“Of course, she is,” Amy said, tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched the wailing infant get her first bath. “Can you blame her? She’s going to be beautiful, she’s going to have a real family, and she’s going to find love.” More tears flowed steadily.
“Lordy, Amy, you’ve got her grown already. Give her time. And this
is
a happy time here, right?” Cassie asked.
Landon laughed and dug a handkerchief out of his Wranglers. “Hormones are getting the best of her. Isn’t that right, baby?”
Amy smiled, rubbing her enlarged belly. “Two more months, and Bo Brooks will be on the other side of this window.” She shed another batch of tears, then sniffed so loudly she snorted.
“That’s my girl. Such a lady,” Landon said as his wife elbowed him.
“Look,” Erika said, “there’s Uncle Bill.”
Bill entered the nursery, where his daughter was getting her first bath and was none too pleased about it. He grinned. She was going to be a feisty one, or so the doctor had said when the wiggling, squealing baby entered the world merely minutes ago. And wouldn’t it be surprising if she weren’t?
He stepped closer and watched the nurses place the tiny diaper in place, swaddle his little angel in a pale pink blanket, then extend her to her daddy.
Her daddy.
While his heart pounded thickly, Bill brought the baby toward his chest. He grinned at the wide eyes, still shiny from tears, the sweet rosy mouth and the curls of downy hair, so blond it was nearly white, peeking from beneath the top of the blanket.
He turned her toward her admirers, their noses all pressed against the nursery window, then grinned while they took photos of Daddy and his little girl.
“You’ve got a beautiful little lady there,” a nurse said from behind him. “You can take her to your wife now.”
Bill breathed in deeply and exhaled. His wife. And his daughter. Life didn’t get any better.
He turned toward the group at the window and indicated he was taking the baby to Lettie. With Erika and Amy leading the way, they turned and headed down the hall and into Lettie’s room.
“Oh my, she’s absolutely gorgeous!” Erika exclaimed as he entered.
“Did you expect anything but gorgeous from these two?” Cassie asked, her camera clicking madly.
“Nothing less at all,” Amy said, her tears still dropping heavily down her cheeks.
Bill maneuvered through the crowd to view the woman in the bed. Her hair was tousled, cheeks flushed, mouth red from biting her lip during those final pushes.
He moved to the bed and sat on the edge, then tenderly handed the squirming little girl to Lettie.
“She’s amazing, isn’t she?” Lettie asked, touching a finger to their baby’s perfect nose.
“As amazing as her mama.”
Then Lettie Campbell Brannon kissed the top of their daughter’s head. “And as lucky as her mama,” she said. “Aren’t you, Ginny?”
Bill’s chest tightened. How he wished his sister could be here to see her beautiful, perfect namesake. “As lucky?” he managed, while their baby’s tiny face turned instinctively toward Lettie’s breast.
“Because she has a daddy,” Lettie said, lifting her eyes to Bill’s, “who makes dreams come true.”
Kelley St. John’s previous experience as a senior writer at NASA fueled her interest in writing action-packed suspense, although she also enjoys penning steamy romances and quirky women’s fiction. She is a member of Romance Writers of America (RWA) and a 2005 double finalist in RWA’s prestigious Golden Heart Contest.
Writing has always been St. John’s first love. She thrives on creating new worlds and bringing readers along for the ride. St. John follows the philosophy that in order to write about life, you have to live. Therefore, she makes it her business to enjoy life to the fullest. Traveling is one of her favorite pastimes and one she doesn’t indulge in nearly enough for her tastes, especially since some of her best ideas have been sparked by weekend getaways. She loves extended car trips that involve marathon plotting sessions and swears that she can plot an entire novel in the time it takes to drive from Atlanta to Orlando.
And if you can’t get enough of Bill and Lettie’s story, read the prologue and deleted scenes, only available via the author’s Web site
www.kelleystjohn.com
.
See below for a preview of
Kelley St. John’s
steamy new novel.
Real Women Don’t Wear Size 2
Available in mass market September 2006.
Clarise Robinson slid the last button through its hole and let her blouse fall open. Stripping in the employee lounge wasn’t the way she spent her usual Thursday lunch hour, but then again, this wasn’t a usual week. Typically, she’d already have her weekend activities mapped out, courtesy of TV Guide and her Dining for One cookbook.
But not this weekend. This weekend, she’d bare her soul, and everything else, in Tampa. And if she was going to put all of—she glanced down and flinched—this out there, she sure wanted to get it right.
Encouraged by the chants and cheers of the partying crowd on the video, she quickly released the front closure of her bra before she had a chance to change her mind.
The Robinson Treasures, as Grandma Gertrude called them, sprang free.
Personally, Clarise had never seen the heavy things as more than a nuisance. Certainly not jewels. As a matter of fact, she’d been under the distinct impression that one woman’s treasure was another woman’s junk. Particularly when Granny Gert’s endowments included more than boisterous bazookas. Clarise had also been blessed with the Robinson Rump.
She turned her attention back to the Gasparilla Pirate Fest video, where a tall, drop-dead-gorgeous Adonis stood in the center of the crowd with one hand cradling his drink and the other pressed to his heart.
Clarise’s pulse skittered, and she prayed Jesilyn and Rachel, her coworkers at Eubanks Elegant Apparel, had kept their word about leaving for lunch. If they were standing outside the door listening—and wondering if she was actually accomplishing this bizarre task—she’d never forgive them. True, if she followed through with her promise to attend the store’s trip to Tampa this year, she’d be semi-stripping beside both of them tomorrow. But for now, she needed privacy. And a whole lot of what Granny Gert called “gumption.”
A puff of cool air entered the room when the heating unit whirred to life. The Robinson Treasures tingled as the breeze quickly converted from frigid to toasty.
She swallowed. January in Birmingham, Alabama didn’t lend itself to the necessary warmth for baring your body at a downtown parade. However, her coworkers had promised that Tampa would provide plenty of heat . . . from the climate as well as the partying crowd.
“Come on, darling. You’re killin’ us,” Adonis drawled, his Southern accent even stronger than his alcohol.
Clarise examined the hand against his chest. Wide palms. Long fingers. She ran her top teeth over her lower lip and wondered if it were true what they said about men with big hands. Ethan Eubanks, the owner of Eubanks Elegant Apparel, and coincidentally, the object of her every fantasy, had big hands. Nice. Big. Hands.
Clarise had noticed. A few times.
When Ethan displayed clothing samples from new product lines at the weekly staff meetings, Clarise forced herself to concentrate on the exquisite quality of the garments, rather than those captivating hands. How was she supposed to watch those long fingers reverently touch a Hermès scarf without wondering what it would feel like to have them caressing her skin? And as head of the Women’s Department, Clarise really needed to pay attention to the details. Which she did, as long as she kept her mind off those hands.
“Aren’t ya gonna show us something?” that sexy Southern accent continued. He flashed a megawatt smile and made her belly flutter.
That was her cue. Clarise knew he’d ask, and she was ready. Sucking in her breath, she waited for his next instruction. It would come in exactly forty-eight seconds.
She’d timed it.
One thousand one . . . one thousand two . . .
Exhaling thickly, she focused on his baby blue eyes. She loved blue eyes, always had. Probably because her own were so dang dark she couldn’t tell where the iris began and the pupil ended. Not an ounce of color, nothing attention-grabbing at all. Just as well, since she spent most of her time trying to hide the remainder of her abundant body.
But not anymore.
After thirty years of perfecting her wallflower image, she had a chance to set herself free. Let all her insecurities and inhibitions disappear and show the world, or at least most of Tampa, the real Clarise Robinson. The one she dreamed of each night, a girl who would drink and dance and party and have fun. Bare her body and be proud of its bounty.
And have monkey sex before the Pirate Fest ended.
She licked her lips. Swallowed hard. Monkey sex typically required two people.
While the blond Adonis called his friends over, Clarise pretended this was the real deal. Her ready-for-anything sister, Babette, would have no trouble baring her body to the masses at Gasparilla. She’d done it last year, in fact, when Clarise had chickened out of the trip and asked her sister to take her place. But then again, Babette’s body was worthy of a Pirate Fest showing. Clarise’s, on the other hand, was more conducive for a Fat Fest showing.
She frowned, a little, then remembered Granny Gert’s motto: “Curves are where it’s at, Clarise.”
Taking a deep breath, she boosted her confidence once more. She did have curves, lots of them, and tomorrow she would flaunt her surplus and get what she wanted. One way or another, she wouldn’t let opportunity pass her by. When the last parade ended, she’d have wild, frantic sex with . . . someone.
But who?
Jesilyn and Rachel had suggested Clarise cozy up to one of the gorgeous guys from work during the trip. All of the department heads were going, since Ethan footed the bill for each of them to attend the annual “corporate bonding” excursion. No doubt, each was planning to get hot and heated with someone at Gasparilla.
Would any of them think twice about having a bit of no-commitments, no-holds-barred, wild and frantic sex with “best buddy” Clarise?
She blew brown bangs out of her eyes while her shoulders dropped a notch. Who was she kidding? Wild, frantic sex? Shoot, she’d settle for mild, lukewarm. Or any activity that involved a male pressed against her. As long as it’d been, that’d be all she needed to work into a lather.
No, she silently commanded, straightening her back and lifting her chest. She refused to settle for tepid. She wanted hot, boiling, exhilarating sex, and that’s what she’d get. Toe-curling, eye-glazing, heart-stopping sex.
Better than she’d ever had.
Clarise winced. Better than she’d ever had wasn’t saying much. Sex with the lights on would extend her current bedroom repertoire. She needed a better goal, or several better goals.
She glanced at her blue notebook, perched on the coffee table in the center of the lounge. For the past few days, she’d studied the Pirate Fest travel brochures, the parade schedules and practically all of the Internet sites advertising the event. And while she’d outlined the must-see parades, she hadn’t acknowledged the activities she most wanted to accomplish during her trip. Not on paper, anyway.
Flipping past the pages of parade routes, Clarise grabbed a pen. She’d always been a list person. Loved setting goals and feeling that major sense of accomplishment when she checked them off one-by-one. Why should her “Naked in Tampa” adventure be any different? After all, she knew what she wanted.
Sex with the lights on, for starters.
She wrote it down, smiled. Finally, a real goal. But that wasn’t nearly enough, and if she was going to do this, she wasn’t going halfway.
Grinning, she scribbled sex outside.
Sex. Outside. Her nipples puckered at the mere thought. But she didn’t want just outside.
With her pulse racing, she amended her list to include different kinds of outside. In the grass, for sure. And on a beach. Those beach scenes in romance novels sounded hot. Water sloshing around her legs while she and her lover tore into each other like animals in heat. Yep, she’d try that.
Tampa definately had plenty of beach to offer.
She bit her lip. There was one more kind of outside sex she wanted more than the others. Before she lost her nerve, she wrote it down.
Under-the-bleachers sex.
Clarise had listened to those locker room conversations throughout her teen years. When they talked about bleacher sex, that had been the most intriguing thing she had ever heard. She definitely wanted bleacher sex.
Yeah, all of those for outside sex. That’d work. And lots of inside sex too. Standing up looked rather nice in the movies. And shower sex. How could she forget her shower sex fantasy? She’d want to get in a bit of shower action this weekend.
Hot water. Hot bodies. Well, his body would be hot. Maybe, if he’d had enough of those hurricane drinks everyone was holding in the video, he’d believe hers was, too.
She added the last two to her list.
Clarise giggled, then moved her hands to her chest when the action made her unbound treasures bounce.
Sure, Tampa offered a multitude of opportunities for sex, but she hadn’t seen a single beach or football stadium in the travel brochures.
No problem. Even if she couldn’t get her bleacher fix, she’d still have kinky sex with . . . someone. Oh, how she wished she could fill in the great big hole in that image.
One Pirate Fest partier to spend five delicious nights with. And what if he ended up being Mr. Right? It could happen.
She imagined Jake Riley, the Men’s Department hottie, offering her one of those big, tall drinks. Or Miles Watkins, Formal Wear connoisseur, the guy Rachel called “sweet eye candy.”
Or Ethan Eubanks, her friend, her boss . . . and her ultimate fantasy. Ethan Eubanks, whispering in her ear, telling Clarise he wanted her more than anything in the world. Ethan, having fanatical sex with her for five sizzling days, then professing his undying love.
Granny Gert always said if you’re gonna dream, you might as well dream big. Then again, everything about Granny factored as abundantly proportioned, dreams, bosom, and behind included.