I mentioned on Facebook that I think release day is even better than my birthday! Partly because I'm far past the age of getting brightly frosted cupcakes, new bikes and wearing a tiara at school! Now birthdays are dinner of my choice (which, don't get me wrong, is just fine!) and something nice from Steady and a homemade card from Ruckus and Finicky. But it also means one more year older and facing the reality my butt is NEVER going to look like it did when I was 20.
Release day on the other hand means my beautiful book cover and name splashed all over, people e-mailing me telling me how they can't wait to read it, people reading excerpts and telling me how great it sounds, etc. I feel appreciated and creative and... fantastic! So, yeah, I like release day better! Because you know what... I got dinner of my choice to celebrate today too! *G*
Here's the blurb and an excerpt from Just Right!
To be a good bad boy you have to find just the right girl…
ER nurse Jessica Bradford is a good girl. Okay, more like a reformed bad girl. She’s determined to be the woman her late father wanted her to be. And she knows she should be with someone like Dr. Ben Torres-- in charge, dedicated, selfless. The tall, dark and handsome part is just a bonus.
So Jessica agrees to keep Ben out of trouble after he’s suspended from the hospital for punching a belligerent, drunk patient in the emergency room. She’ll get the needed recommendation from the Chief of Staff for the promotion she wants and she’ll have a great reason to spend more time with Dr. Perfect. But suddenly she’s got a problem. Outside of work Ben’s not so dependable, or perfect after all…and he’s even more tempting than before.
Ben’s done being everybody’s hero. What’s being a trauma surgeon ever gotten him but horrible hours and a bunch of responsibilities that make his life complicated? His sudden time off from the hospital is not only overdue, it’s a blessing. Which he intends to enjoy fully.
Jessica can’t believe Ben is acting more like a kid in a candy store than a man who’s about to throw his career away. Even more, she can’t believe that she still wants him like ice cream wants hot fudge. She tries her best to keep him out of trouble—except “trouble” is all Ben’s interested in.
And suddenly Jessica’s having trouble remembering why that’s a bad thing…
Excerpt:
There were five words that Jessica hated to hear from her brother.
“Jess, I need a favor.”
Yep. Those were them.
She closed her eyes. “Come on, Sam. I had a long day.” She wanted to prop up in bed, watch Seinfeld reruns and eat a pint of Peanut Butter Passion.
“It’s important, Jess,” Sam said, his tone the one he used for coaxing shy women out onto the dance floor. “I tried to handle it, but I need your help.”
The tone always worked on curvy blondes.
Jessica was not a curvy blonde.
“I’m…busy.”
“Dry your hair and get dressed,” he said. “I told you—it’s important.”
Jessica paused with the comb halfway through her straight brown hair and stared at the phone receiver in the mirror. How had he known her hair was wet? That was weird.
“I said I’m busy.”
“No. You said I’m, then there was a long pause before you said busy.”
She scowled. “So?”
“So, that pause means you were trying to think of a good excuse because you can never quite bring yourself to lie about it. You’re at home. It had to be taking a shower, doing laundry or cleaning the apartment.”
Jessica bristled. “I do other things here than…wash things.”
“Yeah, but if you were really doing anything important you would have actually been busy and you would have just told me what you were busy doing instead of using the noncommittal, generic I’m busy.”
Jessica was thrown off for a moment by her brother using the word noncommittal.
Showing off her own impressive vocabulary, she replied again, “So?”
“I need your help. It should be enough that I say it’s important,” Sam said, moving on from the “busy” conversation, probably bored by now with the topic that wasn’t directly about him.
Of course, important could mean almost anything with Sam.
It could mean he was a few dollars short of getting in on a poker game. It could mean that he needed a place for a couple of buddies from out of town to crash for the weekend. It could mean that one of the girls he’d flirted with had taken him too seriously and he needed an emergency wife to get the girl off his back. Jessica sighed. She hated playing Sam’s wife. He always wanted her to be bitchy and she always ended up feeling bad for the girl.
“It was a really long day at work.”
And it was all because of Ben Torres.
Rumor had it he had been suspended by the Chief of Staff and the hospital attorneys were riled up trying to figure out how to troubleshoot the situation. There were charges pending as well. Manslaughter for Ted. Assault for Ben.
Not that any of it affected Jessica directly. She was an ER nurse. There were more surgeons, there would be more accidents and more patients. But she couldn’t get Ben out of her mind…or suppress her insane urge to make sure he was all right.
“I heard,” Sam said.
Of course he had. Sam was the head paramedic on the best ambulance crew in the city and he not only worked with the ER staff regularly, he was also friends with many of them, including Ben. Matt Taylor, the ER doctor on Ted Blake’s case, was a poker buddy of Sam’s.
“I’m tired and—”
“Shame on you, Jessica Leigh Bradford,” Sam broke in. “I’m your little brother. Your only brother.”
The only part was right. The little part not so much. Sam was younger than Jessica by five years, but she didn’t even come up to his chin.
“I’m not in the mood for this.” But she knew that she didn’t sound convincing. She’d always been a sucker for the little brother bit. Because he was right. He was her younger brother and she felt responsible, even now when he was twenty-five and definitely a big boy.
“Too bad.”
“What is it?” she asked, trying to soak a cotton ball with skin toner with one hand while holding the phone with the other.
“A babysitting job.”
She frowned, forgetting the cotton ball for a moment. “Did you say babysitting?”
“Well, first, do you have a sexy dress?”
Jessica forgot about the toner, cotton ball and everything else. “Excuse me?”
“You’re going to need to borrow one then,” Sam said. “And high heels. Do you have high heels?”
His tone suggested that he sincerely doubted it.
“Of course I do.” They were way in the back of the closet somewhere, but she was pretty sure she still had them.
“What about the dress?”
“I have a dress, Sam.”
“But is it sexy? It will have to be sexy. Maybe you should call Marcy.”
This called for a dress from her friend Marcy? Marcy didn’t dress in anything that didn’t reveal cleavage and lots of it. What in the hell was going on?
“Sam, maybe you’d better define babysitting,” Jessica said grimly.
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