Jenny Fields is a crusader. The editor of her college newspaper, she never met a cause she couldn’t get behind. So when the administration announces it’s tearing down the historic art building, she’s on the case All she needs to do is get Matthew Townsend, the art department’s boy wonder, on board. They say he his talent is unbounded. It turns out so is his ego.

Matthew Townsend cares about art. And that’s pretty much it. If he has a reputation for being moody and aloof, that suits him just fine. He doesn’t have a family worth speaking of, and as a scholarship student, he can’t afford to goof off like the preppy rich kids at his school. He certainly doesn’t care about the art building. Or about the relentlessly perky Jenny, who looks like she was barfed up by Rainbow Brite. What will it take to the preternaturally cheerful girl with the massive savior complex to leave him alone?

Excerpt

It was a chaste kiss, on the surface of things. It was just her lips against my cheek, and her hands rested in her lap, for fuck’s sake. But, just like the other night, at the construction site, it was like she was filling me with lava. It ran down my throat, swirled around my chest, and then settled in my dick, where it burned hot and fierce.

She pulled away, but only slightly. “Thank you for this,” she whispered. See? This was what nice girls did. They said thank you. Then they gave you a kiss on your rough cheek.

Though she’d moved back enough to speak, she hadn’t returned to sitting upright on the bed. She stayed leaning forward, listing toward me, bracing her hands on her thighs.

I let my gaze slide over a bare neck that would make Degas weep. Across pale, unblemished shoulders. The bodice of her dress went straight across, a horizontal ruffle making a dramatic line between white skin and brilliant blue dress. It hadn’t, earlier, been showing much in the way of cleavage, but now that she was leaning forward, it had the effect of creating a gap between the ruffle and her breasts.

I couldn’t stop looking at that gap. Why didn’t she just move back? She had her cartoon. She’d deposited her perfunctory kiss. We were done here.

Weren’t we?

“I don’t want to graduate a virgin,” she whispered.

A jolt shot through my body. I could feel each rib painfully expanding as I sucked in a breath and brought my eyes up to look into hers. In contrast to the tentative tone of her last sentence, those eyes were fierce, glittering, determined. Those were the eyes of the investigative journalist she would become.

“I have a sponge in my bag,” she added, her voice catching a little.

“Oh, Rainbow Brite,” I said, though it came out sounding more like a groan. I let my head fall to my chest. I couldn’t look at her anymore. The room should have been silent then, but I swear, the blood in my ears was like thunder.

She might have spoken and I hadn’t heard her, because the next thing that happened was she moved her hands from her thighs to mine. She just laid them there, but it was nearly enough to make me black out.

I flinched. I was startled, turned on, wary…everything. Everything all at once.

“I’m sorry,” she said, snatching her hands away.

No. The protest probably started with my dick, to be honest, but it rose up through my chest and down through my legs simultaneously, spreading until it swirled throughout my whole body, propelling me toward her.

I wasn’t going to be the reason Jenny Fields was sorry.

I was also done being a goddamned monk.

amazon

barnes and noble

About the Author

Jenny Holiday started writing at age nine when her awesome fourth grade teacher gave her a notebook and told her to start writing some stories. That first batch featured mass murderers on the loose, alien invasions, and hauntings. (Looking back, she’s amazed no one sent her to a kid-shrink.) She’s been writing ever since. After a brief detour to get a PhD in geography, she worked as a professional writer, producing everything from speeches to magazine articles. More recently, her tastes having evolved from alien invasions to happily-ever-afters, she tried her hand at romance. A lifelong city-lover, she lives in Toronto, Canada, with her family. She is represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan of Greenburger Associates.

You can visit her online at the following places: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

a Rafflecopter giveaway