An Excerpt from 'About Last Night'
ABOUT LAST NIGHT Synopsis: Sure, opposites attract, but in this sexy, smart, eBook original romance from RITA finalist and USA Today bestselling author Ruthie Knox, they positively combust! When a buttoned-up banker falls for a bad girl, "about last night" is just the beginning. CathTalarico knows a mistake when she makes it, and God knows she's made her share. So many, in fact, that this Chicago girl knows London is her last, best shot at starting over. But bad habits are hard to break, and soon Cath finds herself back where she has vowed never to go . . . in the bed of a man who is all kinds of wrong: too rich, too classy, too uptight for a free-spirited troublemaker like her. Nev Chamberlain feels trapped and miserable in his family's banking empire. But beneath his pinstripes is an artist and bohemian struggling to break free and lose control. Mary Catherine--even her name turns him on--with her tattoos, her secrets, and her gamine, sex-starved body, unleashes all kinds of fantasies. When blue blood mixes with bad blood, can a couple that is definitely wrong for each other ever be perfectly right? And with a little luck and a lot of love, can they make last night last a lifetime? Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from these Loveswept titles: Because of You, Ride with Me, and Midnight Hour.
- A 2013 finalist for the RITA award in contemporary single-title romance from Romance Writers of America
- A 2012 Reviewers' Choice Best Book Award nominee in the "Contemporary Love and Laughter" category, Romantic Times magazine
- A Library Journal Best Ebook Romance of 2012
- A Reviewers Choice Award 2012 Pick, All About Romance
- A Best Contemporary Romance 2012 nominee at The Romance Reviews
- A 2013 DABWAHA nominee
EXCERPT:
Cath leaned against a table strewn with crumpled tubes of
paint and jars full of brushes, pressing her damp palms against the surface and
willing her heart to stop pounding. <i>You’re not really attracted to
City. You’re just looking for your clothes, and then you’re going home. A blip,
remember? This is a blip.
Dimly, she realized he’d spoken. “Sorry, what?”
His lips twitched, and the dimple made another appearance.
“I only said ‘Good morning.’ Are you all right?”
She’d been on the money predicting he’d have a posh accent,
anyway. Maybe she could blame the hangover for her reaction to the smile. She
needed to eat something. Or get laid.
It had been a while. Could you still say that when it had
been two years? It had been a while.
“That depends,” she said.
“On?”
“On what I did last night.”
He pursed his perfect lips, a frown line appearing between
his eyebrows. “You don’t remember?”
“Not much.” She drew her index finger along the surface of
his worktable, as if checking for dust.
“Do you remember refusing to tell me your name or where you
live?”
“We talked?” Funny, she couldn’t resurrect any memories of
speaking to him. Only his hand, warm and solid, guiding her. Only the way he’d
made her feel.
The way he was <i>still</i> making her feel,
come to think of it. She was bare-legged in this strange man’s apartment,
asking him to reveal the details of what she’d done while drunk last night. The
situation ought to have been intimidating. She ought to have been queasy with
remorse.
She wasn’t, and she could only conclude the reason was City.
He projected calm.
“You kept calling me ‘City,’” he said.
Cath nodded. “Yep. That’s what I call you.”
He gave her a wry smile, and she held on tight to the edge
of the table. Maybe <i>calm </i>didn’t quite cover it. Not when he
smiled, anyway.
“That’s precisely what you said last night.”
His voice wasn’t at all what she’d expected. It was low and
warm and soothing, and it took the edge right off his fancy accent.
“Did I say why I wouldn’t tell you my name?”
The smile widened, and she decided it ought to be classified
as a misdemeanor. Grinning with Intent to Discombobulate.
“You told me you were sad and quite tired, but you didn’t
require my help, and all you needed to set yourself to rights was a cup of
coffee and something to eat.”
“So how did I—”
He raised one finger to prevent her interruption, his eyes
twinkling with amusement. She’d never noticed how unusual his eyes were before.
They were green over brown, both exotic and warm.
“Then,” he continued, “when I tried to introduce myself
properly, you covered my mouth with your hand and insisted we remain strangers,
because you could tell I was a very nice man”—he pronounced the word
<i>nice</i> as if it were a razor blade he was carefully spitting
out—“and I’d be far better off not knowing you.”
Cath was impressed. Her drunk self had more sense than she’d
given her credit for.
“That’s true,” she offered. “I’m not really your type.”
He cocked an eyebrow but let the comment slide.
“Since I’m here, I guess that means you took a pass on the
opportunity to hop the next train and leave me to my own devices?”
“It was nearly midnight,” he said, defensive. “All the shops
were closed, there were no cabs to be found, you wouldn’t tell me where you
lived or let me see you home, and you could barely stand up. So yes, bringing
you here seemed like the right thing to do.”
A thought distracted her from the question she’d been
forming. “What were you doing at Canary Wharf at midnight on a Friday?”
“Trolling for prostitutes.”
He delivered the line in such a dry, remote tone, it took
her a second to get that he was joking, but when she did, she couldn’t prevent herself
from teasing, “You must have been so disappointed with the selection.” She
glanced down at her small, decidedly unvoluptuous body in the oversized shirt.
“I wouldn’t say that, love.”
The dimple appeared again. She lost a few seconds gazing at
his mouth, and then she came to and let her eyes slide down his torso to alight
on his hand, which still held a paintbrush.
She hadn’t expected the smile. Or the paintbrush.
She definitely hadn’t expected him to flirt with her.
“I’d been to see a film,” he explained.
“I passed out,” she replied, attempting to steer the
conversation back toward the safer ground of her humiliation so that she could
get the details she needed and scurry home.
“I suppose you did. You were terribly tired. I made a pot of
tea, and by the time I’d finished you were asleep at my kitchen table. I tried
to rouse you, but you said, ‘Leave me alone,’ and then something that sounded
very much like, ‘Don’t murder me.’” He reported all this matter-of-factly, as
if drunk women passed out on his kitchen table every Friday night.
<i>Which, for all you know, they do.</i>
“Nice of you not to.”
“I seem to have convinced you I’m a nice man.”
Cath nodded her agreement, though he didn’t look all that
nice at the moment. The gleam in those green-brown eyes was positively rakish.
She hadn’t thought City had a speck of rakishness in him.
“Sorry about the stripping part,” she mumbled, partly
because she <i>was</i> sorry but mostly because she wondered what
he’d say.
The smile he gave her made her toes curl, it was so wicked.
“You do remember,” he said in that low rumble.
“You were very, uh, gentlemanly about that.”
“You were very intoxicated.” He turned away to set the
paintbrush down on the tray at the base of his easel.
“Yeah.”
She stared at her toes until they uncurled. This was her cue
to ask what he’d done with her clothes. She would have, only City asked, “How
are you feeling?” and so she had to keep talking to him. She tried to mind it
but failed. The man was proving to be an enjoyable conversationalist, and he
was remarkably easy on the eyes.
“I’m fine, thanks. I have a little headache, but the shower
helped. And the toothbrush.”
“Glad to hear it. Would you like breakfast? I fried up some
bacon.”
The mention of bacon made her stomach rumble.
“That sounds like a yes.”
“I do have a weakness for the bacon-sandwich hangover cure,”
she admitted. “But it seems a little lowbrow for you, City. I can’t imagine you
drunk, much less hungover.”
He took a few steps closer and studied her, an unabashed
appraisal that should have been rude or even scary but instead sent syrupy heat
creeping through her abdomen. “Considering you don’t know my name, you seem to
have a lot of ideas about me.”
Oh, she had ideas. She had a whole slew of new ideas about
him, and she needed to find an exit strategy quick, because none of them was on
the list of things she was supposed to be thinking about.
<i>Banker,</i> she reminded herself. <i>He’s a banker, a very
boring banker. Enough already. Just, whatever you do, don’t flirt with
him.</i>
“I don’t need to know your name. I’ve seen you around, and I
know your type.”
Aaaand she was flirting with him.
It won her a smirk. “What’s my type, then?”
“For starters, you come from money. You went to expensive
boarding schools, graduated from either Oxford or Cambridge, and now you work
at a bank in the City—thus the name.”
He frowned and wiped his hand over his mouth. What a mouth.
“Just let me know when I get something wrong,” she offered.
“By all means, carry on. You’re doing a brilliant job so
far.”
“Which was it, Oxford or Cambridge?”
“Cambridge. Trinity College.”
She resisted the urge to gloat. Gloating was well outside
the range of acceptable responses to City on this particular morning.
<i>So is flirting with him.</i>
Right. But it was so much fun. She hadn’t flirted in ages.
“Let’s see,” she said. “I know you like to jog. Judging by
those shoulders and arms, I’d say you also row, yeah?”
“Some. I play rugby, too.” He gave her half a smile, and she
made an effort to suppress the image of City in a rugby jersey with pink cheeks
and dirty knees, tussling over a ball. A human orgasm.
Her good sense was now officially yelling
Mayday!
She was now officially ignoring it.
“What do I do for fun, then?” He stepped even closer. This
flirtation had turned into a two-way party. She needed to find a method of
steering the conversation back toward bacon sandwiches and, say, the location
of her skirt, because it probably wasn’t good that she could smell him now, and
on this man linseed oil was an aphrodisiac.
“Well, you go to the symphony, spend weekends in the
countryside, and date women who wear twinsets and have names like—”
Without the least bit of warning, he kissed her. Not a
preamble sort of kiss, either. No, he really <i>kissed </i>her, one
huge hand cupping the back of her neck, and his warm, firm lips knew exactly
what they were doing, which was driving every single thought from her head.
Only the man remained, the mouth, the sensations coursing through her, heating
her up from the inside. Heating her up fast. Could all
bankers kiss like this?
Cath rose on her toes, angling her mouth and pressing
closer, but he pulled back a few inches. Then a few feet.
She wanted to say something. The only word that came out of
her mouth was a shaky “Whoa.”
She tried again. “What was that, City?”
“You tell me, Yank.” His lips curved into that sexy smirk
again.
“I’m pretty sure you just kissed me.”
“Yes, I did. Shall I apologize?”
“What for?”
“It was terribly impolite. I didn’t ask your permission.”
Cath leaned back against the table, crossed her arms over
the tight peaks of her nipples, and tried not to smile like a girl who’d just
been kissed silly. She failed. She was failing a lot around this guy. It ought
to have been worrisome, or at least embarrassing, but his lips had liquefied
her brain.
First kiss in two years would do that, she supposed.
“I was much more impolite than you. What with the passing
out and all. You’re being very nice about it.”
City scrubbed his hand over his jawline, pensive now. “I
would appreciate it,” he said after a moment, “if you would stop calling me
‘nice.’”
He took a step closer, and her heart rate spiked.
“You are nice.” Her voice came out all weak and wavery. This
was how Little Red Riding Hood had felt when she’d discovered the Big Bad Wolf
wearing Grandma’s bonnet.
“No,” he replied. “I’m not.”
Another step, and his eyes traced a path over her arms, down
her stomach to her hips. The brightly lit art studio made her purple underwear
visible through the white T-shirt. She could tell that City noticed, and that
he was enjoying the view.
She sat down on the edge of the table. “You brought me here
with impure motives?” The idea gave her a stupid thrill.
He shook his head. “No. I developed them after you arrived.”
Cath fingered the hem of the shirt where it hit her
mid-thigh. “You shouldn’t admit to that sort of thing. It’s perverted to lust
after half-naked drunk girls.”
“Not perverted.” He stepped closer until his thighs brushed
her knees. “Only male. And at any rate, you didn’t get me lusting with the
strip show. Though it was . . . fetching.”
“No?” It was a wonder she could speak at all, considering
there was a tall, hard, hot man crowding her and using up all the oxygen. “What
irresistibly attractive thing did I do, then?”
One more step, and he was between her legs. “You talked.
Rather a lot.”
“About what?”
“All sorts of nonsense. You’re not very fond of my country,
I gather.”
Cath shrugged, sheepish. “Sometimes I miss Chicago.”
“I’d never heard you talk before. You ought to do it more.
It’s charming.”
“People who talk to themselves at the train station are
generally understood to be crazy. Especially in your country.”
“You could talk to me.”
“I hardly know you.”
“I’m superb,” he said. “You’re going to like me.” Big, warm
hands covered her bare thighs, and she shivered. “Though I should probably
reiterate, I’m not at all nice.”
“I am,” she whispered. “I’m a very good person. Not the kind
of girl who gets drunk and has to be rescued from train stations.”
“I know.” He moved his hands up a few inches to the crease
where her thighs met her hips.
“Or who makes out with strange men on tables. I’m a
thoroughly respectable woman.”
“You don’t kiss like one.” He smiled that shark smile again.
New Cath had a death grip on the tattered vestiges of her
willpower, but she’d lost control over her body. Her palms smoothed over the
muscles of his forearms, and her butt scooted her closer to the edge of the
table by an inch or two. Or four.
At least her mouth still worked. “I’ve reformed. The kissing
is sort of a holdover.”
“Don’t reform. I like you bad.”
“I don’t want to be bad.” But her arms had reached up and
twined around his neck, and she had to murmur the last part against his lips.
“I do,” he said, and took over.
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ABOUT RUTHIE KNOX: USA Today bestselling author Ruthie Knox writes contemporary romance that’s sexy, witty, and angsty—sometimes all three at once. After training to be a British historian, she became an academic editor instead. Then she got really deeply into knitting, as one does, followed by motherhood and romance novel writing. Her debut novel, Ride with Me, is probably the only existing cross-country bicycling love story. She followed it up with About Last Night, a London-set romance whose hero has the unlikely name of Neville, and then Room at the Inn, a Christmas novella—both of which were finalists for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award. Her four-book series about the Clark family of Camelot, Ohio, has won accolades for its fresh, funny portrayal of small-town Midwestern life. Ruthie moonlights as a mother, Tweets incessantly, and bakes a mean focaccia. She’d love to hear from you, so visit her website at www.ruthieknox.com and drop her a line.
LINKS:
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