Title: Provocative
(White Lies #1)
Author: Lisa Renee Jones
Publication Date: April 18th, 2017
Genre: Contemporary Romance
A Note from the author:
Hi everyone!
I am BEYOND excited to introduce my WHITE LIES DUET! This is a sexy, intense, psychological thriller, that is provocative in every way, thus why I named book one: PROVOCATIVE. And since this series takes me back to my indie roots, the pricing is lower than my New York titles, and the release dates are close together.
Here are the details on the series:
- PROVOCATIVE, book one, will be out on April 18, 2017 and priced at $2.99 - includes the free novella REBECCA'S FORGOTTEN JOURNALS for those readers who purchase during release week or pre-order where pre-order is available.
- SHAMELESS, book two, will be out on July 11, 2017 and priced at $3.99
- BOTH books will be full-length!
- I'm also giving away prizes on my blog every day in April to celebrate! Entry is super easy. Just comment! The link to my blog is HERE so be sure to subscribe!
Book one in the sexy and intense new White Lies duet by Lisa Renee Jones!
There are those moments in life that are provocative in their very existences, that embed in our minds forever, and sometimes our very souls. They change us, mold us, maybe even save save us. But some are darker, dangerous. If we allow them to, they control us. Seduce us. Quite possibly even destroy us.
The moment I walked into Sonoma’s Reid Winter Winery and Vineyard and made eye contact with Faith Winter for the first time was one of those moments. Provocative because I know at least one of her secrets, of which, I suspect she has many. Provocative because she believes I was a stranger to her when we met, but I am not. Provocative because I sought her out, with no intention of touching her. But now I have. Now I want her. Now I have to have her. But that changes nothing. It doesn’t change why I came for her.
Pre-Order PROVOCATIVE Today!
Special $2.99 pre-order price - will increase after release!
Read Chapter One Now:
pro·voc·a·tive
adjective
1. causing annoyance, anger, or another
strong reaction, especially deliberately.
2. arousing sexual desire or interest,
especially deliberately.
Chapter
One
There are those moments in
life that are provocative in their very existences, that embed in our minds
forever, and sometimes our very souls. They change us, mold us, maybe even save
us. But some are darker, dangerous.
If we allow them to, they control us. Seduce
us. Quite possibly even destroy us.
The moment I stepped into
the mansion that is the centerpiece of the Reid Winter Vineyards and Winery
wasn’t one of those moments. Nor were any of the moments I spent weaving
through a crowd of suits and dresses cluttering the circle that is the grand
foyer of the 1800’s mansion, fancy tiles etched with vines beneath my feet. Nor
the ones spent declining three different waiters offering me glasses of various
wines from one of the most established vineyards in Sonoma, meant to entice me
to buy their bottles and donate money to the charity hosting the gathering. Not
even the instant that I spotted the stunning blonde in a snug black dress that
hugged her many lush curves proved to be one of those moments, but I would call
it a damn interesting one. The moment I decided the blonde silk of her long
hair belonged in my hands and on my stomach was also a damn interesting one.
And not because she’s fuckable. There are plenty of fuckable women in my life,
a number of whom understand that I enjoy demands for pleasure, which I will
definitely provide, and nothing more. This woman is too prim and proper to ever
agree to such an arrangement, and yet, knowing this, as she and her
heart-shaped backside disappear into the congestion of bodies, I find myself
pursuing her, looking for more than an interesting moment. I want that
provocative one.
I follow her path formed by
huddles of two, three, or more people, left and right, to clear a portion of
the crowd, scanning to find my beauty standing several feet away, her back to
me, with two men in blue suits in front of her. And while they might appear to
blend with the rest of the suits in the room, they hold themselves like the
parasites I meet too often in the courtroom, those who most often call
themselves my opposing counsel. My blonde beauty folds her arms in front of her
chest, her spine stiff, and if I read her right–and I read most people right–I
am certain that she’s found trouble. But lucky for her, trouble doesn’t like me
near as much as I like it.
Closing the space between
me and them, I near their little triangle just in time to hear her say, “Are we
really doing this here and now?”
“Yes, Ms. Winter,” one of
the men replies. “We are.”
“Actually,” I say, stepping
to Ms. Winter’s side, her floral
scent almost as sweet as the challenge of conquering her opponents that are now
mine, “we are not doing this here or
now.”
All attention shifts to me,
Ms. Winter giving me a sharp stare that I feel rather than see, my focus
remaining on the men I want to leave, not the woman I want to make come. “And
you would be who?” the suit directly in front of me demands.
I size him up as barely out
of his twenty-something diapers, without experience, the glint in his eye
telling me he doesn’t realize that flaw, which makes him about as smooth as a
six-dollar glass of wine everyone in this place would spit the fuck out. A
point driven home by the fact that he’s wearing a three hundred-dollar Italian
silk tie, and a hundred-dollar suit, no doubt hoping the tie makes the suit
look expensive, and him important. He’s wrong.
“I said, who are you?” he
repeats when I apparently haven’t replied quickly enough, his impatience
becoming my virtue as my role as cat in this game of cat and mouse is too
easily established.
Unwilling to waste words on
a predictable, expected question that I’d never ask, I simply reach into the
pocket of my three-thousand-dollar light gray suit, which I earned by beating
opponents with ten times his experience and negotiation skills, and finger the
unimportant prick my card.
He snaps it from my hand,
gives it a look that confirms my name and the firm I started a decade ago now,
after daring to leave behind a certain partnership in a high-powered firm.
“Nick Rogers?” he asks. “Is there another name on the card?” I ask, because,
I’m also a fearless smartass every chance I get.
He stares at me for several
beats, seeming to calculate his words, before asking, “How many Mr. Rogers
sweater jokes do you get?”
I arch a brow at the
misguided joke that only serves to poke the Tiger. Suit Number Two, who I age
closer to my thirty-six years, pales visibly, then snatches the card from the
other man’s hand, giving it a quick inspection before his gaze then jerks to
mine. “The Nick Rogers?”
“I don’t remember my mother
putting the word ‘the’ in front of my name,” I reply dryly, but then again, I
think, she didn't ask my father, to change my last name either. She just hated
him that much.
“Tiger,” he says, and it’s
not a question, but rather a statement of “oh shit” fact.
“That’s right,” I say,
enjoying the fruits of my labor that created the nickname, not one given to me
by my friends.
“Who, or what, the fuck is Tiger all about?” Suit Number One asks.
“Shut up,” Suit Number Two
grunts, refocusing on me to ask, “You’re representing Ms. Winter?”
“What I am,” I say, “is
standing right here by her side, telling you that it’s in your best interests
to leave.”
“Since when do you handle
small-time foreclosures?” he demands, exposing the crux of Ms. Winter’s
situation.
“I handle whatever the fuck I want to handle,” I say, my tone
even, my lips curving as I add, “Including the process of having you both
escorted off the property by security.”
“That,” Suit Number One
dares to retort, “would garner Ms. Winter unwanted attention in the middle of a
busy event. Not that Ms. Winter even has security to call.”
“Fortunately, I have a
phone that dials 911 and the ability to call it without asking her.”
“If she’s your client,” Suit Number One says, clearly inferring that
she’s not, “you’re obligated to operate with her best interests in mind.”
“My decisions,” I reply,
without missing a beat, and without claiming Ms. Winter as a client, “are
always about winning. And I assure you that I can think of many ways to spin
your story to the press that ensures I win, while also benefiting Ms. Winter.”
“This isn’t my story,” Suit
Number One indicates.
“It will be when I’m finished
with the press,” I assure him, amused at how easily I’ve led him down the path
I want him to travel.
“This is a small community
with little to talk about but her,”
he says. “She doesn’t want her foreclosure to become the front page story.”
My lips quirk. “If you
don’t know how easily I can get the wrong attention for you here, and the right
attention for Ms. Winter, you’ll find out.”
“We’ll leave,” Suite Number
Two interjects quickly, and just when I think that he’s smart enough to see the
way trouble has turned from Ms. Winter to them, he looks at her and says,
“We’ll be in touch,” with a not so subtle threat in his tone, before he elbows
Suit Number One. “Let’s go.”
Suit Number One doesn’t
move, visibly fuming, his face red, that white ring thickening around his lips.
I arch a brow at Suit Number Two, who adds, “Now, Jordan.” Jordan, formerly known as Suit Number One, clenches
his teeth and turns away, while Suit Two follows.
Ms. Winter faces me, and
holy fuck, when her pale green eyes meet mine, any questions I have about this
woman and the many I suspect she now has of me, are muted by an unexpected,
potentially problematic, palpable electric charge between us. “Thank you,” she
says, her voice soft, feminine, a rasp in its depths that hints at emotion not
effortlessly contained. “Please enjoy anything you like tonight on the house,”
she adds, the rasp gone now, her control returned. Until I take it, I think, but no sooner than I’ve had the thought,
she is turning and walking away, the absence of further interaction coloring me
both stunned and intrigued, two things that, for me, are ranked with about as
much frequency as snow in Sonoma, which would be next to never.
Ms. Winter maneuvers into
the crowd, out of my line of sight, and while I am not certain I’d label her a
mouse at this point, or ever for that matter, considering what I know of her, I
am most definitely on the prowl. I stride purposely forward, weaving through
the crowd, seeking that next provocative moment, scanning for her left, right,
in the clusters of mingling guests, until I clear the crowd.
Now standing in front of a
wide, wooden stairwell, my gaze follows its path upward to a second level, but
I still find no sign of Ms. Winter. A cool breeze whips through the air, and I
turn to find the source is a high arched doorway, the recently opened glass
doors to what I know to be the “Winter Gardens,” a focal point of the property,
and a tourist draw for decades, settling back into place. Certain this
represents her escape, I walk that direction, and press open the doors,
stepping onto a patio that has a stone floor and concrete benches framed by
rose bushes. No less than four winding paths greet me as destination choices,
the hunt for this woman now a provocation of its own.
I’ve just decided to wait
where I am for Ms. Winter’s return when the wind lifts, the floral scent of
many varieties of flowers for which the garden is famous touching my nostrils,
with one extra scent decidedly of the female variety.
Lips curving with the
certainty that my prey will soon to be my prize, I follow the clue that guides
my feet to the path on my right, a narrow, winding, lighted walkway, framed by
neatly cut yellow flower bushes, which continues past a white wooden gazebo I
have no intention of passing. Not when Ms. Winter stands inside it, her back to
me, elbows resting on the wooden rail, her gaze casting across the silhouette
of what would reveal itself to be a rolling mountainside in daybreak. The way I
intend for her to reveal herself.
I close the distance
between us, and the moment before I’m upon her, she faces me, hands on the
railing behind her, her breasts thrust forward, every one of her lush curves
tempting my eyes, my hands. My mouth.
“Did those men know you?” she demands, clearly ready and waiting for this
interaction. “Did you know them?”
“No and no.”
“And yet they knew the
nickname Tiger.”
“My reputation precedes
me.”
“I’ll take the bait,” she
says. “What reputation?”
“They say I’ll rip my
opponent’s throat out if given the chance.”
“Will you?” she asks,
without so much as a blanch or blink.
“Yes,” I reply, a simple
answer, for a simple question.
“Without any concern for
who you hurt,” she states.
I arch a brow. “Is that a
question?”
“Should it be?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not,” she says. “You
didn’t get that nickname by being nice.”
“Nice guys don’t win.”
“Then I’m warned,” she
says. “You aren’t a nice guy.”
“Is nice a quality you’re
looking for in a man? Because as your evening counsel, Ms. Winter, I’ll advise
you that nice is overrated.”
She stares at me for
several beats before turning away to face the mountains again, elbows on the
railing, in what I could see as a silent invitation to leave. I choose to see
it as an invitation to join her. I claim the spot next to her, close, but not
nearly as close as I will be soon. “You didn’t answer the question,” I point
out.
“You wrongly assume I am
looking for a man, which I’m not,” she says, glancing over at me. “But if I
was, then no. Nice would be on my list but it would not top my list, however,
nowhere on that list would be the ability, and willingness, to rip out
someone’s throat.”
“I can assure you, Ms.
Winter, that a man with a bite is as underrated as a nice guy is overrated. And
I not only know how, and when, to use mine, but if I so choose to biteyou, and I might, it’ll be all about
pleasure, not pain.”
Her cheeks flush and she
turns away. “My name is Faith.” She glances over at me again. “Should I call
you Nick, Tiger, or just plain arrogant?”
“Anything but Mr. Rogers,”
I say, enjoying our banter far more than I would have expected when I came here
tonight looking for her.
She laughs now too, and
it’s a delicate, sweet sound, but it’s awkward, as if it’s not only unexpected,
but unwelcome, and an instant later she’s withdrawing, pushing off the railing,
arms folding protectively in front of her body, before we’re rotating to face
each other. “I need to go check on the visitors.” She attempts to move away.
I gently catch her arm, her
gaze rocketing to mine, and in the process her hair flutters in a sudden
breeze, a strand of blonde silk catching on the whiskers of my one-day stubble.
She sucks in a breath, and when she would reach up to remedy the situation, I’m
already there, catching the soft silk and stroking it behind her ear.
“Why are you touching me?”
she asks, but she doesn’t pull away, that charge between us minutes ago now ten
times more provocative with me touching her, thinking about all the places I
might touch next.
“It’s considerably better
than not touching you,” I say.
“My bad luck might bleed
into you.”
“Bleed,” I repeat, that
word reminding me once again of why I’m here, why I really want to fuck this
woman. “That’s an extreme, and rather interesting choice of words.”
“Most bad luck is extreme,
though not interesting to anyone but the Tigers of the world, creating it.
You’re still touching me.”
“Everyone needs a Tiger in
their corner. Maybe my good luck will bleed into you.”
“Does good luck bleed?” she
asks.
“Many people will do
anything for good luck, even bleed.”
“Yes,” she says, lowering
her lashes, but not before I’ve seen the shadows in her eyes. “I suppose they
would.”
“What would you do for good
luck?”
Her lashes lift, her stare
meeting mine again. “What have you done for good luck?”
“I came here tonight,” I
say.
She narrows her eyes on me,
as if some part of her senses, the far-reaching implications of my reply that
she can’t possibly understand, and yet still, the inescapable heat between us
radiates and burns. “You’re still touching me,” she points out, and this time
there’s a hint of reprimand.
“Holding onto that luck,” I
say.
“It feels like you’re
holding onto mine.”
With that observation that
hits too close to the truth, I have no interest in revealing just yet, I drag
my hand slowly down hers, allowing my fingers to find hers before they fall
away. Her lips, lush, tempting, impossibly perfect for someone I know to be
imperfect, part with the loss of my touch, and yet there is a hint of relief in
her eyes that tells me she both wants me and fears me.
A most provocative moment,
indeed.
“Have a drink with me,” I
say.
“No,” she replies, her tone
absolute, and while I don’t like this decision, I appreciate a person who’s
decisive.
“Why?”
“Good luck and bad luck
don’t mix.”
“They might just create
good luck.”
“Or bad,” she says. “I’m
not in a place where I can take the risk for more bad luck.” She inclines her
chin. “Enjoy the rest of your visit.” She pauses and adds, “Tiger.”
I don’t react, but for just
a moment, I consider the way she used my nickname as an indicator that she knows
who I am, and why I’m here. I quickly dismiss that idea. I’d have seen it in
those pale green eyes, and I did not. But as she turns and walks away, and I
watch her depart, tracking her steps as she disappears down the path, I wonder
at her quick departure, and the fear I’d seen in her eyes. Was the root of that
fear her guilt?
That idea should be enough
to ice the fire in me that this woman has stirred, but it stokes it instead.
Everything male in me wants to pursue her again, and not because I’m here for a
reason that existed before I ever met her, when it should be that and nothing
more. It is more. I’m aroused and I’m
intrigued by this woman. She got to me when no one gets to me. Not a good place
to be, considering I came here to prove she killed my father, and maybe even
her own mother.
Book two: SHAMELESS will be out on July 11th!
Pre-Order notification:http://bit.ly/2nocwgZ
New York Times and USA
Today bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones is the author of the highly acclaimed
INSIDE OUT series. Suzanne Todd (producer of Alice in Wonderland) on the INSIDE OUT series: Lisa has created a
beautiful, complicated, and sensual world that is filled with intrigue and
suspense. Sara’s character is strong, flawed, complex, and sexy - a modern girl
we all can identify with.
In addition to the success of Lisa's INSIDE OUT series, Lisa
has published many successful titles. The TALL, DARK AND DEADLY series and THE
SECRET LIFE OF AMY BENSEN series, both spent several months on a combination of
the New York Times and USA Today bestselling lists. Lisa is presently working
on a dark, edgy new series, Dirty Money, for St. Martin's Press.
Prior to publishing Lisa owned multi-state staffing agency
that was recognized many times by The Austin Business Journal and also praised
by the Dallas Women's Magazine. In 1998 Lisa was listed as the #7 growing women
owned business in Entrepreneur Magazine.
Lisa loves to hear from her readers. You can reach her at www.lisareneejones.com and she is active on Twitter and Facebook daily.
Author Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter |Newsletter | Goodreads | Amazon Author Profile
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