contemporary romance ebook

WARNING

Some of the books on this site contain material of a sexual nature or graphic violence and are only suitable for adults. By reading the excerpt below you release me as the author of any responsibility.

Excerpt

Jax tapped the steering wheel impatiently. He was sitting in the driver seat of a massive Bentley limousine. He rolled his eyes when he caught sight of himself in the mirror. The driver’s cap he was wearing made him look twice his age. He pushed it up his forehead slightly with his finger and looked at himself again.

Still not any better.

There was only one way of making this cap better—taking it outside and burning it until there was nothing left.

He heaved another sigh and then took to playing with all the buttons while he waited for the person he’d been told to pick up. Whoever it was, they were already thirty minutes late and he was starting to lose the very short amount of patience he had. He could practically see his fuse as it ignited and began to burn down. If they didn’t show soon, he was going to leave and tell his father to stick the job where the sun didn’t shine.

He really didn’t need this shit.

Prodding each button in turn, he memorised what they did and then pulled the little rocker switch that lowered the screen in between him and the passenger compartment. He looked over his shoulder, amusing himself with the way it slid easily down, revealing the back seats to him.

He started when the door opened and hurriedly changed the direction of the tinted glass screen, trying to get it back into place before the passenger noticed.

Muffled conversation came from the back and he kept his eyes straight forwards, remembering what his father had told him about not prying into the business of the person he was responsible for.

He waited in silence when the door shut again and wondered what he was supposed to do now. He had the schedule of his passenger, was he supposed to be driving off now or did he have to wait for instructions?

He was almost tempted to lower the glass screen and ask the person himself, but got the feeling that if he did that then he wouldn’t have a job tomorrow.

“What are we waiting for?” Came a crackly voice over the intercom and Jax swallowed hard.

It was a girl, a woman. He was driving a woman.

He looked at the rear view mirror and frowned when he realised that he couldn’t see her through the tinted screen. He wanted to know how old she was and what she looked like. Curiosity begged him to lower the screen, but instead he put the car into gear and pulled out into the mid-morning traffic.

There was no point in risking his job. He smiled when he thought that things were looking up. Chances were she wouldn’t be the evil bitch he had imagined she was going to be. She didn’t sound evil.

Glancing down at the schedule, he realised that whomever he was driving, they were incredibly busy.

Coasting along the highway, he tapped the steering wheel as he drove, keeping his eyes on the road at all times. He let his thoughts wander to the person he was driving and he idly pressed the intercom switch.

He raised both his brows as a little voice cut through the silence that had been ringing in his ears.

She was singing.

He smiled and listened to her.

She didn’t have a bad voice. She hit a few bum notes here and there but in general, she sang pretty good. She hummed the instrumental bits of whatever it was she was listening to on the sound system and then sang along again.

Opening the window, he let his arm rest out of it and splayed his fingers as the breeze cut through them. He let his hand on the steering wheel go lax and continued to drive down the highway towards their first destination.

All the while listening to the girl in the back seat.

Maybe this job wouldn’t be so bad after all.

His phone began to ring in his pocket. He desperately tried to press the intercom switch so she wouldn’t hear it and realise he was listening in on her. When the only sound left filling the car was the noise of his phone ringing, he breathed a sigh of relief, believing he’d got away with it.

A knock on the window made him swallow hard and he tried to ignore it at first. His heart beat hard against his chest. He’d just broken one of the rules his father had laid down.

He drove a little further and then pulled over when the knocking became louder and more irritated. Taking a deep breath, he pulled down on the little black rocker switch and steeled himself against whatever was waiting for him on the other side of the glass.

The first glance he caught of her made his breath catch in his throat.

The second one made his heart skip a beat and he swore it stopped when he turned to look over his shoulder at her.

He stared blankly into the twin pools of hazel-green that were looking back at him curiously. They were clearly reflecting how annoyed their owner was, but he got the feeling it was more embarrassment about being caught singing than it was anger.

Kaitlyn didn’t know quite what to say when she saw her driver for the first time. His pale blue eyes bore into hers. She realised he was waiting for her to say what she’d been ready to say.

Only the words had fled her lips the second she’d laid eyes on him.

He smiled slightly.

She remembered why she had knocked on the glass.

Her eyes narrowed and her expression darkened.

“You do realise you’re not supposed to use that thing to listen in on me?” She pointed at the intercom button and frowned at him.

He shrugged as an apology. “It’s my first day.”

She arched a brow and looked at him. He couldn’t have been a day over twenty, and he didn’t look like the type of person the company usually employed to drive her around.

She wanted to be angry at him, wanted to tell him to keep his nose out of her business and do his job or she’d have him fired, but something about the awkward apologetic look in his eyes made her feel as though she’d be kicking a puppy.

Kneeling on the seat that his backed onto, she looked at the beach outside the windscreen, and then at him.

There was something familiar about him that she couldn’t put her finger on.

“Fine. Just don’t do it again.” She wanted to move, knew she should go back to her seat and make him drive her, but just looking at him made her want to stay. She told herself that she wasn’t meant to talk to people. If Edward found out she was making small talk with her driver, he’d not let her out of the office.

“Is that all?” Jax asked. She stared at him and he tried to suppress the thoughts of kissing her that were rocketing around his brain. He wondered what had gotten into him. He didn’t usually have thoughts like this about girls that he’d only known for five seconds. Past experience had taught him to be cautious, but there was something in her eyes that made him want to throw caution straight out of the window.

“No,” She started and hesitated a moment before continuing. “Another thing…”

He swallowed hard and shifted in his seat so he was almost facing her.

She smiled at him.

God, she was beautiful.

He found himself smiling too and then his whole world dropped out from underneath him as her fingers came towards him and she twirled the hair at the back of his head around them.

“Your hair naturally that colour?” Kaitlyn smiled and hoped it didn’t come off as nervous. She wanted to see how he was going to react to her, whether he had any clue about who he was driving around and if he did, she’d wrap him around her little finger to keep him quiet. Just like she’d been instructed to.

“No,” he said and his smile turned wicked. “Yours?”

She couldn’t stop the smile that stretched from ear to ear. She’d never had a driver that had the stomach to talk with her like this. Most of them had been too petrified of their boss to even say ‘good morning’. It was refreshing. She hadn’t spoken to someone like this in years.

“No,” she answered honestly and ran her fingers through her long blonde hair.

He gave her a look of longing and she wondered if he was wishing they were his fingers running through her hair.

Wanting to test him a little more, she leaned over and turned the dial that switched the radio on. She breezed through the channels until she hit a station playing the song she was looking for and then sat back again, watching him for a reaction.

He frowned down at the radio as ‘Summer’ blared out over it, her dulcet tones trying to woo him even as he was reaching for the off switch.

She smiled and watched his long fingers silencing the radio. In one simple act, he’d told her everything she needed to know about him and why he had been chosen to drive her.

Jax couldn’t believe that this beautiful girl was listening to this rubbish too, this manufactured voice, when she had such a wonderful one of her own.

“We’ll be late,” he said gruffly. He turned back to face the wheel and waited for the girl to resume her seat so he could start driving again.

He’d thought she was more than that, that she was above being another sheep to follow ‘Summer’, but she’d proven that she wasn’t. And for some reason, he felt disappointed.

Kaitlyn frowned at his profile as all the warmth evaporated from the car. She wondered just what he had against ‘Summer’ and what she’d done. She went to move back to her seat and was barely clear of the screen before he raised it, cutting her off from him.

What was his problem?

Sitting back in her seat, she looked at the tinted glass screen and frowned. He clearly didn’t like ‘Summer’. Was that the reason Edward had chosen him, because he wanted nothing to do with what the company was about? She couldn’t help thinking that there was something more at work. Everyone loved ‘Summer’, there were no exceptions—or was there?

He was the right age group for being madly in love with the fictitious girl. He was male, and judging by the way he’d looked her over, he definitely wasn’t gay. Why wasn’t he tumbling head over heels like everyone else? What made him so different?

She pulled out her notebook and jotted down her thoughts as the car began to move. She needed to get inside his head, needed to see what was making him so immune to the lure of ‘Summer’. ‘Summer’ was designed to be perfect, more than perfect, she was everything a guy wanted and just that little bit extra.

Why the hell didn’t he like her?

Her nose wrinkled in frustration while she tried to think of a reason. After fifteen minutes, she’d come up with nothing and all she could do was sigh and scratch her head as they pulled into the driveway of the recording studio. Putting her notebook back into her bag, she took a deep breath and prepared herself for the coming day.

Jax opened the door and stood mute, waiting for her to get out of the back. He tried not to arch a brow at her or roll his eyes over how long she was taking to get out of the car.

He didn’t know what had gotten into him.

Something about the way she’d searched for that infernal song on the radio had irked him and he couldn’t put his finger on why. So everyone loved his father’s monster, that’s what it was all about after all—duping everyone into loving her and making a billion off it before the bubble burst.

God, he wished he could burst that bubble and let the music industry get back to how it should be—real bands, with real people in them.

He plastered a smile on his face as the girl finally got out the back of the car and then found it becoming real when she smiled at him. It was a tiny show of thanks that went straight to his heart.

Maybe he was being too hard on her. Clearly, she wanted to be a singer or she at least had something to do with bands, and he couldn’t bring himself to hold her love of ‘Summer’ against her. Perhaps she wanted to be like her, wanted to be a singer one day. He’d looked over her schedule before beginning to drive again and she seemed to be in too many meetings to be a singer herself, so maybe it was something she secretly wanted to be and that’s why she’d been so touchy about him listening in on her.

Maybe he was trying to make excuses for her, just like he made excuses for his father.

He’d known her five seconds, and she’d already disappointed him. He didn’t even know her name, and he’d built up an ideal of her that she’d shattered. He really needed to learn from his previous mistakes and let the girl reveal herself to him, rather than building an illusion of who he thought she would be.

He was no better than his father.

Building illusions of girls instead of discovering the real thing.

He sighed, watched her walking up the gravel drive to the large studio and then slammed the door shut.

Kaitlyn stopped when she heard the door closing and turned to watch him as he walked around the car and got into the driver’s side.

Something about him wasn’t right.

When he’d closed the screen on her, she’d felt empty again. She could feel the disappointment as it hung in the air between them, could sense that something was off, and it hadn’t been there before she’d turned the radio on.

He’d been sweet, talking to her as though she was real and he could see her.

He could really see her.

Then, like the screen in the car, the barriers had come up and he’d shut her out.

And weirdly…

All she wanted was to be back in.

For the first time in a long time, she wanted to be seen.

And she wanted him to be the one to do it.

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