At Long Last!

Posted by Leslie at Sep 18, 2012 6:00 am

After 3 months of availability only on Amazon, and another month of forgetting to change that fact (lol) I have finally gotten around to uploading BRING DOWN SAM for readers on other e devices. I would love to say it’ll be out soon on the Kobo and Sony, but I’m having a problem because Smashwords doesn’t have any ISBN’s and those devices won’t take it without them! But it should be available at BN.com for the Nook very soon, and is already available at Smashwords in a number of formats. Here’s the book page: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/156844

Bringing Down Sam is a fun, light, flirty, sexy contemporary, very much like my Temptations. (I wrote it several years ago when writing for Temptation.) It’s about a former child modelling star turned high school English teacher who lets her friends talk her into a plan to “bring down” a guy they think is a sexist jerk. Only, Sam’s not at all the man she thinks he is.

The book has gotten some great reviews, (9 perfect 5-stars ones so far on Amazon, whoop, thanks so much to those of you who’ve written them!) Here’s a little excerpt if you’d like to check it out. You can sample the first 10% of the book on Smashwords.

Have you read it? What’d you think? Do you want me to continue the Temptation in the City series with Leanne’s and Diana’s books?

Click to read the excerpt!

“Give me fifteen minutes to shower, okay? Make yourself at home. The fridge is stocked, help yourself.” Before he left, he quickly looked around the room, peering behind the sofa and then under an end table. “Just making sure the coast is clear. Quig usually hangs out on my bedroom windowsill on a nice day like this.”
“Scared your cat won’t like me?”
“More scared he’ll eat your face off when my back is turned.”
“Big bad puddy tat,” she said with a soft laugh. She waved him away. “Go ahead and take your shower. I think I can protect myself from the twenty pound fluff-ball.”
He gave her a slightly skeptical look, then sauntered away, leaving her alone. She wasn’t the nosy type and didn’t immediately dive for drawers or grab at pictures to see if they revealed any of Sam’s romantic history. But she couldn’t deny being a little curious about the man loathed by most young, single women, and wandered over to the bookshelf to see what kinds of books he read.
She found lots of fiction—war stuff, secret agent adventures—but there were a few interesting surprises. Like a very chick-litty, pale-blue-covered tome with the dubious title, How To Make Mr. Right-For-Now Into Mr. Right! There was also a self-help guide about how to trick a man into saying, “I love you,” and another on ways to play around with a bad boy while keeping a nice guy on the string.
Okay. She got the point. Boy did she ever.
Sam was just evening the score a little. His book had caught the attention of a lot of people because it was so unique…compared to the dime-a-dozen, anti-men, you-go-girl stuff that crowded the bookstore shelves.
About to reach for one of the more obnoxiously titled, cotton-candy-pink titles, she suddenly heard a grunting noise and felt something banging against her bare ankle. Looking down, she spied a gigantic ball of fluff backing up to get another running start before barreling into her leg again, this time with an accompanying swipe of his paw.
“Well, hello,” she muttered, smiling at the little guy’s determination. “You must be Quigley.”
The basketball-covered-with-fur glared up at her from underneath an end table, his green eyes snapping in dislike, his sumo-wrestler-body shaking with indignation that a stranger had the audacity to invade his personal space.
“I’m not a burglar, I promise,” she said, laughter in her voice, as she bent down to say hello. She didn’t reach for the cat, or make any threatening moves, she merely crouched in front of the table, a few feet from him, extending one hand, palm up, for him to sniff.
He didn’t sniff. He pounced.
“Ow!” she yelped, realizing the feline had actually drawn blood.
“Eve, are you okay?” Sam called. Then, not waiting for an answer, he hurried into the room, wearing nothing but a towel slung around his hips, using another, smaller one, on his wet hair.
Eve looked up, forgetting the pain in her hand, the blood, the cat, the whole world.
Because…wow. Just, wow.
He was amazing looking. Sam was handsome, of course, she’d known that at first sight. But she hadn’t realized what an incredibly sexy body lurked beneath the casual clothes. Now, in just that towel—which hung at right about eye-level, considering she was still crouched-down—he couldn’t be called anything except utterly hot.
She slowly rose to stand before him, her gaze going up, inch-by-inch, appreciating the way the towel bulged over his groin and hung low on his lean hips, showing off those perfect, rippled abs.
Her heart was thudding, her breath coming in tiny little bursts. She said nothing, just continued to look.
Sam’s bare chest was miles wide, his shoulders Atlas-broad, his arms thick and flexing. His skin was lightly tanned, damp from his shower, with interesting trickles of water riding ridges of toned muscle. One was skirting along his collarbone, then it hit the hollow of his throat and began a lazy descent down into the wiry, sparse hairs on his chest. Eve found herself watching it descend, unable to tear her eyes away, wondering how it might feel to follow the path that droplet took with her tongue.
“You’re hurt,” he muttered, his voice tight and thick.
Seeing the flush on his face, the way his eyes gleamed, she had to suspect he’d seen her obvious appreciation…and the blood on her hand.”
“Sharp-clawed little roommate you’ve got there,” she mumbled.
“Come on, let’s clean it up.” He grabbed her uninjured hand and pulled her with him through the apartment.
Eve thought about resisting, needing a minute to regroup and pull her racing thoughts together. Plus, walking behind him, seeing the way that taut, male butt moved beneath the terrycloth just wasn’t good for her sanity. What little of it she had left.
A loud meow sounded behind them. Sam didn’t even turn around, calling, “You’re in time-out, cat. And you can just forget about canned tuna tonight!”
Eve chuckled, struck by the diverse facets of this man. Caring and concerned about her, funny and scolding with his obnoxious pet, and bursting with sex appeal. He was one hell of a package.
“Here, run it under warm water,” he said when they reached the bathroom, still steamy and filled with delicious man-smells of sweat and spice and soap.
Eve breathed deeply, inhaling all those wonderful scents, letting them fill her completely, then extended her hand into the warm stream of water he brought forth from the tap. It stung a little, and she yanked back, but Sam gently slid his fingers through hers and squeezed. She let him wash the cut, which was a good two inches long, and marred the fleshy area beneath her thumb. He soaped it carefully, gently, all the while stroking her other fingers with his own. Within a moment, she was no longer conscious of any sting, she could only think about the pleasure of his touch, the warmth of his skin, the care and deliberation he took with her.
“I am so sorry, Eve,” he said. “He’s not friendly, but he usually doesn’t attack people.”
“I shouldn’t have tried to make friends when you weren’t in the room,” she replied, knowing that had been the mistake. “I was the intruder, he was defending your home. At least you know he’s got your back if anybody ever tries to break in and rob you.”
“Guard Cat extraordinaire,” he muttered.
He turned off the water, gently drying her hand with a clean towel, then dabbing some antibiotic ointment on it and covering it with a bandage.
All his focus was on her cut. All her focus was on him.
He was just so close—his even-sexy feet nearly touching her shoes, his bare legs brushing against hers every so often—and so overwhelmingly masculine. She felt the warmth of his exhalations as he worked, and couldn’t, for the life of her, remember why she’d ever insisted she didn’t want this man in her bed the night before.
She did want him. Oh, she so did. She actually licked her lips as she stared at his chest, and the fingers of her uninjured hand clenched around his forearm when he began to back away.
“Eve?” he asked, his voice husky, throaty.
She swallowed, working up the nerve to look up at him, steeling herself to see amusement in those spring-green eyes. Obviously he’d caught her ogling him, he’d felt that grip and knew she wanted him to stay close. So very close.
He didn’t say another word, didn’t have to ask what she wanted or what she was thinking.
Instead, he dropped his hands to her hips and pulled her into him, so she could finally feel the press of that slick, damp, hard body. Eve moaned even before his lips came down to meet hers, and once they did, the moan became deeper, hungrier, filled with want and need and passion.
Their mouths opened together, tongues colliding in hungry exploration. Sam tasted hot and so delicious, she thought she’d die if he dared to stop.