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My Daring Seduction
Isabel Sharpe
Dear Reader,
February can be cruel. Up here in the frozen north, the weather can be stubbornly brutal when our thoughts are turning hopefully towards spring. Valentine’s Day can be a day of love and joy or of loneliness and sadness.
This month the women of the Martinis & Bikinis Club chase away February blahs with their usual meeting, which includes sexually provocative Martini Dares, but also a surprise for my heroine Lindsay. She’s off on the wildest ride of her life, thanks to sexy Denver Langston. Along the way she uncovers more Winfield family secrets and finally finds the key to real happiness. Hint: it’s not staying home playing it safe.
Curl up with a hot toddy, enjoy the story and think about starting up a Martinis & Bikinis chapter in your town. Then let me know how you like your dares! Cool and calm or sizzling hot?
Cheers,
Isabel Sharpe www.IsabelSharpe.com
Lindsay’s Ruby Valentini
4 parts vodka 2 parts pomegranate juice 1 part triple sec Splash of lemon juice Serve ice-cold (with a warm heart) in sugar-rimmed martini glasses!
Table of Contents
ISABEL SHARPE
was not born pen in hand like so many of her fellow writers. after she quit work in 1994 to stay at home with her firstborn son and nearly went out of her mind, she started writing. after more than twenty novels – along with another son – Isabel is more than happy with her choice these days. She loves hearing from readers. Write to her at www. IsabelSharpe.com.
To my wonderful, wild and talented friends and
writing partners in this terrific series: Lori Wilde, Carrie Alexander and Jamie Denton.
Prologue
Dear Daughter,
What a difficult letter this is to write. I am ill now and you are probably reading this after I am gone as it will no doubt take my lawyer some time to find you. It is clichéd but true that looking at the end of life makes you think about what you would have done differently. If I had mine to do it over again, I would not have given you up for adoption, no matter the cost. That pain never left me. But once my life had become stable enough to support you properly, you had already settled in with your new family. What rights did I have to you after all? This I would also change. I could have met you at least, and told you where you came from.
However, one thing I can give you now is knowledge of your three wonderful sisters, my other daughters. Brooke, your eldest sister, is two years younger than you. She is my most sensible, practical and gracious daughter, though I suspect a wild streak she has dutifully suppressed. Next is Joey, my brilliant lawyer, who believes ambition and strength can hide her vulnerability and rebelliousness. Lastly, Katie, my baby. She needs to learn to celebrate her impulsive behavior more creatively and constructively.
What you do with this is up to you. All three girls still live in Boston, where they grew up with me. I hope you will seek them out and make our family whole again.
I want you to know that not a day went by when I didn’t look at them and also think of you, and the lovely young woman you have no doubt become.
Daisy Breckenridge Winfield
1
LINDSAY BECKHAM PUT DOWN the phone in her office carefully as if the receiver harbored an explosive. The calls from Gina were always surreal. On television blackmail was a dramatic high-stakes affair—threats, strong language, wrung hands and curses. Or excruciating, calculated and cruelly exciting.
These talks were bizarre simply because they were so ordinary. Gina was an old friend—or so Lindsay had had the typically poor judgment to think—so their exchanges were familiar, and while not exactly warm and fuzzy anymore, neither were they hostile. Gina treated her “salary” as if she were providing a service Lindsay should feel thrilled to purchase and chatted about personal matters as if their friendship hadn’t taken this baffling turn several months ago when, in the middle of a catch-up phone call, Gina had blurted out, “Did you know there is no statute of limitations on murder?”
Wouldn’t the press be interested to find out that a few years back Gina Nelson had seen Lindsay Beckham, the hot new owner of Boston’s hot new bar, Chassy, kill her boyfriend? Forget the press, wouldn’t the police be interested?
And Gina had gone on to point out, wouldn’t potential investors in Chassy’s planned expansion be interested to learn the woman angling for their money had run away from her adoptive family at seventeen and lived a large part of her adult life high on whatever she could find, going from man to man, searching for love and her own identity the least likely way she could find either?
Needless to say, after that the call had hurtled downhill faster than an Olympic