Mika Lane's Blog - Posts Tagged "excerpt"

Her Dirty Mafia: A Men at Work Romance
An Excerpt

“You’re hired.”

Wait? What?

Hired? I’m hired?

Mr. Domenico Bonetti of BCL Enterprises, whose dark gaze drilled me so intensely that I had to wipe a dab of sweat from my temple, had just offered me a job.

This was the same man I’d only just met, and spoken with for ten minutes.

Actually, not even ten minutes.

And to be honest, I wouldn’t even say he’d exactly offered me the job. He just told me I was hired, like it was a foregone conclusion I’d show up there the next day at nine a.m., coffee in hand, hoping I didn’t have a run in my panty hose.

“Excuse me, Mr. Bonetti?”

I was sure I’d misheard. No one got a job this way.

Unless that was how they did things in Las Vegas. I mean, it was a pretty strange place.

My presumptive new boss, Mr. Bonetti, was likely called Mr. Hottie behind his back by his female employees. I knew the type. Devastatingly handsome. Women at his feet. He might wear blue jeans to the office to show he was a ‘cool’ guy, but he topped them with custom cut dress shirts with monogrammed cuffs barely hiding an obscenely expensive watch.

I’d bet money he got his hair trimmed at one of those fancy hipster barbers who charge guys a hundred dollars plus for a fifteen-minute trim.

I checked out his nails, expecting to see the clichéd man manicure.

They were perfect. Of course.

It wasn’t like I was some sort of expert on men. I came from a podunk town in West Virginia where most of the men didn’t even trim their nose hair.

But Len did. When we’d first met, I’d thought he was one in a million. A smart, funny guy who’d just blown into town, capturing the attention of every female for miles. He was well-groomed and well-dressed—by West Virginia standards, anyway—and swept me off my feet.

For some reason, out of all the women in town, he zeroed in on me. And I ate it up. In all my twenty-six years, I’d never had someone pursue me like he did. Actually, I’d not really had anyone pursue me at all.

Sure, I’d had the infrequent date to play darts at the local bar, and the occasional attempt at casual sex, but nothing ever held my interest for long. I had my sights set on getting the hell out of town at my first opportunity.

And Len wanted to come with me.

What a shitshow that turned out to be.

Mr. Bonetti cleared his throat to get my attention. “Miss Simmons, I just said you’re hired. For the PA job.”

Okay. I had heard him right.

I knew that ‘PA’ meant personal assistant, thanks to good old Google. But what I didn’t know, and what I planned to keep from Mister Hottie, was that I had no idea what a PA was. Or what a PA did.

When I’d arrived for my interview-that-was-not-an-interview, an impossibly sexy receptionist in a tight dress showed me to Mr. Bonetti’s office. That is, after she’d looked me up and down with a sneer.

Thanks, lady.

Mr. Bonetti and his partners ran a hotel and casino and some other businesses I supposed I’d hear about at some point. Their offices were reached from the side of the hotel via a separate entrance from where the guests came and went. But the huge glass window behind him overlooked the hotel atrium. Good way to keep an eye on things.

And because his office sprawled the width of the building, the windows on the other side looked across Vegas to the mountains, as far as the eye could see.

There was so much to look at, I didn’t see how he got anything done.

He sat behind a massive glass and chrome desk with oversized computer screens on either side, of course, because that’s what guys like him did, right?

Cliché number two.

The middle of his desk was empty, save for a few papers and things, so he could see between the two monitors to the person sitting opposite. In this case, that was me. So friendly.

I’d taken the seat the receptionist had pointed to before she’d floated from the room, sinking my ass so far into some modern creation I didn’t know how I’d get back out of it.

“Cool chair,” I said, to cover my clumsiness.

“It’s an Eames. An original.”

Did everyone know what an Eames was, because I didn’t.

But I smiled and nodded like I did.

“So Miss Simmons, what brings you to Vegas?”

I was dreading this question. It wasn’t like I could tell him that I’d come to get away from a creep boyfriend, who’d found me here anyway. Or that I should have just stayed in my shitty small town because what was the point in running away if what you’re running away from just follows you?

I smiled brightly. “I wanted something new. A fresh start.”

Now I was a cliché.

And naturally, he looked at me like I was full of shit. But he was polite enough to cover it. “Yes. I can relate. Sometimes you just need… a new point of view.”

We were connecting. Cool.

The interview, such as it was, continued like that—vague questions from him and vague answers from me—until he’d wrapped things up by telling me I had the job.

I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t even know what the job was. But a job was a job, and I needed one. Badly.

He knew nothing about my employment history. Didn’t seem to care. Which was a good thing. If he had, he’d never have hired me.

That’s how it goes when you have a police record.

Yup, I had a police record.

I’d stolen from my previous employer, a hardware store owned by the family I’d grown up next door to.

We’d been neighbors and friends. Until I stole from them.

Len had needed a seventy-dollar drill to fix the front steps of the house my sister and I had inherited from our aunt. Naturally, we didn’t have seventy extra dollars for it. But Len had a solution. Just bring one home.

Take it. Nothing will happen.

Um, yeah. Thanks.

I felt like shit stealing from some of the nicest people I’d ever known and even as I stuffed it into my backpack, I vowed to find a way to pay them back. It was a terrible thing I did, but I told myself it was really just a loan against future paychecks.

I might even bring it back when we were done with it.

I made my move at closing time. There were no cameras or other security in the back of the store. I thought I was in the clear. But as luck would have it, I got just outside the door when the manager and his son grabbed me and pulled me back inside. They not only fired my ass, but they also called the police.

Our steps never got fixed.

But mister good-looking behind his big, Las Vegas desk didn’t seem to give a crap about what I may or may not have done that day. Or any other day of my life. Thank god.

The shame of stealing from them was overwhelming, and I can guess the owners didn’t feel too great about the way I’d betrayed them. They’d given me an opportunity that I’d thrown back in their faces.

A week later, when they’d dropped the charges, I bought a bus ticket to Vegas. I got a ride to the station while Len was out of the house and called my sister, who was off at college.

I didn’t need a boyfriend who sat around the house and asked me to steal shit he couldn’t afford.

But that wasn’t the end of my dumb mistakes.

I’d told a girlfriend where I’d landed in Vegas. Len followed me by a few days, having driven his old Toyota.

He told me he had plans. He was going to make it big, playing poker.

He played a lot with his buddies and among them, he was usually the winner.

But a small town poker player does not a Vegas winner make. He borrowed against his credit card for the cash to get started.

And lost it just as fast.


Grab Her Dirty Mafia on preorder for a reduced price (available January 21) here.

The Vegas mafia’s hottest men. Dangerous and demanding. They dragged me right into their world and into their beds.

I wasn’t looking for the sexiest mob guys in Vegas.
They found me.
One is quiet. Observant. His gaze burns my soul. His touch sears everything else.
The other is explosive and volatile. So, I stayed out of his way. Until I couldn’t.
The last seemed so normal. But he had a sinful, filthy mind. Especially when he thought of me.
I was new to town. Just needed a job.
And now, my life’s in danger.
I could run. But I don’t want to.
Not that I could, anyway. They’d never let me.


Darlings...
Yes! I am so happy to say Her Dirty Mafia is out in the wild and readers are all over it. Seriously, this book has it all—who doesn't love some sexy criminal bad boy mafia dudes who meet one woman they can't live without??
Oh, and did you miss chapter one, sent earlier this week? Grab it here.

Download it here: Her Dirty Mafia
Let me know what you think!

In other news, are you an audio lover? There's a new group called Audiobook Angels that looks great. Check it out here.

Kisses!
Mika

LIVE TODAY!
It's here! #8 in the Men at Work Collection, Her Dirty Mountain Men delivers all the goods:

✔️3 Burly alpha dudes
✔️Fish out of water heroine
✔️Second chance love
✔️Countless sexy times
✔️A money pit fixer-upper

Check out chapter 1:

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the mountains. I just didn’t do mountains.

They were pretty and all, but also dirty, and spider-y, and worst of all, a long way from the city.

But there I was, heading up Deep Water Mountain, the highest peak in the state, in my struggling little VW Bug. I knew I should have bought the turbo model.

I also should have filled up on gas before I’d left the main road.

But it was all good. I hadn’t been to the mountain to visit my Uncle Bo since I was a kid, but I did recall it wasn’t all that isolated. There were gas stations and stores all over.

Right?

But proof that my memory might not be what I thought it was, the ‘low fuel’ warning on my dash had been screaming for fifteen minutes. Initially, I’d been sure a gas station would be right around the corner, but as I moved through the mountain’s switch-back roads and rounded one empty corner after another, I got nervous.

Real nervous.

And to make matters worse, I’d poorly estimated how fast my car would go through the remaining gas it had. Climbing the mountains in it sucked up gas faster than in the city, where the roads were pretty much flat.

My lousy calculations hadn’t taken that into account.

And now I had a problem.

The Bug, which had been sputtering for the last minute or so, gasped one last time, lost power, and finally died. I had enough momentum to pull over onto a skimpy gravel shoulder, but on the narrow mountain road, there wasn’t much room. I was right in the way of traffic. If there were any traffic, that was.

Well, shit.

I looked ahead, then behind me, and all I could see was an endless tunnel of trees that disappeared into the far reaches of my view.

Great. Just great.

I’d run out of fucking gas in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Because I was a fucking idiot.

And my cell phone had no signal because that’s exactly how my day was going. Another reason to dislike the mountains—unreliable cell service. It was the freaking twenty-first century. Why couldn’t cell phones work everywhere?

I pounded on the horn, not because anyone would hear me but because it felt good to have a grown-up temper tantrum. There were only so many options when you were stuck inside a car.

I could see the news story now.

Woman found dead in her VW Bug on a remote road on Deep Water Mountain.

A young life cut short by poor planning.

I hadn’t been to the mountain since I was a kid of maybe ten or so. I couldn’t be sure. But I did remember being enchanted by Uncle Bo, his cabin, and the woods that surrounded it.

Of course, that was back before I had issues with any place not within a ten-mile radius of civilization.

And now Uncle Bo’s place was mine. Not sure yet whether that was a good thing or bad.

The rumble of a truck pulling up startled the shit out of me. The driver pulled over, and in my rear-view mirror, I watched him approach my car in a rugged I chop wood sort of way.

I double-checked that my doors were locked and grabbed the pepper spray out of my purse just as he rapped his knuckles on the passenger side window.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice muffled through the closed window.

Holy crap. When did they start making mountain men so hot? Not that I’d ever known any for comparison. But still.

I opened the passenger window about two inches.

“Hello. I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

I returned to my phone, scrolling intently, as if I were about to make contact with another human who would be able to get me out of my shitty situation.

Yeah, right.

But in spite of my dismissiveness, he stayed there, looking in my window.

I sneaked a glance and saw him rubbing his face and frowning. He looked up and down the road.

And that’s when I realized I was probably about to die.

I tucked the pepper spray up my sleeve with shaking hands. It would be only a matter of seconds before he busted through my window with a giant axe or some such, unlocked the door, and dragged me off to wherever crazies living in the mountains took their victims.

Oh, why hadn’t I just stayed home? I didn’t need to see the little cabin Uncle Bo had left me in his will. It wasn’t like I was going to live there, or even visit aside from this one trip to check it out and meet with a real estate agent. I could have handled everything over the phone without a single trip to the mountains.

But no. I had to see it for myself. Figure out how much money I’d pocket after its sale.

Because I had plans. I knew the sale of the cabin would not be a windfall of staggering amounts of cash, but it had to be some sort of tidy sum—enough to help me buy a nice condo in an apartment complex with a pool and pretty landscaping.

Was that too much to ask? To get out of my crummy little rental?

But before I could even get started, here I was, the perfect subject for one of those crime shows my mother watched every night.

What a way to be remembered. My mother would watch a melodramatic TV ‘documentary’ about how her only daughter had met her untimely end. It was one thing to die in my car of starvation and dehydration, but another altogether to be taken by a murderous maniac.

My presumed abductor knocked at the window again, this time leaning down enough that I could see his entire face.

His handsome ruggedness was scary and brutish, accented by a shaved head, heavy brow, and facial scruff.

“Well, okay,” he said through the small window opening. “If you’re sure you’re all right, I’ll be on my way. But be careful. The shoulder here is narrow and you’re half parked in the road. Not a lot of cars come by these parts and I’d hate for someone to plow right into you.”

I looked back at my phone. My mother always said not to stare at scary people. “Okay. Thanks. See ya.” I waved.

In my mirror, I watched him return to his truck, his gait heavy and confident. He must have been over six feet tall and with his plaid flannel shirt blowing in the wind, a nicely muscular ass appeared to be underneath his blue jeans.

Gross. Was I crushing on a mad man?

He got behind the wheel, looked at his watch, and pulled back out onto the road.

“Wait!” I screamed, jumping out of the VW and right into his path.

His brakes squealed and even though the truck windows were closed, I heard him swear.

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

I ran to his window, which he slowly opened.

Who was the crazy now?

“Hi, I'm so sorry. But I do need help. I’m out of gas,” I blurted, wringing my hands.

He scowled and rolled his window down the rest of the way. “Miss, I almost ran you down with my truck.”

I stood on my toes, the truck was so high. “Yeah, that was stupid. I’m sorry.”

His knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel, and he looked straight ahead, avoiding my pleading gaze.

Of course, I could make him understand. “I just… I just am not familiar with this area, and was afraid. You know. Of you.”

His eyebrows rose and he looked back at me. “Okay. You’re out of gas?”

I fluffed my hair and gave him my best smile. “Yeah, can you believe it?” I giggled.

He looked at me like he could easily believe it. And that he thought I was a nutcase. Couldn’t really blame him.

First, he offered help and I sent him packing.

Then, I changed my mind and jumped in front of his moving truck.

And last, I’d admitted to running out of gas in the middle of freaking nowhere.

He sighed and nodded. “All right. Let me pull over.”

I stepped out of the way while he maneuvered the truck back to the side of the road.

This time when he got out, he kept a safe distance, probably assessing my mental state. “How’d you run out of gas, anyway? This place is pretty desolate. You didn’t see the signs saying ‘no more gas for fifty miles?’” He’d used finger quotes to emphasize his point, in case I had missed it.

Which I hadn’t.

And what signs was he talking about anyway? I didn’t see any freaking signs.

“I must have missed them,” I said sheepishly. “I thought for sure there’d be a gas station around the corner, but I kept driving and driving and never came across one.”

“That's because there aren’t any.” He reached into the cab of his truck and pulled out a gas can.

Ohthankgod.

“There used to be.”

His head whipped in my direction. “I thought you said you weren’t familiar with the area.”

Shit. I did say that.

“I visited here when I was a kid. Long time ago. And I could swear there were gas stations.”

He opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and headed to my gas tank, shaking his head.

No need to tell him my whole story. He was kind enough to help, but when it came down to it, I still didn’t know him from a hole in the wall.

Even if he were freaking gorgeous and saved me with his can of gas.

“How long you up here for?”

Damn. I knew there would be questions.

“Oh, just a quick trip,” I said breezily.

He screwed the gas cap back in. “Where you staying? You got a house up here?”

Shit, shit, shit.

“Oh, over at the motel.”

He frowned. “What motel?”

“Um. The new one.” I pointed in some random direction. Like that would throw him off.

“There’s no new motel.”

I nodded. “Yes. There is. It might be so new you don’t know about it.”

He shook his head at me. “Um, okay. I gave you a couple gallons. Plenty to get to a gas station safely. Now can you start your car, please?”

I jumped behind the wheel and my baby started right up. Thank god.

He looked satisfied. “All right. You’re good to go. But do me a favor. Don’t come up here again with less than a quarter tank of gas.”

Seriously. The next person who stopped to help might not be as nice.

Or as good looking.

I nodded. “You’re right. Great advice.”

He stood there like he wanted to chat.

“Oh my god. Where are my manners?” I reached in my purse and pulled out a twenty, which I thrust at him. “Will this cover it?”

He waved his hand at me. “You don’t have to pay me. Please be more careful next time.”

He continued standing there. Was I missing something?

I thrust the money at him again. “Then take this as a tip. I mean, you work for a gas station, right? Isn’t that why you have gas?”

The corner of his mouth turned up, but I wouldn’t call it a smile. “No. I do not work at a gas station. And thank you for the offer, but I'm good.”

Turning, he headed for his car, and without looking back, he hit the road.

Read more of Her Dirty Mountain Men .


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Check out this naughty sneak peek and grab it on preorder at a reduce price!


Have a great week!
xoxox
Mika

“Hey. Excuse me. You need to leave now.”

He stirred, exhaled a little snore, and turned over.

In my bed. Which he needed to get out of. Immediately.

So, I poked him. Not as hard as I wanted to, but it worked. He grunted and opened an eye, slowly pushing himself up on one elbow, looking around the room—my room—like he wasn’t sure where he was.

My hook-up from the night before peered at me, where I stood hovering in my bathrobe, like he expected me to hand him a cup of coffee.

Don’t think so.

Check out this naughty excerpt and learn more about Her Dirty Detectives.




Welcome to the Reverse Harem Reader Book Fair, this month featuring Contemporary romance novels. Find some tasty new treats, and enjoy!

Chapter One, A Naughty Lesson
It was true.
People really did have sex in libraries.
Couldn’t they just wait to get back to their dorm rooms?
What if they got something on the books? Or the tables? Or the chairs?
Or the walls?
I slowed my cart—not slow enough to appear as if I cared, but slow enough to get an earful— and pretended to reshelve the books piled on it.
And an earful, I got. Holy shit.
But I figured, if you’re going to have sex in a campus library, the reference floor—where I was working that day—was probably as good a place as any, if not better. With every college student’s ability to do so much research online these days, the reference floor was becoming a sad relic of the past, smelling of dusty old books no longer lovingly paged through in the quest for scholarly advancement. I seldom visited it, there were so few books that needed reshelving there, but when I did, it was like entering a morgue. Cold, airless, dark, and dead silent.
That was, unless someone had taken the opportunity to seize on the privacy of the place and play hide the sausage. Or whatever they were doing.
Somebody—or somebodies—were getting it on out of sight, down at the end of a towering row of bookshelves, one you probably wouldn’t wander down unless you were looking for something highly specialized, or had a thing for the creepy, poorly-lit stacks of the campus library.

Chapter one continues here…