Erin McCarthy - The Nemesis Affair

Former rugby player Liam Kelly wants to keep his edge without losing his cool. The sexy Irishman needs

someone to help him work out a little healthy aggression outside the office so he’ll avoid punching his difficult boss. He needs an adversary who will goad him, insult him, and drive him. Someone to push his limits. What he needs is a professional nemesis. So when Sam

responds to his online ad with plenty of cheek and smart-assedness, Liam knows he’s found the perfect guy.

Except Sam isn’t a guy.

She’s Samantha Hess. Very much female, newly

unemployed, and eager to turn up the volume on her “nice girl” image. Goading Rugby Boy through texts and emails to run an extra mile each day is like therapy for assertiveness—and she’ll get paid. She just needs

to convince Liam “Samantha” can get the job done just as well as “Sam.”

Samantha’s a smokin’ hot, sassy woman with a girl-next-door vibe who doesn’t have a problem challenging Liam mentally. But how can he take her seriously now, when all he can think about is convincing her that his next workout should be in her bed?

And how will Sam keep her adversarial edge—and her heart—safe from the man who’s her perfect match?

Contemporary, sexy stories for sassy women

Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon. www.millsandboon.co.uk/cosmo

The Nemesis Affair

Erin McCarthy

Contemporary, sexy stories for sassy women

Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon. www.millsandboon.co.uk/cosmo

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter One

“I’m a cliché.”

Samantha Hess flung herself down on her friend Katrina’s couch in overly dramatic frustration and pushed her glasses up her nose. “An overeducated twenty-four-year-old unemployed woman, single and living in Brooklyn in an apartment with no windows. Total cliché. It’s ludicrous.”

“The only thing that would be even more ironic would be if you were Jewish,” Katrina said, cramming a piece of bruschetta into her mouth. “Then you’d basically be a cable TV sitcom.”

“I am Jewish!” Samantha protested. Though she hadn’t set foot in a synagogue since she’d made her bat mitzvah, it still counted. She reached for her own piece of cheese-smothered bread. She needed carbs, stat.

Katrina gave her an amused look. “I know you are. I was being facetious.”

“Well, don’t. Your clever wit isn’t going to pay my rent.” Sam pulled her phone out from under her butt cheek where she’d sat on it and started what had become a three-hundred-times-a-day ritual of searching for any open job positions on all the known employment posting sites. It was hopeless. She knew it was hopeless. Marketing jobs for entry-level employees were as scarce as square footage in New York. “There are no jobs. At. All. I’m going to be forced to move home to Boston and listen to my mother tell me how she was right and I should have become a nurse.”

“Oh God, a nurse?” Katrina made a face. “You’d have a terrible bedside manner.”

“I know, right?” She clicked and scrolled, before thinking about what her friend had said. “Wait, did you just insult me?”

“Is assuming you wouldn’t be interested in wiping someone’s ass an insult, or just proving how well I know you?”

Uh, no. No ass wiping. She could own it. “Yeah, you totally nailed it. I would rather prostitute myself than change diapers, either adult or baby.” Slight exaggeration, but just slight. She had a very sensitive gag reflex. Which, then again, might make prostitution a poor career choice, as well.

Fabulous. She was going to starve to death, end of story. “Why can’t there be jobs for brutally honest people? I’d be good at that. Or jobs for people who can wrap presents thoughtfully with great color schemes. Or people who are really, really good at catching a cab when it’s raining?”

Those were no small achievements.

“I don’t know about the first one, but the latter two sound like being a personal assistant. I don’t think you’d be so crazy about that either.”

Hmm. Good point. “Probably not. I was good at my job, you know. It’s just this damn economy.” And now she sounded like those two old guys in the theater box on the Muppets. Damn economy . Grumble, grumble. “Being downsized is like the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech when you’re dumped by a guy.”

Samantha reached for another piece of bruschetta. Two months. She’d been out of work for two months and unemployment only went so far.

“I’m sorry. Have you tried more nontraditional sites for jobs? I know people have actually found positions on social media.”

“I can find a job on Twitter?” For what, she couldn’t imagine. “Color me skeptical.”

Katrina folded her legs underneath her, chocolate-brown cable-knit tights pulling taut. “You can find anything online. Literally anything. Like I bet you could use Google to search professional ass-kicker and find a job posting.”

That made her laugh. “No way.”

“Sam.” Trina gave her a long look. “I found an eBay listing for gently used condoms. And another for a woman’s placenta, at the bargain price of two hundred bucks.”

Oh dear God. She made a face. “Ew. Double ew.”

“I’m telling you. You can find anything online.”

Katrina was right. She knew she was. “I’m Googling professional ass-kicker right now. It’s probably going to take me straight to some site where people are looking for BDSM partners.” And while that might be fun, it wasn’t going to solve her immediate lack of cash flow.

“Then don’t use ass-kicker. Use a different word. Like enemy. Or bully.”

Samantha was typing rapidly, seeing what would pop up in her search bar. “Oh my God, Professional Nemesis Wanted. Right here! That can’t be real.”

“Told ya.” Katrina looked smug.

As well she should be since she had a job, a hot boyfriend and a cute apartment.

Not that Samantha was bitter or anything. Much.

“Wanted: Nemesis to help former rugby player work out his aggression in a healthy manner outside the workplace,” she read.

“What? What does that even mean?” Katrina asked. “He wants a workout partner or something?”

“I have no idea. Wait, there’s more. ‘Looking for someone to challenge, goad and push me via texts and email so I get both a full physical workout and learn to focus my energy in a positive way.’”

“He sounds like a hipster. How much is he paying? You can goad, can’t you?”

Goading was something she wasn’t all that familiar with and frankly, sounded awkward as hell. “I’m not sure I can, actually. You know I’m really terrible at telling men what to do.” It was why she was currently single. She had a very bad habit of choosing strong men with even stronger attitudes and losing herself in the relationship. After a particularly bad breakup she had decided she needed to learn to stand up for herself just a wee bit better before hitting the scene again.