the charity calendar I’m doing.”

  Incredulity marched over his face. “What?”

  “You know…I mentioned that I’d walked up to Jacob and introduced myself and told him about the charity calendar and asked if he’d like to be in it.”

  “I remember.”

  The lie rushed out so fast Neena didn’t have time to formulate a background for her fib. “I told Kat you wouldn’t be interested.”

  He smirked, then big amusement curved his lips and made him something she hadn’t expected yet again…devilishly handsome. His eyes sparked with humor, his nose was a patrician haughtiness, his mouth carved to perfection. Yet his jaw, cut raw and tough, shattered any ideas that he might qualify as a pretty boy.

  “What makes you think I wouldn’t be interested?”

  From the twinkle in his eyes, Neena couldn’t tell if Mitch was teasing her.

  She glanced at his supremely baggy shirt and his pants and fumbled for a reasonable answer. “Well…the men we pick have to have a certain look.”

  He slowly rose to his feet and stared down at her. “Pretty boys?”

  “Most women are attracted to the tough, rugged types on these calendars. You know, cops, firefighters, construction workers—”