Shannon Hollis - On the Loose

“We’re only slow dancing,” he murmured, pressing her against the wall on the dark side of the room. “What is it about you that has this effect on me?” His tongue touched Lauren’s earlobe and she closed her eyes. Heat shot through her.

“My razor-sharp intellect?”

“Mmm. That’ll do for a start.”

If it were possible for a man to seduce and worship at the same time, Josh was doing it.

When one hand slid up and cupped her breast, she was ready to erupt. She was so ready, in fact, that if he even—

His other hand slid under the hem of her short black chiffon skirt. He touched her thigh, then caressed her bare bottom. “A thong.” His voice held pleased discovery. “What color?”

“Peach,” she managed to say. “Josh, someone’s going to come…”

“I certainly hope so.”

Dear Reader,

Writers are notorious for picking bits and pieces from people, news, events and their own experiences and turning them into stories. So when three writers get together to pack a whole lot of ideas into a miniseries-—look out! I hope you enjoy the LOCK & KEY trilogy!

It was a blast working with Jamie Denton and Carrie Alexander to come up with three heroines who overcame their beginnings to unlock their own possibilities. It took some doing to imagine heroes who could give Mikki, Lauren and Rory a run for their money—but imagining sexy, no-holds-barred men who are a worthy match for our heroines is half the fun of writing for Harlequin Blaze.

I learned a lot about collaboration during this project. Writing can often be a solitary pursuit, but in this case it was more like an online party as we wove story threads and compared notes and talked over scenes from three (or six!) different points of view. The result was a strengthened bond between me and my sister writers—and, I hope, three stories you’ll remember for a long time.

Drop by my Web site, www.shannonhollis.com, to see what’s coming up next….

Warmly,

Shannon Hollis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dear Reader,

An Evening To Remember… Those words evoke all kinds of emotions and memories. How do you plan a romantic evening with your guy that will help you get in touch with each other on every level?

Start with a great dinner that you cook together. Be sure to light several candles and put fresh flowers on the table. Enjoy a few glasses of wine and pick out your favorite music to set the mood. After dinner take the time to really talk to each other. Hold hands and snuggle on the sofa in front of the fireplace. And maybe take a few minutes to read aloud selected sexy scenes from your favorite Harlequin Blaze novel. After that, anything can happen….

That’s just one way to have an evening to remember. There are so many more. Write and tell us how you keep the spark in your relationship. And don’t forget to check out our Web site at www.eHarlequin.com.

Sincerely,

Birgit Davis-Todd

Executive Editor

For Jamie and Carrie, with thanks,

and to Jen, for inviting me to the party

I’d like to thank Karina for her knowledge of modern Chinese-American life and for the correct way to make shui jao. Thank you, Maddie, for your sense of humor and Lorelei’s tag lines. And thank you, Lynn and Karen, for all the work and love you pour into enabling our habit over at IBD.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

From Lorelei’s blog

http://www.sfinsideout.com/lorelei/blog/

Do you have your tickets yet for the Baxter House benefit? If not, better hurry. The buzz around town is that this is the “don’t miss” party this spring. Think women with locks and men with keys. Think Deerfield Jewelers, ladies. Think prizes up the wazoo—donated by restaurants, wineries and theaters from here to Mendocino—for every couple whose lock and key is a match.

I won’t even go into what else you might find a match for. There’s a reason the tagline is “Unlock the possibilities,” know what I mean? Use your imaginations!

While you’re doing that, think about the cause. Your ticket price goes straight to the building fund for Baxter House, a transitional home for girls coming out of the foster care system. This is social worker and activist Maureen Baxter’s pet project, and now she’s made it ours. She’s made it fun.

Deerfield white gold, girls. What’s not to like?

Lorelei

“THE NEXT TIME I get the urge for something hot and hard between my legs, I’m going to buy a motorcycle.”

Lauren Massey tossed back the last of the White Knight in her glass and considered heading to the bar for another, then decided against it. The crowd waiting for drinks was four people deep, and besides, she was supposed to be snagging interviews for a story for her column. With two drinks in a row, she’d be more likely to giggle or flirt rather than ask meaningful questions…or ask questions way too personal to put into print.

Her column, “Lorelei on the Loose,” ran in a paper called San Francisco Inside Out, a left-wing cross between for-real street reporting and the tabloids you got at the checkout counter. Oh, they didn’t report on alien babies and celebrity divorces—unless the celebrities were local or the aliens had agreed to appear on the Channel 4 News. Inside Out was about entertainment, with a little activism thrown in, and for now, it paid the bills.

In the snarky, no-holds-barred persona of Lorelei, Lauren also ran a Web log, or “blog,” connected to Inside Out’s Web site, where she commented live on everything from clothes to politics to local charity events like this one. Her identity was a secret closely guarded by the paper, partly because she had a knack for stirring up controversy and partly because readers couldn’t resist a mystery and were always trying to guess who she was. They also couldn’t resist writing in and taking her on in public, which meant that Lorelei got the highest number of hits on the Inside Out site. You’d think this would make the Queen of Pain give her a raise, but it just made her managing editor demand more content, more trend-setting commentary, more everything.

So, like any good columnist, tonight Lauren was going to be multitasking—doing her part for charity and hunting a story like a basset hound.

“A vibrator’s cheaper.” Lauren’s foster sister, Aurora “Rory” Constable, was still smiling over her motorcycle crack. Lauren glanced at the drink on the table in front of her, illuminated by a little Victorian lamp that tried to compete with the colored spotlights and the glittering bling-bling of the twentysomething crowd all around them. Rory would nurse her drink for the next hour on the principle that the calories in it would get burned off in proportion to her activity—which, at this charity event disguised as a key party, could amount to anything from casual conversation to sex in the broom closet.