****NEWS FLASH****
Just wanted to update those who’ve mentioned it in the comments: The Soapbox Queens are having problems with their website server. They are working on it and hope to be back up and running soon.
In the meantime, if you want your Queen fix, be sure to come back here to Plotmonkeys tomorrow where the fabulous and amazing Vicki Lewis Thompson will be our guest-blogger! Can’t wait!!
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Forgive me, it’s the last week of school, I’m making some kind of Libyan potato dish for a “world cultures” day for my daughter for tomorrow (smells YUMMMMMMY) and I have to work the party.
I just zoned on writing something for today’s blog!
So, since my next Blaze HEATED RUSH is actually available NOW on eHarlequin, I figured I’d give you guys a sneak-peek excerpt never before seen anywhere. 
This is the 2nd book in my The Wrong Bed: Again And Again! miniseries and features day care center owner Annie Davis. She has to bring a guy back home to the farm for her parents 30th anniversary party. So she bids on a guy at a charity auction…a guy she thinks is a blue collar, all-American paramedic.
Boy is she wrong!
By the way, for those of you who’ve been saying (or thinking) oh, no WAY will she really have a hero who did THAT.
Uh, yes. I did. 
And he’s quite to-die-for.
Enjoy!
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Sean wasn’t dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt tonight, or a ridiculously expensive-looking suit like he’d worn to dinner. Instead, he wore tailored black trousers and a tight, short-sleeved gray shirt, cut like a T-shirt but made of some shimmering fabric that said it hadn’t come out of a plastic bag marked Jockey.
And she was in the usual khaki pants and a blue, spit-up stained Baby Daze golf shirt. Well, she had to give herself a bit of a break. It wasn’t spit-up stained now. If she had to guess, she’d have to say that was ketchup on her right shoulder. Not spit-up.
Who said they didn’t look just like a matched pair?
Who cares? It’s one weekend!
“It’s obvious just by looking around that you’ve made a success of it,” he finally said as he glanced around the office, noting the framed certificates and licenses on the wall. “Your family must concede that much.”
“You’d think.”
“Well, then, we’ll just have to convince them that you’ve at least done well with your choices in men.”
That caused her to snort out loud.
He leaned back in the chair, kicking his long legs out in front of him, and crossed his big arms over his chest. “Speaking of which, what do I do for a living?”
“I didn’t say.”
He nodded, thinking about it. “How about…mechanic?” His eyes twinkled, and she remembered their first conversation.
Her head tilted back in challenge. “Know what a socket wrench looks like?”
“Good point. Uh…pediatrician?”
She smirked. “I saw the way you looked at the kids.”
“I like children,” he protested, sounding indignant…but not terribly honest.
“En brochette?”
His deep, throaty laugh sent a tingle of sensation racing through her. She liked the man’s laugh. And his smile. And the way those eyes lit up when he was amused.
“Busted. Is that the word? I suppose I did see the little monsters and immediately wonder if I needed to don protective gear to come in and rescue you.”
She frowned. “They’re adorable.”
“They’re sticky.”
“They’re loving,” she insisted.
“They’re loud.”
“They’re loyal.”
“They’re short.”
“Oh, all right,” she said, grinning too much to keep up the ridiculous game of one-upsmanship. “They’re all of the above. But I love them just the same.”
“I saw that,” he murmured, eyeing her intently, his expression almost–tender–if that made any sense. Especially given his obvious disinterest in children. Then that strong chin went up and he said, “Of course, that’s everyone else’s children. I don’t imagine my own–if I ever get around to having any, which I sincerely doubt–would be sticky, loud, or short.”
At that, Annie leaned back in her chair and chortled. “You’re a pompous one, aren’t you?”
Shock unhinged his jaw. “I’m no such thing.”
“A little pompous,” she clarified. “And spoiled.”
“Maybe once,” he admitted. “Not anymore.”
Their stares locked across her desk, and she sensed the intensity in the man. He hadn’t wanted to talk about his past, beyond mentioning that he’d been raised in Ireland. There was a story there–most definitely. But he’d put up walls around himself, using his easy charm and amazing good-looks to keep anyone from surmounting them.
What, she wondered, would await a woman who managed to get to the other side?
“We still haven’t settled on my occupation,” he said, clearing his throat and breaking their intense visual connection. As if he knew she’d been trying to figure him out and was uncomfortable about it. “Hmm…stunt man? Body double for Brad Pitt?”
She snorted. “He wishes people believed he had that body.”
Then she got serious, knowing they really had to nail this down, if only so she could hammer the details into her own head tonight. The last thing she needed was to get caught in a lie by her family, who’d be all over any prevarication like Dylan McFee had been all over Jessie Sims to get that toy.
“Let’s keep it simple. You’re a businessman.” That, according to his correct bio, was true. She hated to draw him much farther into her lies, though the mischief in his expression said he was having fun with the whole charade. “The closer we stick to the truth, the better. And that is the truth, right?”
He shifted in the uncomfortable chair. “More or less. I’m a consultant. But businessman will do.”
Moving on, he asked, “Where did we meet?”
Annie’s hands clenched into fists beneath the desk, and she willed her jaw not to clench in instinctive anger as well. So much for sticking close to the truth. She didn’t even want to pretend to have met this man the way she’d met the real Blake–here, at work, where she so should have known better.
“Dating service?”
He rolled his eyes. “Pathetic. How about a blind date?”
“And that’s not pathetic?”
He frowned, thinking it over. “Party?”
“Fine.”
She felt like they were negotiating a contract, rather than establishing a relationship. And suddenly saw that he probably would be a very good businessman.
He confirmed it by running down a list of questions she never even would have thought to ask. Her favorite color, flower, movie and musician. Her political leanings, ambitions, where she went to school. How she took her coffee, her favorite ice cream. Ticklish spots.
She told him one. But she left the other out altogether. He’d come close to discovering it on her couch yesterday evening. Close…but not quite. And if he ever did discover that one, they’d be a whole lot more involved than two people planning to pull a little scam on her family this weekend.
All the details he wanted to know were minor, but certainly things a couple would know about each other. Cake or pie? Chocolate or vanilla? He filed each detail away, occasionally volunteering an opinion on her preferences–how can you prefer apple pie over Crème Brûlée?–but quickly moving along.
These were all details they could have talked about over dinner last night, in the typical, second date, get-to-know-you manner. Instead, they’d laughed over the program mixup, speculating on the wealthy woman’s reaction to getting Jake the paramedic rather than the international businessman. He’d harassed her into tasting caviar, though not escargot, and she’d intentionally asked for a doggie bag, just to see how he’d react.
She should have known. Sean had at first grinned, then raised an arrogant brow and barked at the waiter when he’d been snitty about it.
Through all that, they’d somehow skipped over all the basic chit-chat, as if already so comfortable with one another, none of it had mattered. Until now, when they realized it did, at least as far as her family was concerned.
The conversation continued in that vein for a few minutes, until he matter-of-factly asked, “Do you sleep in the nude?”
“What?”
“It’s a fair question.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said, part of her dying to tell him and part of her knowing she’d rather show him, instead. “My family is not going to ask you what I wear to bed, because my father would probably toss you out of the house if you answered.”
“Old fashioned.”
“Very.”
“We have a lot in common.”
“Next question?”
“You didn’t answer the last one.”
She waved a hand and glared. “Next question.”
“What size is your bed? I didn’t even get a peek into your room yesterday.”
Groaning as she realized the serious part of their conversation was over, she leaned over her desk and badly answered him. “It’s big. Queen size.”
And usually empty other than Annie and Wally, who generally slept sprawled out, taking up three-fourths of it, leaving Annie clinging to the edge.
“I probably should see it,” he said, sounding entirely innocent for a man trying to maneuver his way into her bedroom.
Maneuver? So not necessary. Given how she’d been feeling about him–hot and attracted the first night, frankly interested the next, and comfortable and amused now–all he’d probably have to do is ask.
They’d spent more than an hour together, talking, laughing, flirting. This so counted as a date.
“Don’t you agree that I should at least…take a peek?”
Inside her chest, her heart did that funny fluttering thing again. And her thighs clenched. “Why?”
“Well, we’re dating, aren’t we? I’m a gentleman, and I escort you to your door, so it’s likely I’d have at least gotten a glimpse at your bedroom.”
“You get along with Wally. That’s proof that you’re in my life.”
“Back to the previous question then. What do you wear when you crawl into that big bed with just your cat for company?”
Unable to resist, she told him in a throaty whisper, “A red silk nightie.”
Lie, lie, lie. She usually wore a long T-shirt to bed. But she at least had a red nightie. She’d bought it at an after-Valentine’s Day sale last winter, determined to have worn it for somebody before the next time the fat baby with the arrows flew around.
Maybe it’ll actually happen. Now. Tonight.
A muscle flexed in Sean’s jaw, and his eyes narrowed the tiniest bit. That, and the almost inaudible hiss of his indrawn breath, was his only reaction. “Long or short?”
Mmm…she suspected he was very long. He certainly had felt that way pressed against her yesterday. And he most definitely had been in her erotic dreams of the night before.
Annie’s breaths merged together, tripping over each other as they rushed from her lungs. She’d forgotten about the dreams until this minute. Now they were replaying in full, glorious Technicolor, reminding her that she’d awakened at four a.m., her body quivering as an intense orgasm shook her from her sleep.
Annie swallowed, trying to force the images away. At least long enough to answer the question he had really been asking.
The shadow of a smile on his lips told her he knew what had been going through her mind. “I meant the gown.”
“I knew that,” she insisted, sounding about as convincing as one of the kids trying to talk his way into another cookie.
“Of course you did.”
“It’s…” she tried to remember. The thing had been hanging on a padded silk hanger in her closet since the day she’d bought it. “Long!” Definitely long. She thought.
“What shade?”
“Shade?”
“Ruby red?” he asked, the voice so silky, the eyes intense. “Scarlet? Garnet? Is it the soft blush of a rosebud, or the wickedness of a fierce explosion of fire?”
Oh, God. The man painted pictures with his words. Pictures that formed entire scenarios in her brain.
Annie’s entire body quivered as her body raced to process the sensations battering every inch of her. Breasts tingling and heavy against her shirt, nipples hard and jutting out in demand, arms shaking with the need to twine them around his neck and draw him to her. Every inch of her was affected.
Beneath the desk, her thighs quivered. The fierce explosion of fire he mentioned had erupted between them and it clawed at her, demanding attention. She was aroused and wet, her sex as aware and ready as if she’d been touched by his hands, rather than only his voice. As crazy as it sounded, if he kept on talking like that, her body was going to explode as unexpectedly as it had during her dreams the night before, just from the sultry sound of his whisper.
“Sean…”
He stared at her, certainty of her reaction washing off him, and for the briefest moment, she thought he was going to act on that certainty. To end the waiting, reach out, take her hand, and tug her across the desk. He’d tear her clothes off, set her on the edge of the desk and step between her shaking thighs. He’d fill her as she hadn’t been filled in forever. And then, maybe, they’d both be able to think again.
Instead, he did something even more shocking. He slowly rose from his chair and cleared his throat. “Well, I guess I have all I need.”
To do what? The closet romance novel reader inside her supplied a sudden, hopeful answer: to ravish me? Right here? Right now?
He didn’t say that. Instead, with a few simple words, he deflated her, confused her.
And completely infuriated her.
“So I suppose we should say goodnight.”
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Like it? It’s available today from eHarlequin! Otherwise, watch for it in stores later this month!
But I took them with the grain of salt with which I take all reviews and continued to visit regularly and participate on occasion. 
