Now available for Pre-order!
REEVE IS COMING!
Meet Reeve & Emily in
First Touch releasing December 29th!
Blurb
When Emily Wayborn goes
home to visit her mom while on hiatus from her hit TV show, she receives a
voicemail from her former best friend, Amber. Though the two were once
notorious party girls, they haven't spoken in years. Although the message might
sound benign to anyone else, Amber uses a safe word that Emily recognizes, a
word they always used to get out of sticky situations during their wild days.
And what's more chilling than the voicemail: it turns out that Amber has gone
missing.
Determined to track down
her friend, Emily follows a chain of clues that lead her to the enigmatic
billionaire Reeve Sallis, a hotelier known for his shady dealings and play boy
reputation. Now, in order to find Amber, Emily must seduce Reeve to learn his
secrets and discover the whereabouts of her friend. But as she finds herself
more entangled with him, she finds she's drawn to Reeve for more than just his
connection to Amber, despite her growing fear that he may be the enemy. When
she's forced to choose where her loyalty lies, how will she decide between
saving Amber and saving her heart?
Excerpt
The
first time I shared a man with Amber had been on my seventeenth birthday.
She'd
been hanging around the neighborhood for the better part of the six months
before that, and we'd become friends. We had the same taste in food and music
and movies and, unlike the other girls we knew, we both preferred a line of
coke to a bowl of weed. “Champagne taste,” Amber would say. “That’s us.”
Though
we were both the same age, our lives had been very different. I’d go to school
during the day, trying to pretend that my grades were salvageable as she’d
watched The Home Shopping Network and ate Cheetos on the neighbor's couch.
Amber had dropped out of high school, and since she’d also runaway from home,
no one was pushing her to go while graduation was the one thing my mother
demanded of me.
I’d
hated everything back then. School. My mother. My neighborhood. My body.
Everything but Amber. She’d been fun. Sassy. Sexy. She was electric and
electrifying and everything I wanted to be. And she cared for me. Maybe even
loved me. If I had gone to a shrink they probably would have said that was why
I latched onto her—that I thought of her as the mother mine had never been. I
knew how screwed up everything seemed. But who could ever know why a person
fell for another? I only knew that I had been dull and dim and that Amber made
me less so.
She’d
also had things I didn't. Things that money bought. The clothes she wore were
designer, her nails were always done. She'd lowered her panties once to show me
her Brazilian. Whenever I’d asked how she paid for things, she’d always
answered simply, "My uncle." Even as we’d grown closer to each other
that was all she’d tell me about the mysterious relative.
"For
your birthday," she'd said two days before, "I've got a surprise.
Plan to spend the weekend with me."
So that
Friday, I slipped out of school early and met Amber at the bus station where
she purchased two tickets to Santa Monica. Though I couldn't get her to give me
even a hint as to where we were going or what we were doing, I spent the
two-hour bus ride buzzing with excitement. Whatever Amber had in mind, I knew without
a doubt that this trip would be the beginning of the next phase of my life. I
was ready. I was so ready.
Outside
the station in Santa Monica, Amber bummed a smoke off a street musician and I
scanned the street, taking in the sights of a place I'd never been. A red
convertible parked nearby caught my attention, more specifically, the man
leaning against it. He was older, maybe as old as my mother, but attractive.
Not because he was all that good looking, exactly—though his body was
definitely fit and trim—but because of what he exuded. Confidence. Assurance.
Money. He drew my attention, and in the way that a restless, sexually charged
young girl often did, I found myself wondering about him. What it would be like
to kiss a man like him. What it would feel like to be beneath him. I'd had
plenty of sex before. With boys from school. I'd yet to meet one who knew what
he was doing, and though I would never have admitted it out loud, I was dying
for it, thoughts of it never far from my mind.
When
Amber followed the line of my sight, she dropped her cigarette with a squeal
and exclaimed, "There he is, Em! Come on."
"There
who is?" I asked as she tugged me toward the very man I'd been staring
at.
"My
uncle!" After throwing her duffle bag into the back seat, she jumped into
the man's arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. Then she proceeded to make
out with him like I'd done on more than one occasion with the boys under the
bleachers at school. Never out on a public street. Never with a man who had to
shave everyday.
When
they had finished their display and Amber was back on her feet again, she made
introductions. "Rob this is Emily. Em, Rob."
He may
have said something to me. I didn't really know because I'd been too busy
staring at her, my jaw gaping.
"Oh,
Emily, he's not really my uncle," she told me as she jumped into the
passenger seat. "Get in."
She'd
misread the cause of my surprise. I grinned—only one of the many times I'd grin
that day—and climbed in the backseat. If Amber hadn't been the coolest person
I'd ever met before that moment, she'd certainly proven herself now.
About the Author:
Laurelin Paige is the
NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestselling Author of the Fixed
Trilogy. She's a sucker for a good romance and gets giddy anytime there's
kissing, much to the embarrassment of her three daughters. Her husband doesn't
seem to complain, however. When she isn't reading or writing sexy stories,
she's probably singing, watching Game of Thrones and the Walking Dead, or
dreaming of Michael Fassbender. She's also a proud member of Mensa
International though she doesn't do anything with the organization except use
it as material for her bio.
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