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A Billion Little Clues
Melinda Gaines, overworked personal assistant, is cursed with permanently bad luck. Her boss keeps making unreasonable demands, and no guy has seen the inside of her apartment in months.
But when Melinda is sent to a party at the CEO's house, she ends up on a romantic, moonlit balcony with an unnervingly handsome stranger. Melinda is convinced that her run of bad luck is over.
That is, until she finds that her latest crush is being accused of murder...
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Don't stop just yet!
I've included several chapters of another one of my favorite books:
Fool Me Once!
She's been lying all her life. Can he teach her the truth?
Ruby Bennis lives her life in the moment. Thanks to a winning smile, sleight of hand, and cleavage that looks okay (with a push up bra and a bit of mood lighting), she bounces along in life. She moves from city to city, job to job, and man to man without a second thought. When she meets Dane at a back-room poker game, she figures that she's got her next easy mark in her sights.
Dane Stanton's done his best to leave his shady past behind. He works behind a desk, living a normal, comfortable, maybe slightly boring life. But when he's forced to resort to old tricks to bail out a friend, he finds himself rescuing Ruby from a tricky situation. Unwillingly, Dane finds himself playing the role of knight in shining armor.
Dane knows that Ruby's trouble. He seems to be the only one seeing through her "good girl" act. He won't let her fool him again.
Even if she's the only one who makes him truly happy...
Fool Me Once
Chapter One
*
Austin Blair grinned as he stepped out of the 401 Building, looking around at the other gleaming skyscrapers of downtown. This, he thought to himself, feels like it's going to be a very good day for me. The sun is shining, the air is warm, and I'm going to kill it in my pitch meeting this afternoon. The commission for the agency – and for me, in particular – is going to be huge.
Strolling down the sidewalk, Blair tried to imagine what he might buy with the obscene amount of money he'd receive for his latest bonus. Maybe he should put in a pre-order for the latest top of the line Mercedes? His current car was already almost a year old. Time to trade that in for a newer version.
Or, perhaps, he should just have some more fun with the cash, go blow it all in a single crazy weekend? A couple of his old frat buddies had sent him some links to somewhere called Macau, apparently like Vegas on steroids, if there was such a thing. They claimed that the hotels would literally send hookers up to the room, like room service! Call up the front desk and tell them how many girls you want, any special requests in terms of tits or age or anything like that, and they'd have it delivered within the hour.
Smiling widely, Blair adjusted the lapels on his four thousand dollar tailored suit, smirked around at all the other working stiffs pushing past him on the sidewalk. Most of them were probably piss poor, hustling day in and day out at some dead-end job, just typing figures or something into a spreadsheet.
Suckers. They should have gone into advertising, like he did after graduating from business school. His daddy pulled a couple strings to get him into the top ad agency, sure, but he'd shown that he had a shark's eye for landing deals and undercutting the competition, doing whatever was necessary to increase the agency's bottom line.
And in return, the agency made sure to reward him very handsomely.
A good job, one worthy of a man with his talents. He approached the intersection of the nearest street, paused to consider his destination. He just needed a quick bite to eat, something carnal, before heading back upstairs to get his presentation ready – and maybe hit on that new secretary, too. She looked like a feisty one, be great to fuck her-
"Excuse me, sir? Can you spare a moment of your time?"
It took a moment before Blair realized that the voice was addressing him. He frowned as he looked around, finding a young woman smiling encouragingly at him from her spot on the sidewalk at the corner of the intersection.
Oh, great. Blair felt his good mood start to evaporate, turning sour as he took in the young woman's appearance. Shirt with some green logo on it, not one that he recognized but probably for some pansy bleeding heart charity case. Green hat, also with the logo on it. Great. One of these liberal flower children, refusing to just accept that cruelty was how the world worked, trying to beg everyone to just get along.
But Blair was good at seeing the upside of anything. Hell, it was what made him such a great marketing and advertising executive; he prided himself on his ability to spin any situation. And as he got a better look at the young woman, he definitely saw a couple of potential upsides here.
She wasn't too bad on the eyes, first of all, he considered to himself. Short, but her shirt dipped low enough to show that she had some real knockers hidden under there, not just the pair of mosquito bites that some of the younger girls in his office insisted on calling real boobs. No, these were tits deserving of the name, and she was giving off quite a generous view of the cleavage. A good marketing tactic, he knew, but he still appreciated it.
His eyes tracked slowly up, rising to her face. Not bad there, either. Big, wide blue eyes that made her look innocent, although the sparkle in them suggested that she was no stranger to a bit of naughtiness. Strawberry blonde hair that, although pulled back into a ponytail to thread out the back of that stupid green baseball cap, looked thick and lustrous. For a moment, Blair envisioned grabbing a big handful of that hair and hauling back, forcing her to arch her back as he plunged himself into that cute little round ass of hers, and he couldn't hide the rush of arousal that swept through him.
The blonde sensed that she'd captured his attention. "Hi there, sir," she said, putting on an eager smile as she stepped up to him, perhaps a little closer than was strictly necessary. "Do you have a moment to help out the Green Advocacy group?"
Blair spared a single glance down at the girl's clipboard before returning his attention back to her lithe little body. "Actually, I donate to charity through my work," he lied. "But perhaps I could be convinced to make an additional contribution..." He let the words trail off suggestively, waiting to see if she took the bait.
She bit. For a moment longer, she kept up the cheery smile, but then sighed and dropped it. "Look, I can tell that you don't care about this organization," she confided in an aside. "But I'm in college here, and I got this job so I could make a few extra bucks over the summer. It turns out, though, that the base pay is terrible, so I'm stuck trying to earn commission by just getting the contact details for a bunch of people who just want to get past me." She rolled her eyes, reaching up to push back an errant strand of her hair that had escaped the ponytail and fallen across her forehead.
Blair shook his head, clucking his tongue in mock sympathy. "It's too bad, really. I could think of a much better way for you to make money." Again, he left this sentence dangling, watching his prey.
He didn't have to look far to see her eyes flash with interest – and hunger. This girl looked nice and innocent, but Blair sensed that she had a wild, dirty side hidden beneath that wholesome all-American exterior. He felt another surge of lust in his loins.
"What exactly did you have in mind?" she asked, taking another step close
r to him. He saw her eyes sizing him up, taking in the fine, custom cut of his suit, the expensive Cartier on his wrist. "I'm very open to considering anything."
God damn, he was actually going to pull this off! Already, Blair was crafting the story in his head, figuring out how he'd brag to his buddies back at the office about how he fucked the shit out of one of those protesting college students. "I turned her from a liberal into a Republi-oh-god-yes-I-CAN!" he imagined himself chortling while returning high-fives. Maybe he could convince her to come back to his place, bring her into his private office and just rail her right there on his expensive, imported mahogany desk...
"Why don't you quit this, come over to my office?" he suggested, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder at the shining skyscraper. "I'm sure we can find a couple positions where you'll fit in perfectly." On my cock, he added privately in his head.
The blonde's eager smile, however, dropped a couple of notches. "I can't just walk off and quit, though," she defended, reluctance dripping from her voice. "At least, not right now."
Blair ratcheted his smile up a couple notches in radiance. "And why not? Trust me, they might not even notice. You can claim to be gathering signatures, or whatever, in my building. Wouldn't you like to get paid twice?"
He saw the effect of his words, the blonde hesitating. "Here, what's your name, honey?" he asked. Connect with the target, establish a personal bond.
Besides, he wouldn't mind knowing what name to call out as he smacked her cute little bare ass. Probably best to not call her by the wrong one.
"Ruby," the blonde replied. "But look, the reason I can't just give the middle finger to this job right now is because I left my keys back at their office. So I've got to at least go back at the end of the day – and they check to make sure that we're standing in our assigned spots." She rolled her eyes at Blair. "God, it's like they just have to treat us like children, you know? I'm twenty-one – I'm an adult, dammit!"
Twenty-one. And she looked it, too, a flower that had just reached full bloom. Experienced enough to know how to handle him in bed, but still young and eager and desperate enough to be willing to do anything to please him. God, Blair loved moments like this.
An instant later, the blonde snapped her fingers, perking up. "Oh, I've got it!" she exclaimed. "How about this for a deal. You hand me your wallet so I can copy down your details on this form, and I'll give you my number." She batted long lashes at him, her eyes going smoky with desire. "And then, you can call me as soon as I get off at five, and we can figure out a way for me to earn a little more..."
Already, Blair had his hand in his pocket, reaching for his wallet. Hell, it might not be quite as good as fucking her this very afternoon, but he was willing to put in a little more effort on a hot fucking little body like this one. He started to open the wallet up, reaching for his driver's license, but the blonde's slender little fingers reached out and plucked the whole thing out of his hands, dropping it onto the clipboard in her other hand.
"And in exchange, this is for you," Ruby said, smiling once again up at him as she tore off a corner of paper and began writing the digits of her phone number on it. Blair watched, mesmerized, as her tits shimmied back and forth in her low-cut top with the motions of her hand. He was rock hard right now. He'd definitely have to relieve some tension before his afternoon meeting, or else he'd go walking into the conference room at full mast.
Ruby ripped off the corner with her number, holding it out to Blair – but before he could take it from her, a sudden gust of wind plucked it from her fingers and sent it to the ground, a couple feet away!
"Shit," he cursed, spinning around and chasing after the piece of paper. He had to pursue it for a few steps, but he managed to pin it beneath one of his leather dress shoes, and grinned in success. He bent down and picked it up, reading the numbers to himself. Ruby, he repeated.
God, that's a good name to shout out when fucking. "Take all of me, Ruby! Fucking take me!"
He turned back around, and found Ruby holding out his wallet to him, all closed up. "I've got all I needed," she said. He reached out to take the wallet, but she twitched it out of his hands – and instead moved in closer, slipping those slender, feminine little fingers into his sport jacket. He felt her tuck his wallet into his breast pocket, and shivered as the backs of her fingers brushed against his chest.
Slowly, still so close to him that he could smell her perfume, Ruby withdrew her hand from inside his jacket. "Now, you have a good rest of your day," she purred to him, batting her eyelashes at him as she stepped back. "You've certainly given me a bit to think about."
She'd given Blair plenty to think about, mostly as fantasies while he rubbed one out as soon as he got to a bathroom. "Me, too," he answered, taking one last look at her tight little body, trying to imagine how she'd look after he undressed her. "Good to meet you, Ruby."
"You too, Austin," she replied, giving him a little wave of her fingers. Blair almost fell off the curb as he turned away.
Goddamn, he had a great life. He grinned widely to himself, slipping one hand into his pocket and feeling that scrap of paper with the girl's digits on it. Still good enough to brag about, and he could already imagine offering her a few hundred bucks to assume a direct position underneath him, working intimately with his equipment.
Austin Blair was a winner. He was smart, aggressive, and that's why he won. This was just one more example of him winning.
Chapter Two
RUBY
*
I watched Austin Blair walk away, keeping the simpering, flirty smile on my face until I was certain that he was too far away to turn around and see me any longer.
Only then did I let the expression slide off of my face. I kept the smile, but it turned much more predatory, mixed with the flush of victory. Another one bites the dust, I thought triumphantly to myself.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out a thick sheaf of bills – plus a few credit cards, all of them bearing the name Austin Blair. He was the type to carry around a couple grand in cash, I decided as I flicked through the bills. He probably liked to whip the wad out at restaurants, doing his best to impress waitresses with the stack. As if he could buy respect by just throwing money at a problem.
Normally, I didn't bother with credit cards. It's too risky to use them, and it's the kind of thing that turns me into a real criminal. At least, it crosses a boundary in my mind. Sure, it's okay to take a bit of extra cash off of pompous, stuck-up idiots who have too much of it in the first place, but using a credit card that I'd stolen just seemed like going too far, turning myself into a real criminal.
Yeah, okay, I can't explain it that well, but it's still a line in my head that I'm not going to cross. I'll pull little grifts, but nothing serious. No credit card fraud.
But that Austin guy was such an asshole that I just had to lift them all, teach him a lesson. I glared back in the direction that he'd headed. What an utter asshole, not able to think about anything but getting his shriveled little pecker wet.
Guy probably just had an inch or two in his pants, anyway, and needed to compensate for it by hitting on anything with a pulse and a pussy. That thought made me feel a little better as I turned and headed off down the sidewalk, in the opposite direction from where Austin had disappeared.
My little grift had gone perfectly, I had to admit as I replayed it in my head. I'd identified the mark before he even noticed me, calling out to him and bringing him over to me. In downtown, surrounded by finance dicks in expensive suits, I didn't have to worry about any actual do-gooders stopping and trying to give me their info.
Once I'd caught his attention, I just had to reel him in. Again, no problem. All of these finance dicks were hyper-sexualized, essentially just genitalia dressed in fancy suits. Give him a little glimpse down my shirt, and he was already thinking about getting me naked.
Then, getting my hands on the wallet. That was, perhaps, the trickiest part of the whole little scam. If Austin had been thinking
with his brain at all, he might have asked why I needed his contact information, if I was giving him my cell number. I had an answer, of course – this way I could come find him if something happened and he didn't call me – but he was fortunately already too lost in his fantasies of fucking me to even consider the question.
After that, it was easy. Write a fake number on a little scrap of paper, let go of it just as a gust of wind swept along, and watch as the dick in a suit went chasing off after it. While his back was turned, his attention on the paper, I had plenty of time to empty his wallet. Then, when he came back triumphantly, I made sure to slip the wallet into his pocket so he wouldn't notice that it was now significantly lighter.
And now Austin is going to have to replace all his credit cards, and Ruby Bennis is richer by about twelve hundred bucks.
Not bad, for fifteen minutes of hustling.
I peeled the hat off of my head, whistling to myself as I tossed it into a nearby garbage can. I'd picked it up at a thrift store for twenty-five cents, so I didn't mind losing it. I tossed the clipboard after it, and almost threw out the credit cards after it – but paused, holding onto them for a moment.
I glanced around the busy downtown sidewalk. There. I spotted a bum, an older guy in his fifties sitting next to a garbage bag of his belongings. A battered hat sat in front of him, holding just a scattered handful of change. He had a cardboard sign propped up next to him, explaining how he was homeless and hungry. Looking at him, shrunken inside his oversized and dirty clothes, I could believe both counts.
"Hey," I said, sidling over to him. When he glanced up, I fanned out the credit cards in my hand. "These are hot, but probably good for another hour or so. Want them?"
The bum looked up at me, squinted and frowned as he saw the credit cards. "Where they from?" he grunted in a voice that sounded like he'd been gargling gravel.
For Love of Valor: A Bad Boy Military Romance Page 18
