Hot for Him

She couldn’t stand not havinghim a minute longer.

Claudia wanted Leandro, and she knew he wanted her. She felt like the sexiest woman in the world standing in front of her mirror fresh from her shower. Dropping the towel behind her, she waltzed into the living room, desire giving her all the confidence she needed.

“I was thinking we could skip dinner and go straight to dessert. What do you think?” she asked him, pausing in the doorway.

His head came up and she saw his jaw tense as he registered her nakedness.

“You are full of good ideas tonight,” he said.

Holding his eye, she walked slowly towards him, loving the way his eyes followed the bounce of her breasts.

“You have no idea,” she said as she pushed him farther back onto the couch and straddled him. She could feel the firmness of his thighs beneath hers, the rasp of his denim against her skin. His hands found her torso on either side, sliding up until they were resting just beneath her breasts.

This man was going to be hers at last.

SARAH MAYBERRY

lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her partner, Chris. In addition to writing romance, she writes scripts for television. Like all her characters, she loves sexy cars, chocolate, a good glass of wine and a great laugh. Unlike her characters, she has to pay for the chocolate on the treadmill. Long live fiction.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Claudia’s story. This book pretty much wrote itself – Claudia leapt off the page, grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go until I’d left her happy and whole. It’s so cool to write a strong, gutsy character. I had a lot of fun with the contrast between her larger-than-life personality and her actual physical presence – as Grace once commented, Claudia can be one scary little lady sometimes!

I hope you enjoyed getting to know Sadie, Grace and Claudia in the SECRET LIVES OF DAYTIME DIVAS mini-series over the past few months, and meeting their hunky other halves, Dylan, Mac and Leandro. I also hope you enjoyed the behind-the-scenes world of soap production. It’s a gruelling business, but it has been a great training ground for me over the years and I love it.

I love to hear from readers! You can contact me through my website – www. sarahmayberryauthor.com – via e-mail at [email protected].

Until next time, stay well,

Sarah Mayberry

BY

SARAH MAYBERRY

Thanks to Chris for holding my hand throughout this book and the previous two, and to Wanda the Wonderful, the good editor from the north, for listening to hours of rambling madness. Here’s to walking the streets of Paris with you both again sometime in the near future.

1

HE SMELLED OF LEATHER and musk and warm skin, and his shoulder was a solid wall of muscle against her left arm. Every time he spoke, his deep voice vibrated through her whole body. And every time he laughed, she had to fight the urge to squirm in her chair.

Claudia Dostis was seriously in danger of screaming out loud. In fact, if Leandro Mandalor’s big, beefy arm knocked against hers one more time, she was not going to be answerable for the consequences.

It was the organizers’ fault. They’d squashed too many people at too few tables at the open forum sessions for the Daytime Television Convention, then they’d compounded their mistake by seating her next to her arch rival.

How was she supposed to concentrate on answering questions from the floor when she was pressed up against Captain Butthead?

He was easily the most obnoxious man she’d ever met. Hands down, without even trying. All he had to do was walk into a room and she was instantly annoyed. It had a lot to do with her innate competitive spirit—his soap, Heartlands, competed on a daily basis with Ocean Boulevard, her baby. It had even more to do with the fact that six months ago he’d tried to get the jump on her by poaching the Boulevard’s idea to run a feature-length wedding episode in the winter months.

But mostly it was just him.

He was too tall—six four, or something equally ridiculous. He was too dark—olive skinned, with glossy black curly hair that he wore cropped close to his head. And he was too, too, too cocky. The man oozed confidence and take-charge charisma. He liked to call the shots, and he expected people to give him what he wanted, when he wanted it, stat.

And the way he looked at her—as though she were a private joke that only he understood. His dark brown eyes always held a hint of laughter when they lit on her, and it made her long for a large, heavy object to aim at his big, fat head.

For about the millionth time that afternoon, she felt the warm press of his body alongside hers as he shifted in his seat. Her fingers curled around the edges of her notes as she fought the need to punch him and tell him to keep his distance.

“…it’s an interesting point, but I’m not sure that I agree with it,” he said in his deep baritone. “What do you think, Claudia?”

She stiffened. She’d been so busy grinding her teeth over their forced intimacy she’d completely missed the comment from the floor.