Excerpt:
Marissa reached for the
cordless phone and started toward the door with Petie, who only paused
long enough to let her hook his leash to his collar. On the third ring,
she hit the Talk button. “Morning, Mom,” she said sleepily,
opening the door and letting Petie lead the way. She hadn’t even
checked the caller id. She’d known it was Mona.
But she was wrong.
“You know, of all the
things I’ve been called, I don’t believe ‘Mom’ has ever entered the
picture.”
At the sound of that
masculine, confident tone, Marissa’s hands involuntarily tightened,
along with a few other parts of her anatomy, and Petie yelped when the
reaction caused a tiny jerk on his leash. “Sorry, Petie,” she mumbled
apologetically.
“Petie?” sexy voice
asked, while Marissa dashed a peek at the caller id. Sure enough, there
was the proof.
Jackson, Trenton J.
“My dog,” she said,
kneeling to rub Petie’s soft coat in an effort to formally
apologize...and because her knees had turned to jelly.
“Ah, so you’re expecting
phone calls from your mother at the crack of dawn, and you’re hanging
out with your dog at the same time. Exciting life you live, Rissi.”
Marissa’s jaw tensed,
eyes narrowed. “Obviously, yours is equally exciting, since you spend
your time running stupid contests about comic strip quotes—for my
picture—and spend your mornings calling women who don’t want to talk to
you.”
“The first part may be
true,” he said, and she could actually hear the smile in his words, “But
the last part, well, I wouldn’t be so sure. You do want to talk to me,
don’t you, Rissi?” he asked, then added huskily, “As much as I want to
talk to you.”
Okay. That stopped her
cold. How was she supposed to argue with a guy who looked like Trent
Jackson, intrigued the hell out of her and admitted he wanted to talk to
her? She tried to formulate a sassy response, but he didn’t give her
time before forging on.
“Saw the winning quote,
did you?” he asked.
“I did,” she admitted,
having viewed the winning entry last night before going to bed. It was
amazing she slept, given how mad she’d been. A tinge of that fury for
his crazy antics rippled down her spine as she recalled the words in
that cartoon bubble.
“I imagine you won’t
have any trouble getting dates, with all of the males in Atlanta wanting
to know if it’s true.”
“If what’s true?” she
asked, before really thinking through her question. Obviously, he was
talking about the quote, so obviously, he was talking about...
“Whether liars really
have talented tongues,” he said, with no hint of a smile filtering
through any of the words, but jumpstarting her libido just the same.
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