Whispering Wishes (31 page)

I still remember sitting on the couch telling my mom about the list of wishes my friend Georgia insisted I needed to make. I was just getting ready to release Pretty Little Lies at the time, and Georgia told me the list would help me realize my wishes and desires for my writing career. My mom and I were giggling because at the time, things in my life were crazy and I told her with my luck, my wishes would back fire. With a twinkle in her eye, my mom laughed and said, “There’s a book idea for you right there.” I gasped, giggled, and immediately started plotting.

My dedication speaks for itself. This book wouldn’t be possible without you, Georgia, as it’s inspired by you. You are the perfect ying to my yang. You make me laugh, you challenge me, you laugh at my crazy ideas, and help me come up with more. Thank you for having the kind of friendship with me, that authors like us write about. Here’s to more lists of wishes, and our future midnight margaritas.

Thank you to my mom for being the best editor a girl could ask for. Even though it makes me blush when I know you are reading/editing the sex scenes, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thank you to all my beta girls. Your feedback, as always, is invaluable and I never take for granted the time you happily volunteer to help me out. You help make my book all it can be and for that, I thank you.

Victoria Bright, thank you for proofreading WW. Your comme
nts and messages made me laugh.

Nad
ège Richards - thank you for making my book beautiful. You gracefully put up with my questions, wants and changes and it means more to me than you know!

Angela Corbett, Mary Ting, Jordan Deen, Alexandrea Weis, Rose Garcia – thank you for your constant support. You always share my posts, keep me smiling and are ready and willing to offer me advice and encouragement. I’m lucky to have you.

Laura Hidalgo, thank you for helping me make the perfect cover. You went above and beyond helping me bring my vision to life. Sarah Singleton, you’re absolutely gorgeous and my perfect Aspen, thank you for agreeing to model for me. Brad Olson, your photography is gorgeous and I loved attending the shoot. You were so great to work with. A special thank you to dress designer Monique of Ouma at Cleo & Clementine – thank you for lending us and letting me pick out the gorgeous dress Sarah is wearing. I love it and it’s absolutely perfect!

Miller’s Killer Street Team – I can’t even begin to count all the ways I love you girls. You keep me laughing constantly, and you share and promote my work without me even asking. I am lucky to have each and every one of you on my team. I adore you all. Here’s to more dinosaurs and gecko porn!

To my family and friends, thank you for your constant love and support.

Finally, to my readers and blogger friends—your facebook messages, comments, emails, tweets and reviews mean more to me than you can possibly imagine. Know that if I could thank each and every one of you personally, I would. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Author Jennifer Miller was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois but now calls Arizona home. Her love of reading began when she was a small child, and only continued to grow as she entered adulthood. Ever since winning a writing contest at the young age of nine, when she wrote a book about a girl with a pet unicorn, she’s dreamed of writing a book of her own. The important lesson she learned about dreams is that they don’t just fall into your lap – you have to chase them yourself. Most importantly, she is a wife and mother, and is very lucky to have a family that loves and supports her in all things. She also has an unhealthy addiction to handbags and chocolate covered strawberries, neither of which she cares to work on.

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Newsletter

AN EXCERPT FROM TEMPTING SYDNEY

A Tempting Novel, Book 1

BY ANGELA CORBETT

The light from
the setting sun glared off the truck door as it opened. The person was in shadow, but his outline showed a large, tall, imposing frame. Wide shoulders, narrow waist. I thinned my eyes. Since Red was just a little above hobbit size with grey hair, I figured this must be one of his employees, and not one I recognized by silhouette. I lifted my hand to block the light and try to get a better view. It didn’t help. He kept walking toward me and was five feet away before I realized who it was.

Confident, gorgeous blue eyes held mine. It was
the
guy. And he was standing in front of me…about to work on my engine. I had a momentary hot flash and took a deep, steadying breath to try to calm down.

“Hey,” I said, shoving my hands in my front pockets. There was no telling what my hands would do if I gave them freedom—but I was sure it would be mighty embarrassing, and perhaps illegal.

His eyes raked over me, dark and with purpose. I felt like I was being undressed with each shift of his gaze. “Hey,” he said back, his voice deep and smooth. Shit. Even his voice seeped testosterone. Why couldn’t he have sounded like a chipmunk?

After what felt like a thorough inventory of my assets, his gaze slowly made its way up my body to meet my eyes. I felt like I’d been measured—and was suddenly completely self-conscious about my clothing choice: low-rise jeans that made my ass look great, a rose pink sequined tank that complimented my cleavage, fair skin, and blonde hair, and a beige moto jacket. I’d been pretty happy with the ensemble when I’d left the house, but wasn’t sure how I felt about it now. I wished I was one of those confident girls who could grab a guy’s attention with a smile and keep it for as long as I wanted. But I wasn’t Brynn, and there was no point in pretending I was. Mindless flirting with guys I couldn’t care less about was one thing—that sort of flirting I could do. But this guy was hot. Like, break-the-rules-and-to-hell-with-my-goals hot. This guy was in a whole different ballpark, and I was completely out of my league.

He’d practically had eye-sex with me at the Soup and Spoon, but I didn’t want to make it obvious that I remembered who he was. Though, really, who wouldn’t remember him? He could star in an ad for muscles. So, I went with something utterly stupid instead. “You’re not Red.”

One eyebrow went up like he was contemplating my lack of IQ. “Nope.”

I nodded, feeling like an idiot for beginning the conversation that way. At least I hadn’t started with an ode to his eyes and bicep circumference—because that had been on the tip of my tongue. I decided to try again. “I think I saw you the other day at lunch. Do you go to college at Easton?” There, that was good. An acknowledgment that I recognized him, but not an affirmation that I’d thought about him in seriously inappropriate ways that required me dipping into my secret naughty box on several occasions since I’d ogled him earlier this week.

He eyed me again. “Nope.”

“Then you live in Winchester?”

“Yep.”

And he wasn’t talkative. So we’d established that.

He stood back and looked at the curvy lines of my car, almost the same way he’d looked at me. I took that as a good sign, since my car was pretty damn hot. “She’s gorgeous.”

“Thanks.”

“A ‘69?”

I was impressed he identified the year with a glance. Though cars were his job, so I shouldn’t be. Maybe my impression of his probable chest measurement was seeping into my impressions of him in general. “Yeah. And she exploded.”

I explained what had happened, and he followed me to the front of the car. He put his tools down on the gravel next to the road and started checking the radiator.

“Any idea what’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer for a minute. “A few.”

He was a man of little words.

We were quiet for what seemed like eons. I felt awkward just standing there, watching him inspect my car in silence. I’m not good with awkward—I tend to just make things more awkward. But I couldn’t stand the no-speech zone any longer. “Have you lived in Winchester long?”

Again, he waited more than a minute to answer. “A few weeks.”

“I’m surprised I haven’t seen you before.” I would have remembered. Those eyes. Those arms. It was suddenly much warmer than it had been a few minutes ago.

“Because you’re an expert on all the men in town?” My cheeks flamed and I was about to respond when he said, “I just started working at Red’s, so it’s not really that surprising.”

Okay. So we weren’t friends, and there was a good chance he thought I was an absolute idiot. Or maybe he just wasn’t interested in talking. In any case, I already felt dumb enough, and I had no further interest in talking to a man who didn’t want to talk to me, regardless of his criminally low levels of body fat, or tight jeans and shirt that fit him like a second skin. He worked in silence, and I watched in silence. It was even more awkward than before. He seemed totally fine with that.

I felt deflated. Why wasn’t he talking to me? Or even attempting to flirt? We’d flirted during our eye-sex encounter, so what was his problem now? He’d barely said a word, which made him so difficult to read that I couldn’t tell what his issue was. But his issue was giving me issues, and I didn’t like it. I toed some gravel on the ground, wishing I could speed up time and get this service call over with.

“Why isn’t your boyfriend helping you with this?”

I started at his voice, surprised he was instigating a conversation. I was even more surprised he was instigating a conversation that was fishing for information about the state of my relationship status. Since it seemed he’d already put me in the epic loser category, I decided not to give the Superman body double any other ammunition. Instead, I lifted a shoulder, non-committal—which was how I felt about my dating life—and pretended I was actually in a relationship, “The guys I date don’t do cars.”

He placed his hands on the front of She-Ra and looked at me sideways, his lips lifting. “What
do
they do?”

I shrugged.

“So…not you?”

I felt my cheeks redden.

He smiled wider, turning his attention back to the mess under my hood. “With a car like this, you should really have someone who appreciates it, and is willing to help you put in the work.”

That whole statement seemed like it had a lot of double-meaning attached to it. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I wasn’t the type of woman who wanted a man to take care of me, and I didn’t want him to assume I was. “I can do the work myself. I don’t need anyone else.”

He braced his arms against the edge of the car, his muscles even more defined than usual with the added strain of his weight. He held my eyes. “You definitely needed me tonight.” My eyes widened and he grinned. It took me a second to realize he was talking about my car, and not about all of the other ways he thought I needed him.