BLURB
Who accidentally has a one-night stand with her alumni band director?
Yep. Me.
I know what you’re thinking. Whoops! I slipped on some valve oil and accidentally landed on his baton during a rousing chorus of Stars and Stripes Forever.
That’s not quite how it went.
But the alumni band director is really, really skilled with that baton, if you know what I mean.
So what am I supposed to do now, as I walk into the morning’s rehearsal — three feet from the podium because of course I play piccolo — and find the guy I ghosted on this morning … right there, smiling at me like he remembers exactly what tempo I prefer?
He’s perfect. Too perfect.
He’s a widowed dad of two adorable little kids that — oh, by the way — he forgot to mention.
But I also haven’t mentioned the seventeen-year-old I live with, either. He’s not my boyfriend. I’m his guardian. He’s autistic and non-speaking, and he’s been my whole world since I was nineteen.
I want Mr. Band Director. He wants me. Nothing — not the secrecy, not the awkwardness, not the 500 miles between his life and mine — will make this chemistry stop.
Except for three pesky little things: the secrets we’re hiding from each other. Three very human secrets.
I’ve never felt so seen before. He gets me. I get him. But we’re buried in responsibilities and loyalties that get in the way. When I’m with him, I can play. Really play.
And not just music.
He can’t quit his job and move his kids to be close to me. I can’t uproot a fragile teen who needs round-the-clock care and is still mourning his parents. The odds are stacked against us.
But who ever let that get in the way of love?
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EXCERPT
There are naked boobies in my bed, and they are not my wife’s.
What have I done?
My body goes cold and hot, skin pulsing against the sheets, blood pooled in morning wood. Wood that rests against my not-wife’s thigh. My eyes widen. My beard itches around my lips, lips that feel raw, my tongue a bit overused at the tip, like I just had sex with –
I cheated on my wife.
I cheated on my wife.
My beautiful, amazing wife who tells me she loves me ten times a day. Who laughs at my stupid music jokes. Who smiles like she’s actually interested in my high school band stories. Who —
Told. Laughed. Smiled.
Past tense, Jared. Two years, two months, four days of past tense.
— is dead.
Stacey’s dead. Right. Damn it.
I close my eyes, jaw tight, inhaling slowly, my nose cold inside, the physicality of it breaking through panic. The unreality of her death still shatters my sleepy self every morning like a car alarm I can’t fully disable, one blissful second of not-knowing, then the loop of grief.
That sour taste. The shock. The anger. The pain, physical and emotional.
Stacey is dead.
Which means I’m not cheating. I’m just in a hotel room with a very naked, incredibly alluring woman who isn’t my wife.
So then who the hell is this in my arms?
She’s cute. Warm. Soft.
So soft.
The arm Ms. Not-Wife is sleeping on went numb in my sleep. I haven’t moved it one millimeter, shoulder locked, neck doing that isometric thing as her weight presses into my bicep. It should be uncomfortable. It isn’t, and somewhere in sleep my hand found her arm and started stroking it. I just realized it’s doing this. My hand likes her.
My cock sure does, too.
I really like the softness. Naked softness takes the liking up several notches.
Another clue this isn’t my wife: I’m on the bathroom side of the bed.
Ms. Not-Wife’s hair is blonde and straight, spread across my arm. Stacey’s was darker, curly, and Stacey had to pee constantly, especially after giving birth to our oldest, Molly. Every apartment, every house, every hotel, every guest room, every beach rental for nineteen years: Stacey got the bathroom side.
The woman in my bed is not Stacey.
The HVAC unit hums on an E-flat that’s four cents flat. Not concert E-flat. An E-flat that vibrates like it’s committing a felony against freon. It is the most passive-aggressive sound in Indiana, and that’s saying a lot, because have you ever gone to a church picnic in this state? Those ladies are lowkey brutal.
The print above the bed is a seashore painting, a Thomas Kincade knockoff, something a lifelong southern Indiana resident thought would evoke Cape Cod but instead makes me think Dungeons and Dragons on acid. It goes with the burnt-orange carpeting somehow. I half expect a Jello-O egg mold as part of the continental breakfast downstairs in the bar where I picked up… this woman.
I actually approached a woman at a hotel bar, and she chose to sleep with me.
Me.
Not-Wife’s hand is on my chest. She has short nails, no polish, the thumb hooked into the dip below my collarbone like she put it there on purpose. Her thumb knows what it’s doing, which is more than I can say for the rest of me. Her ribcage moves into my ribcage every four or five seconds and back out, long even breathing so constant I’ve started matching it without meaning to.
Waking her up means having to talk, and I don’t know what you say after you pick up a woman in a hotel bar and now you’re both naked under the sheets, vulnerable and freaking out a little, yet liking it.
A lot.
Not-Wife smells like vanilla and sex and the chemical-linen scent of every business hotel pillowcase put into circulation since 1994. The bar lighting was bad last night, so I’m seeing things this morning I couldn’t see then: a mole on her cheek. Long dark lashes against it. A dimple at the corner of her mouth that’s there even when she’s not smiling.
She’s gorgeous.
Morning-gorgeous, unadulterated. Her face was not-yet-defined last night, just a woman who was blonde and smiling under bad bar lighting. She has lips I kissed last night, a tongue that danced with mine and tasted so good, and her breasts are smashed against my side like little pets curled up, seeking warmth.
I have forgotten how nice this is.
A person breathing into your neck. A warm softness against your body. Your bare skin against theirs. I took this for granted for too many years, and once it was gone I felt the absence like a phantom limb.
Author Info
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Julia Kent writes romantic comedy with an edge. Since 2013, she has sold more than 2.5 million books, with 5 New York Times bestsellers and more than 23 appearances on the USA Today bestseller list. Her books have been translated into French, German, Dutch, and Italian, with more titles releasing in the future.
From single dads to cinnamon roll heroes to new adult rock stars, Julia finds a sensual, goofy joy in every contemporary romance she writes. Unlike Shannon from Shopping for a Billionaire, she did not meet her husband after dropping her phone in a men's room toilet (and he isn't a billionaire she met in a romantic comedy).
She lives in New England with her husband, three children, and a Havanese dog named Walter. She is the only person in the household with the gene required to change empty toilet paper rolls (Walter gets a pass).
She loves to hear from her readers by email at julia@jkentauthor.com, on Twitter @jkentauthor, on Facebook at @jkentauthor, and on Instagram @jkentauthor. Visit her at http://jkentauthor.com
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