Lisa Fox - Her Perfect Lips - HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance

LISA FOX

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

HarperImpulse an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014

Copyright © Lisa Fox 2014

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Lisa Fox asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International

and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted

the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access

and read the text of this e-book on screen.

No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,

downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or

stored in or introduced into any information storage and

retrieval system, in any form or by any means,

whether electronic or mechanical, now known or

hereinafter invented, without the express

written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © December 2014

ISBN: 9780008115500

Version 2014-10-06

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

To booze, beads, and New Orleans.

Contents

Cover

Title Page Her Perfect Lips LISA FOX A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright HarperImpulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014 Copyright © Lisa Fox 2014 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Lisa Fox asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © December 2014 ISBN: 9780008115500 Version 2014-10-06 Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Dedication To booze, beads, and New Orleans.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Also by Lisa Fox…

Lisa Fox

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Stacy took her usual seat at the long conference table and arranged her notes in front of herself. Her coworkers filed into the large, airy boardroom, cups of coffee, water bottles, and tablets in hand, ready for the monthly All-Staff meeting. She smiled vaguely at them all, tapping her fingernail against the glass tabletop, waiting to begin. These multidepartment progress reports were informative, and very often fun, but her time could be better spent today. There was a mountain of paperwork waiting on her desk and her own part of the meeting was going to be small, she only had one minor update to offer, but it was a positive one. The staff-focused Instagram account she had opened for Sharpe Designs last month was getting some quality followers and loads of great comments. Her goal today was to encourage everyone to keep posting new, amusing pictures. Maybe there was some way she could deliver that message and then sneak out.

She gave Kat Greer a little wave as the stunning blonde graphic designer entered the room. Kat’s boyfriend, chief programmer, Dean Kirkwell followed close behind. Stacy made a mental note to grab Dean after the meeting and get an update on the Fisher account he’d been promising her for days. He must’ve known she was thinking about him because he caught her eye and winked. She smiled back, watching them settle into seats at the back of the boardroom. They were such a gorgeous couple, a perfect picture of contrasts. Kat was a New York goddess in her black Anna Sui dress and Trash and Vaudeville heels, while Dean looked like he had just stepped out of GQ , the hottest new face of “urban preppy.” But despite the seemingly outward differences, everything about their relationship could be summed up in the way they looked at one another. It was as though they were always sharing a wonderfully secret joke. She envied them a little bit.

The CEO and co-owner of Sharpe Designs, Ron Sharpe, entered the room, and the meeting was quickly called to order. Ron’s partner and husband, CFO, Alan Altman, started things off with an announcement that the company was doing better than ever. He explained that they were already outearning their projected figures and this was going to enable them to spend more freely in areas they thought they would have to neglect this financial year.

The lights dimmed for Alan’s PowerPoint presentation and Stacy’s thoughts drifted as the slides flicked across the screen in a blur of colors and graphs. She really needed to pick up her dry cleaning tonight or the place was probably going to sell all her stuff. She had no excuse for letting it sit there for so long either, the shop was only about two blocks away from her Ludlow Street studio. It wasn’t like she had to travel across town or anything. She had a good pile going at home now too, maybe it was time to do a trade. Go to the dry cleaners, pickup and drop off, then grab her tablet and reward herself with dinner at that new little Austrian café on Delancey.

Alan’s presentation ended and there was polite applause. Throats were cleared, clothing rustled, people drank water, and checked their phones as the director of development set up his progress report. Stacy shifted in her chair, trying to find a more comfortable position. She glanced at her wristwatch, the clock on the wall, the digital display on her tablet. They all told her the exact same thing. There was a lot of meeting left to go. She shifted again and saw Dean lean over and whisper something into Kat’s ear. From the flush on Kat’s cheeks and the side-glance she gave him, it was obvious that whatever he said was definitely not work related. She smiled, happy for them, but her own loneliness made her heart heavy. Here she was thinking about dry cleaning while they were going to go home and have awesome sex. Yay, Friday night.

She rested her chin in her hand and exhaled a long, weary breath. She worked hard at dating, just as hard as she worked at everything else, and in all the time she’d been in New York City, she still hadn’t found her ‘Mr. Right.’ She couldn’t figure out what she was doing wrong. She went to the right bars, joined singles groups, had an online dating profile, but nothing ever seemed to work out. There had been a few promising starts, but nothing special. Nothing lasting. And certainly nothing even close to that hit-you-in-the-gut kind of desire she craved. She’d never been a quitter, but the search was taking its toll. She was almost ready to believe it was a lost cause.