Tag Archives: #sundaytease

#SundaySnippet – When #fakedating is acceptable…

So tomorrow my book CHANCE ( LAST MAN STANDING #12) releases into the book reading world and I figured I’d give you one more chance ( see what I did there! LOL) to determine if you’d like to read the entire book.

Today’s snippet goes to the heart of the #fakedating premise of the book between Freddie and Chance.

Enjoy…

When he laid it all out she had to admit, the idea was pretty out there.

“I know it’s a last-minute request and I totally understand if you don’t want to say yes. But I really want you to say yes.”

“I don’t know,” she said, biting down on a corner of her lip. “It’s kind of…deceitful, isn’t it?”

“In a way. But for the best of reasons. If they think I’m dating someone they’ll be happy for me and I’ll have the added benefit of them getting off their hook-me-up endeavors for a while. And believe me, I could use a break from that. There’s nothing worse than a grown man being set up by a bunch of elderly women with good intentions.”

“No, I don’t imagine there is.” She laughed.

“It’s only for one night,” he added. “Just to get through this party. There’s nothing else planned until my Aunt Theresa’s birthday in July and by then I’ll have figured something out to get them off my backs permanently.”

“That’s only three months away, you know.”

“Yeah, but I’m looking at it as three months reprieve where I won’t be harassed with dating matchups.”

“Have you ever simply thought to tell them your views on marriage? Marriage for you, in particular?”

“The cousins—their kids—yes. But they’re all married, too. I’ve never said outright to the aunts that I don’t want to get married. I’m afraid a few of them would have heart attacks or start invoking my mother’s name as a way to ward off whatever bedevilment they think has possessed me. Their definition of a happy life is a happy wife and kids for every man they know. It’s their…generation’s, I guess, way of thinking.”

Freddie nodded. “My mother’s a little younger than your aunts, I think, but she feels the same way.”

She sat back and stared at him for a moment.

“Say I say yes—”

“Please do.”

She rolled her eyes. “Say I agree to go with you as your, what? Fake girlfriend?”

He nodded.

“What are you gonna tell them about me? About how we met?”

“The truth is always the best way to avoid issues,” he said. “You own and manage the coffee bar in my office building. We met and hit if off, decided to date.”

“What happens if they ask if I’ve ever been married? If I have any kids?”

“Tell them whatever you’re comfortable with. You don’t need to lie—”

“Good, since we’ll already be lying about our relationship.”

He frowned. “I guess I don’t consider it lying as much as I think of it as a way to keep the aunts out of my hair for a bit.”

She nodded. “What would you expect me to do?”

He shrugged. “Whatever girlfriends do when they meet their boyfriend’s relatives.” He raked his hands down his face, then readjusted his glasses. “And I can’t believe I’m describing myself that way at my age.”

“You’ve got a few years left in you,” she said with a grin.

Intrigued? I hope so!!! Peg

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#SundaySnippet 1.9.2022

from the upcoming MIX & MATCH 3.1.2022

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09P48WPZC

The Friday night social scene in Heaven N.H. wasn’t the eclectic, happening, busy one she’d grown used to while living in Manhattan. She and her ex had routinely made Friday a date night when his work schedule allowed and they’d attended many a packed jazz bar or bistro over the years. Mood lighting, expensive décor and a drink menu that boasted thousand dollar bottles of wine and champagne had been the norm, along with cocktails going for upwards of twenty-five dollars a glass.

The Love Shack, Heaven’s own answer to the bar scene, was a wooden, rustic, brightly lit establishment with butcher block tables covered in gingham tablecloths and where the most expensive bottle of wine topped out at sixteen dollars. The costliest cocktail served was a four dollar cranberry Cosmo that was heavy on the Ocean Spray and light on the vodka and Cointreau.

Jasmine scanned the bar where Olivia told her her date would be waiting. There were three men scattered down along the rail. Two she recognized from high school and one guy whose face she couldn’t see because his back was to her. When he turned she realized immediately this was not the man she was due to have drinks with.First there was no way this guy was 36 years old. Her mother would have called him Gramps.Clue number two was the wedding band on the hand holding his beer. It was so tight, the skin surrounding it swollen, his knuckle hair squeezed around it, indicating it had been there for decades.Nope. This wasn’t her guy. A cursory glance around the place showed most of the tables were taken with couples.Her date had yet to arrive.

“Hey, Jazz,” the bartender and owner, Kick Loomis said from his perch drying beer glasses behind the bar.

“Kick.”

“You squattin’ or sittin’, sweetheart?”She’d been in the place enough times in her life to know he meant was she going to sit at the bar or take a table.

Jasmine was self-conscious enough she didn’t want to be seated on a bar stool, sitting alone while waiting for her date, especially when one of the guys she’d gone to school with tossed her an inquiring eye and a raised eyebrow. She didn’t want to get into a how-you-doing-what-you-been-up-to-since-high school chat. If her memory served, and it always did, the guy had been one of the football heroes of Heaven High back in the day. Those glory days were long gone and she had no desire to listen to him dredge them up.

She spotted an empty table in the corner and nodded toward it.

“I’ll send Raylynn over with a menu.”

She nodded and as she was about to head for it felt a tap on her arm.

“Excuse me. Jasmine?”

She turned at the sound of her name, spoken in a deep, soft voice blessed with a charming accent and found herself face to face with the gorgeous guy she’d spotted in her mom’s office. The one Sharmaine had been sucked on to like a tick

.Good Lord, he was even better looking up close and personal than he’d been, seated, and ten feet away from her. Stunning blue eyes, the color of freshly laid Robin’s eggs topped a face with high cut cheeks and a jaw forged from granite. Midnight hair curled around his ears and caressed the nape of his neck. Layered waves fell across his head in a chaos of perfection.

She’d been right about his height. Most men she could stare straight in the eyes due to her own long legs. But she had to tilt her head back a bit to look into this man’s striking ones.“You are Jasmine, aye?” Even his voice was gorgeous, the song of Ireland singing through it.

She nodded, her own voice deciding now would be a good time to leave on vacation. And when his smile took a slow stroll from one corner of his full, thick lips to the other, showing perfect, straight white teeth, the tips of her fingertips began to tingle like she’d fallen asleep on them and spent the night with them cuddled beneath the weight of her body.

He-of-the-handsome-face stuck out his hand and declared, “Good. Olivia said to meet you here. Donovan Boyd, but everyone calls me Van. Lovely to meet you.”

Jasmine knew she should shake his hand. It was the polite thing to do, wasn’t it? For some reason, her brain wasn’t sending any signals down her arm to lift it up to his outstretched one.

Donovan, or Van, kept his hand out, his smile in place, and ticked his head to the left a hair. A clap of booming laughter rang out from somewhere behind her and finally propelled the gears in her brain to start turning again.

After a head shake where she actually heard her brains rattle, she extended her hand and slipped it into his.

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