It was time to embrace her inner wild child.
Brooke drained her cocktail and put the glass on their table. David dropped his face against her neck, scattering warm little pecks from her shoulder blade into the hairline at her nape.
âPeople are looking at us,â she whispered.
He put his mouth over her ear and she shivered. âLet them.â
âIf youâre not careful, youâll be in the gossip columns. âWhat Boston bad boy was seen canoodling with a scandalously underdressed blue blood?ââ
He shrugged. âMy coverâs already been blown.â
âHow long are youâ¦â She swallowed, not wanting to sound clingy.
âStaying?â He licked behind her ear. âI donât know. Not long, I expect.â
Perfect. He was exactly what she needed right now. âSo what youâre saying is this is a one-night stand.â
He paused in his exploration to look directly. âAre you OK with that?â
Oh, she was more than OK with this. âIâll race you to the nearest bed.â
CARRIE ALEXANDER
lives in Upper Michigan, where the winters are long and the snow is measured by how high it reaches up your leg. The knee-deep blizzards give her plenty of writing time, resulting in over thirty slightly scandalous romance novels. After the snow melts, her most daring challenge is swimming the Michigamme river in May, before the water warms up.
Dear Reader,
How daring are you?
I confess that Iâm not. I blame this on my first attempt at driving a motorbike when I was a girl. With very little instruction, I zipped away at top speed. What fun! Iâll go even faster! Yikes, Iâm running out of roadâ¦how do I slow down? Is this the brake? I have to turn â now. Crash!
Yes, Iâm accident-prone. Iâd be the skydiver who broke her leg at the landing or the diver who belly flopped from the high board. But what about dares that are mental as well as physical? Brooke Winfield, the most conservative of THE MARTINI DARES heroines, goes far out of her comfort zone to perform a public striptease. This proves to be a revealing act in more ways than the obvious. While Iâm never going to skydive, I do write sexy romantic exposés, somewhat of a scandalous occupation where I live. Maybe Iâm more daring than I thought.
I hope My Front Page Scandal gives you a vicarious thrill!
Happy reading,
Carrie Alexander
This book is dedicated to everyone who
provided aid, comfort, meals and cyber-support during my two months of deadline hell. Thanks for putting up with me.
1
ONE GOOD YANK and the biker dudeâs distressed designer jeans came off.
Brooke Winfield glanced at the featureless bulge between his legs, reminded of playing dolls with her sisters. Joey was always the first to strip the Ken figurine to his plastic skin and make indecent overtures to the girl dolls, while Katie held disco parties for hers. Brooke didnât actually play at all. Sheâd been more concerned with designing the dollsâ wardrobes and staging elaborate scenarios in their dream house.
âThirty years old and Iâm still dressing dolls,â she said to the nude male mannequin while she folded the jeans. With his boyish chest and aquiline nose, he was too high-fashion to make a believable biker dude. A leather bandanna and the tattoos sheâd painted on his slender forearms were only surface dressing.
Brooke caught a glance of herself in the mirror on the back wall of the display area. The surface was what people noticed. Her surface, as usual, read ninety percent Boston conservative and ten percent creativeâtoday, signified by the jangly tin fish earrings sheâd bought last year at the Bazaar Bizarre, a punk-rock arts-and-crafts fair.
Ten percent. Brooke knew that it was time to flip those numbers. Recently, sheâd decided that she was finished with conforming to the Winfield rules and expectations. She didnât want to wind up like her deceased mother, whoâd hidden the truth about her previous life right up to the end to fit in with her conservative in-laws.
With a sigh, Brooke returned to dismantling the window. It, at least, had caused a splash, even though the display sold only the illusion of rebellion. Three-hundred-dollar jeans werenât changing anyoneâs world. Certainly not the trendy Bostonians who thought nothing of slapping down the plastic to buy a fashionable garment they might wear only once.
She unscrewed the mannequin and lifted the torso and limbs onto the trolley, then climbed back inside the window display. O.M. Worthington was an historic, ultra-exclusive department store on Newbury Street. It catered to longtime customers, with personal services and the promise of remaining unchanged since the Mayflower.
Alyce Simmons, the head fashion buyer, had enlisted Brookeâs help to push the stodgy store into a more profitable era. Their first collaboration, the leather-heavy Gaultier window display, had caused a few raised eyebrows among the staff, as well as the storeâs clientele. The only reason theyâd gotten away with it was that Old Man Worthington himself had approved the concept. Even an octogenarian could see that the store must boost their youth appeal or theyâd never make it to their third century.