Excerpts

The Tycoon's Very Personal Assistant

Here’s an excerpt from the opening chapter of my third book, out in July 2008 in the UK. Scroll down to find excerpts from my first two books Bedded by a Bad Boy and The Mile High Club.

The Tycoon's Very Personal Assistant is a tempestuous romance set in the glossy gambling Mecca of Vegas and on California's wild and rugged central coast. Kate Denton is a smart, sassy English girl who finds herself stranded in Las Vegas with no clothes, no money, less prospects — and at the mercy of gorgeous hotel tycoon Zack Boudreaux. After a night of passion, Zack offers her a job as his personal assistant on a two-week business trip to a deluxe resort in California's Big Sur. Could this be the answer to all her problems? Kate, being the smart girl that she is, soon realises Zack's expecting a lot more from her than just shorthand and typing… Which sets up a whole new set of problems of a more intimate variety.

This is the opening few pages. I hope it whets your appetite for more.

‘I told you I’m not a working girl.’ Kate Denton shifted on the stiff leather chair and shot the shadowy figure sitting on the other side of the mahogany desk her don’t-mess-with-me look. Jet-lagged, shaken and as good as naked under the hotel robe she had on, Kate knew the look wasn’t one of her best.

He didn’t reply. The insistent tap of his pen against the desk blotter seemed deafening in the silence. Bright Vegas sunlight shone through the wall of glass to his right and cast his face into shadow, making it impossible to tell his reaction.

Oh goody, Kate thought grimly. After the most humiliating experience of my entire life, I get interrogated by a hotel manager with a god complex.

Apprehension slithered around in Kate’s stomach like a hyperactive snake. Why on earth had she demanded to see the hotel manager in the first place? It had seemed like a good idea when the concierge had started making noises about calling the police but once she’d been whisked up to the penthouse suite of offices and ushered in here, she’d started having serious doubts. The guy wasn’t behaving like any hotel manager she’d ever met.

She felt more intimidated now than before.

Obviously hotel managers had a much higher profile in the States. This guy’s workspace would have made the Oval Office look tacky. A lake of luxurious blue carpeting flowed to floor-to-ceiling windows, showcasing the hotel’s enviable position towering over the Las Vegas Strip. The view wasn’t the only thing giving Kate vertigo. The room was so big it accommodated a separate seating area with three deluxe leather sofas and Kate had recognised the striking canvas on the far wall as that of a modern artist whose work now went for millions. She’d also noticed the guy had not one but three secretaries standing guard outside.

No wonder he had a god complex.

‘A working girl? You mean a hooker?’ His deep voice rumbled out at last, sending an annoying shiver of awareness up Kate’s spine. ‘I don’t recall saying I thought you were a hooker, honey.’

Kate heard the hint of amusement and her jaw tensed. ‘Who gave you permission to call me honey?’ she said, grateful for the crisp note of condescension in her voice.

‘I don’t need permission,’ he replied dryly. ‘When the lady in question was trying to break down a door in my hotel wearing nothing but a bra and thong.’

Kate swallowed. Okay, there was that.

‘It’s not a thong. I have proper knickers on,’ she blurted out and then winced.

The memory of getting caught by the bell captain and bundled into the robe flooded back to her. Embarrassment scorched her cheeks. The fact she had something slightly more substantial than a thong covering her butt cheeks suddenly didn’t seem all that relevant. That she’d mentioned it to him was mortifying. She’d yet to get a proper look at the guy and already he knew far too much about her underwear.

The metronome taps of his pen interrupted her thoughts. ‘Proper panties or not, you were causing a disturbance.’

The heat in Kate’s cheeks soared. What was this guy’s problem? She was the one who’d been manhandled. So she’d raised her voice and kicked the door a little, but wouldn’t anyone who got stranded in a hotel corridor practically naked?

‘I was trying to get back into the room.’

‘Yeah, but it wasn’t your room was it,’ he said, propping his elbows on the desk. He leaned forward and the sunlight illuminated his features at last.

Kate’s heart pulsed hard. Hooded green eyes studied her out of a tanned face which was quite simply dazzling in its masculine beauty. Sharp black brows, chiselled cheeks and short dark hair which curled around his ears only added to the firepower. Even with his face carefully devoid of expression, the guy might as well have had a huge neon sign over his head flashing the word ‘irresistible’ at her.

From the way he was watching her, she wondered if he was waiting for her to swoon. She tightened the tie on the robe, absolutely determined not to start drooling.

Luckily for her, she was currently immune to the alpha male of the species.

‘It was my room, or at least it was supposed to be,’ she said, annoyed by the quake in her voice. She wrapped her arms round her waist, far too aware of the air-conditioned breeze chilling her bare legs.

His gaze swept over her and Kate felt the throb of response. All right, maybe not completely immune.

‘You’re not registered here.’ His emerald eyes shifted back to hers. ‘Mr Rocastle, who is the registered guest, has made a complaint against you. So, why don’t you tell me why I shouldn’t just kick you out in your proper panties?’

There it was again, the telltale lift in his voice. Kate went rigid. Was he making fun of her?

Andrew Rocastle had duped her, practically assaulted her and then humiliated her into the bargain. And now this guy thought it was funny. When had this become stomp all over Kate day?

‘It’s not my fault Mr Rocastle didn’t put my name on the registration card when he checked us in this morning. I thought he’d booked us separate rooms,’ she ground out, angry all over again at Andrew’s underhanded attempt at a seduction. ‘And anyway, I don’t have to explain myself to you. None of this is any of your business. You’re a hotel manager, not my mother.’

Zack Boudreaux’s eyebrow winged up. For such a little thing, she sure had a big mouth. He didn’t consider himself arrogant, but women were usually a lot nicer to him. He’d certainly never encountered this level of hostility before.

In the normal course of events, he wouldn’t even know about this type of minor disturbance, let alone be asked to deal with it. But with The Phoenix’s manager unavailable for the day and his deputy on a training programme, the concierge had referred the matter up to Zack’s PA. He’d heard the commotion in the outer office and buzzed the woman in out of curiosity. Truth be told, after clearing his calendar for the rest of the week in preparation for his trip to California, he’d found himself with nothing to do for the first time in close to ten years and he was bored.

One thing was for sure, the minute this feisty little firecracker had waltzed into his office wrapped in her bathrobe and a very bad attitude, he hadn’t been bored anymore.

He knew it was perverse, but for some weird reason he found her sassy comebacks entertaining. Imagining her in the corridor without the bathrobe was doing the rest.

‘I don’t manage this hotel,’ he said. ‘I own it, as well as two others in the South West.’

‘Bully for you,’ she shot back, but the statement lacked impact when he spotted the flicker of panic cross her face.

‘And anything that happens in my place is my business.’ His gaze remained steady on hers. ‘I make a point of it.’ He kept his voice firm. He hadn’t made a fortune at poker in his youth by showing his cards too early. He didn’t want to let her off the hook just yet. She had caused a disturbance and he was intrigued enough to want to know why.

‘Maybe you could make a point of getting my clothes back for me, then,’ she snapped.

Zack’s lips twitched as she glared at him. With her blonde hair haloing around her head in haphazard wisps, her full lips puckered in a defiant pout and her round turquoise eyes bright with temper, she looked cute and mad and sexy as hell. Kind of like a pixie with an anger management problem.

His lips curved before he could stop them.

Her round baby-blues narrowed dangerously. ‘Excuse me, but do you think this is funny?’ The clear, precise and slightly snooty English accent made his pulse spike.

Her voice should have reminded him of weak tea and pompous aristocrats — the two things he’d hated most during the years he’d spent in London as a teenager — but it had a smoky, seductive edge that made him think of rumpled bed sheets and warm fragrant flesh instead.

He cleared his throat, and stifled the grin. ‘Funny’s not the word I’d use,’ he said, his gaze flicking down to her cleavage.

She tugged hard on the lapels of the thick robe, hastily covering the hint of red lace.

His eyes rose as he acknowledged the quick punch of lust. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get your clothes back,’ he said. ‘But first I want to know how you and Rocastle are connected and what he did to make you want to cause my hotel criminal damage.’

The Tycoon's Very Personal Assistant by Heidi Rice © 2008 ® & TM are trademarks of the publisher. The edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books. For more romance information go to eHarlequin.com

The Mile-High Club

Here’s an excerpt from the opening chapter of my second book, out in November 2007 in the UK, January '08 in Australia and New Zealand and March '08 in the US under the brand new title The Millionaire's Blackmail Bargain.

The Mile High Club features the jet-set romance between reclusive American crime novelist Jack Devlin and gutsy British editorial assistant Carmel Rourke. At the instigation of her best friend Louisa, a reporter who is desperate to uncover the true identity of the mysterious publishing sensation known only as Devlin, Mel has ended up hiding out in a Ritz Hotel bathroom. The suite belongs to a ‘hunk’ that Mel and Louisa spotted earlier in the evening at one of Devlin’s book launches down the street in Piccadilly and who Louisa is convinced might actually be Devlin. Louisa gets Mel into the suite with the help of an ex-boyfriend who happens to be one of the hotel’s bellboys, but once there Mel knows she can’t go through this stranger’s stuff. She’s just about to leave when she hears the door opening and hightails it into the bathroom. Two hours later, Mel’s still crouched in the bath behind the shower curtain, suffering from cramp, severe hunger pains and the desperate desire to murder Louisa – then she hears 'the hunk' open the bathroom door…

Mel fisted her hands to stop them trembling and sunk down further into the bath as the light flashed on. A dark shape crossed in front of the gauzy layers of shower curtain.

He looked enormous.

But at least he was whistling. Maybe he wouldn’t mind when he found a mad woman hiding in his bathroom? She swallowed and prayed her stomach wouldn’t grumble. The fear and the hours she’d spent in confinement were making her head start to spin. Running water sounded and then the whistling stopped. Was that the hum of an electric shaver?

Mel tried to inch upright without putting her head too far over the lip of the bath. She needed to be ready to put her plan -- pathetic as it was -- into action. The humming stopped and the whistling started again. Then came the deafening crackle of a zipper and the thud of something hitting the floor. Mel felt her heart jump into her throat and had to suppress the yelp when a tanned, muscled forearm sprinkled with dark hair appeared above her and grasped the shower control.

Two quick twists and a deluge of cold water shot out of the showerhead. Mel squealed as the icy spray hit her full in the face.

‘What the…’

The shower curtain whipped back and towering over her was the hunk -- without a stitch on. A sprinkling of dark hair defined the contours of a hard muscled chest and arrowed down to his groin. Mel’s blood pressure shot up to boiling point as her eyes followed the arrow down completely of there own accord. Through the deluge of warming water, she saw something she knew she’d never forget as long as she lived. Her gaze rocketed back up to his face so fast it was a wonder she didn’t get whiplash. Piercing blue eyes glared at her, accusingly. But he made no move to cover himself.

Mel pushed the dripping hair off her forehead, her hand shaking so hard she thought she might be having a stroke.

‘What the hell are you doing in my bathroom?’

Mel tried to scramble up. She dropped her bag, slipping back as the shower spray continued to pummel her. ‘Could you turn it off?’ Her voice came out on a pathetic whimper.

He waited several beats, before reaching out and turning off the spray, his eyes glaring at her the whole time.

She stood up, slowly, keeping her eyes trained on his face as if her life depended on it. She would not look down. She would not. Her skin must be vermillion by now and she couldn’t control the tremors raking her body. At last, he let go of the curtain, reached behind him and took one of the small towels from the rack. The quick glimpse of a tight male butt made Mel gasp.

He turned back sharply, wrapping the towel firmly around his waist and tucking it in.

Still, he didn’t say anything, just pinned her with that forbidding look in his vivid blue eyes. Even with the added height of the bath beneath her, Mel realised he was still taller than her. He had to be at least six foot two or three.

His gaze dipped to her chest.

Mel glanced down at herself and gaped in horror. The water had made her blouse and bra transparent. Her puckered nipples were clearly visible through the sodden material. She clasped her arms across her chest, clung onto her shoulders, but couldn’t control the trembling or the hot flush racing up her neck. Could this actually get any worse?

‘You better get out,’ he said, his voice ominously calm.

He stepped back, letting her climb out and then turned to reach for another of the towels on the shelf opposite.

A flash of adrenaline surged through Mel. Stop being a ninny and get out of here.

She launched herself across the bathroom, her feet sliding on the wet tiles as she clutched the door handle and lurched into the bedroom.

She heard the pad of footsteps behind her and tried to speed up.

‘Oh no you don’t, honey.’

The words seemed to boom in her ear as strong arms wrapped around her from behind and hauled her back against a solid male chest. Her feet lifted off the floor. Frantic, she shoved her elbow back, heard a muffled grunt. But his grip on her only tightened, pressing her heaving breasts against warm hard forearms. The spicy scent of his aftershave filled her nostrils.

‘Stop goddamn struggling. I’m not going to hurt you. I want to know who you are and what the hell you’re doing here?’

The buzzing in Mel’s ears became deafening. Don’t you dare faint you silly cow. As she registered the thought, her skin flashed hot and then everything went black.

• The Mile-High Club’s due out in November 2007. I hope that’s whetted your apetite.

Bedded by a Playboy

My first book (titled Bedded by a Bad Boy in the UK and Australia) is out in the US in January '08 in the Presents Collection 'Pregnant Mistresses'.

It's an extra sensual contemporary romance set mainly on a seaside estate in Long Island. It involves the tempestuous romance between feisty English girl Jessie Connor (fiery red hair and a temperament to match) who’s set her heart on finding Mr Right, and Monroe Latimer, a drop-dead gorgeous Harley-riding American bad boy with a troubled past and a huge sign on him saying Mr Wrong But Completely Irresistible. This excerpt comes from a few pages into the first chapter. Jessie has spied Monroe having a skinny dip in her sister and brother-in-law’s pool. Jessie thinks he’s a trespasser (he’s actually her brother-in-law Linc’s long-lost brother), so – once he’s slipped his jeans back on – she decides to tackle him herself…

Keeping her breathing slow and steady, Jessie tiptoed across the patio. She stopped dead when her trespasser shoved whatever it was he'd been staring at back into his pocket. When he didn't turn around, but reached for his t-shirt, she let go of the breath caught in her throat.

Humming some tuneless melody, he sat down on the sun-drenched tiles, rubbed his feet with the T-shirt and picked up a sock.

Sticking her two fingers out, Jessie shoved the points between his shoulder blades and shouted out in her most authoritative voice. ‘Don't move. I have a gun.’

He stopped humming, his back went rigid and he dropped his sock.

‘Okay, don't get excited.’ His voice was gruff and tight with annoyance. He sounded American, but there was something else about his accent she couldn’t quite place.

‘Put your hands up, but don't turn around.’

His skin felt warm, but the muscles beneath were hard as rock, flexing under her fingers as he raised his arms. Up close, he looked a lot more dangerous. Jessie spotted a faded tattoo across his left bicep. Ridged white scar lines criss-crossed the tanned skin of his back. But then she noticed something else. Despite the impressive muscles across his shoulders and upper arms, he didn't have an ounce of fat on him. He was so lean, she could make out his ribs. A Goliath who didn't eat properly? How odd.

‘Listen, put the gun down and I'll get out of here. No harm, no foul.’

He started to turn. She prodded her fingers harder into his spine. ‘Don't turn around, I said.’

‘Easy.’ He didn't sound scared, just really pissed off. Maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea after all. ‘I'm putting my hands down,’ he ground out. ‘I've been on the bike all day and I'm beat.’ He lowered his arms.

The seconds ticked by interminably.

‘So what do we do now?’ he asked.

Jessie's heart hammered against her ribcage and sweat pooled between her breasts. Heck, she hadn't thought this far ahead. Where was Linc? Her fingers were starting to hurt.

‘Where you from? You sound English?’ he said.

‘I think where you're from is probably a more pertinent question,’ Jessie shot back. No arrogant trespasser was going to charm her.

He leaned forward. Jessie's heart jolted in her chest. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Grabbing my socks. Any objections?’ The response was measured, calm and condescending.

Jessie bristled. ‘Fine, but next time ask permission.’ Just as she issued the order, her tightly clamped fingers twitched.

The trespasser's back tensed and his head swung round. Oops!

‘Damn it!’

Jessie jumped back, yelping, as her prey shot up and grabbed her in one quick, furious movement.

‘Let me go,’ she shrieked, struggling to pull her arms free as his large hands clamped on her arms like manacles.

‘The finger routine. I got to hand it to you, I never thought I'd fall for that one.’

Striking blue eyes stared daggers at her out of a face that would have done Michelangelo proud. The man was quite simply beautiful. Jessie gulped, momentarily transfixed, taking in the high, slashing cheekbones, the rakish stubble on his chin and the daredevil scar across his left eyebrow. Adonis or not, his face was as hard as granite. He looked ready to murder someone and from the way his fingers dug into her arms, she knew exactly who it was.

Her heart rate shot up to warp speed. Don't pass out you silly cow. This is no time to panic. Twisting, Jessie kicked out with her bare foot and connected with his shin.

‘Ow! Stop that you little hellcat,’ he yelled, yanking her towards him and wrapping his arms around her.

‘Let me go. You -- You trespasser.’ With her face pressed against the soft curling hair on his chest, the demand came out on a muffled squeak. The smell of fresh, wet male was overpowering. She lifted her knee, intending to stamp on his foot, but before she could make contact, he tensed and shot backwards.

‘Watch out!’

His hands let go. Jessie turned, poised to bolt for freedom, but he grabbed her from behind. Strong arms banded under her breasts and he lifted her off the ground as if she weighed nothing at all. She kicked, frantically, but he was holding her so close, so tight, she couldn't get any leverage.

Okay, now was the perfect time to panic.

• That’s just a little sneak peek. Hope you enjoyed it. If you’d like to buy the book online in the UK click here. It'll be out in the US in January '08 and to buy a copy there click here. Happy reading.

Heidi Rice

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