An Excerpt of Sweet Carolina by Lissa Matthews

I want to share a new author I just found recently!!

She is amazing... and so is her new book!!!

I am happy to say that I can share with you an excerpt of the book ~ But I am warning you.....

you WILL need a big ol'glass of ICE COLD water to read this...

It is set to come out April 27th!!!

“Sweet Caroline” by Lissa Matthews

Genre: Contemporary Romance, Red Hots!

ISBN: 978-1-60928-029-1
Length: Novella
Price: 3.50
Publication Date: April 27, 2010
Cover art by Angie Waters
 
The second time around is even sweeter…with cherries on top.

Blue Jeans and Hard Hats, Book 1

Buck doesn’t do personal projects. Until he runs into a woman wandering the aisles of the local home-improvement store, looking lost and confused. Just the way this fantasy looks at him nearly buckles his knees. In a hot second, the successful owner of a contracting company becomes a simple handyman, ready and willing to get as personal as the lady will allow.
Since her less-than-golden marriage to the local golden boy ended, Caroline’s declaration of independence includes her own business, road trips…and nipple piercings. Now it’s time to cut the last tie to her old life, but the house needs some work before she can unload it and move to her dream cabin in the mountains. Hard as it is to admit, she needs a little help.
Over the next few months, he shows her his toys, like hammers and drills, and she shows him hers—like floggers and paddles. And their attraction is the tinder that could send Caroline’s plans for an independent life up in flames…

 I obtained all of this information  from Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

Sweet Caroline
Copyright © 2010 Lissa Matthews
All rights reserved — a Samhain Publishing, Ltd. publication

Caroline’s hands were still shaking as she held onto the steering wheel so tight her knuckles were ghostly white. She couldn’t believe she’d been so forward with Buck, especially kissing him, telling him she wanted him, liked him wanting her, but… He’d been aroused. Had she pushed him too much though? Had she been too forward?

Seeing him in the store surprised her, but when she heard his voice, the amused interest in it, saw his smile, something happened inside her. Her lust for the handyman took over and she showed him what he wanted to see. He wanted to know what she liked, and she was more than willing to oblige. She’d harbored the fantasy of wanting him to see her as a forty-year-old woman who had life and hunger and freedom to be herself and not the forty-year-old woman whose husband emotionally and physically left her long before she’d ever asked him to move out. It had taken a lot of courage, but then a lot of what she had done over the last year and especially over the last few months had taken more courage than she knew she possessed. Showing Buck what kind of sex toys she liked wasn’t really such a big deal. If it ended up that he wasn’t interested, well, that was okay. It at least showed her she could put herself out there again and express herself.

Pulling into her driveway, she had to admit to being a bit relieved he hadn’t beaten her back. She’d made a few more stops before heading home and figured he’d had some errands of his own. He said he’d be back this afternoon, and she didn’t doubt him. There was a job to do, and even if a personal line had been crossed in the adult store, he’d finish the work on her house.

She pressed the button on the garage door opener and drove in. She grabbed her purse and her purchases and exited the car. Leaning against the warm metal, she closed her eyes, still thinking of Buck. The arousal from earlier in the morning when she’d taken coffee to him out at the shed combined with the arousal from the adult store thrummed through her. She took a deep, shaky breath and let it out slowly. What’s done was done, and it was time to get to work and stop thinking about it for a while.

“Yeah, you go ahead and try that,” she muttered to herself, pushing away from the car in the direction of the door to the house. Straight into her home office, she shrugged out of her hoodie and tossed it and her purse into the corner before setting the bag from the yarn store on her worktable. She had an order to fill for a crochet basket for a newly pregnant woman. The mother of the mom-to-be ordered the theme basket as a birthday gift, and Caroline needed to get it out in the mail first thing tomorrow.

She pulled a set of three boxes with a pale green stripe pattern from the top shelf of the closet. In the bottom box went a spiral bound crochet patterns for baby book and three skeins of hand-dyed yarn—baby green, baby yellow and a variegated purple ranging from dark violet to very light lavender. Being they didn’t know what sex the baby would be, the mother’d requested colors other than pink or blue. In the middle box she put crochet needles, handcrafted and personalized with the name of the recipient. The mother’d requested that, also saying she had been given needles with her name engraved on them. It seemed to be a tradition passed down from mother to daughter during the first pregnancy.

The top box would contain a pair of white baby booties, crocheted by Caroline herself. Throughout the package, were little hidden gifts—a crochet charm, a little book about being a first time mom, a baby duck stuffed animal, even packets of decaf herbal teas and a small journal.

Caroline smiled. She loved the baby ducks. They were her signature of sorts, her extra special touch. For every gift she put together, there was always a baby duck.

She went to the chest of drawers on the opposite wall from her table and in the top drawer, rifled through the ribbons. She had a pretty purple ribbon with very thin green and brown stripes somewhere. It would be perfect for the boxes, but damn if she knew where it was. She closed the drawer and opened the second one. Nope, still nothing. Surely it wouldn’t be in the third one, that’s where she kept…other things, but she looked anyway.

“What are you looking for?”

Caroline slammed the drawer shut and turned her head at the voice in the doorway. Buck. She hadn’t heard him drive up, hadn’t heard him come in the house. “Hi. How long have you been standing there?”

“Since you started looking through the first drawer and mumbling to yourself.”

“Oh.” She stood from her crouching position. “I’m looking for a ribbon.”

“To be tied up with?”

She grinned. She didn’t mean to. It just happened. She should have been shocked instead, right? Well, maybe not, probably not, considering their earlier encounter, but it seemed her uncertainty when she was driving home of having maybe pushed went right out the window when she was face to face with him.

It had always been the other way around with other men, but with Buck, from the first time they met, she was comfortable with him. It didn’t hurt that he looked like he wanted to devour her at times. And she had to remind herself that Buck wasn’t a lover chosen for her by another man, by Derek. He was just a man and maybe they were choosing each other.

“Well no, but now that you mention it…” She winked at him and was rewarded with heat flaring in his eyes and a smile spreading over his mouth.

“I’ll keep that in mind. I brought the stuff I needed for fixing the deck out back and the new screen door. I’ll be working on it tomorrow.”

“Okay. Are you leaving for today? I mean, you could have picked up what you needed tomorrow instead of coming back now.”

“No, I’m not leaving today. But I am done working outside. I have some things in the house I need to do.”

“Sure, okay.” Arousal was back full force, and her blood was hot. He was going to be in the house working. She’d be able to hear him, probably even see him when she left her office. It was time to honestly admit how much she wanted him, and it wasn’t just a little bit. No, it was a whole hell of a lot.

She turned away, intent on going back to work. She put her hands on her hips and gazed around the room. The ribbon had to be there somewhere. She—

Her thoughts were interrupted by his voice again, though this time from right behind her, his breath on her neck, his body a solid wall at her back.

“You didn’t ask what I’m going to be doing in the house.”

“Oh. Was I supposed to?” She really didn’t care what he was going to do. She just liked the idea of him being nearby. She was coming to like that way too much.

“Yes, you were.”

“Okay. Well, what are you going to do?”

His lips feathered kisses at her ear. “You. I’m going to do you.”
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