USA TODAY bestselling author LUCY MONROE lives and writes in the gorgeous Pacific Northwest. While she loves her home, she delights in experiencing different cultures and places in her travels, which she happily shares with her readers through her books. A lifelong devotee of the romance genre, Lucy can’t imagine a more fulfilling career than writing.
JENNIFER RAE was raised on a farm in Australia by saltof-the-earth farming parents. All she’d ever wanted to do was write, but she didn’t have the confidence to share her stories with the world until, working as a journalist, she interviewed a couple of romance-writers. Finally the characters who had been milling around Jennifer’s head since her long years on the farm made sense and she realised romance was the genre for her and sat down to release her characters.
FIONA BRAND lives in the sunny Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Now that both of her sons are grown, she continues to love writing books and gardening. After a life-changing time in which she met Christ, she has undertaken study for a bachelor of theology and has become a member of The Order of St. Luke, Christ’s healing ministry.
CHAPTER ONE
MADISON ARCHER SET HER morning coffee down, hot liquid spilling over the rim, as she read her Google alerts with growing horror.
Madcap Madison Looking for New Master?
Archer Heiress into Heavy Kink
San Francisco Bad Boy Dumps Very Bad Girl
The articles made lurid claims about a lifestyle and relationship between Maddie and Perry Timwater. A completely nonexistent relationship.
The fact that Perry was the source caused the coffee to sour in Maddie’s stomach.
His supposed exposé of their fictitious relationship claimed she was a submissive with a serious pain fetish and need for multiple partners. She gritted her teeth on the urge to swear as she read it was her inability to remain faithful that forced Perry to end things between them.
Maddie wouldn’t mind ending Perry right that minute. Betrayal choked her.
How could he have done this?
He was her friend.
They’d met their freshman year at university. He’d made her laugh when she’d thought nothing could. Not after her epic fail trying to get Viktor Beck’s attention. She’d started university with a broken heart and Perry had helped her paste over the cracks with friendship.
She’d helped him pass his accountancy courses. He’d played platonic escort for her and she’d provided him entrée to Jeremy Archer’s world—an echelon above his own.
But never, not once, had their friendship ever taken a turn toward something heavier.
Pounding sounded on her front door. “Maddie! It’s me, don’t freak.” Then barely a second later, the double snick of locks sliding back was followed by the door swinging wide.
Holding a bag from their favorite bakery aloft, her black bob swirling around her pixie face, Romi Grayson kicked the door shut behind her. “I come bearing the panacea for all ills.”
“I’m not sure even chocolate and flaky pastry can make this situation better.” Maddie slumped against the back of her chair.
Eyes the same vibrant blue as Maddie’s glittered with anger. “So, Perry’s lost his mind, right?”
“You saw the articles?”
“Only after reporters woke me from a dead sleep demanding my opinion of my best friend’s darker sexual proclivities.” Romi’s mouth twisted wryly. “Proclivities I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have even if you weren’t still a virgin.”
“You’ve got that right. I’ve never been able to trust one man enough to have sex, much less multiple partners.”
As ridiculous as that might seem at twenty-four, it wasn’t going to change anytime soon, either.
“If you ask me, it’s got less to do with trust and more to do with the fact you imprinted on Viktor Beck like a baby bird when you were a teenager and you’ve never gotten over him.”
“Romi!” Maddie was in no mood to hash out her unrequited feelings for her father’s dark-haired, dark-eyed, to-die-for-bodied golden boy.
“I’m just saying...”