Showing results by narrator "Shirl Rae" in All Categories

I have three cardinal rules: Never mix business with pleasure. Never let a woman spend the night. Never date a woman with kids. Kids freak me out. God only knows how many this baby daddy has. Man, what was I thinking when I was in college? Me, Drake Hanson. Aka Donor 5262. It was a piece of cake and $1,500 a month for my deposits (in sperm bank speak) came in handy. I just didn't think about the consequences. One day, some kid is going to call me Daddy, and I'm going to get hit up for child support.

Once, when I was young and stupid, I had that boy. The charmer, the Adonis, the one who torched every woman's panties in our small town. He was my brother's best friend, practically part of the family. When he proposed, he promised me forever. Then the bastard disappeared without a word. It's taken five years to get over Ryan. I drowned myself crying a thousand times over. I moved on. I'm finally remembering what it's like to smile, when guess who shows up? Everything about him is different. For one, he's become a freakin' billionaire

Signing with Brighthouse Records was supposed to be everything we ever wanted - our better life. Our chance at everything we never had but always wanted. All our dreams would finally come true, and we were on top of the world. It was our chance at the happiness we never had in life. Our every desire was at our fingertips, and the power of that feeling was all-consuming. But then it took every dream we thought would come true, and it slapped us in the face with the cold, hard reality.

It should have been simple. Easy come, easy go, and in between, atonement. She was not who I would have chosen. Gwen was delicate and lovely: a former model with a ruined life, living loudly in the quiet of the Smoky Mountains, healing injured bears. When she laid her hands on me, she healed me too. That's how it began. That's where it went wrong. I knew she could never be mine. But I sinned. I sinned.

For Lucas Kent, his new prisoner is a maddening contradiction: compliant yet defiant, fragile yet strong. He needs to uncover her secrets, but doing so may ruin everything. For Yulia Tzakova, her captor is the man of both her dreams and her nightmares: tender one moment, cruel the next. She can't let him crack her, but resisting him may leave her broken.

As far as Declan Waterford is concerned, women are off limits—at least until he can earn enough money for his brother's surgery. The dueling piano gig at Vegas's Masquerade hotel barely pays enough . . . but if Declan can convince his boss to promote him, he'll be set. Between drowning in mistakes at her editorial internship and fighting off her father's demands that she relocate to Vegas and join his hotel empire, Melody Sumner doesn't have time for love—or one-night stands with sexy Irish piano players—no matter how appetizing Declan is.

Yulia Tzakova's freedom comes at a heavy price. Her former captor dominates her dreams, and survival consumes her waking moments. She may have escaped, but she's far from safe. In the shadowy world of spies and betrayal, nothing is what it seems.

Everyone thought I was married to the perfect man. But if Conall Walsh were perfect, I wouldn't have killed him. I thought I got away with it until I received an anonymous note at the ballet company I dance for: You were a very bad girl. If you don't want me to report what I know about last night, meet me at the old opera house after rehearsal. I will tell you the price of my silence when you arrive. If you speak of this or bring anyone with you... no deal. But his price isn't money. It's me.

Dean Barclay had nothing to do with my decision to flee my old life, but he is 100 percent of the reason I vowed to never look back. I've never forgotten how it felt to follow Dean - dangerous, daring, determined - away from the crowd and climb into his beat-up old Trans Am. I was 16 and gloriously alive for the first time. When I felt his hand cover my leg and move upward, it was over. I was his. Forever.

Romance author Kamaria Wilson came to Las Vegas with nothing to lose. A one-night stand with a delicious man is just the distraction she needs . . . until one night with him doesn't feel like enough. Panicked, she skips out on the morning-after encore and hides out at the poker tables. After his hot one-night stand goes MIA, security specialist Jack Aldirisi is sure he'll never see her again. But when he's called in to the casino for an unexpected special assignment, Lady Luck smiles down on Jack. For the rest of the weekend, he'll be by his missing woman's side.

After losing out on a plum assignment, a romance book conference is the last place journalist Sheridan Farlow wants to be. Love is a myth—like flattering changing room mirrors—and she has the past relationships to prove it. Her editor wants a story? Fine. She'll write an entire expose...only it doesn't go according to plan. Bernard "Mac" Mackenzie is something of an anomaly in the romance-writing world—a man who writes romance and believes in it. And until he met Sheridan, Mac's never felt anything close to the love he writes about. He needs more of her. In his arms. In his bed.

Author Jessie Jameson is the Bad Girl of romance, making a huge name for herself writing love stories with sizzling hot sex scenes. No one needs to know that her real-life inspiration is sexy publishing exec Grayson Reynolds. Or that after the hottest sex of her life, Grayson walked out on her. Grayson's finally taken the reins of his family's publishing business, and he's determined to sell off the romance division. But Jessie Jameson's contract is complicating things. It's like she's been trying to ruin him ever since the mind-blowing night they shared.

After catching her fiance cheating on their wedding day, interior designer Kylie Edwards swore off high-powered men. But before she can drown herself in wedding cake, she's dragged to a Vegas romance conference by her friends. At least she'll be able to meet the hotel's owner and pitch her new design idea. And maybe attend the elaborate masquerade ball, where business unexpectedly becomes pleasure with the hotel's oh-so-hot head of security.

Sara Greaves has been planning her perfect wedding since she was five. Twenty years. Wasted. When she's dumped by her fiance, she heads to Vegas to forget and ends up at a hotel hosting a Romance Readers conference. Cuz she's lucky like that. Mr. Tall, Dark, And Anti-Marriage buys Sara a drink, and makes her a bet . . . she could marry any guy in Vegas tonight and make it work. She wasn't supposed to choose him.

After losing a bet, successful publisher Michael Chang is "pretending" to play the piano in a Vegas lounge in order to spy on his less-than-trustworthy employee. His espionage is quickly derailed after meeting Thea Danelle, an editor who's been wronged by Michael's company. She's smart and unpredictable...and clearly hiding a naughty side that tempts Michael to distraction.

Ski instructor Ellie Montgomery hits Vegas during a romance convention to meet the man of her dreams . . . only, the man of her dreams isn't the cover model she's there to see. He's the hot-as-sin bodyguard who catches her sneaking in the back door of a meet-and-greet, and he seems more than ready to do what it takes to prove he's twice the man her pretty boy crush could ever be.

Ryder Diamond - the town's golden boy - doesn't have time for taking chances, let alone love. Against his better judgment, he lets his buddies set him up on a blind date with a girl who's only passing through town. But temporary or not, Whitney James sets fire to desires he can't control.

It's her best friend's wedding, and Autumn Lane is trussed up in a pink bridesmaid dress with a big "everything is great" smile plastered across her face. She's not going think about her life imploding, or spending the next two weeks housesitting in the ridiculously small town of Diamond. No, she'd rather think about the tattooed hottie in the wedding party...and how to turn the wicked way he's looking at her into a night of intense pleasure.

Sick of her interfering brother nosing into her love life - and by proxy, her sex life - Penny Diamond has decided she needs a break from her "girl next door" reputation. And she knows exactly who can help her.... Tall, lean, and impossibly intense Sebastian Strafford is rumored to have a sexual appetite with a decidedly wicked flavor.

Christina Stilton has waited all her life to become a wolf's bride. Becoming mate to a stranger in a faraway pack is the only chance she has to escape her Appalachian life of poverty and abuse. She wants safety, but trusts the Fates to steer her toward love, too. She might have been treated as a useless female back in Virginia, but her role in Anton's small pack is clear. He needs to be loved and loved hard, and she's just the woman for the job. She just needs to convince him to get out of her way and let her do it.