The Perfect Indulgence
The perfect pick-me-up!After swapping lives–and coffee shops–with her twin sister, Chris Meyer is certain her New Yorker uptightness has melted in the hot California sunshine. But finding inner peace is tough with four guys vying for her attention. Including the one who turns her mellow zen into a way-too-sexy zing…Zac Arnette doesn't mind a little competition, because he knows the attraction he and Chris share is smoking hot! They agree to a friends-with-benefits fling–which fits in with Chris's new laid-back style. But she might not want to give up her favorite new indulgence when it's time to return to NYC…
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The perfect pick-me-up!
After swapping lives—and coffee shops—with her twin sister, Chris Meyer is certain her New Yorker uptightness has melted in the hot California sunshine. But finding inner peace is tough with four guys vying for her attention. Including the one who turns her mellow zen into a way-too-sexy zing...
Zac Arnette doesn’t mind a little competition, because he knows the attraction he and Chris share is smoking hot! They agree to a friends-with-benefits fling—which fits in with Chris’s new laid-back style. But she might not want to give up her favorite new indulgence when it’s time to return to NYC...
“We should be friends...with benefits.”
Zac nuzzled her ear. “What do you think?”
Chris sat there stupidly for two seconds. This was exactly what she wanted. She was ridiculously hot for him and wanted his body immediately.
“Sweetheart.” He leaned in a couple of inches closer.
“Mmm?”
“It’s up to you to move away if you want. Because I’m going to kiss you.”
“Oh my.” Chris stared at his spectacular mouth. She could practically taste it again. “That sounds like a terrible idea.”
“It gets worse.” He leaned toward her until his amazing lips were brushing her skin, slowly turning her molten. “Because if I kiss you, I’m not going to want to stop there.”
“Oh! That is worse. Much worse.” She was imagining his hands on her naked body, his warm torso lowering over hers. Or under hers. Or behind hers. Or—
His mouth tasted just as wonderful as it had the other night, and the pressure of his lips ignited a fierce and primal response in her. Chris wanted this. She’d invited this. And the passion that came to life between them, her legs locking around his, their hips straining toward each other?
Oh yes, they could be friends...but bring on those benefits.
I had such a great time writing my recent Blaze story Some Like It Hotter, the story of the free-spirited and quirky Eva Meyer, and her determined pursuit of Ames Cooke that upends his world. But when I came to write The Perfect Indulgence about Eva’s twin sister, Chris, I wasn’t quite sure what kind of man to pair her with.
Then I stumbled over Zac Arnette. He and Chris are alike in many ways. Being an engineer, Zac is precise, methodical and controlled. But I gave him all this simmering sexual energy under the surface and an amazingly intuitive side. All I had to do then was introduce him to Chris and watch him fall madly in love, not with the woman Chris thinks she has to be, but with the woman she really is.
Who doesn’t want that? If I wasn’t happily married, I’d want to give Zac a call myself.
Happy reading!
Isabel Sharpe
ISABEL SHARPE was not born with pen in hand like so many of her fellow writers. After she quit work to stay home with her firstborn son and nearly went out of her mind, she started writing. After more than thirty novels for Mills & Boon, a second son and eventually a new, improved husband, Isabel is more than happy with her choices these days. She loves hearing from readers. Write to her at isabelsharpe.com.
Contents
BREATHE IN...BREATHE OUT...breathe in...breathe out.
Chris Meyer sat on a cliff near Aura Beach in her adopted town of Carmia on the Central California coast. She was meditating, in a deep trance, aware only of the breeze on her face, the sounds of the ocean waves rolling in and the slow pattern of her breathing.
If anyone had told her a little over five months ago when she and Eva, her sister and fellow coffee-shop owner, had first cooked up the idea of temporarily switching lives, that she would someday practice meditation, she would have laughed and assumed the person had confused her, a typical type A New Yorker, with her laid-back California-girl twin.
However, in the past five months Chris had undergone a total personality transformation, thanks to her daily meditation and yoga classes at the Peace, Love and Joy Center on the outskirts of town. Gone were her uptight, neurotic and anal-retentive tendencies; she was now relaxed, carefree and brimming with California sunshine and roses.
Most of the time.
Back in October, if someone had suggested she sit on a cliff for half an hour doing absolutely nothing, she would have scoffed. What could possibly be considered productive about that?
She’d learned so much living here. And with Eva’s serious boyfriend, Ames Cooke, so far unsuccessful at finding the perfect sales-manager job with a vineyard or distributor here in Central California, Chris wouldn’t be switching back to the hectic pace of New York anytime soon.
That was good. She wanted to stay here until this change went much deeper than her surroundings. Much deeper than her new casual wardrobe, her new crazy hairstyles— Well...actually, they were wigs and temporary hair dyes she’d been experimenting with, but that counted as change, right? Deeper than her new phoenix tattoo, which, admittedly, was tiny and hidden on her rib cage under her arm. And deeper than the row of earrings she’d taken to wearing down the shell of her ear. Although, truth be told, they were cuffs. She didn’t want any more holes in her ears. But this was a true transformation. Really. She was going for total calm, ready to say goodbye to the high-strung, anxious, quick-to-judge side of her personality. She was also working on freeing her spontaneous, live-in-the-moment self from a lifetime spent planning, organizing and following routines, which she’d learned from her parents. When she and Eva had been infants, their parents had put them on strict feeding schedules. As girls, they’d been taught the importance of doing their chores and getting a full eight hours of sleep. For whatever reason their parents’ devotion to work before play had not remotely rubbed off on her free-spirited twin, but Chris had bought into it 100 percent.
