Some girls are made for the city
Successful voice-over artist Ari Madden has been planning her escape from Blackwater Inlet for years. In three more weeks, sheâs making tracksâaway from her cloying family, the gossip mill and her rep for rejecting local men who threaten her dreams. So itâs defnitely the wrong time for a total stranger to start delivering sexy shocks to her lady-circuits.
Bruno Brandt meant to unwind in his new getaway cabin in Podunkville, not get recharged by a red-hot woman with small-town blues. Outrageous, sultry Ari sparks him like a live wire, though, convincing him their fling will never be enough. Heâs a world-class whiz when it comes to anything electric, but can he do what no man ever has beforeâjump-start Ariâs desire to commit?
Contemporary, sexy stories for sassy women
Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon
www.millsandboon.co.uk/Cosmo
Dear Reader,
While growing up in our small town, my girlfriends and I could never hear enough about the big city, and Cosmopolitan magazine was our source for learning just about everythingâfrom how to do our makeup to secrets about dating that our mothers were never going to tell us. As an adult, I moved to Manhattan, but I still have a soft spot for small-town living, as well. Maybe for that reason, since I began publishing romances with Mills & Boon in 1993, my books have often explored the country versus city themes that are close to my heart.
With Switch Me On, I took a risk, hoping editors would go for a small-town setting in a Cosmo Red-Hot Read from Mills & Boon, and I was thrilled when they did. It just goes to show that girls like heroine Aribella Madden are Cosmo Girls mostly because of their insides, not outsides, and due to their sensibilities, not town of birth.
Like me, Ari has a soft spot for the world she was born into, but is destined to land elsewhereâand soon! The only real question is whether red-hot, sexy Bruno Brandt will be in tow when she leaves to pursue her dreams. I do hope youâll have fun reading Ari and Brunoâs story!
Enjoy!
Jule McBride
Chapter One
Because Bruno Brandt designed big city power grids, he thought he knew everything about electricity, but the current that jolted through him when he saw the woman in Boondocks made him feel like Frankenstein being hit by lightning. It was 2:00 a.m. and he hadnât slept his usual four hours the previous night. Heâd red-eyed from the west coast, then flown himself from Raleigh-Durham in his helicopter, landing down the road at his cottage in Blackwater Inlet. Back-water Inlet, locals called it. He hoped it didnât start snowing this far south, the way they kept predicting, because it would ruin his travel schedule, and he wanted to make his upcoming meetings in Chicago. So much for global warming. Plowing to the bar, he yelled for another drink since the first hadnât done jack to warm him.
Not so the dental hygienist. She was hotter than live wires. Well...tonight she was a DJ, not a hygienist, go figure. She had the sexiest voice heâd ever heard. Star quality. Leaning on the bar, he knocked back a second drink, letting the couple next to him do the small talk. That was the cool thing about small towns, everybody was so damn friendly. In one night, he could meet more people in Blackwater Inlet than heâd met in D.C. in a lifetime. Robby Shoemaker and his wife, Alice, were not shoemakers by trade, as it had turned out, but owned the only shrink practice in town.
Not that Bruno liked being psychoanalyzed. Alice had started the convo guessing he wasnât married and pointing at his naked ring finger, making him feel like he was on a date with one of the gym-bodied climber-types he knew in D.C. When sheâd guessed heâd experienced some sort of loss, sheâd hit too close to home. Heâd started to leave but the drink hadnât made him any sleepier yet. He was cursed by many things, including the ability to hold his liquor.
Besides, every time he heard the voice of the DJ, a warm hand grabbed him by the balls and squeezed. Lots of females had whispered dirty somethings to him, but oh, the things he wanted to hear this one say. Even dumb things like, âOh, Bruno,â where the words alone might sound boring, but the intonation would make it steamy. The voice was strangely familiar, too. He could swear heâd heard it before, but he couldnât have, because theyâd never met. It was deep, but not so throaty that she sounded like Marlene Dietrich chain smoking too much weed.
He studied her half-unbuttoned gauzy white blouse. Nice tits. A little drink dribble on the front sent a certain devil-may-care message, and he heard her say into the microphone, âCome do me, baby.â What she really said was, âAt Boondocks, the music never stops.â In D.C., cops would be breaking up the party, but in Blackwater Inlet nobody gave a ratâs ass if the crowd was still slurping daiquiris at sunup.