Crazy for You: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance)

by Juliet Rosetti

  Get swept away with Loveswept!

  Gina Wachtel

  Associate Publisher

  Read on for excerpts from more Loveswept titles…

  Read on for an excerpt from Juliet Rosetti’s

  The Escape Diaries

  Escape tip #1:

  Be prepared.

  Actually I wasn’t prepared at all. I just wanted to go to bed. I was tired and cranky, sweat was puddling between my boobs, and my armpits smelled like sprouting onions. Deodorant cost one ninety-five at the prison canteen, well beyond the means of someone who earned ten cents an hour. Given a choice between M&Ms or Mennen, I’d pick the sweet and live with the stink. Repulsive, yes—but chocolate is what gets you through the day, and no one else smells any better.

  If I’d stuck to chocolate, things might have turned out differently. But I had a leftover cough drop from a bout with bronchitis, and when my cellmate, Tina Sanchez, developed a tickly throat, I gave her the cough drop. Just being a pal, right?

  Wrong. You’re supposed to return unused medications to the medical director. The staff tracks pharmaceuticals the way the CIA tracks yellow cake in the Middle East. A cellblock officer caught the menthol scent on Tina’s breath and wrote her up for taking a nonprescription drug. Since I was the one who’d dished out the illicit substance, I was written up, too. Along with a bunch of other drug offenders—aspirin pushers, Alka-Seltzer peddlers, and Midol dealers—Tina and I were sentenced to garden detail.

  Not exactly the Bataan death march in a suburban peas and petunias plot, but Taycheedah’s gardens are a whole different chunk of real estate. Looking out over them is like gazing at the Great Plains; you wouldn’t be surprised to see buffalo and buzzards roaming around out there.

  The first days of September had been sunny and hot, and in the perverse way of growing things, every tomato on six acres had ripened on the same day. Ten thousand of the squishy red things, demanding to be handpicked before thunderstorms swept through and turned them into salsa. We picked. And picked. And picked some more. All morning, all afternoon, and into early evening. When it got to be five o’clock I thought we’d be dismissed for dinner. But no-o. You do the crime, you do the time: that was the warden’s motto. The kitchen staff sent out sandwiches and bottles of water and we ate sitting cross-legged in the dirt. Then we hauled ourselves to our feet and went back to work.

  My spine was an archipelago of ache, my skin felt scalded, and my teeth were filmed with bugs. The rank, catnippy odor of tomatoes clung to my clothes. I straightened and stretched at the end of my gazillionth row, rubbing my back and anxiously scanning the sky to the west, which had turned the pus-yellow of a fading bruise. The air was thick enough to stir with a spoon. Crickets chirped storm warnings. Lightning flickered in a raft of distant clouds.

  Lightning terrified me. I glanced uneasily at the officer on duty, hoping she’d let the tomatoes go to mush and order us back inside. She didn’t. She just yawned, leaning against a tree, staring glassily into space. Obviously, distant lightning wasn’t high on her list of concerns.

  “Did you know that lightning can strike as far as ten miles away?” I said to Tina, who was picking on the opposite side of my row.

  “So what?” Tina scoffed. “Your chances of getting hit by lightning are less than winning the Powerball.”

  “You’ve got it backward.” The heat was making me cranky. It was Tina’s fault I was on this gulag detail in the first place. “The odds against winning the Powerball are greater than your chances of being struck by lightning.”

  “I ain’t never won the lottery and I ain’t never got hit by lightning neither, so that proves my point.”

  Tina’s logic made my brain hurt. I opened my mouth to explain her faulty reasoning, which would probably have resulted in Tina’s giving me a mashed tomato facial, but at that moment a siren began to wail. I nearly jumped out of my sweat-streaked skin. Dropping my tomatoes, I clapped my hands over my ears.

  “Is that the escape siren?” I asked.

  “No, you goober. That’s the tornado siren.”

  Tornado? My stomach did a roller-coaster dip. Tornadoes scared me even worse than lightning. What were you supposed to do? In grade school we’d had to practice tornado drills, crouching under our desks with our arms over our heads and our butts in the air. By the time the drill ended, our classroom smelled like a cauliflower factory.

  The guard–snapped out of her heat-induced stupor, blew a whistle, and bellowed, “All right, everybody, form up in a line. We’re returning to the main unit. Inside, you will proceed to your designated—”

  A galloping wind drowned out her voice, bowled over the tomato plants, and hurled leaves through the air like green rain. The storm blitzed in faster than anyone could have expected. Thunder shook the ground and a zag of lightning split the sky. The mercury vapor lamps that lit the grounds exploded, plunging us into murky gloom.

  Disoriented, I grabbed onto Tina and we bumbled around, tripping over vines, squishing tomato guts underfoot, trying to catch our breaths against the scouring gale. The air sizzled with electricity and my hair stood on end. The wind worked itself into a tantrum and slammed us along, Tina’s long braid whipping against my face until she was whirled one way and I was hurled another. I smacked up against the wall of the greenhouse and stepped in a load of peat moss from an overturned wheelbarrow.

  Lightning flashed again, turning the world muddy purple. The purple goop spat hail. Split pea hail at first, that sounded like the first faint pops of microwave popcorn, then fist-sized hail that smashed the greenhouse panes and sent shards of glass geysering into the air. A 747 revved for takeoff inside my skull. My ears popped, my hair tried to yank itself out by the follicles, and what felt like a dozen Dustbusters sucked at my clothes. Tree branches and gutter spouts hurtled through the air, outlined by strobes of lightning. Something enormous somersaulted toward me, growing bigger and bigger, blotting out the sky. I stared in disbelief. It was a house! An enormous house was about to smack down and squash me like the Wicked Witch of the East. When the rescue workers came around searching for bodies, they’d discover my feet sticking out from beneath the foundation.

  “She really needed a pedicure,” they would say.

  * * *

  I was five years old when I watched The Wizard of Oz for the first time. My parents were out and my older brothers, who were supposed to be babysitting me, had abandoned me. Alone in the house, I poured myself a glass of Kool-Aid, dribbled my way to the TV, and popped a tape into the VCR. I couldn’t read yet, but the video cover showed a girl in a blue dress, a scarecrow, a lion, and a shiny metal man. I plopped down on the sofa, my legs so short they stuck straight out over the edge of the cushions, and watched, entranced, as a girl named Dorothy balanced along a fence, singing a song about a rainbow.

  Then Almira Gulch appeared. Eyes like Raisinettes, chin like an ax blade, mouth like a rat trap. By the time she was pedaling her bike through the twister, cackling insanely and transforming into the Wicked Witch of the East, I was petrified, sobbing, and soaked.

  My mother came home, switched off the movie, changed my underpants, and put me to bed. I wasn’t allowed to watch The Wizard of Oz again until I was nine years old, presumably old enough to separate fantasy from reality, but even then I had to squeeze my eyes shut when the winged monkeys flew out of the witch’s castle.

  Read on for an excerpt from Lauren Layne’s

  After the Kiss

  Julie Greene had built a career out of falling in love. Staying in love? Not so much.

  Julie’s boss apparently hadn’t gotten the memo.

  “I’m confused,” Julie said slowly, leaning forward with a placating smile. “You want me to write what?”

  Translation: You’re confused. I don’t write that shit.

  Camille Bishop leaned back in her chair and studied Julie with puzzled eyes. “I’d have thought you’d be jumping at the chance to have such a simple assignment after last month.”


  Julie pursed her lips together and considered. Last month’s assignment had been exhausting. Documenting the seven kinds of first kisses had required a lot of research.

  Pleasant research.

  But this? A two-page spread, to be called “How to Take Relationships to the Next Level”?

  What was Camille thinking? This was Stiletto magazine, not Dr. Phil. Stiletto was sex and high heels, not companionship and freaking clogs.

  The rocky post-honeymoon period just wasn’t Julie’s scene. Which is not to say she didn’t have plenty of other skills.

  The first date? She had men begging for it.

  The first kiss? An art form she’d long since mastered.

  The first time you lost your panties in his sheets? Soooo not a problem.

  This wasn’t to say that Julie had perfected only the major, most obvious dating milestones, however. She also knew how to finesse the subtler moments—those key moments where the breath caught and you thought, Yes, this. Julie could explain every single nuance, from the toe-curling euphoria when his hand brushed yours to the tingle when eyes held for just a beat too long. And then there was her personal favorite moment: the bone-deep satisfaction when you made him laugh for the first time—a real laugh.

  Most women thought these moments just happened. Julie Greene knew better. These moments were created.

  As for what happened after all that good stuff?

  Julie couldn’t care less. She had no need for the first fight, no desire to meet the parents. No interest in finding dirty boxers in her hamper or making room in her bathroom for a man’s razor. That was all a one-way trip to Julie’s personal vision of hell: couples movie night.

  Julie had found that the women of New York City erroneously used movie night as a yardstick of how close to the altar he was. After all, if he was satisfied to spend a Friday night at home instead of at a strip club, he must be whipped, right?

  Wrong. So wrong.

  Movie night was just another way of saying that you didn’t want to bother dressing up for him and that he didn’t care. Julie lived in fear of the moment when fancy dinners and cocktail parties would be a thing of the past, and the highlight of the weekend would be lounging in yoga pants and watching car chases or beautiful people making out on-screen.

  The sexiest part of that scenario was the butter on the popcorn.

  She shuddered. Julie Greene didn’t do movie night.

  “Camille, look,” she tried again. “It’s not that I don’t respect your suggestions …”

  “Oh?” Camille tilted her head, making her chemically straightened bob sway ever so slightly, and Julie froze. Over the years, Julie had come to think of Camille’s usually immobile hair as her “tell”—when it moved, someone’s life was about to get really messy.

  Up until now, it had never been Julie’s life.

  In the six years that she’d been working for Camille as a full-time columnist, this was the first time Julie had received a direct order on a story topic. Even when Julie had been fresh out of college with nothing but a handful of internships under her belt, Camille had given her wide latitude on what to write about.

  Julie knew that Camille trusted her judgment. So what was with the sudden power trip?

  It didn’t make sense. Julie was one of Stiletto’s best columnists, and they both knew it. And Camille had always encouraged her writers to play to their strengths. Julie’s niche was the single readers with the dream of falling in love. After that, they were on their own.

  Julie sat up straighter. Wait, no. That wasn’t entirely true. Readers did have someplace to go once they got past the fun part of dating.

  Grace Brighton.

  “Why not have Grace do it?” Julie asked excitedly. “She’s your relationship guru.”

  “And here I thought you and Grace were both my relationship gurus.”

  “We are,” Julie agreed quickly. “It’s just that we each have our own expertise. Anything having to do with long-term relationships is Grace’s.”

  Camille pursed her lips, painted today in a rather shocking coral. “And how would you describe yourself?”

  Julie’s heel jittered beneath the desk in frustration. Camille knew full well what Julie’s expertise was. Everyone at the Stiletto office did. Heck, half the women in Manhattan knew Julie by name. Knew what she stood for. Stiletto was the magazine to work at. The Dating, Love, and Sex department was the department to work in. And Julie, Grace Brighton, and Riley McKenna were Dating, Love, and Sex, respectively.

  Julie answered slowly. “I’m all about butterflies, first kiss, getting him to call. You know, dating.”

  “Mm-hmm, and how is it that a woman goes from those giddy first few dates to the comfortable, committed stuff that Grace writes about?”

  Julie’s mind went blank. There was really no good way to tell the editor in chief of the country’s largest women’s magazine that you’d never bothered to think about what happened after. And sure, maybe some people might think Julie a little insubstantial. But she was willing to bet those same people were perpetually dateless. Or entrenched in yoga pants and movie nights.

  “Um, well … I guess it sort of evolves?” Julie replied finally.

  “How?”

  “With the right person, it just happens. That’s the mystery of what makes true love so special.” Gawd, I almost made myself vomit.

  Camille shook her head. “Not good enough. You’ve seen the letters from our readers. They want to know the specifics. These are women who’ve already had the third date. They’ve even been on the seventh. But then what? How do they move forward?”

  Julie’s sleeveless Kate Spade turtleneck dress suddenly felt a little tight around her throat.

  “If not Grace, Riley could write it,” Julie said, grasping at straws. “You know, I actually think she’s been looking for a way to broaden her focus and take a break from the sex stuff for a while. Can’t you just see it? ‘Outside the Bedroom’ or something like that.”

  “Julie,” Camille said with a sigh, “Grace and Riley have their stories figured out for the next few issues. I’ve already okayed them.”

  “If you want a schedule of my future story ideas, I’d be happy to—”

  “My mind’s made up.”

  Okay, so Camille wasn’t going to be persuaded with reason. Time to go for the editor’s soft spot: Stiletto itself.

  “I’m not sure this is what’s best for the magazine,” Julie said demurely. “I just don’t have any experience with the … you know … long-term stuff.”

  But Camille wasn’t biting. “So? You think every writer in this office has personal experience with everything they write about?”

  I do, Julie thought. Or at least I did.

  “Julie, look around. What does this look like to you?”

  “Um, an office?” More accurately, a high-tech, state-of-the-art, killer corner office with a view of Central Park South.

  “Exactly. It’s an office of a magazine company. This is journalism, not your pink fuzzy diary,” Camille snapped. “If you haven’t been there yourself, talk to women who are going through that stage. Do what you always do—dive into our readers’ heads and answer the hard stuff for them.”

  Julie bit back a sigh, knowing the battle was lost. Temporarily. Camille was one of those scary women who had made her way to the top of the food chain by having steel ovaries and a penchant for making people cry. Julie had always figured that if they’d made a movie about Camille’s life she’d be played by either a stern Katharine Hepburn type or an intensely scary Robert De Niro on crack. She was about as soft as a hammerhead shark and half as friendly.

  Still, Camille was right about one thing: this article could be done with a little bit of strategic networking. A major in journalism from the University of Southern California had taught Julie that media was more about whom you knew than what you knew. But Julie had developed her own type of journalism over the years, one that involved a distinctly personal voice. And she hated th
e idea that she couldn’t speak personally to a topic.

  “So we’re good?” Camille asked, standing to indicate that the conversation was over.

  Not even close. “Definitely,” Julie replied with a confident smile.

  Camille had already picked up her cellphone and was yelling at her dry cleaner. Something about white stains on a black dress. Awwwwwwk-ward.

  Julie slipped out the door and was immediately surrounded by the sounds of Stiletto on a Friday afternoon. The mood in the Manhattan office was crackling even on a slow day, but by the end of the week the vibe was positively electric.

  The office staff was made up almost entirely of women, with a handful of fashion-forward men. Everywhere she looked, there were skinny hips perched on a colleague’s desk, gossip about evening plans, and lip gloss exchanges over cubicle walls as office makeup transitioned to happy-hour makeup.

  Normally Julie would be making the rounds, figuring out if anyone had heard of something happening that she hadn’t. It was more of a habit than anything else; Julie couldn’t think of a time when she’d been the last to hear about a party. Being at the top of Stiletto’s ladder also meant you were at the top of New York’s social ladder. The girls of the Dating, Love, and Sex department didn’t have to fish for an invitation.

  Julie made a detour into the kitchen, where Camille kept a few bottles of champagne stocked for celebrations and promotions.