Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (84 page)

Amanda shrugged, and in that moment, I realized I was missing a bigger picture.

“I do not need to be babysat.” I fished my keys out of my purse, grabbed my bag, and walked past both women with my head held high.

“Considering you’re going to be late now to work”—I stopped just as I reached the door—“you might as well pick up some coffee for us both since we’ll be spending the morning together, and be sure to buy enough muffins for everyone in the office.”

My hand trembled as I gripped the doorknob and pulled it open. I couldn’t help myself from glancing over my shoulder and up the stairs. All I needed was a small cry, a whimper, anything to prove that being a mother was more important than being a businesswoman.

Grace was sleeping. She was safe and loved and would be fine. So why did I feel like such a failure for leaving her?

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Text copyright 2015

Rosalind James

All Rights Reserved

What happens in Vegas…

Will Tawera doesn’t do commitment, except on the rugby field. Moving to Las Vegas to become a kicker for the NFL would be a big change from New Zealand rugby, but then, he’s ready for a change. And when he’s asked to do a little modeling on the side? Thousands of dollars to hold a beautiful blonde while looking dark, dangerous, tattooed, and Maori? He could do that.

Faith Goodwin doesn’t do dark, dangerous men. Especially not when they make her laugh, take her miniature golfing with four-year-olds, and are far too sexy and sweet for comfort.  But when Will finds himself in hot water back in New Zealand, who’s he going to call? And who would be able to resist answering?

Author’s Note

The Blues and the All Blacks are actual rugby teams. However, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Dream Date

It all started with Mrs. Johnson’s toilet.

Faith Goodwin wielded the blue plastic plunger with everything she had. She was late, and every plunge was making her later. The accordion pleats compressed with a
whoosh,
then released with a sucking sound that…never mind.

“Three”—
whoosh—
“hundred”—
suck—
“dollars,” she chanted in her mind. The amount of rent she paid in exchange for managing the six-unit apartment building. It was a good deal, even though she was wearing rubber boots and rubber gloves, and this wasn’t the first time she’d unclogged Mrs. Johnson’s toilet. Or any toilet.

“It’s the colitis.” The quavering voice came from a nice, clean, dry spot behind her. “I have to use extra paper. And you know, dear, these toilets could stand to be replaced.”

Faith closed her eyes and counted to ten. “You need to start flushing more in…in between, Mrs. Johnson. This makes twice this month.”

“Maybe a plumber…” the old lady suggested.

“He’d charge me a hundred dollars to do the exact same thing,” Faith said, doing her level best to detach from her surroundings. “So, please. Flush.”

She plunged a few more times, then gave the lever a push, crossed her fingers in the yellow gloves, and held her breath. The toilet thought about it for a minute, and then reluctantly decided to resume normal service, the water gurgling its way down the bowl. Yay.

“All right,” Faith said. “Good. If you’ll hand me the mop and the bleach, I’ll clean up.”

Yet another job they didn’t tell you about during Career Day. She was late for work already, she was going to be later, and she couldn’t stay in this spot for another moment. So as usual, she took her mind somewhere else.

She was jogging down the hard-packed sand of the beach in a pink—no, a black bikini, which looked great on her, because…well, because this was a fantasy, and she’d obviously put in some gym time before it started. The gentle crescents of blue lapped up onto the shore, delicate scallops edged with cream, and her feet were getting wet, but that was all right, because she was running barefoot, as she did every morning. Past the group of guys throwing a football, and she could see their heads turning out of the corner of her eye. She pretended to ignore them, but she could tell they were watching.

And then one of them streaked past her as if she were standing still, turned and waved an arm, and Faith looked, too. Which was lucky, because the ball was headed towards her like a missile.

She shrieked a little and threw an arm across her face to block it, but even as she did, the man planted a foot, swiveled in mid-step, and was leaping, stretching sideways to intercept the ball. His arms were across her body, the ball was smacking into his palms, and his feet were tangling with hers. She went down on the sand, flat onto her back, the breath knocked out of her by the fall—and by him falling on top of her.

He shoved himself off her where she lay gasping, sprang to his feet in one quick motion, and reached a hand down. “All right?” he asked a little breathlessly. “Bloody hell, I’m sorry. Tell me I haven’t hurt you.”

Ooh. Her fantasy man had an accent. And the sweetest smile as he hauled her to her feet, looking so relieved at the sight of her smiling back. He started to laugh, white teeth flashing in his tanned face, and she laughed, too.

“Yes, dear?” Mrs. Johnson asked. Because Faith wasn’t actually lying on a beach beneath a half-naked man with muscles that required their own ZIP code. She was wringing out a mop into a toilet in an eighty-five-year-old woman’s apartment in Las Vegas, and it was January.

“Nothing,” Faith said. “Just something I thought of. Or the general ridiculousness of life, I suppose.” She gathered her bleach solution and her plunger. Onward and upward.

“Laugh or cry, that’s the choice.” Mrs. Johnson’s smile launched a spiderweb of tiny wrinkles across her face, and her blue eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “Getting old isn’t for sissies, and sometimes the rest of life isn’t either, is it?”

“Nope. It’s not. But, please, next time? Flush more.”

After that, she headed back to her apartment again for a shower she didn’t have time for, because there was no way she was showing up smelling like Mrs. Johnson’s bathroom. No time to dry her hair, either, so she shoved it into a messy bun instead. She was more than twenty minutes late by now, and it was raining. And she still had to pick up the coffee.

Sacrifices

“Not exactly Hollywood,” Will Tawera said dubiously when his mate Solomon Salesa pulled into the strip mall parking lot on West Charleston Boulevard and stopped in front of a blank storefront with
Calvin Quisp Photography
painted on the single glass door. “You sure this is legit? Because if anything ever looked like a porn studio, it’s this.”

“And if it is,” Solomon said cheerfully, “that’s your job. Drag me away before I get myself into trouble.”

“Yeh, right. How about if I get carried away myself?”

“Then all bets are off,” Solomon said. “I’m not going to promise to drag you away, whatever Lelei thinks. Such a thing as living vicariously.”

Will had agreed to come along on this adventure a couple days earlier, when Solomon had invited him to dinner in true hospitable Pacific Islander fashion. Will had turned up at the modest tract home in the Vegas suburbs to eat roast pork and sweet potatoes with Solomon, his pregnant wife Lelei, and their two kids, and it had been one of his better nights in the States.

“Cuz,” Will had told Solomon after his first reverential bite, “you know how to make a Maori boy homesick.”

“Aw, had to do it,” Solomon said with a grin. “Lelei says you’re too skinny.”

Will laughed out loud, Solomon joining him, as Lelei stammered out her own laughing protest. And that was another thing he missed. Laughing. Pakeha—white people—didn’t laugh enough, especially here in the States.

“But I should probably be on the two-grapes diet,” Solomon said. “For the audition I’ve got coming up.”

“Oh, no,” Lelei said comfortably. “You’re perfect as you are.”

“Well, it’s not going to be you doing the judging,” Solomon told his wife. “Or I’d be in, wouldn’t I?”

“Really.” Will accepted another serving of pork. “You going to be on the big screen? Thought you were all about the football.”

He’d met the other man when they were both running through drills for the Las Vegas Outlaws, the NFL’s new expansion team. Will’s agent had got him the tryout, which was why he was here—that, and to do some offseason training during the break from Southern Hemisphere rugby. Will still wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but he hadn’t felt like he had anything to lose, either. He was feeling reckless just now, and that was the truth. If the Outlaws wanted a rugby-style kicker and were willing to pay millions to get one, why shouldn’t he at least entertain the idea? The States hadn’t been in his life plan, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be.

For Solomon, though, the tryouts meant more. They meant the difference between working construction and a continued career in the NFL for the big Samoan free agent, who’d spent the last few seasons bouncing on and off various teams’ practice squads. Solomon had seemed fit to Will, and he’d have said the other man would be in with a good chance at the linebacker spot. Of course, what he knew about gridiron would have fit on the head of a pin, so he might not be the best judge. But Solomon was going after an acting career as well?

“Not the big screen,” Solomon said. “The small one, more like. If I get lucky and they choose me.”

“Or unlucky,” Lelei said. “I still don’t like it.”

“It’s four thousand dollars,” Solomon reminded her. “Which would pay a lot of rent. For a few weeks of work—a few days, more like—and I’m laid off anyway.”

“Still,” Lelei said. “What if the kids find out?”

Solomon cast a glance at four-year-old Sefina, but she was poking her little brother in the side and giggling, not listening to the adults’ conversation. “They’re not going to find out. I probably won’t get it anyway, and if I do?” He shrugged a huge shoulder. “It’d be ten years before any of them cared enough to look at something like this, and by that time, it’d be long buried.”

“Something like what?” Will asked. “Or should I ask?”

Solomon sighed. “Nothing that bad. And no, it isn’t,” he told his wife, who had opened her mouth again. “It’s a few photo shoots over three weeks. Five or six times, maybe. They’re looking for a brown brother with a tribal tattoo and a set of muscles, willing to strip down to his jeans—and all right,
maybe
his undershorts, and pose with a pretty girl in some…compromising positions.”

“Uh-
huh.”
Will tried to keep the smile from showing. “Sounds like you ought to be paying
them.”

“See,” Lelei burst out. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“Aw, baby,” Solomon said. “You know I don’t want anybody but you. I’m not interested in some skinny blonde with no…” He coughed. “Curvy parts. But a man’s got to work, and for what they’re paying? You bet I’ll do it. I’d do just about anything for you and the kids, you know that. I’d dig ditches if it came to that. And if I get this? I’ll be happy to have it. You want to come with me and check it out?”

“No,” she sighed. “Of course not. I trust you. I don’t like it, but I trust you.”

“Tell you what,” Solomon said. “We’ll get Will here to come along with me. He can check it out for you. Be my chaperone.”

“Will?” Lelei laughed, her mood changing in an instant, back to cheerfulness, and that was another thing Will had missed, that cheerfulness. “I doubt he’s had much experience at that.”

“Well, no,” Will admitted with a grin of his own. “But this is an audition? Just for the blokes, or…”

“Oh,” Solomon said, “both. That’s what they said. Both.”

“And there’s going to be some stripping down involved?” Will asked.

“Well, I don’t imagine you’d be invited to watch that part,” Solomon said. “I’m guessing it’s going to be a lot of sitting around and waiting. But with some pretty girls in the room.”

“With nothing to do,” Will said. “Nervous, like. Needing a bit of a chat-up to distract them while they wait to see if they’re, what? Blonde enough? Sexy enough?”

“Both things.” Solomon pulled his phone out of a pocket, punched a few buttons, and handed it over. “Here’s the ad.”

“One male,” Will read. “Pacific Islander, tattooed, muscular, minimum height 6’0”, max age 32. One female, petite build, delicate, blonde, angel look, under 5’6”, max age 25. Erotic imagery, no full nudity. Model release required.”

He handed the phone back to Solomon. “Sounds like a big ask. But…” He sighed. “I’ve eaten at your table, haven’t I. I’m obligated.”