Happy Friday!  Just a little excerpt from my upcoming short MAKING THE GRADE with my dear friend Jane Gaudet – hoping to have it in the queue by Monday, so stay tuned!  Have a great weekend, everyone!

Math teacher Sadie Dunne’s summer is not off to a good start. Not only has she spent the entire school year getting pushed around by her rambunctious students, by their parents, and by her colleagues, who find it all too easy to take advantage of her generous heart, but instead of taking a relaxing vacation on a tropical beach somewhere, she’s stuck teaching summer school. To make matters worse, the AC in her classroom is broken and too-hot-for-his-own-good maintenance man Cooper Bell seems more interested in flirting with her than in fixing it.  When her latest mistake of a relationship implodes, Sadie has had enough.  For once, Sadie wants to be the one calling the shots – in her classes, in her life, and especially in the arms of the hunky handyman.

Cooper has never been great at reading women, and the mixed signals from the lovely Sadie have been driving him crazy! She may want him, but she never speaks up, and he worries that she’s out of his league. When an accident traps them in a supply closet together, Cooper sees an opportunity to convince her to give him a chance, even if it means letting her call the shots and revealing his deepest, darkest fantasy of submitting to a beautiful woman. A steamy tryst in a closet is one thing, but can Sadie and Cooper get past their self-doubt to teach each other how to be happy together?

EXCERPT:

Sadie grumbled to herself as she trudged down the stairs.  It was even hotter down here, if that were possible.  The air conditioning had gone out on Monday, and for whatever reason was still out.  She paused at the bottom of the stairs, drawing a breath of hot, stale air, gathering her courage.  The downstairs corridors were always a little dim and dank and nightmarish in a monster-in-the-basement horror movie kind of way, but the flutter in her stomach had nothing to do with fear as she tapped on the door of the Maintenance Office.

“Mr. Bell?”

The whirr of machinery nearly drowned out her voice, and, reasoning that he might not be able to hear her, she opened the door.  And stopped short, her jaw dropping.

Cooper Bell.

The man should come with a warning label.  Six-five, broad-shouldered, and muscled like a Greek statue, the gorgeous, brown-haired thorn in Sadie’s side was in the process of pulling a greasy, damp tee shirt over his head.  The rational, schoolteacher part of Sadie was immediately and properly horrified, but everything female in her came to instant, sparkling awareness, and she had to stifle what would have been a truly embarrassing whimper of lust and gratitude at the sight of such a delicious specimen of manhood.  He was reaching for a clean tee shirt across his desk in a move that had muscles flexing smoothly under golden skin when he spotted her in the doorway.  Cooper froze, eyes widening, and then straightened, dark eyebrows rising over dark green eyes, the corner of his mouth kicking up in a half-smile that brought out the dimple in his cheek.

Stupid dimple, thought Sadie, ignoring the desire to stroke the little notch with her lips.

“Problem, Miss Dunne?” he asked.

Sadie was having trouble getting her mouth to work.  It was one thing to listen to her fellow teachers gossip about the studly new Head of Maintenance who looked more like a male model than a handyman.  It was quite another to be confronted with the man himself, half-naked in only a pair of jeans that hung from lean hips in a way that made the stomach flutter morph into a herd of stampeding buffalo.  He was nearly smooth, with a narrow trail of brown hair under his navel, trailing down under his waistband.  Sadie wondered if it felt as soft as it looked.  She wondered what it would feel like to nuzzle the hard ridges of his abdomen as she slowly pulled those jeans down, down, down…

Oh my God, Sadie!  Snap out of it!  You have a boyfriend!  Kind of. 

I can’t believe it’s been a year already!  365 days since I took a deep breath and put HOT FOR JOE up for sale on Amazon.  I think I sold 10 copies that first month.  However, I stuck with it, and I’m happy to report that in just a year, I’ve sold just over 17,000 copies of 11 short stories, 2 collections, and 2 romantic suspense novels.  It’s been quite a ride, and I’m hoping that in this second year I’ll be able to bring you new Bright’s Ferry books, a few more shorts, and a jump into the Hearts of Stone world, among other things.

To celebrate my anniversary, BUILD ME UP is free through Wednesday, so if you haven’t gotten to know Grant and Kelly, now’s your chance!

And of course, it’s Monday, so here’s a much-deserved excerpt from MAKING THE GRADE (TEACH ME TONIGHT #2).  Sadie and Cooper are stuck together in a hot, dusty supply closet, but luckily, there’s a window…:)

Math teacher Sadie Dunne’s summer is not off to a good start. Not only has she spent the entire school year getting pushed around by her rambunctious students, by their parents, and by her colleagues, who find it all too easy to take advantage of her generous heart, but she’s just been dumped, and instead of consoling herself on a tropical beach somewhere, she’s stuck teaching summer school. To make matters worse, the AC in her classroom is broken and too-hot-for-his-own-good maintenance man Cooper Bell seems more interested in flirting with her than in fixing it.

Cooper has never been great at reading women, and the mixed signals from the lovely Sadie have been driving him crazy! She may want him, but she never speaks up, and he worries that she’s out of his league. When an accident traps them in a supply closet together, Cooper sees an opportunity to convince her to give him a chance, even if it means letting her call the shots and revealing his deepest, darkest fantasy of submitting to a beautiful woman. A steamy tryst in a closet is one thing, but can Sadie and Cooper get past  their self-doubt to teach each other how to be happy together?

EXCERPT:

“Come on, I’ll give you a boost.”

“A boost?”

Cooper grinned at the horror that must have filled her expression, but Sadie couldn’t see anything funny about the situation.  Nothing.  Zero.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to drop you.”

“There must be another way.”

“Unless you’re going to magically sprout wings, this is the best idea I’ve got.”

Cooper started toward her, pausing when Sadie shook her head, frantic.

“Come on, don’t you want to get out of here?  We’ll have a better chance of someone hearing us with the window open.   Maybe I’ll get a tiny little glimpse of your panties.  So what?  It’s not like I’ve never seen panties before.”

Cooper’s eyes were alight with amusement and naughty anticipation, though she could see him fighting to keep the smile from his face.

“I can’t,” squeaked Sadie.

“Why not?”

His eyebrow rose as the heat of Sadie’s blush swamped her.

“Because I’m not wearing panties,” she said.

IT SHOULDN’T MATTER.  WHAT were panties anyway? A meaningless scrap of silk that cloaked the soft folds of her pussy – flesh Cooper was never going to get to see.  Sadie might have gone commando every day of the year and he never would have guessed.  But alone in this closet, suddenly the thought of Sadie’s sweet folds uncovered under her skirt seemed unbearably erotic.  Cooper’s skin felt too tight, his cock swelling in the confines of his jeans as he pictured her inching up her skirt for him, her creamy thighs graced with black garters as she revealed the doorway to paradise.

Was she bare? Or did she keep her mound covered in sexy curls, the same impossible white-blonde as her hair?

She was beet red.  And his mouth suddenly seemed incapable of forming a sentence.

“Oh,” he said.

“So, yes.  No boosting.”

Cooper couldn’t help it, his eyes dropped to her skirt.  She blushed even harder, if that was possible.

Don’t think about it.

“Was it too hot to wear them?”

The words came tumbling out and Cooper thought that now might be a good time for a merciful cosmic piano to drop out of the sky and crush him into tiny, stupid pieces.

“What?”

She looked adorably cute.  And flustered.

“Panties.”

God, shut up, Cooper!  What the hell is wrong with you?

“No, I left them somewhere.  I mean, does it matter?”

Somewhere.  That one little word had a green tendril snaking up Cooper’s spine to wrap around vital organs.  Somewhere like a lover’s bed?  Somewhere like some dickwad’s pants pocket, where he could feel the lace and silk against his fingers during the day and think about all the sweet curves they had nestled against?

“No, it doesn’ t matter,” he gritted out.

And then it was just awkward silence for a long moment.  Sadie was staring at the floor, no doubt hoping it would open up and swallow her.  Suddenly, her chin came up and she looked at him straight, eyes flashing.

“If you must know, I was going to seduce my now ex-boyfriend, but it turns out he was too busy seducing someone else, so I kind of threw my panties at him and made a grand exit.”

Well, then.