Coming to you on October 12, Love Affair to Remember, After Office Hours Book 2! Thanks to Rae
Monet for this fabulous cover. I LOVE it!
When I was writing Desire Actually, Book 1 in the After
Office Hours series, I got hooked on Gloria King’s character. If you’ll recall,
she was the CFO. I love a lot of things about her: She’s confident and secure,
she’s made it in a man’s world, and she’s a mature woman. I love writing about
strong, mature women. Gloria’s just about to turn 48, and she’s still elegant
and sexy in addition to being smart. And Gloria has a secret by the name of
Parker Hunt. Hmm, I was dying to know exactly what went on between these two in
the past… And how would that affect their future? So I just had to write Love
Affair to Remember. Here’s a blurb to give you a hint of what happened!
What if one night ruined your whole
life?
In one sizzling night of forbidden
passion, Gloria King set fire to her comfortable life and watched it be
consumed in the conflagration. The man who lit the match—Parker Hunt.
And now Parker is back.
More than five years have passed
since Parker has seen Gloria, but the passion between them is undeniable. And
he’ll do anything to have a new chance to get it right, if only he can convince
Gloria to trust her heart.
Gloria has pieced her life back
together after their forbidden night. But Parker is still the only man in the
world with whom Gloria can never look for happiness, no matter how badly she
might want it. If only she could resist his magnetism, forget the delicious
taste of his kiss and the sweetness of his caress…
Can a single night of passion born
in shame become a lifetime of love?
Anything can happen After Office
Hours…
Hmm, so what do you think happened!!?? As an excerpt, I’m
going to give you a taste of the prologue from Love Affair to Remember.
In Desire Actually, Gloria and Jordana discuss Gloria’s interview with Parker
Hunt, who is applying for the position of Marketing VP. So here, you get to see
exactly what went on in that interview!
Love
Affair To Remember
After Office Hours, Book 2
© 2016 Jennifer
Skully
PROLOGUE
He was gorgeous. As perfect as the day they’d first met, as
the day she’d last seen him. As gorgeous as he was that night.
His hair had been all dark then, but the few strands of gray
now peppered through the earthy brown made him seasoned, more desirable, even
mouthwatering. But it was his eyes she remembered the most, a penetrating
sapphire as deep as the ocean seen through a cloudless sky from a plane thirty
thousand feet high. Looking in them had sometimes made her dizzy. Beneath the
black suit, white dress shirt, and red tie, he still wore the same toned body,
without an ounce of fat gained in the more than five years since they’d worked
together.
Since she’d made that one terrible mistake and her life had
changed utterly.
With only the width of her desk separating them, Parker Hunt
was too much. Too handsome, too sexy. Too much history, too many memories. Just
too everything.
“Gloria King.” He said it as if he was finally getting over
the shock of seeing her on his interview agenda. “It’s been a long time.” His
whisky-smooth voice was as potent as ever.
How on earth had she thought she could handle working with
him again? But the company had moved too far along the interview chain to put a
stop to it. Besides, they were both different people now. She was
different. Scarred by her own guilt and by everything she’d lost. She would
never allow anything like that to happen again. Not with anyone. Especially not
with Parker Hunt.
Even if she hadn’t dated anyone in the five years since her
divorce.
Even if she’d never forgotten Parker.
“I was very glad to see you on the interview list.” Gloria
pushed back slightly from her desk, crossing her legs. She hadn’t dressed
specifically for him. Three other interviews had been scheduled for the day.
But Parker looked at her, and her feminine side was happy that she’d changed
five times this morning and finally settled on a less businesslike skirt and
blouse.
With another man, the appreciative look would have been a
warning sign. You didn’t hire an executive who ogled a woman right there in her
office. But Parker wasn’t just any executive. She might have ruined her life
over him, but if he hadn’t given her a second glance, her forty-seven-year-old
heart—forty-eight in October, only a few weeks away—would have stopped beating.
She put them cleanly on the business level by saying, “I’ve
read through your resume.” Not that she’d needed to look at it. Parker would
make a top-notch VP of Marketing. He worked outside the box, not just with new
releases but in searching out alternate applications for current products. He
would be an asset. “But I’d rather hear straight from you what you’ve been
doing since you left Sunderland.”
Sunderland was the company they’d both worked for. Until
Gloria couldn’t work there anymore. When she could no longer see Parker day in
and day out without the crushing weight of her guilt. And the fear that she’d
succumb to her own selfish passions again.
He smiled his too-gorgeous smile. “I didn’t move around much
after Sunderland. Same company for the past five years.”
There was so much she wanted to ask him, especially about
his bare ring finger and its lack of telltale tan line, indicating he hadn’t
worn a wedding ring in quite some time. But she wouldn’t ask what had happened.
Couldn’t. She noticed he hadn’t even looked at her hand.
“So why did you leave your last job?” She waggled her
fingers at the resume on her desk. “Besides wanting to explore your
opportunities.” Which was a meaningless artifact everyone added to their
details so they didn’t have to say they’d been fired or hated their boss or
they were bored out of their minds. With Parker, she assumed it was none of those
reasons.
Putting his elbows on the arms of his chair, he steepled his
fingers. “Do you want something Brett Baker will find palatable? Or the truth?”
Brett Baker was their CEO. The Silicon Valley startup was
relatively large in employee headcount, considering that they wouldn’t begin
shipping the final product for three and a half months, at the beginning of the
new year. Their funding was decent, though Brett was always reviewing options.
His greatest strengths were his integrity and his fair-mindedness. But he
didn’t take anyone’s crap either.
“The truth would be good. And I know full well you’ll give
Brett the same answer.”
He grinned. “With a little varnish.”
“All right, give me the totally unvarnished version.” She
settled back, the sun falling on her head. She hadn’t closed the blinds and the
office was small. None of the executives had sumptuous digs with massive
furniture and plush décor. Her conference table supported four at most, and
she’d borrowed a chair from that grouping for Parker. You were provided a space
large enough to fit your needs, but they hadn’t skimped on the hardware. Her
computer was state-of-the-art, her desk equipped with an ergonomic keyboard and
her chair providing proper support.
It was nothing like Sunderland, but there she’d been only a
controller and Parker was a marketing director. They’d both moved up in the
ensuing years. Until their universes once again converged. It could be a
cataclysm worse than the collision that wiped out the dinosaurs.
“Unvarnished it is.” His gaze tracked her face, from her
eyes to her mouth, turning the word into something sexual with just a look.
Or maybe she was turning everything sexual because
she was starved for male attention.
“Brett knows,” Parker went on, “that I didn’t see eye to eye
with my former CEO.”
“And he didn’t think it was a warning sign?”
Parker splayed his hands in the air. “He appreciated the
honesty. But in the unvarnished version, the guy was a dickhead.”
Her lips curled in a slight smile. Parker answered it just
as slightly. They’d both known their share of dickheads at Sunderland, and
they’d both had a tolerance for them. You couldn’t walk out every time you
encountered a difficult boss or coworker or employee, or you’d never keep a
job. “You were there for almost five years. So what changed?”
“Profits changed. Or should I say losses. About nine months
ago, orders started falling off. People want product improvement, new bells and
whistles, and we weren’t keeping up anymore.”
Nine months. Just when Gloria was changing jobs. Why did
that seem like a portent for this moment, as if they’d been walking a path
destined to bring them together again?
He shrugged, shook his head with feigned sadness. “I worked
as well as I could with him. But you have to spend money to make money. And the
product suffered even more. Until the quarter was so bad, he wanted me to pull
orders in from the following month to make the numbers look better.”
“Robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s happened before.” She’d
been known to call customers to ask if they’d be willing to take an early
shipment.
“Yeah,” he said on a sharp breath. “But the product was
still in QC and wouldn’t make it out the door till the following week. He just
wanted me to authorize my customer service group to do the invoicing.”
There was negligence, and then there was downright fraud.
You just couldn’t bill for stuff you hadn’t shipped. “What did your CFO say?”
Parker blew out a disgusted pfft of air. “He was a yes man. Since the shipments were completed,
even though not tested, he was okay with it.”
“Well, gee,” she said, dousing the words with sarcasm. “Why
don’t we just invoice for everything that’s in the warehouse since it’s
completed and will eventually ship on an order?”
He smiled with her. God, that smile. It turned her heart
inside out just as it always had. She had to stop looking at him. “I refused to
have my customer service people involved,” he said. “Told the bosses that if
they wanted it, then Accounting would have to do the invoicing. They backed
down but the writing was on the wall.”
She understood perfectly. “Why’d you leave Sunderland,
though?” He’d enjoyed the job, and there was a good possibility he’d have made
it to the executive staff in a short time.
The silence was as screeching as nails on a chalkboard. And
the look he gave her scorched. “I left fairly soon after you did.”
She wouldn’t touch that one with a silicon oven mitt that
handled up to five-hundred-degree temperatures. She’d cut all her ties with
that job. She hadn’t returned friends’ calls. She’d pulled her blinds down over
everything that had to do with Sunderland.
It hadn’t worked. She’d still ended up divorced. Alone. And
guilty.
“Well,” she said with ridiculous brightness. “What can I
tell you about us? You’d be a great fit. I know you’ll bring dynamic ideas to
the mix. There’s a lot of opportunity here. And Brett’s a good man. You won’t
get any of those invoicing shenanigans under his watch.” She sounded like a
cheerleader on speed.
Parker didn’t seem to notice. Or he was too polite to
mention it. “How’s your executive team? The unvarnished version.”
“Unvarnished,” she said softly, thinking about Rhonda Clark,
VP of Human Resources. “What did you think of Rhonda?”
He smiled without curving his lips. “Is that a subliminal
message?”
For a very short time, they talked without saying anything,
with just a look. Gloria had always felt that if nothing was acknowledged, if
it was never said aloud, you had the thing totally in hand.
Maybe that’s why her emotions had burned out of control so
quickly. In that one single night.
And why everything had gone so wrong afterward. Because,
while she thought she had control, she was kidding herself.
“Due to our…” She didn’t want to use the word past,
or even history, because of everything it implied. What was the right
word? She left the sentence hanging, which might have been even worse. “She can
be annoying. Everyone else is cooperative, a team player, and all that
business.”
“Rah-rah,” he said, and they both laughed.
He could always make her laugh. She’d noticed him the first
time—had really seen him—because he
made her laugh. But she didn’t want to think about any of that.
“The most important thing is that you’ll never be pushed
into unethical practices. And Rhonda is manageable.” She shouldn’t say it, but
it was the unvarnished truth. “You’ll charm her into agreeing with you on just
about anything.”
He settled deeper into his chair, regarding her with an
understated grin she’d call cheeky. “Thank you for that vote of confidence. I
appreciate the good word you’ve put in with Brett.”
“I didn’t put in a good word. I haven’t even told him we
worked together.”
He regarded her for a long moment, emotion in his eyes that
she couldn’t decipher. “Why?”
“I didn’t want to influence the selection process.” She
hadn’t been able to decide how much to say. In truth, she hadn’t known how
she’d react to Parker after all these years. And now she’d reacted the same as
she had the first time. And the last time. The difference was more than five
years in between, and the fact that she wasn’t the same woman anymore. “I’ll
tell him after this. And that you’ll be a good fit. There’s nothing else really
to say.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing that has any bearing on how well you do your job.”
His facial expression shifted, eyes slightly narrowed, a
line across his brow. “Can you work with me again, Gloria?”
This was her out. The moment he’d entered her office, she’d
wondered if she could handle seeing him day after day. But she wasn’t the same person she’d been. She
was stronger because she’d paid for her mistakes. She wouldn’t let her emotions
get the better of her. Not this time. Not ever again.
“Of course I can work with you, Parker. We’ve both moved on
from Sunderland. We’re different people.” She smiled and rose to her feet. He
joined her, and she held out her hand. “I’ll put my vote in for you. You’re the
most qualified.”
But when he took her hand in his, the shake lasted far
longer than formally necessary. With his touch, the ghost of the woman she’d
been unfurled inside her, whispering that her emotions weren’t as dead as she
wanted them to be.
* * *
He wasn’t worried about getting the job. His resume was
solid, his qualifications impeccable, and just as Gloria had said, he was a
good fit.
Everything had fallen into place. He’d found himself on the
wrong side of an internal power struggle, and before he’d even updated his
resume, he’d learned about this opportunity.
Silicon Valley was a small world with a big grapevine. You
heard who went where, when they did it, and why, and he knew the paths Gloria
had traveled. He’d learned about her promotion. He’d even heard about her
divorce. And he knew her name would be on that agenda before the HR Manager,
Jordan Davis, had even handed it to him.
He just hadn’t expected the impact the sight of her would
have on him. Her beauty hit with a visceral reminder of everything they’d done,
everything he’d felt. Back then, it had been a huge error in judgment. If he
could change that, he would. But that was then.
And this was now. Everything was different. Their rings were
gone, their debts paid after more than five hard years, and the past was simply
that, past. If there were new lines around her eyes, he didn’t see them. She
was as luscious as she’d been back then. A couple of years older than him, she
hadn’t suffered the fate of physics that many people did as they entered their
late forties.
He’d told only one lie throughout the whole interview
process.
Because he hadn’t come here for the new job. He hadn’t come
to get away from an unethical situation. He hadn’t come for the pre-IPO stock
options.
He’d come for Gloria.
-------
And there you have it, the set up for Love Affair to Remember,
After Office Hours Book 2! You can find it as an iBooks preorder, coming soon
to all other retailers as a preorder, and available on October 12.
If
you haven’t caught up, here’s where you can snap up Desire Actually, After Office Hours Book 1:
Latest Releases:
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