After
Office Hours
is coming Feb 12, starting with Desire Actually, Book 1! I’m
announcing a brand new Jennifer Skully series! As you all know, I love office
romance, probably because I worked in an office for over 20 years. I love all
that juicy office gossip!
I’ve
got the first three covers for you to preview. Thanks to the fabulous Rae
Monet!
Up
first is Desire Actually. The idea came to me when a friend, Lisa
Salvary, casually mentioned that it would be fun to read a book where the man
is less experienced than the woman! And poof, the whole story blossomed in my
mind. That’s how it works with writers, one little snippet, from a friend, an
overhead conversation, something on the news, whatever, and away we go! I loved
writing Grady and Jordana’s story. They made me laugh, and they made cry a bit,
too. They’re journey was also inspired by a trip I took to Crater Lake and the
Lava Beds National Monument. A very pivotal scene came to me as my husband and
I were crawling through lava caves. I won’t say anymore, you’ll have to read to
find out! But I will tell you how fabulous those caves were, so visit if you
ever get a chance. But be sure to take hiking boots, a flashlight, a helmet,
long-sleeved shirt, and long pants. Those caves can get a little hairy!
Here’s
a blurb about Grady and Jordana’s story in Desire Actually. And I have to thank
Lisa Salvary again for the fabulous title!
What does a red-blooded,
All-American male do when his wife asks for a divorce—by email, no
less—claiming he's too vanilla in the bedroom?
He gets a sexy tutor for
after-office-hours sessions, of course.
Enter Jordana Davis, a work
colleague who offers to share the mysterious secrets of what women really
want—Desire, Actually. Grady Masterson is more than willing to listen to every
seductive suggestion.
He aces sexting and phone sex as
the sparks start to fly between them. Then Jordana imagines that Grady could be
the one she hadn't been looking for. If only he wasn't taking lessons from her
to win back his wife.
How far would you go to win the one
you love?
Desire
Actually
After Office Hours,
Book 1
©
2016 Jennifer Skully
Chapter One
Grady Masterson stared at the email
on his monitor. After eight at night, the office was as silent as a stadium
once the fans of a losing team had all gone home. Empty and let down. The quiet
gave him time to stare at the email longer than he might have if it had arrived
in the middle of the day.
He simply couldn’t understand it.
He was forty-two years old, a
college graduate and Vice President of Business Development for a Silicon
Valley start-up that had the potential to make billions. He occupied a corner
office on the second floor, with a window and a wood desk instead of plastic
cubicle furniture. He owned his own home and came from a large San Francisco
Bay Area family who’d never been scandalized by divorce in the ranks—of course,
two of his brothers hadn’t married yet. He paid his taxes without fudging a
single deduction, and he wasn’t stupid. At least he’d never thought so until
now, when he simply could not comprehend what the email was telling him.
Dear Grady, she’d written. I’m divorcing you. We’re not compatible
anymore. Since we don’t have kids to worry about, it should be a simple matter.
I’ll have my lawyer call yours. She’d signed it as Your Wife.
Your wife. As if he was too
stupid to recognize the email address. They’d been married fifteen years.
Career-oriented, they’d never had children. Right from the beginning, when they
were in college, Darlene had told him she wasn’t the mothering type. He didn’t
mind, though his mother had never truly come to terms with the fact that she
wouldn’t get grandchildren from her first born. He and Darlene had a good
marriage. They didn’t fight, not about money, not about sex, not even about
religion or politics or in-laws.
Then suddenly, without a single
warning shot, they weren’t compatible and she wanted a divorce.
It defied explanation—or even
logic. He understood each individual word. He grasped the overall meaning. What
he couldn’t fathom was the context, the why.
Swiveling his desk chair, he stared
out his window. It wasn’t quite dark yet, the late summer sun still streaking
the western horizon with the last of the day’s rays.
He was more angry than hurt, though
he was sure the hurt would come later, after he’d processed the whole thing.
Had she been distant lately? Busy
at work, sure, since Darlene was an analyst at a brokerage house. She was
always distant when the market was down, which it had been for the last few
months. Maybe he’d been distant, too, without even realizing it. A start-up
created a huge amount of work and stress, but he’d made time for her. He’d
factored that in when he accepted the job eighteen months ago. He usually
didn’t arrive home until after seven o’clock, or even later. Neither did
Darlene. They were happy workaholics. They shared a good meal, usually take-out
from one of the nicer restaurants along University Avenue in Palo Alto. They
enjoyed a glass of wine together—a new vintage they’d found during a Sunday
trip up to Napa in the spring—and tuned into an interesting show on PBS. Or a
British mystery. Or… it hadn’t really mattered because they both went through
email in front of the TV.
He couldn’t detect the chink in
their marriage. They’d seemed comfortable and well-matched. Maybe they were a
little routine, but he was satisfied with that.
The email had left him totally,
freaking clueless.
And suddenly he was pissed as hell.
It wasn’t mere anger. Emotion chewed up his gut like something bad he’d eaten
for dinner. It threatened to spew up and out, burning his throat with acid.
He clicked his mouse to force-close
his computer. He was done staring at his inbox.
What kind of woman divorces her
husband over email? Not the woman he thought he knew, not the woman he’d loved.
Love. The word sent him over
the edge, and he grabbed his cell phone off the desk. Jabbing in the pin number
to unlock it, he found her name in his favorites and stabbed the icon of her
smiling face.
It rang so long he thought she’d
let him go to voicemail. Until she said, “Hello.” Politely. As if she hadn’t
even looked at the caller ID.
“What the hell is going on, Darlene?”
The sharpness of his voice sliced holes in the quiet office.
“Grady.” She paused long enough to
communicate her annoyance. “I really don’t think we should discuss it over the
phone.”
“Right. So you can divorce me by
email, but we’re not allowed to actually talk about it.” His fist was so tight
on the phone that his knuckles cracked.
“I knew you’d be like this. That’s
why I sent the email.” Because she didn’t want to listen. He’d heard the
subtext in her tone.
“You can’t just make up your mind
without even talking about it.” He felt his back teeth grinding as he closed
his mouth on the words. “Most people would at least try a little counseling. We
don’t even have any problems.”
“That’s why we can’t do counseling,
Grady. Because you won’t admit the truth. We’ve been off for months. Years, in
fact. We’re little more than roommates. But you’re so complacent with the
status quo that you don’t even notice.”
Complacent?
He rose and began pacing the office because he couldn’t sit still as he
listened to her. “Right. We’re roommates who have sex once a week. Like
clockwork.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.
It’s like clockwork. Routine. Complacent.”
Her voice hissed on the word, like a snake slithering into his comfortable, complacent world beneath a rock.
Pulling the phone away from his
ear, he stared at her icon a moment. Her snide voice didn’t match the smile. It
was like she was some other woman. “So this is all about sex?”
“It’s not all about sex. But
I could use a little more variety in the bedroom. It doesn’t always have to be
Saturday night. It doesn’t always have to be step one, step two, step three,
we’re done. We could be spontaneous. It’s all too vanilla.”
“So now I’m vanilla, too?” Where did she even come up with that
word? “All right, fine. I’ll come home and we’ll have sex right now. We’ll do
step three, then step two and step one.” He didn’t even know what the steps
were. Their love life wasn’t clockwork. He only chose Saturday because on
Friday they were both tired from a long workweek and Sunday night they had to
get up early the following morning. And he mixed things up. She’d stopped
wanting to kiss, jumping right into things, asking him to put his mouth on
other parts of her body instead of on her lips. He’d happily obliged. More than
happily for both of them.
She gave a long-suffering sigh,
like the mother of a teenager who’d told him to clean up his room for the
millionth time. “You really don’t get it. When I try to explain what a woman
wants, you just don’t listen.”
“I’m listening now. Tell me what a
woman wants.”
“It’s too late.” She snapped out
each syllable.
He had to be the calm one. They’d
never work things out if they were sniping. “We’ve been married for fifteen
years. We should at least talk face-to-face before we bring in the lawyers. I’m
coming home now.”
“I’m not at home.”
“You’ve already moved out?” This
time his teeth ground so hard, he thought he heard one of them chip.
“I’ve got a hotel room.”
It was too freaking weird. “Just
like that?”
“I told you’ve I’ve been thinking
about it.”
The idiot lightbulb over his head
finally flashed on. “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Which
translated to: Yes, there is.
“How long has it been going on,
Darlene?”
“I told you there isn’t anyone
else.” But the softness of a lie had slipped into her tone.
“Tell me.”
“I am telling you.”
“Someone from work?”
“No.”
“A client?”
“Of course not.”
“Then who?”
“I told you there isn’t anyone.”
But he knew her. He might not have
paid enough attention over the past few months, he might be complacent, but with his eyes suddenly
wide open—actually, it was his ears—he recalled the subtle differences, clothes
ever so slightly sexier, the loss of five pounds, a new tint in her hair.
“I assume he’s not vanilla in the
bedroom like I supposedly am.” His voice snapped like a rubber band.
“Grady, I’m not—”
He knifed through the lie. “You
are. But you should know there’s not going to be a divorce until we talk.
Honestly and openly. Call when you’re ready.”
He didn’t hack at the phone. He
simply ended the call with a push of his finger. Then he tossed his cell phone
on the desk with a thunk.
She was having an affair. He’d
claimed he wasn’t a stupid man. But he was. He’d missed all the signs. There’d
been nights she hadn’t come home until ten, but he’d had those late nights
himself, for business. Over the last
few months, the Saturday night intimacy had been at his initiation, and now he
wondered if she’d faked her climaxes, too.
He swore, slapped his hand on the
back of his chair and rammed it into the desk. Then he grabbed his phone,
shoving it into his suit pocket.
They needed to talk. He couldn’t
leave this hanging. But he didn’t even know where she was.
He slammed his office door on the
way out. It felt damn good. He relished the sensation as he turned, taking two
long strides toward the door
And smacked into a wall that
shouldn’t have been there. A supple, yielding wall that crumpled to the carpet
with a woomph of breath and a soft
shriek.
* * * * *
Jordana Davis fell on her butt.
“Sorry. Are you okay?” Grady
Masterson stretched out a hand to her. With his executive-short dark hair and
sexy five o’clock shadow—make that eight o’clock—the guy was totally hot. She’d
always thought so. But he looked especially good from her vantage point down on
the carpet. She adored big, tall men, and Grady was at least six-two compared
to her five foot seven.
“I’m fine. It was my fault.” She
let him pull her up, her fingers engulfed by his warm, oversize hand. It was
most definitely her fault. If she hadn’t been eavesdropping on his entire phone
conversation, she would have left before he figured out he wasn’t alone.
His cheeks turned ruddy, as if he
suddenly realized that she’d probably heard everything, right down to the fact
that his wife thought he was vanilla in bed.
A wave of heat blushed her face. He
had to be wondering why she was here so late. She jerked a thumb over her
shoulder, pointing at her computer. “I was polishing Rhonda’s Power Point
presentation.” The excuse was inane. It didn’t explain why she’d kept herself
hidden. “For the quarterly company meeting tomorrow,” she added, which didn’t
make anything better.
She was executive assistant to the
Human Resources VP, whose office was straight across from Grady’s. A cubicle
wall separated her desk area from Ivy, Grady’s assistant. They had identical
cubicles, each with a short reception desk in front, desk tops all around,
hanging file cabinets, and an opening that faced directly at their respective
VP’s office. Beyond that was a warren of cubicles housing the Accounting
department and a row of offices along the opposite wall while the copy room and
conference room flanked the entrance to this upper quadrant of the building.
Grady blinked with eyelashes that
were long and dark. “Sorry for startling you when I slammed the door.”
She waved away his apology,
giggling like a silly schoolgirl. If she hadn’t jumped up, he probably would
have rushed through like a mini tornado without ever seeing her and saving them
both from the embarrassment.
But he’d ended the call, and she’d
heard him swear. She’d thought she could slip away without being noticed. What
an idiot.
So, was it best to acknowledge what
she’d heard or pretend she’d been engrossed in Rhonda’s presentation? That
might be a lie too hard to swallow.
He shifted feet. “I didn’t hear you
out here on your computer.”
She had a very quiet keyboard. “I
should have been louder.”
His dark coffee eyes seemed to glow
with tiny slashes of green. Instead of dropping his gaze, he looked at her
directly. She counted the long, long seconds of silence. “You heard it all,
didn’t you.” His voice didn’t rise into a question but remained flat.
It was less embarrassing to simply
nod her answer. She’d heard every dirty detail of his side of the conversation.
It wasn’t hard to deduce that his wife had sent him a Dear Grady email because he was boring in bed and she was having an
affair. Or maybe she was having an affair because he was boring in bed. Or… his
wife made her affair his fault by saying he was a bad lover.
His jaw flexed, and he breathed
deeply enough to flare his nostrils. She’d never seen Grady Masterson angry. He
was big, he was toned—oh yeah, he was toned—but he wasn’t a pushy loudmouth.
Tonight was the first time she’d heard him raise his voice, his speech clipped
and harsh.
“So tell me,” he said, his gaze
intense enough to create a wash of heat deep inside her. “What do women really
want?”
She thought about tossing her purse
strap over her shoulder and making a run for it. Or throwing him a bone,
something like We want equal pay for
equal work, or We want to be taken seriously. But that wasn’t what
he needed to hear.
He’d asked sincerely. And since
she’d blatantly eavesdropped on his very personal conversation—because of
course it never occurred to her to leave—he deserved an honest answer.
“A woman wants to be desired.” Her
words came out breathy, sexy. She bit her lip. It wasn’t how she’d meant to
sound, but there was a change in the atmosphere swirling around them that
brought out the huskiness in her voice.
His eyes got darker, the streaks of
green receding into the deep cocoa, turning his gaze into something earthy and
potent. “How does a man do that?”
“You can’t do it. You have
to feel it.”
“But how?” He spread his hands,
which she realized had been clenched. “Flowers? Chocolate? Fancy dinners?”
“You have to be desperate. You have
to be intense.” She felt his intensity now, like heat shimmering off concrete.
He shook his head, a short, sharp
jerk. “What does that mean?”
On a college essay, she’d once
gotten the comment that her reasoning needed to be more compelling. What the heck did that mean? Same applied here. What
did desperation and intensity mean in concrete terms,
especially in regard to the subject matter?
Her breath felt rough in her
throat. Then she went for it. “A woman wants to be shoved up against a wall and
taken.” She swallowed her embarrassment, concentrated on the heat of his earthy
gaze. “Tear her clothes off. Like you can’t wait one more second to get your
hands on her. Just pull up her dress and make her scream with pleasure.”
His eyes were all pupil now. She
could almost see her reflection in the blackness. “How?” he murmured.
“With your mouth,” she whispered.
“It’s all about her, for her. You
don’t even get off. You just need to taste her. Right this minute.”
There was a scent on the air, his
male musk, hers, mingling, pulling them closer.
His lips moved. “That’s just lust.”
“You can’t have the love if you
don’t have the lust first, because then you’re just friends with benefits.”
That was her preferred modus operandi. Relationships were too fragile and
potentially disastrous. She didn’t have time for disaster.
Grady stepped closer, invading her
personal space. His heat arced into her, surrounded her, seduced her.
“And you’ve been desired liked that?”
he asked so softly his voice was like a feather stroking her erogenous zones.
The question didn’t merely invade
personal space, it assaulted personal everything.
She could have told him her answer was theoretical. She could have lied. But in
this moment, they were too intimate for lies.
“Yes.” She was a desire junkie. “It
was the biggest high in the world.”
Desire
Actually is available now!
Kindle Kindle UK Kindle CA Nook iBooks IBooks AU iBooks UK iBooks CA All Romance Smashwords
Kindle Kindle UK Kindle CA Nook iBooks IBooks AU iBooks UK iBooks CA All Romance Smashwords
Freebies!
Dead to the Max, Max Starr Series, Book 1 is still free!
And that’s not all! Two more freebies, one from Jennifer
Skully and one from Jasmine Haynes!
Check out the fabulous new cover for She’s Gotta Be Mine.
Thank you for a whole new series look, Rae Monet! Try Book 1 of the Cottonmouth Series for FREE!
Try Somebody’s Lover, the first book in
the The Jackson Brothers Trilogy for FREE!
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