Desired
Freed
Tamed
Commanded
Mine
Magic & Mayhem
Witches Be Burned
Standalone
Bought by the Boss (coming soon)
PHOTO: © PAIGE RICHARDSON
STACEY KENNEDY is the USA Today bestselling author of the Dirty Little Secrets and Club Sin series. She writes deeply emotional romances about powerful men and the wild women who tame them. When she’s not writing sensual stories, she spends time with her real-life hero, her husband, their two young children, and her other babies: a mini labradoodle named Jax and a chocolate Labrador named Murphy. Stacey is a proud chocolate, television show, Urban Barn, and wine addict. She likes the heroes in her books like she likes her coffee…strong and hot!
staceykennedy.com
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Read on for an excerpt from
Hard Cover
by Jamie K. Schmidt
Available soon from Loveswept
Chapter 1
Dawn
Rory Parker was a billionaire douche bag who looked like a movie star. I knew this because we had gone to the same high school. I Google stalked him when he started sending me emails earlier this year. We traded quips and banter for several months like it was some bizarre foreplay. Then the real reason he contacted me came up. Rory hadn’t wanted to “reconnect,” he wanted to buy me out of my lease. I wanted him to go to hell. When it was apparent neither one of us was going to budge, the emails mysteriously stopped being friendly. I felt partly triumphant that I stood my ground, and a little disappointed that he only was interested in me because of my store. However, I should have known he wasn’t giving up and was just refocusing his attack.
A combination of old money and real estate mogul, Rory was planning a redevelopment project for the shops by the Haven docks. He was throwing money around that had everyone scrambling to sell out. I wanted to punch him in his perfect white teeth—when I wasn’t fantasizing about what I’d like to do with him. With his pretty rich-boy looks and body by CrossFit, Rory was eye candy. He was also the enemy, and I had to keep that in mind.
In high school, he had been a senior when I was a freshman—not to mention his crowd wouldn’t let him be caught dead going out with me. Still, we managed to flirt every chance we got. Once he left for college, it was out of sight, out of mind for both of us. I felt like an idiot for getting all oogly-woogly when he emailed me out of the blue. I was such a sap. Maybe I was even a little desperate. That’s why it stung so much when he followed up my “Want to get dinner sometime?” with “Funny, you should ask . . .” I told him I wasn’t interested in having him buy me out of my lease, and then stopped responding to his emails. Rory still sent them, though.
When the emails no longer worked for him, he sent my landlord, Larry Briggs, with a generous offer. I ripped up the paperwork and set it on fire inside the copper bowl by my cash register. It had been worth the citation for the fire hazard. I’ll pay that fine next month, as well as another one when the next bullshit charge they try to lay on me comes around. The town’s officials were collecting offenses, hoping to evict me, but they were going to have to work a lot harder on that one. I paid my rent on time and I was a model tenant—if a little eccentric.
I hoped that would be the end of it. I couldn’t care less if I was delaying hometown boy’s pet project. I still had five years left on my ten-year lease. He and this town could kiss my ass until then. When it was time to find another place for my bookstore, it probably wouldn’t be here. No one would rent to me. I was the quartz in their otherwise shining jeweled crown of the conservative New England town of Haven, on the Connecticut shoreline. Eight months out of the year the only customers I had were locals I brought in through workshops and my lecture series. But during the summer, I made a great deal of money selling unique books about feminism, sex, and various other forms of enlightenment.
The tinkling bells over the door alerted me someone was coming into the bookstore. I glanced up as a woman walked in with her two children. She took one a look at me and my purple hair and tattoos, grabbed their hands, and rushed out of the store.
Namaste, bitch.
I wasn’t your usual bookstore owner, and I certainly didn’t belong among these stores—at least that’s what some of the town politicians thought. They replaced the potter who had the shop next to me with one that sold Limoges, Waterford crystal goblets, and Hummel figurines. The old fisherman who had the store on the other side of me took Rory’s generous buyout offer as well. Packing up his handmade birdhouses and fishing lures, Old Man Mack left an empty store space that smelled vaguely of Skoal tobacco and codfish. They replaced the business with a small art gallery, with painters I’ve never heard of, from places far away from Haven.
The First Selectmen of the town—Rory’s father—said they wanted to make over my store into a chic bookstore cafe that sold things that would be more universally appealing. I
offered to put a few USA Today best sellers in the front window as a compromise, but that wasn’t good enough.