Best Man...with Benefits. Nancy Warren
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May the best man sin...
Lauren Sanger is practically the perfect maid of honor, except for one tiny flaw. She hates the best man. Jackson Monaghan is beyond hot—his body is the stuff of sexy lady dreams—but he’s just such a jerk. So when a prank lands them in the same bed, Lauren should have flipped out...instead of having the best sex of her life with the best man!
Jackson can’t figure out how two people with anti-chemistry during the day can have such a wickedly hot sexual chemistry at night. Worse still, he wants more. Enough to dare Lauren into doing the last thing she should be doing—him. But friends with benefits is one thing...enemies with benefits is quite another.
He found himself touching warm, soft female skin...
What?
Oh, she smelled good.
Jackson eased closer. The curving line of her shoulder captivated him. He couldn’t resist—he put his lips where her shoulder met her throat. A pulse beat there, slow and steady. His hand moved downward to capture her breast.
And then she made a sound like a purr and turned to him.
He raised his head to look at her more carefully in the darkness of the hotel room and at the same time she opened her eyes.
His heart stopped. Her eyes opened wide.
Holy hell...
He knew this woman’s name perfectly. And most of the time wished he didn’t.
What was Lauren doing in his bed?
If you’ve been to the famous Hotel del Coronado near San Diego, then Hotel Messina might seem a little familiar. I love that part of the world. When I dreamed up my latest Mills & Boon Blaze I was living in Southern California, so it was natural to incorporate my favorite places, including Napa and San Francisco.
When I thought about plot, I drew on the best plotter of them all, Shakespeare. This is my riff on Much Ado About Nothing, with the cynical couple who banter and snipe at each other, but are deep down crazy about each other, and the second couple, the ones who are in love with their ideal vision of love, but the minute the going gets tough they start to fall apart. Naturally, this is a modern and much sexier tale, but I owe William for the initial inspiration.
As always, I love to hear from readers. Please come visit me on the web at nancywarren.net.
Happy Reading!
Nancy Warren
Best Man...with Benefits
USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR
Nancy Warren
USA TODAY bestselling author NANCY WARREN lives in the Pacific Northwest, where her hobbies include skiing, hiking and snowshoeing. She’s the author of more than forty books and novellas for Mills & Boon and has won several awards. Visit her website at nancywarren.net.
For Elizabeth Jennings and the Matera Brainstormers.
Contents
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QUESTION: HOW DO you know when someone is truly your best friend? Answer: you love her enough to put up with her semi-douchy fiancé and his completely douchy best buddy.
Asked and answered, Lauren Sanger thought, as she sat on a private patio of Hotel Messina, the swish resort located on a small island off the California coast where, in a few hours, she’d be maid of honor in her best friend’s wedding.
Built at the turn of the century, Hotel Messina had housed royalty and A-list celebrities, and been the setting for movies and thousands of weddings.
Amy Ruehl had dreamed of getting married here since she and Lauren had first seen the hotel in a movie back when they were kids. Her parents could afford the outrageous expense, and all the guests had made the trek over to spend the night, celebrate Amy and Seth’s wedding, and then go back to their much more mundane lives.
Or maybe that was just Lauren.
The wedding would take place at four in the afternoon. That’s what it said on the thick vellum invitations, and with the military precision with which the wedding planner and hotel staff had worked this thing, that’s precisely when the ceremony would begin.
It was two now, and the bride and her maid of honor were taking a late lunch break. Their hair was done, makeup awaiting final touches, and their dresses were pressed and neatly hanging.
She and Amy already wore their fancy underwear beneath the thick hotel robes with the gold M logo on the breast pockets.
While they munched on salad and cold cuts and sipped wine, they enjoyed a spectacular view of the white sand beaches and summer blue water that surrounded the hotel. The weather was perfect. A June day without a cloud in the sky and waves that seemed to laugh as they hit the beach.
“Are you nervous?” she asked her best friend. They’d talked about their weddings a lot when they were young. Amy was a firm believer in fairy tales and happy endings. Lauren not so much, but she couldn’t be happier that her BFF’s dream was about to come true. Seth wouldn’t have been her choice, but Amy was crazy about him and that was all that mattered to Lauren.
Amy shook her head, a smile of pure happiness on her face. She always took everything in stride and didn’t