First Touch
by
Laurelin Paige
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Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: December 29, 2015
~Synopsis ~
When Emily Wayborn
goes home to visit her mom while on hiatus from her hit TV show, she receives a
voicemail from her former best friend, Amber. Though the two were once
notorious party girls, they haven't spoken in years. Although the message might
sound benign to anyone else, Amber uses a safe word that Emily recognizes, a
word they always used to get out of sticky situations during their wild days.
And what's more chilling than the voicemail: it turns out that Amber has gone
missing.
Determined to track down her friend, Emily follows a chain of clues that lead
her to the enigmatic billionaire Reeve Sallis, a hotelier known for his shady
dealings and play boy reputation. Now, in order to find Amber, Emily must
seduce Reeve to learn his secrets and discover the whereabouts of her friend.
But as she finds herself more entangled with him, she finds she's drawn to
Reeve for more than just his connection to Amber, despite her growing fear that
he may be the enemy. When she's forced to choose where her loyalty lies, how
will she decide between saving Amber and saving her heart?
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~Excerpt ~
~Excerpt ~
The first time I shared a man with Amber had
been on my seventeenth birthday.
She'd been hanging around the neighborhood for
the better part of the six months before that, and we'd become friends. We had
the same taste in food and music and movies and, unlike the other girls we
knew, we both preferred a line of coke to a bowl of weed. “Champagne taste,”
Amber would say. “That’s us.”
Though we were both the same age, our lives
had been very different. I’d go to school during the day, trying to pretend
that my grades were salvageable as she’d watched The Home Shopping Network and
ate Cheetos on the neighbor's couch. Amber had dropped out of high school, and
since she’d also runaway from home, no one was pushing her to go while
graduation was the one thing my mother demanded of me.
I’d hated everything back then. School. My
mother. My neighborhood. My body. Everything but Amber. She’d been fun. Sassy.
Sexy. She was electric and electrifying and everything I wanted to be. And she
cared for me. Maybe even loved me. If I had gone to a shrink they probably
would have said that was why I latched onto her—that I thought of her as the
mother mine had never been. I knew how screwed up everything seemed. But who
could ever know why a person fell for another? I only knew that I had been dull
and dim and that Amber made me less so.
She’d also had things I didn't. Things that
money bought. The clothes she wore were designer, her nails were always done.
She'd lowered her panties once to show me her Brazilian. Whenever I’d asked how
she paid for things, she’d always answered simply, "My uncle." Even
as we’d grown closer to each other that was all she’d tell me about the
mysterious relative.
"For your birthday," she'd said two
days before, "I've got a surprise. Plan to spend the weekend with
me."
So that Friday, I slipped out of school early
and met Amber at the bus station where she purchased two tickets to Santa
Monica. Though I couldn't get her to give me even a hint as to where we were
going or what we were doing, I spent the two-hour bus ride buzzing with
excitement. Whatever Amber had in mind, I knew without a doubt that this trip
would be the beginning of the next phase of my life. I was ready. I was so
ready.
Outside the station in Santa Monica, Amber
bummed a smoke off a street musician and I scanned the street, taking in the
sights of a place I'd never been. A red convertible parked nearby caught my
attention, more specifically, the man leaning against it. He was older, maybe
as old as my mother, but attractive. Not because he was all that good looking,
exactly—though his body was definitely fit and trim—but because of what he
exuded. Confidence. Assurance. Money. He drew my attention, and in the way that
a restless, sexually charged young girl often did, I found myself wondering
about him. What it would be like to kiss a man like him. What it would feel
like to be beneath him. I'd had plenty of sex before. With boys from school.
I'd yet to meet one who knew what he was doing, and though I would never have
admitted it out loud, I was dying for it, thoughts of it never far from my
mind.
When Amber followed the line of my sight, she
dropped her cigarette with a squeal and exclaimed, "There he is, Em! Come
on."
"There who is?" I asked as she
tugged me toward the very man I'd been staring at.
"My uncle!" After throwing her
duffle bag into the back seat, she jumped into the man's arms, wrapping her
legs around his waist. Then she proceeded to make out with him like I'd done on
more than one occasion with the boys under the bleachers at school. Never out
on a public street. Never with a man who had to shave everyday.
When they had finished their display and Amber
was back on her feet again, she made introductions. "Rob this is Emily.
Em, Rob."
He may have said something to me. I didn't
really know because I'd been too busy staring at her, my jaw gaping.
"Oh, Emily, he's not really my
uncle," she told me as she jumped into the passenger seat. "Get
in."
She'd misread the cause of my surprise. I
grinned—only one of the many times I'd grin that day—and climbed in the
backseat. If Amber hadn't been the coolest person I'd ever met before that
moment, she'd certainly proven herself now.
~ Links to Pre-Order ~
~ About the Author ~
Laurelin Paige is
the NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Author of the Fixed Trilogy. She's a
sucker for a good romance and gets giddy anytime there's kissing, much to the
embarrassment of her three daughters. Her husband doesn't seem to complain,
however. When she isn't reading or writing sexy stories, she's probably
singing, watching Mad Men and the Walking Dead, or dreaming of Adam Levine.
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