Crystal
Green
Hot and
Bothered (Rough and Tumble #3)
Info
for books #1 and #2 included
Blurb:
On the dusty outskirts of Vegas, there’s a down and dirty saloon where
all sorts of lethally charming—and genuinely dangerous—men carouse to seduce the
women who happen to venture inside on their way to and from Sin City.
Despite the many women he’s bedded over the
years, Gideon Lane has never been able to get Rochelle Burton completely out of
his head. He certainly never expected to see the city girl again, now a
successful author, all grown up in all the right places and asking for his
protection.
After their disastrous night together, Rochelle
was determined to put Gideon—and the things he made her want—far behind her.
But when an obsessive fan expresses their anger over her latest book in a
disturbing way, Rochelle’s overprotective cousins insist she hire the best
bodyguard the Rough & Tumble saloon can offer.
Both Rochelle and Gideon intend to keep their
relationship strictly professional, but when the threat to Rochelle puts them
in close quarters, Gideon can’t help wanting the chance to prove that some
things are better the second time around…
EXCERPT 1
When Rochelle Burton first
decided to track down Gideon Lane, she’d wondered how much he might’ve changed
from the eighteen-year-old man-slut she’d known all those years ago. But when
she found him in the middle of the Rough & Tumble Saloon’s courtyard doing
what he had always done best, she immediately stopped wondering.
The light from a small fire going in the pit was hitting
the brim of his gray Stetson at a slant, hiding his eyes in shadow. But his hat
didn’t cover his lazy smile or the smoke from the cigarillo angling out of his
mouth that curled into the mild May night air. He was slumped in his seat,
resting one square-toed black boot on his knee and draping his arms over the
two rickety chairs on either side of him. If he noticed that Rochelle was
leaning against the door frame, where whisky-soaked rock ’n’ roll spilled out
of the saloon from a nearby jukebox, he didn’t show it.
Then again, she suspected he was much too busy enjoying
the private striptease that four fluffy-haired women were putting on for him.
And she was damned sure that he hadn’t been hired by
these girls to be their bodyguard, even if that was his profession. No, this
was an entirely different sort of personal bodywork.
Two of the ladies, who were twins—and bleached blondes,
at that—each had one leg straddled over either side of him while the other two
felt themselves up, unbuttoning their blouses, laughing and tipsy.
No, Gideon hadn’t changed a bit. He was still a player,
even after seventeen years had passed them by, still the only guy who’d ever
left her in tears, even though she’d put that behind her a long time ago.
Definitely.
Rochelle eased her sunglasses down her nose, looking at him
until he had to sense her stare. She could tell the moment he caught sight of
her, and it wasn’t because she could see his gaze under that hat brim. It was
because he tensed in his seat, sliding his arms off the backs of the chairs and
then taking the cigarillo out of his mouth.
Well, a grand entrance had been pretty simple. She’d see
about the rest of this necessary reunion.
The four girls stopped gyrating and glanced back at her.
The non-twins shrugged and kept dancing, but the two blond lookalikes kept
their legs draped over Gideon, almost as if they were claiming him.
Rochelle didn’t mind. She merely told herself to smile
and pushed her sunglasses up and onto her head, where they held back her dark
waves from her face.
Was Gideon thinking that she looked different? The same?
Or . . .?
Ugh—she wasn’t here to compete for Miss Nevada or his attentions, so she swiped the thoughts out of her
head.
“What do you know,” she said instead, smoothly raising
her voice over the music. “It looks like things never change in this town.”
He was still tense, still staring. Her belly flipped,
although she wasn’t about to let him know that he affected her, even after all
this time.
How was that even possible when she’d put him in her
past? Scratch that—when he’d been only such a tiny, insignificant moment in her past?
One of the blond twins glanced down at Gideon. “You know
her?”
He let the cigarillo drop to the ground, then mashed it
into the concrete with his boot. He nudged back his cowboy hat, revealing a
face that used to make Rochelle’s heart skid and bump through her chest: light
brown eyes that could burn a girl, a strong whiskered jaw, a dimple in his firm
chin.
Damn, even now her body was reacting like a runaway
sports car, an accident just waiting to happen. But she didn’t do accidents
these days—those were things that happened to people who let challenges happen to them, not the ones who brought challenges on.
His gaze rolled over her, from her face and then down a
body that had developed more than a few curves and swerves since they were just
a couple of dumb kids, and she flushed all over.
She sure felt like a kid now, but she blanked out the
weakness.
“I’ll be damned,” he finally said in that velvet twang
she’d never quite forgotten. “Rochelle Burton.”
EXCERPT 2
It was bad enough that
Rochelle Burton—a woman Gideon thought he’d never see again—had strolled
through the door tonight, but this?
Shit, he needed time to recover before he responded to
her, because, truth to tell, his tongue was tied in knots, mocking the twisting
pull in his gut that had tightened so painfully when he’d seen her standing by
the door, watching him.
Time had added lushness to her body—breasts that he ached
to shape with his hands, an hourglass waist, and hips he wanted to explore,
too. Instead of the dewy innocence of teenaged youth, she had the face of one
of the beautiful, remote society women who usually rolled through Vegas with
their rich husbands. But Rochelle’s smile. . . God, even though she
wasn’t doing much smiling now, it was still dazzling, chipping the ice off any
first impression he’d had of her tonight.
She was definitely a reminder of days gone by, a sexual
torch that had never quite gone out, no matter how many times he’d tried to
douse it in the bed of another woman. And even if he’d had the reputation of a
cowboy Casanova before her, she’d been the one who dogged him—the only woman
who’d wrangled and tangled him so thoroughly that he couldn’t figure up from
down.
It wasn’t that he felt anything
for her besides good all-American, red-blooded lust, but . . .
Rochelle Burton. Here. What the hell?
The last night they’d seen each other had started out in
the usual way, with them laughing and joking, flirting as they’d done every
summer since they were fifteen. Cat and mouse, mouse and cat, they’d say saucy
things to each other but never cross any lines. Her cousins would’ve kicked his
ass if he had—or if they’d known.
But that night, as they’d walked around the ranch,
knowing that she’d soon be off to college in California, where she lived with
her divorced dad, he’d noticed that the boundaries weren’t quite the same. The
laughing had turned to tickling in an abandoned barn, and there on the hay,
they’d started kissing.
Feverish, sloppy, this-is-finally-happening kissing. With
most girls, he needed something physical, never emotional—just enough screwing
to soothe the teenaged hormonal aches that seemed to be hardwired in him. But
with Rochelle? He’d wanted her more than any girl he’d ever met, and he wasn’t
sure why.
But that didn’t matter, because she wouldn’t be around
soon—he’d probably never even see the college girl again after this summer. Yet
instead of making him feel better about banging her and making the break
between them easy, it almost made him feel worse. No more hanging out with her,
no more laughing. No more trying to figure out just what she was to him.
Before he’d known it, her clothes were off, then his.
Fumbling, heavy breathing . . . it should’ve been the
culmination of every fantasy he’d had about her, but she’d been so nervous,
shaking, and he’d tried to please her but . . .
Shit, even though he’d held up his end of the bargain,
it’d been no good in the end, tawdry and empty and wrong. So wrong that neither
of them had looked at each other afterward. And when he’d reached over to put a
hand on her, to touch her because he wasn’t sure what to say for the first time
in his life, she shut down. And when she’d kiddingly thanked him, trying to
brush off the encounter with more jokes, her voice had been quivering.
About the Rough And
Tumble Series:
Rough and
Tumble (Rough and Tumble #1)
Blurb:
On the dusty outskirts of Vegas, there’s a down
and dirty saloon where all sorts of lethally charming—and genuinely
dangerous—men carouse to seduce the women who happen to venture inside on their
way to and from Sin City.
After Molly Preston flees a dead-end job with a
lecherous boss, she finds herself in even hotter water after one of her best
friends makes the wrong bet in a poker game with a sexy bad boy drifter in a
backroom of the Rough & Tumble.
The man’s name is Cash. And he offers Molly an
indecent proposal—one hot night with him—that could erase her friend’s debt to
him in one fell swoop. She wants to say yes, even if this electrifying man
seems just as unsafe as he is tempting.
One night becomes two...then more...and soon
Molly is road tripping with Cash in the desert and exploring boundaries she
never knew existed. But will indulging in this kind of pleasure leave her
“normal” life in the dust?
Buy Links:
Down and Dirty (Rough
and Tumble #2)
Blurb:
On the outskirts of Sin City, there’s a rough
and tumble saloon where the women who are brave enough to enter can mingle with
men that are equally magnetic and dangerous. And in this town, no one’s afraid
to get a little dirty…
Billionaire playboy Bennett Hughes’ black sheep reputation is well-earned, but
that doesn’t stop him from wanting the respect of his family—even if it means
tracking down his brother’s gold-digging one-night-stand to earn it. But when
Ben finds his intended target to be the opposite of what he expected, his
chance at redemption ends in an accidental quickie marriage.
Despite her history, ex-showgirl Liz Palazzo believes in love at first sight,
something she thought she experienced with Ben. Determined to put her
party-girl reputation behind her, Liz vows to be the best wife ever—even if her
husband seems set on keeping their union a marriage of convenience.
But as the sparks fly and their connection grows, Ben starts to wonder if Liz
might be the one person who can make him a better man—or if the former bad girl
just wants him for his money…
Goodreads:
Buy Links:
About the Author:
You can call her “Crystal,” “Chris,”
or “Christine”—she’s the same person, even though her different pen names
reflect different writing personalities.
Under “Crystal Green,” she writes romance. “Chris Marie
Green” is in charge of the urban fantasy series Vampire Babylon, which features
six full-length books, three novellas, and one short story. Chris Marie has
also indie published a New Adult Single Girl/Geek Lit hybrid with illustrations
by Billy Martinez called The She Code, along with other shorter works that
follow the rules that all girls should know in life.
Crystal used to be an 8th grade teacher of reading, writing,
and US History, but she promised herself if she ever sold 3 books in a year,
she would take a chance and write full-time. Ten years later, she is still
feverishly writing and loving it!
~~Kellie~~
Mia Kayla is a New Adult/Contemporary Romance writer who lives in Illinois. On the weekdays, she can be caught wearing a suit, commuting to her corporate job in downtown Chicago and raising three beautiful munchkins in the suburbs, four if you count the husband.
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