Your Bed or Mine? (32 page)
Authors: Candy Halliday
Jake Sims.
As in infamous retired Chicago Cubs baseball player, Jake Sims. King of the tabloids, Jake Sims. A new model or starlet on
his arm every week, Jake Sims.
Who looks yummy in his underwear commercials, Jake Sims.
Alicia pushed that thought aside. Besides, her new neighbor was also the Jake Sims who had recently become a single dad when
his equally famous supermodel ex-wife was tragically killed in a car accident. Jake had custody of his thirteen-year-old daughter
now. Thus, the reason Mr. Playboy had been forced to give up his penthouse in downtown Chicago, and was now living in the
suburbs.
Having custody of his daughter was yet another reason Alicia wasn’t interested in Jake Sims. As if she really needed another
reason in addition to his notorious reputation with the ladies. She couldn’t explain it, but kids and dogs always hated her
on sight.
Alicia sighed and said, “For your information, Jake Sims is the reason I’m in a hurry this morning. Zada is planning a dinner
party on Friday night, and guess who happen to be the only two single people on her guest list?”
Alfie gasped. “And what are you going to do about that?”
Alicia said, “I’m telling Zada at coffee this morning to back off, and I mean it. I am
not,
nor will I ever be interested in Jake Sims.”
“Thank you,” Alfie said, obviously relieved. “There isn’t a brother in his right mind who would want his sister paired up
with a known player like Jake the Rake Sims.”
“Good morning, Jake,” Tish Jones said with a smile when she opened her front door. “Come on in. Zada and Jen are in the kitchen.”
Jake followed Tish down the hallway, thinking that having morning coffee with three extremely attractive women used to mean
one of his famous parties had lasted all night. But that was before Carla’s tragic accident had turned his life upside down.
Before decisions had to be made that would change the course of his life forever.
Doing what was best for his daughter hadn’t been an easy decision, in fact, far from it. The easiest thing would have been
allowing Danielle to remain in LA and live with his ex-mother-in-law, Ranatta Harper, of the famed Harper Modeling Agency
in Hollywood. He’d considered that option briefly for Danielle’s sake, knowing uprooting her from her home and her friends,
and forcing her to live with a father she only saw on her birthday and occasionally at Christmas would only add to the trauma
of losing her mother.
But that had been before news broke out in the gossip columns that all-business Ranatta was already lining Danielle up to
step into Carla’s supermodel shoes. Jake simply couldn’t allow that to happen. Carla had been on the cover of every teen magazine
available by the time she was thirteen, and where had that gotten her? Caught up in world where image was everything, where
the pressure to stay thin and beautiful was constant, and where drugs were simply a way of life. In other words, dead before
her time.
News of the high levels of cocaine found in Carla’s system had made the headlines for days. To keep the story alive as long
as possible, the media had even dragged him and his own free-wheeling bachelor lifestyle into the picture for a little more
drama. That’s when Jake realized if he truly wanted a better life for his daughter, things in his own life had to change.
Exit Mr. Big Time.
Enter Mr. Housewife.
The women who had invited him to coffee this morning had also taken him under their wing and had given him a crash course
in
Domestic Living 101
over the last few weeks. The new house in the suburbs was ready now. Danielle was registered in a good school. He was signed
up to car-pool three days a week, and his chicken casserole wasn’t half bad, even if he had to say so himself.
A new and improved Jake Sims was ready to step up to the plate now—the challenge ahead of him far more important than any
baseball career.
“Alicia should be here in a minute,” Zada told him as Tish placed a cup of coffee on the kitchen table in front of him. Zada
pushed a plate of fresh blueberry muffins in his direction. “I wanted you to meet the only other single person in our cul-de-sac
before my dinner party on Friday night. I think you and Alicia will really hit it off.”
“About the dinner party… .” Jake began.
Zada pointed a stern finger at him. “You are
not
backing out of my dinner party, Jake Sims. I understand your main focus has to be on your daughter. But Danielle doesn’t
arrive from LA until Sunday. You can attend one last adult function before you become super-dad.”
Jake started to argue, but Zada jumped up from table at the sound of the doorbell. “That’s Alicia now,” she said and darted
out of the kitchen.
The guilty looks Tish and Jen exchanged told Jake something wasn’t right. But he never had the opportunity to ask. Raised
voices from the hallway gave Jake his answer.
“Don’t shush me, Zada! The very idea that you think I would be interested in Jake Sims makes me mad enough to spit. You, Tish,
and Jen might be in awe of his baseball fame and glued to the television every time his stupid underwear commercial flashes
across the screen, but don’t include me in your little fan club.”
“Alicia, please!”
“And spare me the reformed bad-boy speech you gave me yesterday. I’ve never been attracted to bad boys. Especially not bad
boys who prance around in their underwear, claiming to be reformed! So don’t expect me to be nice at your matchmaking dinner
party Friday night. I intend to tell Jake Sims to his face I’m not interested. Got it?”
“Well, I got it loud and clear, didn’t you?” Jake asked. He looked over at Tish, then at Jen.
Tish and Jen were both too embarrassed to speak.
Embarrassed also described the look on Alicia Greene’s face when she came to a screeching halt in the kitchen doorway. But
she was breathtaking. Possibly, the most genuinely beautiful woman Jake had ever seen: long, blond hair, a definite stop-traffic
figure, deep blue eyes round with shock at finding him sitting at Tish’s kitchen table.
Until their eyes met.
She quickly recovered, the lift of her chin saying she meant every word. She’d never been attracted to bad boys like him.
And reformed or otherwise, she never would be.
Jake managed to suppress a bad-boy grin. Maybe he would go to Zada’s dinner party on Friday night after all. If for no other
reason than to enlighten his feisty neighbor with a few very important facts.
First, bad boys didn’t
prance.
Second, even bad boys could be reformed.
And third, never say
never.
Where authors give you the inside scoop!
From the desk of Amanda Scott
I’ve always loved Sir Walter Scott’s poem “Lochinvar,” the tale of a young Scottish hero who rode off with his lady-love from
her wedding to another man:
“While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
And her bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;
And the bride-maidens whisper’d, “Twere better by far
To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.”
While constructing the plot for
Lady’s Choice
(on sale now), I was hiking in the High Sierras one day when that poem popped into my mind and every writer’s favorite phrase
began to twitch: What if I were to begin
Lady’s Choice
with a fourteenth-century Highland version of that wedding? What if the “Lochinvar” everyone cheers turns out not to be the
young gallant, “so daring in love and so dauntless in war,” but someone truly dangerous?
To stir more trouble,
what if
my Macleod bride believes at first, just as everyone else does, that the abductor is her Lochinvar? And
what if
her own sister, firmly believing the bride loves someone else, set the whole thing in motion and then has to deal with the
consequences when she learns someone has usurped her plan to suit his own evil purpose?
Best of all,
what if
Sir Hugo Robison, the hero meant to benefit from that plan, knows nothing about it because he did not bother to reply to the
urgent messages sent him by the bride’s loving, caring sister, or to attend the wedding? And
what if
all of the above somehow impacts the fate of the legendary, long-lost Knights Templar treasure found by Lady Isobel Macleod
and Sir Michael Sinclair in my previous book,
Prince of Danger
?
To say that
Lady’s Choice
was fun to write is an understatement. I hope you enjoy it.
Sincerely yours,
Amanda Scott
http://home.att.net/~amandascott/
From the desk of Candy Halliday
When my editor mentioned she’d like a switch in my next book from single-in-the-city to married-in-the-suburbs, I jumped at
the chance.
Finally,
I thought. Domestic divas are going to get their due. Any wife will tell you that as hard as it is to find Mr. Right, the
real quest begins after the wedding. Making the marriage a success—now that’s the challenge of a lifetime. Or a hopeless cause,
to some desperate housewife.
Like Zada Clark, my
she
ro in
YOUR BED OR MINE?
(on sale now). Poor Zada thought she’d found Mr. Right—until she realized his name was Mr.
Always
Right. Divorce has to be the only solution, but the old-school judge won’t grant it unless she and Rick reach a compromise
over who’s keeping the dog and the house.
What does Rick do? Move back in and challenge Zada to a real-life game of
Survivor
. The first one to outwit, outplay, and outlast the other wins. Never one to back down from a challenge, Zada says, “Game
on!” Of course, Rick doesn’t know she’s got a secret weapon: the three other members of her Housewives’ Fantasy Club. Together,
they’ll help Zada create a fantasy that will
out-tease, out-tempt, and out-tantalize
Rick into losing the game with four little words: Your bed or mine?
The battle of the sexes has always been fascinating to me, and boy did I have fun forcing Zada and Rick to live together again.
The icing on the cake for me, however, was creating a group of women best friends who stick together (yes, I’m a
9 to 5, First Wives Club, and Thelma and Louise
junkie) but in YOUR BED OR MINE? I’ve added a slightly naughty but incredibly delicious twist—these women are sensuously
secure enough to get together once a week to share their most secret desires.
Need a little spice to jump-start your sex life? Want to be entertained with thoughts of guilty pleasures you’d never allow
yourself to pursue? Welcome to the Housewives’ Fantasy Club series. Viva Domestic Divas, ladies! Enjoy the fun and start a
Housewives’ Fantasy Club of your own.
Cheers!
Candy Halliday