OUT NOW!
Imogen Blair’s best friends are both engaged, and their joy makes her realise what’s missing from her own life. Or rather, who. With her future happiness at stake, Imogen comes up with a plan to land the guy of her dreams, pastry chef Jean-Luc Fortier. But you know what they say about the course of true love? It never runs smooth.
With Malachi Banks—special-ops commando turned reluctant sidekick—strong-armed into helping her, Imogen’s determined to win her man. But will the prize be worth it?
Lead is the sixth book in the Blackwood Elements series but can be read as a standalone – no cliffhanger!
Available now:
The beginning…
“So let me get this straight,” Stefanie said to me as I sank onto one of the white leather couches in her living room. “Jean-Luc invited you out for dinner and then expected you to entertain his girlfriend?”
“Well, technically it wasn’t dinner. It was a cooking contest, and we got to sample some of the dishes.”
Stef rolled her eyes. “Imogen, that’s not the point I was trying to make.”
I knew that. Of course I knew that. But trying to avoid the real issue—that Jean-Luc had invited me on what I thought was a date but which turned out to be definitely not a date made my disappointment easier to bear. Okay, it didn’t, but I had to try, right?
Probably I should start at the beginning, shouldn’t I? My name’s Imogen Blair, and I’m unlucky in love. And lust, and like, and anything else that might happen with a man. Take the last guy I dated, for instance. Three weeks in, he let slip that he had two kids back in Utah by his ex-girlfriend that he’d just…abandoned. Long-term prospects? Zero. Before that mistake, I’d gone out with a guy whose idea of showing a girl a good time was to take her to his mom’s house for a home-cooked dinner, nod approvingly as Mom interrogated her, then try for third base while they watched a Disney movie in the basement with Mom’s footsteps clomping overhead. Oh, and in a spectacular error of judgement a year ago, I’d gotten cheated on by a suspected drug dealer.
Bad enough, but not as awful as the two years I spent as a call girl. Life had led me down a dark path until that point, and when you’re desperate for money, and your life’s in the toilet, and you’ve watched Pretty Woman more times than was healthy, you’ll do some really, really stupid things. Eventually, I came to my senses and realised a wealthy businessman wasn’t going to buy me jewellery and take me to the opera, so I retired from that “career,” but it turned out that the assholes willing to hook up with a barista or a waitress or a nail technician weren’t any better.
By now, you’re most likely wondering why I bothered dating at all, and believe me, I’d asked myself the same question many times. I guess I just didn’t want to give up on my dream. Two of my friends had recently gotten engaged, and seeing how happy they were gave me hope. Hope that I’d find a man to share my life with. Hope that I could be one half of something special. Hope that I’d get the big white wedding I’d been daydreaming about since I was a little girl.
And then there was Jean-Luc Fortier, a pastry chef who worked at Rhodium, one of the restaurants part-owned by Stef’s fiancé, Oliver. I’d worked there for a while too until I started my own nail salon, and even now I still did the occasional evening shift when things were slow at the Nailed It, which had the added bonus of letting me spend time with Monsieur Fortier. The perfect man—soft brown eyes, long, elegant fingers, and a French accent that made me shiver. Kind, sexy, and generous with the free cakes and pastries. So what was the problem? Well, he’d friend-zoned me from the moment he first showed me around the restaurant, and I’d been trying to clamber out of that box ever since.
Setbacks such as Jean-Luc casually mentioning his latest girlfriend left me depressed, even if his girlfriends never seemed to last for long, and that was when I did dumb things like going speed-dating or hooking up with a bartender who expected me to bow down to his four-inch dick. Stupid, stupid Imogen. After this latest debacle, with my judgement so badly impaired, I’d have to be careful not to sleep with a serial killer like Stef accidentally did.
“Have you got any wine?” I asked. I couldn’t go out with an idiot if I was unconscious, could I?
Stef regarded me doubtfully. “Are you sure that’s the answer?”
“I’m not sure about anything anymore.”
The arrangement…
“Right, everything’s arranged,” Sofia said. No preamble. Not even a greeting. “I’ve found a guy to go to that cooking contest with you, but in return, you have to go to a thing with him tomorrow. He needs a plus-one. Bradley’s coming over with outfits at seven a.m. You know Bradley, right? Emmy’s assistant?”
Huh? My brain frantically tried to process her words, and all I could do was channel Stef. “Back up a second. What thing? What guy?”
“It’s a wedding, but his ex is gonna be there and they don’t get along so well anymore. He needs to prove he’s moved on.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Now I understood exactly what Stef meant. “I can’t go to a stranger’s wedding with a guy I’ve never met before.”
“Oh, but you have met him. Apparently, he prevented you from being arrested when you accidentally dated a drug dealer last year.”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure he was a drug dealer. He was just friends with a drug dealer.” Because that made all the difference when the cops were on their way to search the apartment I’d been sleeping in. Hazy memories of that night trickled back. Of a brown-haired hottie sent by Blackwood hammering on the door and driving me home in the middle of the night. “Wait. Do you mean Malachi?”
“So you do remember him? Good. Yes.”
At the time, I’d asked for his phone number, although I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to call it. Malachi was way out of my league. Word came back from Oliver that he had a girlfriend, and I hadn’t thought about him since. Unless you counted the dirty dreams. I might have had a few of those.
“I can’t date Malachi.”
“You’re not dating him. Think of it as more of a business arrangement. He’ll be in Third Base tonight from seven.”
“Third Base?”
“It’s a bar downtown. You can meet him there to hash out the details.”
“But—”
“You want Jean-Luc, don’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Well, Malachi’s the perfect guy to help you get him. He’s trained for undercover work, and he’ll keep his hands firmly off. How are you feeling, by the way?”
“A little better. What’s happening with Drew?”
“Don’t worry about Drew. Seven o’clock. Third Base.”
She hung up, and I stared at the phone open-mouthed. What just happened?
“Was that Sofia?” Stef asked.
“How did you guess?”
“With that look on your face, it had to be either Sofia or Emmy. Nobody else inspires such bewildered frustration.
