Mara Fox - Letting Go!

“You wanted a stranger. I just went along with you.”

Tony looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept since the cruise. “You don’t know how I’ve felt, knowing I might lose you all over again once you knew the truth,” he continued.

“You never had me to lose. You agreed it was just going to be sex and you would walk away!” How could Emma be so angry that he hadn’t really walked out of her life when just moments ago she’d been cursing herself for letting him do just that? How could she want to throw herself into his arms and strangle him at the same time?

“I knew I’d have to see you again,” he said simply. “But I wanted you to have your fantasy first.”

She smiled grimly. “Yes, you were my fantasy, all right….” She wrapped her arms around her waist. “I don’t even know you.”

“Oh, I think we got to know each other rather intimately,” he said, cupping her chin in his hand. “I know that your eyes go all hazy when you get aroused, and I know the way you like to be stroked along your beautiful back. I know that you’re ticklish behind your knees and that you sigh in your sleep.”

He tilted her face so that she looked him in the eye. “And I think we both know that this fantasy isn’t over….”

Dear Reader,

When I won the Romantic Times BOOKclub Reviewers Choice Award for Best First Series Romance for 2004, I was writing for Harlequin Temptation. Then I was told that I would be writing my first book for Harlequin Blaze, and I was so intrigued. It couldn’t have come at a more remarkable time in my life—I’m single again. So Emma’s cruise into sexual experimentation might be based on my own voyage of sexual discovery. Of course, in the old days a lady never told, but today a lady not only tells, she goes for it!

I hope you enjoy discovering Emma’s sexual exploits with her Bahama boy toy. And I hope you’ll be excited to know that her best friend, Tina, is getting her own book. Because being a sexual mentor and sidekick just didn’t do this girl justice. She’s got a stripper in her wrong bed and what she does with him will heat up your sheets! Be sure to read it in bed, preferably with someone to strip down for you!

I hope you enjoy reading about these very different but enticing women stepping up to the challenge of finding a man who gives them all the pleasure they’ve dreamed about. Enjoy the adventure!

Sincerely,

Mara Fox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

After wandering the county as a military brat, author Mara Fox was happy to settle in a little Texas town with the friendliest people she’d ever met and the biggest sky she’d ever seen. And she thought it was like catching hold of one of those stars when she won the Romantic Times BOOKclub Reviewers Choice Award for Best First Series Romance for 2004. These days she’s going to college and spreading her single wings, both figuratively and not so figuratively. Turns out that Emma and Mara have a lot in common! There might even be a singles cruise to the Bahamas in the works….

I’m happy to dedicate this book to Brenda Chin,

the best editor, mentor and friend anyone could have

in her corner, especially in a tight spot.

Prologue

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

GAZING THROUGH the glass at Emma, Anthony Enderlin wondered if this would be a good time to introduce himself to the woman who had lured him to the law firm of Anderson-Harding with her siren voice.

Though he felt they knew each other, they’d never actually met. They’d only spoken. And her voice had teased, cajoled and flirted with him, affecting him the way he imagined good phone sex might. It had stayed with him, sneaking into the most unexpected corners of his life.

And they’d only talked a couple of times while coordinating a work program.

It was damn disconcerting.

So he’d decided to come and do the computer installation himself. It would surely get her out of his system, so to speak. He’d sold the idea to his boss as a field test of sorts and vacation. Now he was spinning his wheels…lurking.

He heard footsteps in the hall. Emma’s best friend, the lady lawyer they called The Shark, was approaching, and feeling guilty, he stepped back as though he hadn’t been hanging around outside the employee break room like a moonstruck idiot.

He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. Turning, he headed towards the office where yet another lawyer would expect him to debug a computer constipated with porn, viruses and fragments of old games.

Which was a huge waste of his expertise.

After all, he was the designer of the software, and he’d coordinated the project with Emma, the company’s liaison. When he’d come to do the install, he hadn’t planned on spending his time cleaning up each and every lawyer’s computer system.

He’d hoped to do a bit more liaisoning.

With Emma.

Because that voice had flowed over him like silk and sex.

Tony had known that Emma couldn’t possibly look as good as she sounded. He knew he’d get over the infatuation when they finally met. Then they’d become friends because talking to Emma made him feel good. Besides, he was better at friendship than dating. For some reason, no matter how attractive the woman he was dating, one of his programs usually wooed him and the woman walked away.

What he needed was a woman who could seduce him from his cyber world.

The Shark walked by in sharp, echoing heels. He avoided eye contact by pretending to be reading the printout in his hand. Not that she’d know him. He’d managed to avoid her so far.

She was striking in a sleek way, but Emma’s softer beauty was even more attractive. Once he’d seen Emma, he’d had difficulty imagining her as just a friend. She looked like a character who had just stepped out of a Camelot novel. Or out of one of the role-playing games he preferred when he got tired of programming. He enjoyed adventures with knights, dragons, quests and swordplay.

He spent a lot of time rescuing the princess.

However, this princess had enough gumption to rescue herself, and he knew from their conversations that she was also a smart, funny, sexy woman, even if right now she was hiding out in the break room after a bad breakup.

So she was a bit self-conscious, too. Interesting.

It was a fascinating contradiction that Tony planned to examine closer. He no longer saw Emma becoming a friend, he wanted more. But he didn’t know how much more. They lived half a country apart. And he wasn’t a player—he spent too much time in front of a computer screen to be able to brag about his dating exploits. Then there was his short attention span.

So the “liaisoning” would be short-term. Better everyone understood that up front.

He could be charming, his sister had told him. And according to the office gossip, Emma had just gotten burned by a first-class jerk, so she might go for a gentleman.

They might have some laughs together.

He might get to listen to that silken voice at a much closer proximity. Whispering love words in his ear.

He smiled at his little fantasy.

So much for thinking like a gentleman.

So far he hadn’t even managed to meet her or shake her hand. Instead he was stuck purging computers. Making himself useful so the boss didn’t send him home.

It made his fingers itch. The longer she hid out, the more determined he was to uncover everything about Emma…