“Anthony Joseph DiAngelo, I love you with everything that I am and everything I ever hope to be. I swear to you that I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life and there won’t be a day that goes by that you’ll regret this moment...” She took a deep breath, exhaled, and then said, “...if only you’ll find it in your heart to ask me again.”
Her words couldn’t have been more perfect. They could have been her wedding vows instead of merely a request that he propose to her again. This woman was all he’d ever want in this world, and nothing could keep him from granting her this wish and every wish she’d ever have in the future.
Tony felt his hand shake as he reached for the ring, so he curled it into a fist, inhaled deeply and got control over his body before trying again. When he held the ring, he lowered himself to his knees, then lower to sit on his heels so she at least had about an inch in height on him to make it somewhat proper. However, he didn’t want to draw anything out. He’d already told her everything during the last proposal. Now it was time for simple and quick, so he could let his body and heart make good on their plans as soon as humanly possible.
Gazing into her warm brown eyes, Tony held her left hand in his and did as he’d been ordered. “Will you marry me, baby?”
She beamed at him a moment before throwing her arms around his neck and capturing his mouth for a kiss he happily returned, trying to remember to keep it PG for the spectators he could hear squealing in girlish delight and alternately pretending to puke and gag and warn their coach of cooties.
Tony forced himself to pull away from his new fiancée so he could place the ring on her finger and help her to stand. In seconds, they were surrounded by the horde as hugs and well wishes were offered for at least another half hour before things settled enough for the game to resume. Their coach’s engagement must have wound up the Shark Bytes, because they ended up winning 5-1 in the highest scoring youth soccer game to date.
All in all, it’d turned out to be a pretty great day, and if Tony had anything to say about it, things would only get better from here on out. It was hard to imagine their future any other way with how fortunate they were. He loved his teaching career and he’d always coach in the youth programs. Trish was a born entrepreneur and missed the business she’d worked so hard to grow back in New York, so it was only a matter of time before she did it again. But he also knew that he needed to let her come to that decision on her own, so he’d wait it out.
As everyone snapped pictures of the team with the trophy as tall as the champions who’d earned it, Tony pulled Trish behind the bleachers and stole a proper kiss filled with all the passion and love he held for his bride-to-be. Damn, that sounded good. It sounded right.
“You know,” he said, looking on at the kids celebrating and oblivious to their coach’s sudden disappearance, “we are at the fields a block from my place. I bet no one would notice if we slipped away to go do some celebrating of our own. I’ll give you a ten-second head start since you’re wearing boots.”
Trish laughed, but shook her head. “No way. You can suck it up and wait until later.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I thought you would have learned by now not to challenge me. Ten…nine…”
“Tony, damn it, stop.”
“…seven…”
She started to back away from him. “I’m not kidding.” But she laughed and kept backing up.
“Better hurry,” he said in a low voice with a smirk on his lips. “You remember what happened last time I caught you.”
Her eyes flying wide, she gasped. “It’s daylight.”
He gave her a predatory smile that told her just how little he cared. “…four…”
“Shit!” she squeaked on a laugh before spinning and bolting down the road.
Tony counted the last two numbers in his head and took the couple seconds to enjoy watching her run from him. He wasn’t really in a hurry. After all, they had the rest of their lives ahead of them to do everything from make love to discover new facets of their relationship and they’d do all of it together.
She was his perfect game. They were a team, and when they had kids—fingers crossed she wanted enough to fill a soccer roster—they’d be an even bigger team.
“Ready or not, world,” he said to himself as he started walking home, “here we come.”
SEDUCING CINDERELLA: EXCERPT
ASK ME AGAIN is a stand-alone novella loosely based on Gina’s younger sister, Tricia, and her fiancé TJ, and was written as a cheap gift for their wedding on May 30th, 2015. Of course, Gina’s kidding about the cheap gift part. (Maybe.) ASK ME AGAIN will be re-released with additional scenes and bonus epilogue sometime later this year. If you enjoyed Gina’s writing, you can get more of it from her romantic comedy TEMPTING HER BEST FRIEND, or her Fighting for Love series about hot MMA fighters. The first book in the series, SEDUCING CINDERELLA, hit #9 on the NYT bestseller list and is best known for its beloved hero (who Gina suspects is why the book hit it so big). Don’t believe it? Feel free to check out the reviews. You’ll notice most readers didn’t give a fig about the story or writing, much to Gina’s amusement. They did, however, drool and fawn over Reid Andrews. Here’s a quick excerpt to give you a small taste of his yumminess so you can judge for yourself:
He walked his hand up the wall, drawing closer to her as he spoke. “Tell me what you want.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s a reason we’re doing this. You want something. Don’t think about the answer. I want you to feel the answer. Now,” he said once he’d gone as far as he could and began to lean toward her, “tell me, what you want.”
She licked her lips. Swallowed hard as his mouth got closer, but stayed just out of reach. “Right now?”
“Right this very instant.”
“I want to kiss you so badly it scares me.”
Her answer shocked the hell out of him—he’d been expecting her to say something along the lines of wanting her doctor—but he was too selfish to give a damn. “Then do something about it,” he commanded.
Lucie grabbed the sides of his face and meshed her mouth on his. This time, saltiness left behind from her workout mixed with the strawberry taste of her lips. The combination was intoxicating, but it was nothing compared to the one-two punch he got when she swept her tongue over his upper lip.
Reid took that as an open invitation. Plunging his tongue inside her mouth was like tasting sweet ambrosia.
He hoped like hell his boxer briefs would do a better job of containing his growing erection than he did of containing the toe-curling groan that escaped his chest.
She pulled away, switching immediately into therapist mode. Although she wasn’t usually so breathless when assessing him. He liked her affected like this. A lot. “This isn’t a good idea, Reid. You need to stay focused with the stretches or you’ll cause yourself more pain.”
With his left hand on her chin, he dragged her attention away from his injury. “My shoulder isn’t in pain right now, Lu. However, I can’t say the same for another place of my anatomy.”
He waited patiently for her innocent mind to catch up with his fiendish one wallowing in the gutter. To no avail. “I don’t understand, where are you in pain?”
He hitched his left brow and quirked up a corner of his mouth in the universal smirk that said, “I’m thinkin’ dirty.” Now she’d get it in three…two…one…
A slight widening of those light gray eyes and a sudden interest in the ceiling above his head told him he was right on the money. He would’ve laughed at how charming he found the blush in her cheeks, but he wasn’t exactly in the laughing mood. Nope. His mind had already hopped onto the one track that was headed straight for trouble. The fun kind.
“I know I’m not your type, Reid. You don’t have to make things up to make me feel better about myself. I’m a big girl.”
Was she fucking serious? She didn’t think he was turned on by her? Now that was enough to piss him right the hell off. Abandoning th
e stupid stretch, he grabbed her ass in both hands and pulled her into his body.
Hard.
This time she gasped and planted her hands on his pecs in a feeble attempt to keep some semblance of space in the equation. Lucky for him, that wasn’t the half he was concerned with obliterating everything between them but their clothes. And even those weren’t a safe bet at this point. To prove it, he ground his pelvis forward, letting the hard length of his cock rub against the nerve-sensitive juncture between her legs.
“Feel that, Lucie? That’s not how I react to women I’m not into. Believe me, there are other ways of teaching you these things. Less intimate ways.” Ways that he should damn well be using. But instead he trailed one of his hands up her side and swept his thumb over her nipple, eliciting a wanton moan from her kiss-swollen lips. Even through the material of her sports bra and tank top he could see her nipple pucker and harden from his touch. He hissed in appreciation. “I just can’t seem to leave myself out of this.”
“Why not?” she said with just a hint of trembling.
Why not? That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t he step back from her? Why was it that every time he pictured her doing anything with another guy, much less that asshole of a doctor she was so hung up on, his gut clenched like he’d just been sucker punched by a heavyweight?
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “All I know is I’m tired of fighting myself when I’m near you like this. So maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe starting right now we come up with a new plan.”
He wasn’t sure if she realized it or not, but Lucie’s hands left his chest and slid up behind his neck, allowing her breasts to mold themselves against him. Damn, he loved the way her softness gave way to his harder body.
“What are you suggesting?”
He dipped his head until they were so close they were sharing breaths, their noses lightly brushing as they danced around their overwhelming desire to fuse their mouths. “Maybe the best way to teach you how to seduce, is to let you feel what it’s like to be seduced. And then let you try it out on someone who’s not your eventual target. So you get any nerves out of the way.”
“Like a trial run.”
“Right. In the end I go back to reclaim my title like I want, and you bag what’s-his-nuts, just like you want. No strings, no hard feelings. But in the meantime, we blow off some steam and get whatever the hell this is out of our systems.”
“I suppose that makes sense. It’s definitely a plan with merits.” Her long fingers at his nape slipped up into the hair at the base of his skull as she tipped her head back, exposing the smooth expanse of her neck for his nibbling pleasure. “Oh, God.” The prayer was a breathy whisper, just barely loud enough for him to hear, and made him grin with base satisfaction as he moved up to the space just behind her ear. She tasted like salted caramel, a combination it seemed he couldn’t get enough of.
“So what do you say, Luce?” He nipped at her earlobe and then soothed it with a gentle suction in his mouth.
“I say—” Her answer was cut off by a gasp as he pushed her back the few inches to press her up against the wall.
“You were saying?” Reid prompted her to start her sentence again, knowing damn well he wasn’t going to let her finish. It was too much fun interrupting her.
“I was saying that— uhn!” That time he ground himself over where he knew that sensitive little bundle was swollen and aching for some contact. “Damn it, Reid, yes, okay? I say yes to the new plan!”
“About damn time you spit that out.” And with that, he attacked.
About Gina L. Maxwell
New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author Gina L. Maxwell, is a shameless romance addict with no intentions of ever kicking the habit.
Growing up, she dreamed of helping people escape reality with her sublime acting abilities. It wasn’t until college when she realized she had none to speak of, thereby derailing her lifelong plans. Another ten years would pass before she discovered a different means to accomplishing the same dream: writing stories of love and passion for romance addicts just like her.
Thanks to the support of her amazing family, Gina is now the Boss of the world’s first organized romance mafia, the Maxwell Mob, and living her dream of bringing a little romantic fantasy to the world—one steamy novel at a time.
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Find Gina on the web at http://www.ginalmaxwell.com/
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Twitter: @Gina_L_Maxwell | Email: [email protected]
Interlude
CHAPTER ONE
Cassidy McCullough peered through the grimy store-room window at the back of Hennipen’s Gas & Grab, an establishment that definitely lived down to its name.
“This is some kind of joke, right?” she asked, taking in the familiar sway-backed mare standing peaceably in the shade of what was probably the only deciduous tree in the whole town of Busted Spur, Arizona. The horse was loosely tethered to a rusted pump handle, and there was a water bucket in easy reach.
Annabelle Hennipen gave a throaty chortle. “No joke,” she replied. “Your Uncle Duke, he rode in an hour or so ago, on one of his cow ponies, leadin’ old Pidge there behind him. Duke said his truck was broke down again, but it was probably temporary, so he’d come back here and pick up your suitcases soon as he and G.W. got the rig running. In the meantime, he didn’t want to leave you waiting around, so he brought the horse.”
Cassidy glanced back at Annabelle, lounging in the doorway between the crowded storage area and the main part of the Gas & Grab, and shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder if that man ought to be allowed to live alone,” she said.
“I been sayin’ the very same thing for years,” the other woman replied, with a wide grin. Annabelle was a voracious reader with a top-notch vocabulary, but she liked to ‘talk country’, as she might have phrased it, provided she knew the other person pretty well. Claimed it felt more natural. “’Duke McCullough’, I tell him, ‘you need a wife and I need a husband, so why don’t we just go ahead and hitch ourselves to the same wagon? Two can pull twice as far as one.’ He just smiles in that knee-meltin’ way he has and says something like, ‘One of these days, Annabelle, I’m gonna take you up on that offer, and it’ll serve you right when I do, because then you’ll be stuck with me for the duration’.”
Cassidy had heard it all before, of course; Duke and Annabelle had been flirting with the idea of marriage for as long as she could remember. The truth was, Duke wasn’t the only one with a chronic case of cold feet—Annabelle could be pretty skittish herself. They never seemed to be on the same page, those two, when it came to tying the knot; if one was ready, the other wasn’t.
Thinking about the slow, plodding horseback ride ahead of her, all five dusty, sweltering miles of it, Cassidy didn’t reply right away. She’d just have to bite the bullet, she guessed, open one of her suitcases, slip into the rest room, and swap out her tailored beige crepe pantsuit and matching strappy shoes for jeans, a tank top, and a pair of sneakers.
And mount up.
It wasn’t as if she had any other choice; there were no taxis in Busted Spur, since it barely qualified as a wide spot in the road, let alone a town.
Annabelle had a car, but she couldn’t be expected to close up shop, even for the fifteen or twenty minutes the trip out to the ranch would take. The Gas & Grab was a one-woman operation, and customers were few and far between these days. Every sale counted, however small.
Cassidy’s best friend, Shelby, would have been glad to provide transportation, except that she was in Nogales for the day, buying folk art and silver jewelry for her online shop.
The reality: Pidge was parked outside and the poor horse had to get home somehow.
No doubt about it, Cassidy loved her uncle, but right about then, well, she could cheerfully have strangled him.
Annabelle’s voice drifted her way. ““
I guess that would fix him,” she was saying.
Obviously, while Cassidy was letting her mind wander, Annabelle had gone right on talking.
Though she’d missed the middle part, it didn’t take a psychic to fill in the gap. Annabelle had been pondering the mystery that was Duke McCullough.
So Cassidy simply agreed. “I guess it would,” she said, with conviction.
Annabelle stood with one shoulder braced against the door frame now, her arms folded. She had muscular biceps and a small, colorful tattoo of a dragonfly just above her right wrist. “You reckon Duke’s ever gonna change?” she asked, and it was clear from her tone that she didn’t really expect an answer.
Cassidy gave her one anyway. “No,” she said breezily. “Would you want him to?”
Annabelle pondered for a few moments, looking solemn, then shook her head. “Probably not,” she admitted. “If he was different, he wouldn’t be Duke.”
“There you have it,” Cassidy replied.
Just then, the bell over the front door jingled, and Annabelle’s whole face brightened. “Customer,” she chimed.
Cassidy waved her off with a grin. “Take care of business,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
Annabelle nodded in an of-course-you-will kind of way, returned Cassidy’s grin, and disappeared.
Cassidy opened a suitcase, took out a change of clothes, and ducked into the ‘staff’ bathroom, a cubicle with a sink and a toilet, and swapped out her pantsuit and pricey shoes for denim, cotton and sneakers. She’d worn her shoulder-length brownish-blonde hair in a loose chignon for the trip; now, she let it down, did a little finger-combing, folded her dressy jacket, pants and sleeveless top, and packed them, along with the heels. Within moments, she’d tucked her luggage and laptop case into a corner, and picked up her shoulder bag, which contained the main necessities of life: her cell phone, an electronic tablet, a hairbrush, a wallet, a small bottle of hand sanitizer, and a travel-size package of tissues.
Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) Page 39
