Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
The massive arm that wraps around me from behind comes as a complete surprise.
I squeal, but the sound is muffled by a man’s hand slamming down over my mouth, making stars dance before my eyes as he lifts me off my feet. “I knew he had a big mouth,” the guy growls into my ear as he totes me away, back toward the bakery. “Now it’s going to get his girlfriend in trouble.”
I squeal and struggle, but my beefy captor is enormous. There’s absolutely no way I’m getting away from him without help.
Just like that, Matty appears in front of us, blocking Meaty’s path to the back door of the bakery. I expect him to tell the man to let me go, but he skips that part and goes straight to decking the guy hard enough to send us both lurching to the right. The man’s arm loosens around me as we fall, but it’s too late for me to regain my feet.
I’m on a direct collision course with the pavement when Matty grabs my upper arms and hauls me against his chest.
Then, with our lips mere centimeters apart and our hearts racing in time, he breathes, “Get in the car. Now.”
I pull in a breath, but he cuts me off before I can speak, “I swear, if you argue with me right now, I’m going to spank you when this is all over.”
A sharp bolt of anger mixed with sizzling, electric pleasure zaps through me, and then I’m running toward Matty’s SUV, his big hand still wrapped tight around one of my arms.
He practically tosses me into the passenger’s seat and jogs around to the driver’s side, peeling out of the parking lot with a squeal of tires.
As he takes the turn leading away from town at a speed that seems unwise, he cuts a glance my way. “Scratch that. I’m going to spank you anyway. You clearly need a good spanking.”
My jaw drops again with an outraged huff.
I have no idea what’s going on, but Matty really is a raging jerk.
But unfortunately for me, kind of a sexy one…
Chapter One
NORA ANNETTE BOUDREAUX
A woman who’s pretty sure she’s been kidnapped, and who realizes she should be angry about that—
kidnapping people is bad—but…she isn’t.
And it’s all the fault of One Sexy Jerk.
As Matty McGuire takes another hairpin turn in the road at fifty miles per hour, I squeal and cling to the “oh shit handle” above the passenger’s door, praying I’ll live to yell at him for being such a maniac.
I pull in a breath, but he almost instantly takes another razor-sharp turn, guiding his SUV onto a narrow gravel lane. Tiny rocks spray into the air, the vehicle skids toward the ditch, and I decide now is the time to speak up.
If I don’t, I might not live to express my displeasure with all of Matty’s recent life choices.
Well, except for punching the guy who was trying to drag me into the cupcake shop with his sweaty hand over my mouth. I’m glad about that part. And the part where Matty caught me before I fell to the ground and pulled me against his chest.
I enjoy Matty’s chest.
I enjoy it way too much, considering he’s made it abundantly clear that he has no interest in me, whatsoever. He’ll rescue me when I need rescuing, sure, but after the rescuing is done, he can’t get away from me fast enough. He doesn’t want to be my friend or even a close acquaintance, let alone my hot and deeply devoted boyfriend, who doesn’t mind lounging in bed on Sunday mornings looking sexy while I practice sketching the human form.
I’m great with fabric patterns and have been designing my own since I launched Bonjour Baby, my clothing design company, four years ago, but my figure drawing remains rudimentary. But that’s only because I don’t have a sufficiently stimulating model at my beck and call. If Matty were my man, and that sculpted body were mine to pose, light, and worship with my charcoal nub, I’m sure I’d be well on my way to mastery in just a year or two.
If I didn’t kill him first.
Or vice versa.
“You have to slow down,” I shout over the rumble of the rocks churning beneath the SUV’s wheels as Matty careens down the narrow road fast enough to make my teeth rattle. “You’re going to have an accident!”
He shoots something back that sounds like, “Says the woman whose entire life is an accident.”
“What was that?” I bleat, wincing as he hits a hole in the road big enough to lift my bottom out of my seat, straining the fabric of my seatbelt.
“I said, be quiet and let me think,” he says.
“That isn’t what you said! You said my life was one big accident.”
“You do get into more than your fair share of trouble, Nora,” he shoots back without missing a beat or a hint of remorse. He didn’t even think about apologizing, I can tell. “Why did you stop at the shop? Why are you even out of your house? It’s Thanksgiving for Christ’s sake.”