When Lightning Strikes

Welcome to Whiskey Creek—Heart of the Gold Country!

Simon O’Neal’s causing trouble again.

And it’s up to Gail DeMarco to stop him.

Gail DeMarco left Whiskey Creek, California, to make a name for herself in Los Angeles. Her PR firm has accumulated a roster of A-list clients, including the biggest box office hit of all—sexy and unpredictable Simon O’Neal. But Simon, who’s just been through a turbulent divorce, is so busy self-destructing he won’t listen to anything she says. She drops him from her list—and he retaliates by taking the rest of her clients with him.

Desperate to save her company, Gail has to humble herself by making a deal with Simon. The one thing he wants is custody of his son, but that’s going to require a whole new image. He needs to marry some squeaky-clean girl who’ll drag him off to some small, obscure place like Whiskey Creek….

Gail’s the only one he can trust. She agrees to become his wife—reluctantly. But she isn’t reluctant because he’s too hard to like. It’s because he’s too hard not to love!

Praise for Brenda Novak

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—Linda Lael Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author

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—Reader to Reader Reviews

“Brenda Novak’s seamless plotting, emotional intensity and true-to-life characters who jump off the page make her books completely satisfying. Novak is simply a great storyteller.”

—Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author

“Novak’s smooth plotting makes for a great read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Dead Right

“Novak is an expert at creating emotionally driven romances full of heat, sensual tension and conflict that not only satisfy her characters but her readers as well.”

—Writers Unlimited

“Believable characters and gripping action.”

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—Romance Readers Connection

“Strongly defined characters, sizzling sexual tension and a tautly constructed plot…blend brilliantly together in Novak’s exceptionally intense, powerfully emotional novel.”

—Booklist on Every Waking Moment

When Lightning Strikes

Brenda

Novak

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Pierce Rohrmann.

Your many talents and drive never cease to amaze me. Thanks for your hard work on my behalf, your brilliant ideas, your endless support, your wit and generosity—and last but not least, thanks for picking me up, dusting me off and shoving me back into the fight whenever I try to escape. LOL You make one heck of a BFF!

Dear Reader,

I have had so much fun creating this new series—maybe because I live fairly close to Gold Country and have always been enchanted by it. My husband and I enjoy visiting Jackson, where we have dinner or stay over in a B and B. We’ve gone rappelling and spelunking at Moaning Caverns and driven the kids over to Coloma to pan for gold. But we’ve probably spent the most time mountain biking in the foothills. Even if we’re not doing something special, we like just investigating the area. The history here in Northern California is as rich as the soil.

I love writing stories set in small towns, because of the depth of the relationships that so often exists there. A lack of anonymity affects behavior in interesting ways. A close-knit community can be a blessing; it can also be a curse. I think you’ll find examples of both in Whiskey Creek—but for a movie star like Simon O’Neal, who needs a quiet place to get away and pull himself together, Whiskey Creek is just what the doctor ordered.

I love hearing from my readers. Please feel free to visit me on Facebook (search for Author Brenda Novak to “like” my page) or stop by my website at brendanovak.com, where you can sign up for my mailing list, enter my various giveaways or learn about other books in this series. There, you can also sign up for my annual online auction for diabetes research, which occurs every May. So far, we’ve raised more than $1.5 million for research!

I hope you enjoy When Lightning Strikes!

Brenda Novak

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue

1

She was ruined. She’d become anathema—the Jerry Maguire of the Los Angeles public-relations biz. And it’d happened almost overnight.

“You don’t look so good.”

Gail DeMarco turned away from the phone she’d just hung up to focus on Joshua Blaylock. Dressed in a pair of skinny black jeans with long-toed shoes, a designer jacket and rectangular-shaped glasses, her personal assistant hovered at the corner of her desk, a hopeful yet worried expression on his face. Like her, he’d been hoping they could pull out of the nosedive she’d caused by making one impetuous call, and then a number of thoughtless statements, three weeks earlier. But she could tell Joshua had overheard enough to understand what her other employees didn’t grasp quite yet. They hadn’t just lost a few important clients, like Maddox Gill and Emery Villere; they’d lost them all. Big Hit Public Relations had fallen from its lofty perch at the top of the PR food chain to crash and burn at the bottom. And it was all thanks to one man. Simon O’Neal, the hottest male lead in the movie business, had flexed his superstar muscles and brought down her company so quickly and easily Gail could hardly believe it. She kept thinking she’d wake up to find that their feud was all a bad dream—or that others would see Simon as the train wreck she knew him to be and side with her instead. But America loved him. He was their new James Dean. He was screwing up right and left, but he had the most loyal fans in the world, fans who were as fascinated by his self-destruction as his talent.