An Amazon Top 20 Romance of 2016
I WISH YOU WERE MINE
Oxford #2
Lauren Layne
Released on February 2, 2016
Loveswept
Perfect for fans
of Alice Clayton and Emma Chase, Lauren Layne’s Oxford series heats up in this
story of forbidden desire as a brooding jock hoping for a comeback falls for a
woman who’s strictly off-limits.
A year ago, Jackson Burke was married to the love of his
life and playing quarterback for the Texas Redhawks. Now he’s retired, courtesy
of the car accident that ruined his career—and single, after a nasty scandal
torpedoed his marriage. Just as he’s starting to get used to his new life as a
health and fitness columnist for Oxford magazine, his unpredictable ex shows up
on his doorstep in Manhattan. Jackson should be thrilled. But he can’t stop
thinking about the one person who’s always been there for him, the one girl he
could never have: her younger sister.
Mollie Carrington can’t say no to Madison. After all, her
older sister practically raised her. So when Madison begs for help in winning
her ex-husband back, Mollie’s just glad she got over her own crush on Jackson
ages ago—or so she thought. Because as Mollie reconnects with Jackson, she
quickly forgets all her reasons to stay loyal to her sister. Tempted by
Jackson’s mellow drawl and cowboy good looks, Mollie is sick and tired of
coming in second place. But she can’t win if she doesn’t play the game.
ONLY .99 CENTS
Excerpt
Jackson
took a sip. Perfection. Although what did it mean that Jackson’s life had
turned into one where the highlight of his day was a well-made cocktail?
It
wasn’t that Jackson needed the booze. He enjoyed it,
certainly. Had relied on it more than he probably should have in those first
few days when he’d gotten out of the hospital and come home to a whole lot of
nothingness.
But
these days he could take it or leave it.
Tonight,
however, he was taking it. Sobriety had no place when you had to sit across
from the most off-limits woman on the planet.
Knowing
that didn’t stop the anticipation, however. He hadn’t seen her since she’d
shown up in his hospital room to deliver a bag of Gatlin’s BBQ and . . .
His
divorce papers.
That
had been eight months ago.
He’d
avoided her ever since, and he couldn’t even say why except
that he’d avoided pretty much everyone. Jackson still spoke with his parents
every Sunday, but everyone else—all the old teammates, the old neighbors—had
eventually stopped calling.
Mollie
hadn’t, though. Mollie had never given up on him. Until today, he hadn’t
responded to a single text, a single email, and yet she hadn’t stopped sending
them. That was Mollie for you. Fiercely loyal to both him and Madison,
even when things had started to go to hell.
Mollie
had been accepted to Columbia just about the time that he and Madison started
coming apart at the seams. In hindsight, he was grateful that Mollie had been
in New York when things started to go to hell in his marriage. That she hadn’t
seen him at his worst.
At
the time, however, he’d been hit with an unfair sense of abandonment. He hadn’t
realized how much he’d come to rely on the much younger Mollie to mediate
things between him and the volatile Madison until she was in a different time
zone.
Even
now, more than a decade since first meeting Mollie, he struggled to reconcile
the fact that she and Madison had come from the same parents. Madison was
perfectly coiffed, charming only when she was in the mood, and manipulative as
all hell. Mollie, on the other hand, was adorably awkward—a brainy research
assistant who cared a hell of a lot more about her scientific journals than her
manicure.
But
somewhere along the line, Mollie Carrington had ceased to be that awkward kid
who talked about bugs at inopportune times. Somewhere along the line, she’d
become his rock. The one person in the world, save for perhaps his parents, who
always knew the exact right thing to say to make him feel like a human whenever
he’d started to feel like a caricature of himself.
For
years he’d tried to tell himself that it was just sibling affection—that he
cared about her the way he would a sister. But then things had gotten worse
with Madison—way worse. And Jackson had been hit upside the head with the
truth: that maybe he’d married the wrong sister. That he didn’t want to spend
the rest of his days married to the beautiful, brittle Madison.
He
wanted someone who made him laugh. Who listened. Someone who cared more about
people than she did about hair appointments.
Someone
like Mollie.
In 2011, she ditched her corporate career in Seattle to pursue a full-time writing career in Manhattan, and never looked back.
In her ideal world, every stiletto-wearing, Kate Spade wielding woman would carry a Kindle stocked with Lauren Layne books.
For a list of all her works, please be sure to check out her official website!
No comments:
Post a Comment