Jo Leigh - Want Me

His lips. Her lips. Together. Kissing. Oh .

Thinking would come later. Now was for goosebumps and heat. She’d wanted this so much … it was definitely in the cards.

Nate’s breath on her lips and her chin, the sudden loss, made her open her eyes.

His right hand floated near her face before his fingertips brushed the path of her blush up her cheek to her temple. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, then winced slightly. “More than beautiful. How did that happen? When?”

“You went away.”

“And you became a gorgeous woman.”

She doubted she could blush harder. “You came back better, too.”

“Older, at least.” His fingers moved into her hair, carefully, slowly. “Hopefully wiser.”

“Definitely better,” she said, momentarily panicked that wiser meant he knew they shouldn’t be doing this.

“I don’t want to stop.”

She stepped closer to him, letting more of her body press against his.

“No one’s asking you to …”

JO LEIGHis from Los Angeles and always thought she’d end up living in Manhattan. So how did she end up in Utah, in a tiny town with a terrible internet connection, being bossed around by a house full of rescued cats and dogs? What the heck, she says, predictability is boring. Jo has written more than forty novels and can be contacted at joleigh@joleigh.com.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the final story in the IT’S TRADING MEN! trilogy. Writing these three books ( Choose Me, Have Me and now Want Me ) has been fun! I’ve fallen in love with Charlie, Jake and Nate, and want to be like Bree, Rebecca and Shannon.

Shannon came up with the brilliant notion of using trading cards to trade men. You’d think she would have been the first to find her Mr Right. Wrong!

Fiery redhead Shannon Fitzgerald has more than the St Marks lunch exchange on her mind. She’s doing everything in her power to keep her family’s business running, she’s co-ordinating a huge Easter fundraiser, and she’s giving up hope that she’ll ever find true love. When she runs into long-time family friend Nate Brenner at a wedding, she immediately sees his potential as a trading card hottie.

The last thing either Shannon or Nate imagines is for sparks to fly between them. Especially since Nate is sharing Shannon’s house … in the bedroom next door! When sparks turn into a passionate flame, both of their lives are changed forever … especially when the trading cards for trading men become a national scandal, with Nate and Shannon in the heart of the storm!

As always, I can be reached at joleigh@joleigh.com, and hearing from readers is the best thing ever!

Love to you all,

Jo Leigh

Want Me

Jo Leigh

www.millsandboon.co.uk

As always, I owe so many thanks to Debbi and Birgit for being true partners in this crazy writing endeavor.

THE WEDDING WAS IN FULL swing, “The Irish Rover” was in heavy rotation by the band, beer was flowing and the hundred and fifty friends and family of Theresa O’Brian-Moran were halfway to hangovers.

Shannon Fitzgerald had found a relatively quiet corner. It had taken Shannon the better part of the evening to convince herself to approach her second cousin about joining the small and exclusive St. Marks lunch exchange. But Ariel was perfect, really. At twenty-four, she was three years younger than Shannon, lived in Nolita, worked in Midtown and was still single, as was Shannon. Arial was also very pretty and had attracted a group of red-faced, very happy young men wanting to dance.

Shannon had pulled in her share of slightly older young men, mostly in the twenty-eight-to-thirty-five range, although Angus was hovering and he’d just turned eighty-three. It was like being caught in a swarm of bees. Shannon and Ariel kept swatting them away, but they just circled over to the bar, then came back.

“Trading cards?” Ariel asked, leaning in so she’d be heard above the fiddles and tin whistle of the band and the tipsy pleading of brokenhearted boys. “I thought it was a lunch exchange.”

Shannon nodded. “It’s both. If you want to do the food part, you bring in frozen lunches for fourteen, then you take home your own fourteen lunches. It saves a ton of money and gives you variety, but the important thing is the trading cards. All of us have friends or exes or coworkers who are eligible single men.”

She pushed her cousin Riley a full arm’s length away without giving him a glance. His breath. God. “Nice men,” Shannon continued. “Men we’d want our best friend to go out with.”

Ariel nodded slowly, fussing a little with the bodice of her pink dress, then her eyes lit up. “David Sainsbury at my office. He’s off-limits to me, but he’s extremely nice and he just broke up with his girlfriend. He’d be a real catch. He’s always nice to the temps, and he gets coffee for his assistant every time he gets a cup for himself. He’s funny, too.”

“There you go,” Shannon said, tickled about the addition of David, who sounded like someone she might be interested in.

“How do I do this? Submit his name?”

“You procure a picture of David, a head shot is best, let us see what we’re getting. I’ll make sure you have a few samples of the cards that are no longer in circulation. Then I put the picture on the front of the trading card.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. The printing plant.”

Shannon wondered if that was Ariel’s first beer. Fitzgerald & Sons was a huge part of the extended family. Ariel’s father had worked there for over ten years before he opened his stationery store. But then it was hard to think in all this craziness. “For the back of the card,” Shannon said, deciding right then to reiterate all of this information in a follow-up email, “you fill out a short form. It starts with his profession. Then whether he’s a marry, date or one-night stand.”

Ariel’s head tilted as she let the second part sink in. “Ah,” she said, when the beauty of that key piece of information hit.

“Exactly. Next, his favorite restaurant. Then his secret passion. Not his career but the thing he loves more than anything. Sports or movies or dancing. Whatever turns him on.”

“David is completely into science fiction. He’s always got a book nearby.”

The wistfulness of Ariel’s voice made it clear that Shannon wouldn’t be going out with David. She and Ariel were cousins, and she wasn’t interested in starting a family feud. “Are you sure he’s off-limits?”

“Company policy. He’s one of their top attorneys.”

“Maybe it’d be worth it to try and find another job,” Shannon said, turning briefly to shoo away one of the Wilson twins.

Ariel shook her head. “I’ve put out feelers. It’s murder out there. I’m not risking my job for anything. They have full medical.”

“Understood.” She took a sip of her white wine, sacrilege in this crowd, but Shannon didn’t care. Beer was for the pub. Wine was for weddings. “After his passion comes the bottom line—what it is that makes him special. Why you’re recommending him. Then, I put that information on the back of the card, do the printing and, voilà, we have Hot Guys Trading Cards.”

“I love this idea,” Ariel said. “I really do.”

“It works. It’s safe, too, because the person who submits the card sets up the date. And no one outside the group knows the cards exist.”