Title: The Reluctant Bride Author: Monica Murphy Genre: Contemporary Romance
Everyone’s for sale, including me. One moment I’m the forgotten daughter of one of the most wealthy families in the country, and the next I’m the blushing bride in an arranged marriage. My fate is sealed in my wedded union with a complete stranger.
In public, Perry Constantine is the life of the party. Easygoing. Adored. In private, he’s brooding. Dark. Angry. But so am I. It’s a contest of wills to see who will break in the bedroom first, and while I try to remain strong, I find myself craving the very man I swore to hate.
I shuffle through the papers—damn this contract is thick—until I come across a photo. I pull it out and stare at it, trying to come up with some sort of feeling I might have toward this Charlotte Lancaster person upon first seeing her.
Nothing. I feel nothing.
The photo is from what I can only assume is a debutante ball.
She’s wearing a ridiculous white dress that looks like an over frosted wedding cake.
Her smile is small. Reluctant. Her eyes are blue, crystal clear like a perfect spring sky. Her hair is blonde and done up in the most elaborate style it overwhelms her small features.
I prefer brunettes. Happy, sexy as fuck brunettes who know how to have a good time and laugh a lot. Redheads too.
I don’t discriminate.
Well, I might discriminate against grumpy looking blondes who seem pissed at the world.
“She looks like an angry virgin,” I finally say, my gaze still on the photo.
“Perry,” Mother admonishes.
Winston smothers a laugh.
“Didn’t she refuse to dance with every guy who asked her the night of her debut?” I remember reading something about this. My mother and Winston share a look, but don’t answer me. “Yeah, pretty sure she even turned down her father. Bet that pissed him off.”
“None of that matters,” Mother says. “I’m sure she’s changed.”
Yeah right.
I toss the photo onto the table, immediately banishing her face from my thoughts.
“She’s not my type.” “If she spreads her legs, she’s your type,” Winston says gruffly.
Title: Flare Author: Jay Hogan Series: Style Series #1 Genre: M/M Contemporary Romance
My own fashion label. The shiny new sign above the door means everything. My dream. My life. Worth every gruelling hour I’ve spent making it happen. Nothing can stop me now. Not the fear. Not the nightmares. Not my sad excuse for a love life. And certainly not Beckett Northcott, the sexy English professor who wouldn’t know a fitted shirt if it slapped him in the face and who has flannel down to an art form.
I don’t date for a very good reason, and yet Beck makes me want to break every damn one of my rules. But with my debut at Fashion Week looming, my business in trouble, and Beckett Northcott peeling open my terrified heart to a future I’ve never imagined, the threads of my carefully woven life are unravelling at the seams.
I could walk away. Or I could take a chance that Beck and I might just have what it takes to fashion a new life, together. A fresh design from a new cloth.
Shayne extolled the virtues of his lookbook in painful detail, careful to point out all the high-profile designers he’d modelled for. The message was clear. If I wanted Flare, my shiny new label, to succeed in its first appearance at Fashion Week, I needed him, front and centre. I didn’t even have an open call going. He’d just arrived on the doorstep of Flare and assumed I’d be interested, no, gagging to see him. I’d have choked on the sheer audacity if it wasn’t for the fact he had a point.
I did need something, but it certainly wasn’t his or anybody else’s bullshit.
My gaze flicked over his shoulder to where my shop assistant stood with his lips flattened against the glass, his tongue darting obscenely in and out. Kip made no bones about his gutter-dragging opinion of the excruciatingly beautiful but arrogant-as-fuck model, and I made a fair attempt at swallowing my laugh. But the resulting half snort almost blew the show.
Shayne spun in his seat, but you had to be quicker than that to catch Kip Grantham napping—his attention locked on his steamer as he pressed my new season feather-collared jackets fresh from my manufacturer. He gave Shayne a waggle of his fingers that got ten points for insolence but didn’t fool anyone.
Shayne turned back with his lip curled. Beauty never made up for a personality that verged on the nasty, which was only one of the reasons Shayne wouldn’t be gracing my runway anytime soon. The other reason being his tendency for drama with a capital D, and I prized composure as much as looks in the models I employed.
“All my slots are gone for this year, sorry,” I lied unapologetically, doing my best to ignore Kip thumbing his nose in the background.
“That’s not what I heard,” Shayne said tartly.
Bugger.
“I can wear anything well, and you know it.”
Which was unfortunately true, but beside the point. “I’m sure you’ll have a ton of designers clamouring to add you to their list once they know you’re back. I’ve already chosen the one pinch-hitter model I’m allowed from outside the casting call. You missed that day, right?” I couldn’t resist the dig.
He sniffed. “I was overseas. Miami. Stockholm.” He waved a hand in the air. “The casting agency contacted my agent, of course, but it couldn’t be helped.”
Behind Shayne, Kip gave an epic eye-roll that would’ve given the London Eye a run for its money.
Shayne studied his fingernails. “And yes, I’ve had a lot of requests since I returned. But I like your work, Rhys. It’s a little raw, but there’s a freshness to it—”
I imagined strangling the man by his Hermes scarf, knowing Kip would help me hide the body.
“—and since this is your debut year, I thought I’d give you first shot at me. I can help make that splash you need.”
Again, unfortunately true. But Jesus fucking Christ, he’d never speak like that to a seasoned designer. It was all I could do not to boot the arsehole from my office, but New Zealand fashion was a tiny industry, and the last thing I wanted was to earn a name for myself as a prima donna in my first year.
“I’m flattered you thought of me.” I almost choked on the words as Kip mimed hanging himself with his tie while walking downhill. “But not this time.” Read ever.
Shayne stared, bewildered, like I’d lost my ever-loving mind, and maybe I had. Then he shrugged. “Well, I hope you don’t come to regret your decision.” He shoved his lookbook in his fashionable Burberry satchel with an audible huff. “Young-gun invites only happen once, right?”
“Right.” I nodded sagely, wondering if it would be considered a service to humanity to throttle dickhead sanctimonious pricks on a Friday afternoon before they were let loose on an unsuspecting weekend. If it wasn’t, I was going to petition for a law change. “I guess I’ll have to rely on my actual designs, won’t I?”
He sent me a look that said he knew there was an insult in there somewhere, but I wasn’t worth the effort to search for it.
“I should be getting back to work.” I pushed to my feet and circled around the desk, making it clear the meeting was over.
Shayne gathered his coat and satchel and then stood. “I, um, ended things with Marc, in case you were wondering.”
I wasn’t and looked puzzled just to piss him off. “Marc?” I knew damn well who he was talking about.
He narrowed his gaze. “Marc Norman.”
“Oh. Shame.” I felt oddly relieved for Marc, who was in fact a lovely guy, if a bit . . . vacant.
Shayne ran his gaze slowly up my body and I suddenly needed a shower. “Maybe you and I could do . . . something?”
Not in a million years. “Thanks, but I’m too busy to date right now.”
He shot me a sly grin. “It wouldn’t have to be a date.”
And yeah, I might’ve thrown up in my mouth. “The answer’s still no.” I plastered a grin in place. “Sorry.”
A spark of annoyance flashed in his eyes, but he didn’t push.
“Let me walk you out.” I ushered Shayne past Kip, who discreetly stabbed a finger in and out of his mouth, and then out the front door of Flare and into the crisp June air laced with salt from the harbour beyond. As soon as the coast was clear, I spun back to my assistant, my mouth open in a silent scream. Kip raced to my side, and together we watched Shayne cross the road and disappear from view in a cloud of Yves St Laurent and pissy flounce.
“Oh. My. God. That man is a douchebag of the highest order.” Kip slipped his arm through mine and pulled me toward the service desk. “He’s always dropping into the shop looking for you. I put him off as often as I can, but he does actually spend money, so I don’t want to piss him off too much. I don’t know why he’s so fucking popular.”
I snorted a laugh. “You mean apart from his scorching angular waifish look and ability to have both men and women drooling over their credit cards as they rush to buy whatever the fuck he wears?”
Kip huffed. “People will follow any idiot off a cliff if they look like they know what they’re doing. Your clothes stand on their own, Rhys. They don’t need a pretty clothes horse.”
I shot him a look and he pulled a face. “Okay, maybe one or two pretty clothes horses wouldn’t go amiss.
Jay is a 2020 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Gay Romance and her book Off Balance was the 2021 New Zealand Romance Book of the Year.
She is a New Zealand author writing mm romance and romantic suspense, primarily set in New Zealand. She writes character driven romances with lots of humour, a good dose of reality and a splash of angst. She’s travelled extensively, lived in many countries, and in a past life she was a critical care nurse, nurse educator and counsellor. Jay is owned by a huge Maine Coon cat and a gorgeous Cocker Spaniel
The sound of the curtain in her changing room being pulled open echoed into my changing room, so I made sure my dick wasn’t visible, then pulled back my own curtain.
Jamie was zipping up Alexandra’s dress—the royal blue bandage strapless one—but she whipped around to face me when Jamie was finished.
Her eyes widened, pupils dilated, nostrils flared. It was a primal reaction that I would have to be an idiot to miss.
I had a primal reaction of my own—in my pants.
“Holy fuck,” I breathed.
She glanced away, but the smile that lifted one side of her mouth was dead sexy.
“You’re getting that one,” I said.
She smoothed her hands down the sides, turned on one foot, and glanced at herself in the mirror. “Yeah, I like it, too.”
“You can’t wear those two together, though,” Jamie said. “The blues are too close in color, but not close enough. If you know what I mean?”
Alexandra and I nodded.
“He should just wear a dress shirt and maybe dark gray pants when you wear that dress.”
“I have dark gray pants in the room,” I said, hooking a thumb toward my changing room and a stack of pants on the bench.
I stepped out and away from my room to get a better look at myself in the mirror outside the changing rooms. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a perfect fit,” Jamie said. “Doesn’t even look like you’ll need tailoring.”
Alexandra nodded. “Looks good.” I caught her checking out my ass and grinned, but when she saw me see her, her eyes whipped up to the ceiling as if a flock of geese had just flown overhead.
“You guys got any brown wingtips?” I asked, focusing my gaze on Jamie.
He nodded. “Sure do. Size?”
I glanced back at Alexandra and smiled as I said, “Thirteen.”
I did not miss the flare of her eyes or the way they drifted down to the front of my pants.
“Eyes up here, lady,” I said, catching her gaze back in the mirror.
Startled, she ditched the surprised look and went with a glare before returning to her changing room and dramatically pulling the curtain closed again.
“What is the dynamic of your relationship?” Jamie asked, glancing back and forth between me and the closed changing room curtain.
“She’s my fiancée,” I said chipperly. “But she’d rather not be.”
A Canadian West Coast baby born and raised, Whitley is married to her high school sweetheart, and together they have two beautiful daughters and a fluffy dog. She spends her days making food that gets thrown on the floor, vacuuming Cheerios out from under the couch and making sure that the dog food doesn’t end up in the air conditioner. But when nap time comes, and it’s not quite wine o’clock, Whitley sits down, avoids the pile of laundry on the couch, and writes.
A lover of all things decadent; wine, cheese, chocolate and spicy erotic romance, Whitley brings the humorous side of sex, the ridiculous side of relationships and the suspense of everyday life into her stories. With single dads, firefighters, Navy SEALs, mommy wars, body issues, threesomes, bondage and role-playing, Whitley’s books have all the funny and fabulously filthy words you could hope for.
