The Hot One
The Hot One
Lauren Blakely
Contents
Also By Lauren Blakely
About
His Prologue
Her 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
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Her Epilogue
His Epilogue
Another Epilogue
Coming Soon!
Acknowledgments
Also by Lauren Blakely
Contact
Copyright © 2017 by Lauren Blakely
Cover Design by Helen Williams.
Photo credit Wander Aguiar Photography
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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy sexy, heartfelt romance novels with alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Also By Lauren Blakely
The Caught Up in Love Series (Each book in this series follows a different couple so each book can be read separately, or enjoyed as a series since characters crossover)
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Caught Up In Us
Pretending He’s Mine
Trophy Husband
Stars in Their Eyes
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Standalone Novels
BIG ROCK
Mister O
Well Hung
The Sexy One
Full Package
The Hot One
Joy Stick (May 2017)
Most Valuable Playboy (July 2017)
The Wild One (August 2017)
Happy Trail (November 2017)
Far Too Tempting
21 Stolen Kisses
Playing With Her Heart
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The No Regrets Series
The Thrill of It
The Start of Us
Every Second With You
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The Seductive Nights Series
First Night (Julia and Clay, prequel novella)
Night After Night (Julia and Clay, book one)
After This Night (Julia and Clay, book two)
One More Night (Julia and Clay, book three)
A Wildly Seductive Night (Julia and Clay novella, book 3.5)
Nights With Him (A standalone novel about Michelle and Jack)
Forbidden Nights (A standalone novel about Nate and Casey)
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The Sinful Nights Series
Sweet Sinful Nights
Sinful Desire
Sinful Longing
Sinful Love
* * *
The Fighting Fire Series
Burn For Me (Smith and Jamie)
Melt for Him (Megan and Becker)
Consumed By You (Travis and Cara)
* * *
The Jewel Series
A two-book sexy contemporary romance series
The Sapphire Affair
The Sapphire Heist
About
At first glance, stripping naked at my ex-girlfriend's place of work might not seem like the brightest way to win her back.
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But trust me on this count - she always liked me best without any clothes on. And sometimes you've got to play to your strengths when you're fighting an uphill battle. As a lawyer, I know how to fight and I’m prepared to fight hard for her. I might have let her slip through my fingers the last time, but no way will that happen twice.
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He's the one who got away...
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The nerve of Tyler Nichols to reappear like that, stripping at my job, showing off his rock hard body that drove me wild far too many nights. That man with his knowing grin and mischievous eyes is nothing but a cocky, arrogant jerk to saunter back into my life. Except, what if he's not a jerk . . .? He's the one I've tried like hell to forget but just can't. Maybe I'm cursed to remember him. My money is on him being the same guy he always was, but what's the harm in giving him a week to prove he's a new man? I won't fall for him again.
But how do you resist the hot one...
To Karen. For one note that mattered so much.
His Prologue
Technically, I didn't drop my drawers the first time I saw her again. Just my balls.
The ones in my hands. Juggling balls.
Here’s how it went down. Picture a Sunday morning in Central Park. A perfect summer day. The grass was green, the breeze was warm, and I’d just spent the last few hours getting acquainted with turtles and frogs at the children’s zoo because I’m an awesome uncle. And Carly’s one cool seven-year-old.
The kid loves all creatures, but especially the ones that jump and crawl, so I took her to the enchanted forest part of the zoo. When we finished, she tugged on my shirt sleeve, batted her hazel eyes, and asked ever so sweetly for an ice cream cone.
Like I stood a chance at resisting her. C’mon. She’s my cousin’s kid, and clearly she gets her charm from our side of the family.
With her hand in mine, we strolled across the grass near the running path, hunting for the nearest ice cream dealer.
And then Carly did that thing little kids do.
She shrieked for what seemed like absolutely no reason. Next, she pointed to an impossibly tall dude wearing a beret while juggling two Rubik’s Cubes, two orange balls, and a small green beanbag.
“He can do five, Uncle Tyler!” Carly shouted, her eyes going wide.
“Five isn’t too shabby,” I said with a shrug.
She turned to me with a questioning stare. “I’ve never seen you do five.”
“That’s because I haven’t shown you all my tricks yet.”
“Can you really juggle five balls?”
I scoffed. “Please, I can do that with my eyes closed.”
I didn’t put myself through law school juggling for nothing.
Just kidding.
You can’t put yourself through law school juggling anything but insane class schedules and lack of sleep.
Carly arched an eyebrow. So did the juggler, as he kept up the cascade of his quintet. Show-off.
Yeah, Carly’s a chip off the old block. She’s all about challenging me, and I’m all about rising to the challenge.
The stick-thin guy with the beret raised his chin. “Have at it, man.”
With clockwork precision, he let the balls fall out of orbit and into his palm. Next, the Rubik’s Cubes. Then the beanbag. He stepped closer, handed me the objects, and flashed a crooked, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is grin.
Game on.
Packs of runners jogged along, cyclists wheeled over the black asphalt, and rollerbladers whizzed by on the concrete. With my feet parked hip’s width apart, I stood at the edge of the grass getting a feel for the items, weighing them, and then one, two, three, four, five, I whisked each one up into the air in a high oval arc. Round and round, in a perfect five-ball cascade.
Carly clapped, then demanded more. “Yes, now close your eyes!”
I groaned. What was I thinking? Juggling with eyes closed is fucking hard. But I could pull it off for a couple seconds. My special skill. I obliged my niece’s request, pulling off a few quick blind ovals. Five seconds later, after I’d shown off that particular party trick, I opened my eyes.
And I saw a vision from my past.
A blond beauty, with long legs, a lovely round ass, and a high ponytail swishing back and forth across her shoulders. She ran along the path in tiny orange let-me-peel-them-off-with-my-teeth-pretty-please running shorts. And that face. Dear Lord, the stunning face of an angel. High cheekbones. Deep brown eyes that saw me like no one ever had. Those red lips, shaped like a bow. Fuck me, the things she could do with those lips. The things I taught her to do with that sinful mouth.
Delaney sure as hell knew how to use it, and I don’t just mean in the bedroom. We used to talk about anything and everything when we were together in college. Days with her. Nights with her. Best time of my life. That woman was full of spark. Full of fire. So damn passionate. And look at her now.
Jesus Christ.
It had to be illegal to be that smoking hot.
She wasn’t alone. She ran with two other chicks and a couple dogs.
As for me? Mister fast on his feet, quick with a word, never met a situation he can’t talk his way out of? Scratch all that right then and there. Because I dropped the cubes. I dropped the beanbag. And I dropped the orange balls in a pile of wreckage at my feet.
My jaw fell, too.
But the best part? All that came out of my mouth was a muffled Hey.
Yep. Eight years later and I could only utter a monosyllable.
Height of my mother-fucking unbrilliance.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head as she trotted past me. Over her shoulder, she called out, “How’s the juggling working out for you now, Tyler?”
Oh, zinger, how you slay me.
The lady won.
The lady killed it.
“Great. I kept it up,” I shouted.
She gave herself away for a sliver of a second, and if I were in court, I’d have known then I had her. She let her gaze linger far too long. Giving me that patented you-were-in-my-fantasies-last-night look I knew so well, her eyes roaming down my face, my chest, and yeah, there, right fucking there, to her favorite part.
She loved that part.
But this wasn’t a courtroom battle.
Because when she cast her pretty brown eyes to my niece, I saw Delaney adding up the years and computing possibilities. “Looks like you sure did,” she said, deadpan all the way.
She snapped her gaze from me, zeroed in on the path in front of her, and sprinted.
With her friends and the dogs flanking her, she tore past and left me in the dust with my balls, my jaw, and my composure lying in the dirt at my feet.
To say I’d been thinking of her every day for the last eight years would be a lie. To say I’d gone those eight years without ever once thinking of her would be an even bigger fib.
But I sure as hell didn’t expect to run into her one fine Sunday morning in the park. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t ready. And my first thought was to catch up and explain that I hadn’t ditched her to have a kid. Closing the distance would have been easy. I can run like the wind. I can put one foot in front of the other and hoof it. But I had my favorite person with me, and no way was I going to drag Carly in a chase after a girl I once loved like the sun.
Still, I tried.
I grabbed Carly’s hand and yelled. “Delaney!”
She didn’t even turn around, and soon she was a speck rounding the bend.
I suppose, in retrospect, the last words out of my mouth when I dumped her shouldn’t have been, “It’s too hard to juggle classes and you.”
Her Prologue
I’m cursed.
There’s no other explanation for this thing that happens to me every time I get close.
I’m not talking about horseshoes close, either.
I mean every single time I take the rabbit out for a ride.
The bunny makes it clear it needs a certain stallion to get over the hump.
Do bunnies even like horses?
I don’t know, but it pisses me off that my traitorous body seems to need one man, and one man only, to fly off the cliff.
I don’t ask for this kind of sexual haunting. Hell, I don’t even believe in ghosts. But the ghost of boyfriends past has been inhabiting my fantasies for years. I try like hell to rely on Henry Cavill, Chris Hemsworth, or Michael Fassbender. I mean, really. Michael Fassbender. And we all know what he’s packing.
But nope.
My brain won’t bend to his Fass.
I’ve learned to stop fighting it. I just go with it when my ex pops into my solo flights. I grit my teeth and bear it, and let him join Bunny to take me to the magic land. Then I turn off the pink toy, tuck it into the drawer, and drift asleep, satisfied, but also not.
That’s been my life for the last year and a half. The biggest and littlest Os come with double-A assistance. So Bunny and I have gotten a lot closer. Sometimes, we make it a double.
And in the mornings, I pretend I didn’t get off to Tyler Fucking Nichols.
That man.
That cocky jerk who broke my heart.
But even if he inhabits my naughty imagination, I do take some solace in knowing I’m over Tyler. I’m so over the way he ended things eight years ago. I’ve moved on, thank you very much. This is purely a physical possession, nothing more. Hell, it’s not really a surprise that my mind wanders to his particular talents, given the way he owned my body when we were younger. But I sure do wish he’d stop crashing my BYOB— that’s bring your own batteries—parties.
One Sunday morning, I stumbled upon the key to exorcising him.
Here’s how it all went down.
I popped out of bed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and tugged on my running shorts.
A little later, I met up with my good friends Penny and Nicole at the entrance to Central Park, and we began our training run for a 10K race we’re doing in a few weeks. I figured it would be just another morning jog, followed by a plate of two eggs, any style, with a strong mug of green tea at my favorite sidewalk café, The Charming Breakfast Spot.
Instead, I saw him.
Juggling.
Of all things, the man was juggling.
The spitting image of irony.
At the edge of the grass by the running path, he spun five objects in an oblong blur with the most adorable little brown-haired girl by his side. Who looked just like him.
And in the blink of an eye, I seethed.
I ached.
As I ran, I broiled. I went from zero to sixty miles per hour of hurt in mere seconds. All I could think was the bastard had found a way to juggle in the end. I couldn’t believe he’d moved on so easily after me. And he didn’t just rebound to another girlfriend. He leveled all the way up to fatherhood.
The worst part? The absolutely, completely, horrifically unfair part
? He was still so goddamn handsome, with that chestnut hair I wanted to run my hands through, that square jawline I could have touched all night, those lips made for kissing me everywhere.
In last night’s unbidden appearance in my mind, he sure as hell had. He’d been my first in that department; he was still the best.
At that, and at everything.
Look, any woman who says she doesn’t rate her lovers is a liar. She might not have a whiteboard with a numbered list or a diary with rankings. But we all know who rocked our world and claimed our bodies.
He was the one for me. Top of the list. End of the line.
But no more.
Tonight, I’d kick him out of my head, no matter what it took.
“Look,” I hissed to my girls. “It’s Tyler ‘the Juggler’ Nichols.”
Penny’s amber eyes went round as moons as her mouth fell open. She jerked her head to Tyler. “Holy smokes, he is hot,” she whispered, as she ran with her little Chihuahua trotting beside her.
I could have tripped her for that. But I loved her too much, and her little dog, too.
“He’s not hot,” I muttered, as I breathed hard from our pace.
But Tyler Nichols was indeed a specimen, just like he’d been when we were in college. From the day we met in an advanced poli-sci seminar, the man hooked me, he lined me, he sinkered me. He was my best friend, my boyfriend, my most fearsome competitor, my greatest ally, and my first love.
Then he broke my heart, and a few weeks after that, my ego shattered when he finished me off at a debate tournament.
That was devastating . . . and yet, at the same time, it wasn’t. But before I could linger on the ways my future shifted during the tumultuous end of my senior year of college, the present shifted, too. When Tyler opened his eyes and met mine, the expression in his was priceless. He blinked, then recognition flashed in those dark-brown irises.