Title: Someone Like You
Author: Morgan Malone
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Book Blurb:
“I dare you, I double, triple dare you, to go online for three months and really look at the guys who are out there just waiting to fall in love with the awesome women you are! I bet you that you will all be head over heels and engaged by the end of the year!” Seri, Jessica, Emily and Olivia made a vow in college never to marry when they formed The “I’ll Never Say I Do” Club. At 40, they are all rich, successful and alone. Then Seri meets and falls in love with a man she met online. At her Maine wedding, she issues a challenge to her three bridesmaids: Three months to meet a man they want to marry. The consolation prize if they fail: a New Year’s trip to Hawaii. What have they got to lose? Love ‘em and leave ‘em had always been Dr. Jessica Mizrahi’s motto. No way was anyone going to get inside her heart and hurt her. Again. On the night of Seri’s wedding, Jess falls into a hot and heavy quickie with a bold, bad boy chef. The next day, she’s back in Saratoga Springs and her busy practice, beautiful apartment and no men complicating her life. Then, the chef shows up in her hometown, to open a long-awaited restaurant right next door. Jess fights the attraction but she’s drawn to the warmth in his flashing eyes, the humor lurking behind his cocky smirks and the memories of their brief but blistering time together. He’s more than he seemed and is becoming more than she can handle. Steve Cole is the hottest chef in Manhattan. For ten years, he’s clawed his way to the top, earning three Michelin stars. But he’s not happy. He dreams of intimate bistros in resort towns along the East Coast. He’s checking out a possible location in Maine when a brash and beautiful bridesmaid seduces him. Word for word and move for move, she’s his match and they end up in the hottest tryst he’s ever experienced. Then she’s gone. Until days later, when she literally knocks him down in front of Yaya’s, the first of his resort bistros. Steve can’t let his guard down and risk another broken heart. He’s got a restaurant to open in two weeks! He’ll keep it loose and lusty, no strings. Then he’ll move on. Jess has vowed never to love any man and Steve refuses to trust any woman. But, the sparks that were ignited in Maine, are burning hot and bright in Saratoga. Doubts and fears from their pasts may be too much for them to overcome, but Seri’s challenge has given Jess hope. Does her sexy chef have the recipe for happy-ever-after?
Excerpt:
It was a dream. It was surely an erotic, fanciful dream brought on by feeling her soft skin and holding her luscious ass in his arms, her full breasts pressing against his chest, when he’d carried her to bed. Her scent, which he had finally recognized as bergamot and eucalyptus, filled his senses and cast him into some dreamy forest bower with an earth mother, faerie queen, seductress, intent on having her way with him. Again.
Groaning, Steve woke up. He expected to find himself in his chrome and leather, gray-hued bedroom, blackout curtains enveloping the room in lightless dark. He pried a sleepy eye slightly open. What he saw caused both eyes to spring open. He made to sit up, but the weight across his lap pinned him in place. Faint light crept through heavy lavender drapes covering two floor-to-ceiling windows. It reflected off a massive silver-framed mirror propped against the far wall, and the golf ball-sized crystals that served as knobs on the gilded wood dresser and armoire. What the hell. He shut his eyes, as if to push the dream out of his head, but when he opened them again, he was staring straight above him at a fucking bower of wildflowers amidst curling vines, a bit of blue sky peeping through. And fairies—fucking fairies—hiding behind some deep purple flowers, their little wings glistening with silver. What the hell! It took him a few moments to realize that the underside of the canopy that covered her bed was a tapestry.
I’ve got to get out of here. This place is just plain over the top. But he was unable to move. Steve reached down to move whatever was holding him in place and got a handful of warm, silky flesh. Lifting his head slightly, he glanced down his torso. A rounded hip and thigh draped across him, perfectly exposed because the waist of her sleep bottoms had drifted down to the crack of her ass. He drooled. Or he felt like he was drooling. He reached out a cautious hand to touch her, to see if she was awake. She didn’t move when his hand cautiously settled on the indentation of her waist. He exerted gentle pressure to slip the luscious leg off his lap, but to no avail. If anything, she curled tighter against him. Then her arm stretched up to graze his shoulder before draping possessively across his chest.
Trapped. If he moved, he would wake Jess, and that was going to be awkward as hell. How could he explain what he had been doing in her bed till the wee hours of the morning? Sure as hell she’d think he’d tried to take advantage of her, tried for sympathy sex, tried for “She’s had too much wine to remember” sex. And he had not. He’d know if he’d had her. And while his dreams had been achingly explicit, he was pretty damn sure they had not been out in the woods all night, making all kinds of love. Then he glanced back up at the canopy, with its woodland images. And wondered.
Then all cogent thought drained out of his head because her knee rested on top of his erection, pressing into the turgid flesh, which hardened to the point that it became painful just to lie there. He had no choice. Time to get out of bed and pay the consequences. But, then Jessica turned her head toward him and planted a warm wet kiss in the vicinity of his bicep, right on the heart of the dragon that curled from his chest all the way down his arm to his wrist.
He reached up to extricate himself from her embrace but found instead that his fingers caught in her curling mass of hair, turned bronze by the sliver of sunrise playing across the bed. Steve wanted nothing more than to pull those strands across his chest, to pull that sleeping beauty face close enough for one kiss. Not the tongue-tangling, teeth-rapping kiss they’d shared in Maine. But a “Hello, gorgeous, I’m going to sink into you like you’re a pot of dark chocolate and I need more than a lick” kiss.
Without another conscious thought, his lips brushed her forehead, then trailed across an arched eyebrow, whispering across her sleep-bruised eyelid to her Ice Queen cheekbones. He lingered, savoring the softness of her skin, the slightly salty tang left by her midnight tears. Before he could drift to her lips to capture one forbidden kiss, Jess shifted. Her tongue darted out to lick the underside of his chin. Her hand tightened on his chest, cupping his pec, brushing against his hard-as-nails nipple. Steve groaned, tightening his hold on her head, as he made to pull her mouth up to meet his.
A whisper drifted up from her slightly parted lips. “If I’m dreaming, don’t wake me up. Please. Just kiss me like it was the first time.”
Longing like he’d never felt before burst into his heart. Pulling her to him, Steve caressed her swollen lips with light brushes of his own. She sighed into his mouth as if all the resistance she’d ever felt toward him had evaporated. The urge to hold her—just hold her—overwhelmed him. Tugging her more onto his body, he fit his other arm under her so he could cradle her like the precious woman that she was. To Steve. in that moment, she was the woman who’d haunted his every dream. Her mouth opened under the pressure of his, giving his tongue permission to caress her lips, teeth, and tongue. The kiss deepened, so that it was the beginning and the end of everything he’d ever wanted. But even that was not enough.
Buy Links (including BookBub):
Book is on sale for $2.99 for the month of February, as the sequel will be out in April 2023.
What’s your favorite part about being a romance author?
Living in Romancelandia, where I get to write stories about “later-in-life” love always with a “happy ever after.” Then receiving reviews, texts, e-mails and hugs from readers who love my stories. The best job in the world!
Here’s my tip to add romance to your love life:
Be open to love in your life. Don’t hide behind pre-conceived notions of what your life and your romantic future will be. Love can find you in the most unexpected places, in the most unpredictable ways!
Giveaway –
One lucky reader will win a $75 Amazon US or Canada gift card.
Open internationally. You must have a valid Amazon US or Amazon CA account to win.
Runs February 1 – 28, 2023.
Drawing will be held on March 1, 2023.
Author Biography:
Morgan Malone has been reading romance since the age of twelve, when she first snuck her mother’s copy of The Saracen Blade under the covers to read by flashlight. An award-winning published author of fiction by the age of eight, Morgan waited fifty years, including thirty as an Administrative Law Judge, to pen her next work of fiction. Now retired, Morgan lives near Saratoga Springs, NY. with her diva rescue dog, Princess. When not writing later-in-life romance, Morgan is penning romantic memoirs or painting watercolors. She travels frequently with her daughter and spends as much time as possible with her son, daughter-in-law, and two delightful grandsons who live nearby.
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