Tanya Michaels: Hers for the Weekend

“Are you kidding?” Piper’s grimace, complete with eyes rounded in horror, did Josh’s heart good. “He’s one of the reasons I need boyfriend camouflage this weekend.”

“Oh.” Josh glanced at the doorway, noting that he and Piper were visible to anyone in the dining room. “And your grandmother’s fondest dream is to see you in the arms of a good man, right?” Don’t do it.

“Right.”

He took a step toward her. Maybe he shouldn’t do this, but how could just once hurt? “I have an idea that should make your grandmother ecstatic.”

Piper’s ocean-colored eyes grew so wide he could drown in them. She stood on tiptoe to meet him, and then his lips were on hers.

Fire raced in his blood. Too late he realized that the reality of kissing her was far more devastating to his senses than the fantasy, and his assumption that he could walk away from “just one” kiss unaffected had been foolish.

Still, as long as he was making the mistake, he should make the most of it.

Dear Reader,

One of the fun parts of my job is exploring the different ways two people can end up together. As much as I love stories about a man and a woman who make an instant connection, I’m a sucker for stories about people who start out as friends. People who don’t immediately realize (or want to admit) what’s right in front of them, so they try in vain to fight the attraction. But the sexual tension and emotional undercurrent can’t be ignored.

At least, that’s the case for my heroine, Piper Jamieson, and her best friend, Josh Weber. Career-driven Piper has no time for romance in her life, especially not with a heartbreaker like Josh. When she needs a date for the weekend, though, her sexy best friend fills in—with unexpected results.

Piper and Josh are very special to me, maybe because I married my own best friend, maybe because they were just so much fun to write. I hope you enjoy their story and will check out the information about my other books and my story-themed giveaways at www.mindspring.com/~tjmic.

Happy reading!

Tanya

HARLEQUIN DUETS

96—THE MAID OF DISHONOR

HARLEQUIN FLIPSIDE

6—WHO NEEDS DECAF?

Hers for the Weekend

Tanya Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

PIPER JAMIESON SAGGED against the sofa cushions and rolled her eyes at the phone receiver. It could have been a wrong number, a pushy telephone solicitor, an obscene caller even, but nooo, it was her mother. Piper loved her mom, but all their conversations boiled down to the same argument—Piper’s love life.

She started to put her feet up on the oval coffee table, but stopped suddenly, as though her mother could see through the phone line and into her apartment. “So, how’ve you been doing, Mom?”

“Never mind that. I’m more concerned with how you are,” her mother said. “You don’t feel acute appendicitis coming on, right? You aren’t going to call us tomorrow with a severe case of forty-eight-hour east Brazilian mumps or something?”

Piper groaned. Although she’d bailed out on all of the family reunions in recent years, she’d used legitimate work-related excuses, never fictional medical ones. But this year she’d made a promise to her grandmother.

This year, there would be no reprieve.

“I’ll be there,” she assured her mother. “And I’m looking forward to seeing you all.” Mostly.

“We’re looking forward to seeing you, too, honey. Especially Nana. When I went to visit her at the hospital last week—”

“Hospital?” Piper’s chest tightened. She adored her grandmother, even if Nana did stubbornly insist women needed husbands. “Daphne told me she was under the weather, but no one said anything about the hospital.” As Nana advanced in years, Piper couldn’t help worrying over her grandmother’s health.

A worry her mother was not above exploiting. “You know what would help your Nana? If she knew you had a good man to take care of you.”

Ah, yes—here came the Good Man Speech. Piper knew it well.

“You’ve always been independent,” her mother was saying, “but there’s such a thing as being too stubborn. Before you know it, you’ll wake up fifty, without anyone to share your life….”

Knowing from experience that it did no good to point out she was decades away from turning fifty, Piper stretched across the maroon-and-black-plaid couch. Might as well be comfy while she waited for her mother to wind down.

Though she’d escaped her small hometown of Rebecca, Texas, and now lived in Houston, Piper couldn’t escape her family’s shared belief that a woman’s purpose in life was to get married. Piper’s sole brush with matrimony had been a broken engagement that still left her with a sense of dazed relief—how had she come so close to spending her life with a man who’d wanted her to be someone different? When her sister, Daphne, had married, Piper thought the pressure would ease, that their mother would be happy to finally have a married daughter. Instead, Mrs. Jamieson was scandalized that her youngest was married, now pregnant, while her oldest didn’t even date.

As her mom continued to wax ominous about the downfalls of growing old alone, Piper stared vacantly at the dead ficus tree in the corner of her living room. I should water that poor thing. Although, at this point, it was probably more in need of a dirge than H2O.

“Piper! Are you even listening to me?”

“Y—mostly.”

“I asked if that bagel man was still giving you trouble.”

Mercifully, her mother had moved on to the next topic. Too bad Piper had no idea what that topic was. “Bagel?”

Then realization dawned. Her mother must mean Stanley Kagle, vice president of Callahan, Kagle and Munroe, the architectural firm where Piper worked as the only female draftsman. Make that draftswoman. In Kagle’s unvoiced opinion, Piper’s job description should be brewing coffee and answering phones with Ginger and Maria, the two secretaries who had been with the firm since it opened. Luckily, Callahan and Munroe held more liberated views.

“You mean Mr. Kagle, Mom?”

“Whichever one is always hassling you at work.” She paused. “You know, you wouldn’t have to work at all if you’d find a nice man and raise some babies.”

Piper could actually hear her blood pressure rising. One of only a handful of female students in her degree program at Texas A&M, she’d busted her butt to excel in her drafting and detailing courses, and was now working even harder to prove herself amid her male colleagues. Why couldn’t her family be proud of that? Proud of her?

“Mom, I like my job. I like my life. I wish you’d just accept that I’m happy.”

“How happy could you be? Daphne says you’re underappreciated and that one of your bosses has it in for you.”