All Things Pretty (23 page)

All the Pretty Lies

All the Pretty Poses

All Things Pretty

Down to You

Up to Me

Everything for Us

The Wild Ones

Wild Child

Some Like It Wild

There’s Wild, Then There’s You

YA and
PARANORMAL

Fragile

Madly

Madly & the Jackal

Madly & Wolfhardt

Blood Like Poison: For the Love of a
Vampire

Blood Like Poison: Destined for a
Vampire

Blood Like Poison: To Kill an Angel

The Reaping

The Reckoning

Gravity

Caterpillar

Wiccan

Beginnings: An M. Leighton Anthology

New York Times
and
USA Today
Bestselling Author, M. Leighton, is a native of
Ohio. She relocated to the warmer climates of the South, where she
can be near the water all summer and miss the snow all winter.
Possessed of an overactive imagination from early in her childhood,
Michelle finally found an acceptable outlet for her fantastical
visions: literary fiction. Having written over a dozen novels,
these days Michelle enjoys letting her mind wander to more romantic
settings with sexy Southern guys, much like the one she married and
the ones you'll find in her latest books. When her thoughts aren't
roaming in that direction, she'll be riding wild horses, skiing the
slopes of Aspen or scuba diving with a hot rock star, all without
leaving the cozy comfort of her office.

About Michelle: I love coffee and chocolate,
even more so when they are combined. I'm convinced that one day
they could be the basis for world peace. I also love the color red
and am seriously considering dying my hair.

STAY TUNED

to read the first chapter of

DOWN TO YOU

Available now

Genre:
Adult
Contemporary
Romance

(NOT appropriate for younger readers)

The scorching tale of one girl and two
brothers in a love triangle…that’s not.

Olivia Townsend is nothing special. She’s
just a girl working her way through college so she can return home
to help her father run his business. She’s determined not to be the
second woman in his life to abandon him, even if it means putting
her own life on hold. To Olivia, it’s clear what she must do. Plain
and simple. Black and white.

But clear becomes complicated when she meets
Cash and Nash Davenport. They’re brothers. Twins.

Cash is everything she’s
always
wanted
in
a guy. He’s a dangerous, sexy bad boy who wants her in his bed at
any cost. He
turns her insides to mush
and, with just one kiss, makes her forget why he’s no good for
her.

Nash is everything she’s
ever
needed
in a
guy. He’s successful, responsible and intensely passionate. But
he’s taken. Very taken, by none other than Marissa, Liv’s rich,
beautiful cousin. That doesn’t stop Olivia from melting every time
he looks at her, though. With just one touch, he makes her forget
why they can never be together.

Black and white turns to shades of gray when
Olivia discovers the boys are hiding something, something that
should make her run as far and as fast as she can. But it’s too
late to run. Olivia’s already involved. And in love. With both of
them.

Both brothers make her heart tremble. Both
brothers set her body on fire.

She wants them both.

And they want her.

How will she ever choose between them?

CHAPTER ONE- Olivia

My head is spinning lightly, but happily. I
can’t even remember the name of the drinks Shawna keeps ordering
for us. I just know they’re delicious. And potent as hell! Wow!

“When’s the stripper coming? I’m ready to
get my freak on!” Ginger shouts. She’s the crazy, outspoken,
cougar-of-a-bartender we work with at Tad’s Sports Bar and Grill in
Salt Springs, Georgia. She’s wild enough in her natural
environment, but stick her in a strange new place in a city like
Atlanta and she morphs into a full blown tiger.
Rawr!

She looks at me and grins. Her bottle-blond
hair looks urine-yellow in the low light and her pale blue eyes are
twinkling devilishly.

I’m instantly suspicious.

“What?” I ask dazedly.

“I talked to the manager ahead of time. He’s
gonna make sure Shawna has to help the stripper get out of those
pesky clothes he’ll be wearing.” She giggles maniacally. I can’t
help but laugh. She’s a mess.

“Ryan would kill her if she stripped another
man’s clothes off, bachelorette party or not!”

“He’ll never know. What stays in the VIP
room happens in the VIP room,” she slurs.

“Don’t you mean what
happens
in the
VIP room
stays
in the VIP room?”

“That’s what I said.”

I snicker. “Oh, okay.”

I giggle as I watch her take another sip of
her neurotoxic drink. I opt for my water instead. Somebody has to
remain semi-lucid. Might as well be me. Tonight is all about Shawna
anyway. I want to send her off into married life with the best
party possible. I doubt that includes her having to carry me home
or clean vomit off her shoes.

A knock at the door to the private room has
us all turning our heads in that direction. The girls immediately
start laughing and hollering and cat-calling.

Dear God, I hope it’s the stripper and not a
cop or something!

The door opens and in walks the most
incredibly handsome guy I think I’ve ever seen. He looks like he’s
in his early twenties, really tall, and built like a football
player—wide chest and shoulders, thick arms and legs, tiny waist in
between. He’s dressed in solid black from head to toe. But it’s his
face that’s most impressive.

Sweet hell, he’s effin’ gorgeous!

His short hair is dark blond and his face is
chiseled perfection. I can’t tell what color his eyes are as he
scans the room, but I can see that they’re dark. He’s just opened
his mouth to speak when his gaze finally makes its way to me. His
eyes click to a stop on mine and he stares.

I’m completely mesmerized. As I look into
them, I still can’t determine a color, but the orbs look nearly
black. Even in the light spilling through the door behind him, they
look like pools of ink. Just barely, he cocks his head to the side
as he watches me.

It makes me nervous. And excited. I don’t
know why. I have no reason to be nervous
or
excited. But I
am. He makes me feel twitchy. Squirmy. Warm.

We’re still staring at each other when
Ginger gets up and drags him further into the room, flinging the
door shut behind him.

“All right, Shawna. Come kick your single
life to the curb the right way!”

The other girls start squealing and cheering
her on. Shawna’s smiling, but shaking her head. “No way! Not this
girl!” The bridesmaids-to-be get more insistent, two of them coming
around to take her by the hands and haul her to her feet.

She leans back, away from them, shaking her
head more vigorously. “No, no, no. I don’t want to. One of y’all do
it.”

She starts wiggling her arms to free
herself, but the girls have a death grip on her thin wrists. When
she looks at me, her wide brown eyes tell me all I need to know.
She’s totally freaked by the idea.

“Liv, help!” I raise my hands in a gesture
that says
what do you want me to do?
She nods toward the
hunk hulking behind Ginger. “You do it!”

“Are you crazy? I’m not stripping a
stripper!”

“Please! You know I’d do it for you.”

And she would. Dammit.

How the hell does the world’s clumsiest shy
girl get wrangled into doing things like this?

As I so often do, I answer myself.

Because she’s a pushover!

Taking a deep breath, I stand and turn
toward the Hot Stripper Guy, purposely jacking my chin up another
notch. He’s still watching me with those smoky coal eyes.

When I take a step toward him, he very
slowly raises one eyebrow.

Heat washes through me.

Must be those dangerous drinks,
I
think
. It has to be.

I feel flushed and a little breathless, but
I take another step anyway.

Hot Stripper Guy backs away from Ginger and
turns to face me fully. He crosses his arms over his chest and
waits, that one brow still raised in curiosity. He’s not going to
make it easy. He’s leaving it all up to me, just like Ginger asked
them to do.

As if on cue, the music that’s been pumping
into the room all night gets louder. It’s a sexy song, heavy on the
bass. It’s mood music for sure. It seems to punctuate every intense
beat of my heart as I get closer and closer to those velvety
eyes.

When I stop in front of him, I have to look
up. My five and a half feet of height is nearly a foot shorter than
his towering frame.

Up close, I see that his eyes are brown.
Dark, dark brown. Nearly black.

Sinful.

I’m lost in wondering why that particular
word would come to mind when the girls start chanting for me to
take his shirt off. Uncertainly, I glance at their excited faces
then back to him. Slowly, he spreads his arms, holding them out to
his sides, away from his body.

One corner of his mouth twitches. His
expression, his body language is rife with challenge.

I realize he doesn’t think I’ll do it. No
one probably does.

And that’s exactly why I will.

Letting the beat of the music relax my tense
muscles, I plaster a smile on my face as I reach forward to tug Hot
Stripper Guy’s shirt from the waistband of his pants.