Somebody Else’s Sky: Something in the Way, 2 Page 26

  Her husband doesn’t want her anymore. The man next door would give up everything to have her.

  Shop now on Amazon/Kindle Unlimited.

  THE FIRST TASTE

  “The First Taste is a delicious read that will have you craving seconds. I promise!”—Kim Karr, NYT Bestselling Author

  * * *

  Andrew Beckwith has already devoted his life to one girl—his daughter, Bell. As far as he’s concerned, she’s all he needs. Amelia Van Ecken is an independent, smart, and savvy businesswoman who doesn’t have time for sex, much less love. Andrew and Amelia are complete opposites, but on one thing they agree—relationships are overrated. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be rated X. Because when sharp-tongued Amelia and stubborn Andrew cross paths, sparks fly—and burn.

  The First Taste is a standalone spin-off of Slip of the Tongue. Shop now on Amazon/Kindle Unlimited.

  YOURS TO BARE

  "Sensual, evocative, and spellbinding.”—K.L. Kreig, USA Today Bestselling Author

  * * *

  No matter how cruel it’s been to him in the past, Finn Cohen’s never been able to flip fate the bird. So when it drops a leather-bound journal at his feet, he knows he should walk away…

  Halston Fox’s journal is the one place she can be herself—as long as she can tie it up and put it away when she’s finished. But when Finn undoes the bow, he pulls strings that could unravel both of them.

  Yours to Bare is a standalone spin-off of Slip of the Tongue. Shop now on Amazon/Kindle Unlimited.

  EXPLICITLY YOURS SERIES

  (Download the first book free!)

  “Pretty Woman meets Indecent Proposal in Explicitly Yours, a provocative series that’ll leave your heart racing.”—Louise Bay, USA Today Bestselling Author

  * * *

  Lola Winters doesn’t think she can escape her life as a waitress— until she receives a shocking proposition from a sexy stranger. Wealthy businessman Beau Olivier wants Lola for a night, and in order to get her, he’s willing to make her dreams come true.

  But what if one night isn't enough, and Beau isn’t ready to say goodbye in the morning?

  Explicitly Yours Series on Amazon.

  STRICTLY OFF LIMITS: A FORBIDDEN ROMANCE NOVELLA

  Alexandra James gave up her spring break for an offer she couldn’t refuse: a week-long job that would earn her enough money to buy her way out of a broken heart. But if she thought her new boss would let her off easy because he’s her father’s best friend, she couldn’t have been more wrong. 21,000 words.

  Strictly Off Limits on Amazon.

  SOMETHING IN THE WAY

  An epic, three-book saga of forbidden love.

  * * *

  It was a hot summer day when I met him on the construction site next to my parents’ house. Under the sweat and dirt, Manning Sutter was as handsome as the sun was bright. He was older, darker, experienced. I wore a smiley-face t-shirt and had never even been kissed. Yet we saw something in each other that would link us in ways that couldn’t be broken...no matter how hard we tried.

  * * *

  I loved Manning before I knew the meaning of the word. I was too young, he said. I would wait. Through all the carefully-chosen words hiding what we knew to be true, through his struggle to keep me innocent, and through infinitely-starry nights—I would wait. But I’d learn that life isn’t always fair. That no matter how much you achieve, none of it matters if you suffer the heartbreak that comes with falling for someone you can never have. Because even though I saw Manning first, that didn’t matter. My older sister saw him next. Learn more.

  About the Author

  Jessica Hawkins is a bestselling author known for her “emotionally gripping” and “off-the-charts hot” romance. Dubbed “queen of angst” by both peers and readers for her smart and provocative work, she’s garnered a cult-like following of fans who love to be torn apart…and put back together.

  She writes romance both at home in California and around the world, a coffee shop traveler who bounces from café to café with just a laptop, headphones, and coffee cup. She loves to keep in close touch with her readers, mostly via Facebook, Instagram, and her mailing list.

  For more information:

  @jess_hawk

  jessicahawkinsauthor

  www.jessicahawkins.net

  Connect With Jessica

  Want to discuss this series with others who are reading? Join the SOMETHING IN THE WAY Spoiler Room. (Spoiler alert…there are spoilers.)

  * * *

  Get news first—join the mailing list.

  Share the experience—come to The Penthouse, a Facebook reader club.

  Stalk her Instagram and YouTube.

  All books have inspiration boards & playlists.

  Like her Facebook page.

  Tweet her.

  Lola Winters doesn’t think she can escape her life as a waitress—until she receives a shocking proposition from a sexy stranger. Wealthy businessman Beau Olivier wants Lola for a night, and in order to get her, he’s willing to make her dreams come true.

  * * *

  But Beau’s conditions are explicit. From sunset to sunrise, Lola must submit all of herself to him—body, mind, and soul. Because nothing is more important to Beau than maintaining control...especially over his possessions.

  * * *

  Sometimes, though, things don’t go according to plan. What if one night isn't enough? What if come sunrise, Beau isn’t ready to say goodbye?

  * * *

  Read chapter 1 next or download free now.

  1

  Each night started with the flip of a switch. Hey Joe’s neon OPEN sign flickered and hummed to life. Lola’s watch read 5:59 P.M., but time had no place on the Sunset Strip. Johnny wiped down the wraparound bar with the efficiency of someone who did it more often than he brushed his own teeth.

  “Opening at goddamn six o’clock,” Quartz said, shuffling in. “You ever heard some people like to drink their lunch?”

  “But if we opened earlier, you wouldn’t get to say that every night,” Lola said.

  Quartz’s whiskey on the rocks already sat in front of his regular stool. “Bad enough you’re going to cut me off in eight hours. When’s Mitch going to wake up and open his bar at a decent hour?”

  “Don’t think he’ll be getting to that,” Johnny muttered. “Your tab’s hit its max, Quartz. Need you to pay that tonight.”

  “But if I did, you’d never get to say that.”

  “I’m serious.” Johnny kept the whiskey bottle in his hand, ready to refill Quartz’s glass. “You see anybody walking through the door? This isn’t back in the day. Look around.”

  Quartz made a point of twisting on his seat. “Looks like the same old trough I’ve been drinking out of since ’67.”

  “The point is, you want a bar to come to every night, need to help keep us in business.”

  Lola shook her head quickly at Johnny.

  “What?” Johnny asked, leaving the bottle on the bar to serve another customer. “They’ll find out at some point.”

  Lola ducked under the hatch and came up behind the bar. “Don’t listen to him,” she said to Quartz, taking Johnny’s rag and picking up where he left off.

  Quartz put the rest of his drink back with a jerk of his head. “Never do. Figured out years ago that your boyfriend’s ponytail holder is cutting off the circulation to his brain.”

  “He gets crabby when business is slow,” Lola said. “Mitch’s been breathing down his neck about bad sales.”

  Two more regulars came in and took their seats next to Quartz. Lola served them and stood back as they grumbled about their wives, bosses, and neighbors. At least, those were the typical topics. She wasn’t actually listening because she was watching Johnny at the opposite end of the bar. For the third night in a row, he checked the bulbs on a string of busted Christmas lights that’d been up for nine months.

  “Why don’t you just buy new lights?” Lola asked.

  “Becaus
e these ones are fine, babe. There’s only one broken bulb. I just need to find it.” The lights were even smaller in his sizeable hands. He raised his brows at her. “You going to trade me in for a newer model the day you figure out my one flaw?”

  Lola smiled. “After nine years, you must keep it pretty well hidden, whatever it is.” Before she’d even finished the sentence, a car engine revved out front. And then another. An ear-splitting racket nearly shook the building.

  Quartz swiveled around on his barstool. “They trying to wake the dead?” he yelled.

  “Nah. Just get some attention,” Johnny said. “Ignore them.”

  Fumes seeped through the open door, clouding the room. Lola spent five or more nights a week at Hey Joe, the place she considered her second home. The staff and the patrons were her family. So when a lone beer drinker in the corner booth glared at her, she felt responsible for putting a stop to the commotion.

  It was dark out. People roamed down the Strip’s sidewalk. An electric-blue Subaru was parallel parked out front. The owner, who couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, honked at her.

  “We’ve got customers inside,” she called over the noise. “Take it somewhere else.”

  He hit the gas again. Behind him sat a black Nissan with red rims and a matching spoiler. The driver turned his music up so loud the sidewalk vibrated.

  Lola went to the curb. With a rag from her apron pocket, she waved away exhaust fumes. It took one well-placed, swift kick of her Converse to put a dent in the Subaru’s fender. “I said—”

  The driver gaped. “What the—?”

  “Get the fuck lost!”

  He jumped out and came around the hood toward her. Lola braced herself for an argument, but he stopped mid-step and looked up.

  “You heard the lady,” Johnny said from behind her. “Don’t make me call your mommy.”

  “Look what she did to my car.” The kid pointed at the dent. “That’s a brand-new paint job.”

  “She’s done worse to men twice your size,” Johnny said. Some people by the door snickered.

  “But—”

  “Look, kid,” Johnny said. “Something you should know about this little stretch of the Strip—we don’t call the cops. We handle our own business.”

  The boy flipped them off with both hands but returned to his car.

  Johnny squeezed Lola’s shoulders. “Can’t go around kicking people’s cars, babe.”

  She glanced back at him. “He started it.”

  Even with affection in his brown, gold-flecked eyes, the look he gave her was louder than any words.

  “Aw, come on,” Lola said. “I’m not the one who threatened to handle him.”

  “Why do you say it like that?” He tucked a loose strand of his long hair behind his ear and half smiled. “Think I can’t take a couple punks?”

  “Oh, I know you could. I also know that you, Jonathan Pace, are all talk.”

  Johnny winked. “Not when it comes to my lady.”

  With a kiss on the back of her head, he left Lola standing at the curb. She slung the towel over her shoulder. The two cars took the pavement in a fury of screech and burn, and what followed was a rare moment of silence. Sunset Strip was always busy, but every year the crowd at Hey Joe thinned a little more.

  Lola turned to go back inside. Everyone had cleared the sidewalk except one man, who was watching her. He stood by the door with a hip slightly cocked and his long arms straight at his sides, as if he’d been passing by and hadn’t meant to stop. Even in the dark, she was struck by his movie-star good looks—chocolate-colored hair styled into a neat wave, a jaw so sharp it could cut metal. She might’ve guessed he’d accidentally wandered over from a film premiere on Hollywood Boulevard, except that he was too buttoned up and stiff.

  “You lost?” she asked.

  He straightened his back. “What gives you that impression?”

  “If you’re looking for happy hour,” she said, pointing west noncommittally, “try a few blocks down.”

  “There’s no happy hour here?” He checked the lit, orange sign on the roof. “At Hey Joe?”

  “Not the kind you’re looking for.”

  He touched the perfectly done red knot of his tie. “It’s the suit, isn’t it? I look out of place.”

  She moved closer, pulled by the deep lull of his voice. The LED beer logos in the window turned the lingering smoke multi-colored. His deep-set eyes were dark, his jaw abrupt in all its angles. She had to tilt her head back to look up at him. His attractiveness sank its teeth in her, more obvious with every passing second. “Not just the suit.”

  “What then?” He ran his fingers through his stiff, rust-colored hair. He had so much of it that the gesture made some strands stand on end. “That better?”

  It was that he was too much—his green, almond-shaped, watchful eyes, and his tall, straight back. He didn’t match the carefree laughs and imperfect postures of the people inside the bar. He turned them into commoners, with their round faces, round eyes, round bellies. It was that until that moment, she’d thought she knew what it meant to get butterflies.

  But she couldn’t say those things. “We just don’t see a lot of suits at this end.”

  “You work here?” he asked.

  Lola stuck her hands in the pockets of her apron. “Not like I wear this thing to make a fashion statement.”

  His loud laugh almost startled her. When he stopped, it echoed. He looked from her neck down, everywhere and all at once, as if he might reach out and touch her. His perusal made her feel exposed, and she was glad her apron subdued the cropped T-shirt and leather pants underneath it.

  “You really did a number on that car,” he said, his eyes back at her face.

  Lola didn’t embarrass easily, but there was no denying the sudden warmth in her cheeks. Wherever this man came from, people didn’t kick cars there. “You must think I’m a real class act.”

  “Doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “I guess that’s a yes then.” She shrugged, because he was right—he was a stranger. She did things like that all the time in front of customers, new and old. Then again, none of them had ever given her butterflies.

  He turned his head toward the door so his profile, straight and clean like his suit, was backlit by the sign. A face as handsome as his almost seemed predatorily arranged to disarm prey. “That was your boyfriend?”

  “Who, Johnny?”

  He looked back at her. “Ponytail and Zeppelin T-shirt. Big guy.”

  She shifted on her feet. “How do you know he’s not my husband?”

  “You aren’t wearing a ring.”

  She balled her hands, which were still in her apron. The man stared at her longer than was appropriate, but she wasn’t ready to look away. That was why she had to. “I should get back to work.”

  He nodded. “So should I.”

  She glanced around the block. There weren’t any offices nearby.

  Before she could ask, he said, “I was actually on my way in for a drink with some colleagues. I’m here on business.”

  “Here?” she asked. “This bar?”

  He turned and pulled open the door. “This very one. After you, Miss…?”

  Light slivered onto the sidewalk. From the bar came a soundtrack of snapping pool balls, glass bottoms on tabletops, men arguing. “Lola,” she said, then amended, “Lola Winters” because he looked like a man who dealt in last names.

  “Lola.” He smiled up to his dusky-green eyes. “Beau Olivier. Nice to meet you.”

  She didn’t move right away. She liked the closeness of him. “Sounds French, but you don’t.”

  “I’m not. My father was,” he said. “I grew up here.”

  “Was?”

  “He passed away.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lola said.

  “It was a long time ago. C’est la vie.”

  “C’est la vie,” she repeated.

  He looked at her expectantly. For a moment, she’d forgotten the
y were about to go inside. She cleared her throat and walked through the door. Hey Joe’s interior was booths mutilated by cigarette burns older than Lola, and black and muddied-white checkered linoleum flooring. A neon-pink mud flap girl watched over the crowd from behind the stage. They were things Lola only thought about once in a while when she considered reupholstering, replacing or removing them. But she thought about them then.

  “What can I get you?” she asked over her shoulder as she walked.

  “Scotch, neat.”

  “Preference?”

  “Macallan if you’ve got it.”

  She stooped behind the bar. “That isn’t on special, Beau,” she teased.

  He smiled again. “I like the way you say my name.”

  “Yeah, well. So does Johnny.”

  Beau joined two other men at the bar—the ones who’d snickered on the sidewalk earlier. They were younger than Beau, younger than Lola even, in T-shirts and flannels, jeans and sneakers. She wouldn’t have looked twice at them if they’d come in without Beau.

  Lola made his drink, glancing at him from under her lashes. He’d loosened his tie. She noticed things about him she hadn’t in the dark—the early shadow of stubble forming on his cleft chin, fine lines around his eyes, dimples that hugged his smile like parentheses. He’d called Johnny big, but Beau likely surpassed him in height.

  Beau walked back to her end of the bar. She gave him his Scotch.

  “Is it just me, or does alcohol taste better on a Friday?” he asked.