Title: Tryst Author: Cambria Hebert
Series: Take It Off #8
Publisher: Self-Published
Release Date: May 16, 2014
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Erotic Romance
More Info: Goodreads
Purchase: Amazon US
Purchase: Amazon UK
Sometimes all a girl needs is a little fling…
Talie Ronson needs a vacation.
From life.
Since she caught her cheating, loser husband in bed with his assistant, her life has been on a steady spiral—right into hell. Her car’s a junker, her job sucks, and her perfect, gorgeous sister likes to brag about her wonderful life every time they “do” lunch.
In an effort to salvage what’s left of her life and her sanity, she takes the advice of her kooky best friend and takes off to Topsail Island. A week at the beach, alone, is exactly what she needs to recharge, regroup, and relax.
Only, her alone time is about to get derailed.
Gavin Palmer’s favorite activity is walking around in his boxers and eating junk food. He and his neighbors have an understanding. They stay out of his business and he stays out of theirs. He lives at the beach, not for vacation, but for isolation. He’s had enough of people to last him a lifetime.
Gavin’s isolation is interrupted when his normally quiet neighbor starts disturbing his peace. He stomps across the sand to give the guy a piece of his mind… only it isn’t a guy.
It’s Talie.
She’d maddening, nosy, and talks too much.
But she’s hot and her bedroom eyes have him thinking maybe he’s had enough solitude. Maybe a week of company is exactly what he needs.
Maybe what they both need is a no-strings-attached tryst.
Excerpt
Just as the road started to gradually lift and lead onto the bridge my car made a very loud clunking sound and then groaned like it was going to come apart at any second.
Even though my foot was pressed on the gas the car slowed considerably, idling along like a turtle who had no where it needed to be. “Come on!” I yelled at the dashboard as I gave the steering wheel a smack.
Suddenly the wheel seemed extremely hard to steer. What usually was an easy, effortless task now seemed like something that required large muscles.
Did I mention I was lacking in the muscle department?
I applied the brakes and fought the Jetta to the side of the road. I wasn’t about to try and make it over the bridge like this. My luck I would plunge over the side and get eaten by a shark when I hit the water.
The loud rattling sounds the stupid car made drowned out the cadence of the ocean waves and caused some of the peace I was found on my way here to disappear.
After several long moments of just sitting there, leaning my forehead on the steering wheel and asking God why I was cursed I turned off the engine. The car stuttered and then died. I knew it wasn’t going to turn back on.
“And the hits just keep on coming,” I said out loud.
I opened the car door, letting it open so that the light would stay on for a few moments and bent down to look for the hood release latch. After I found it and popped the hood I stood there staring down in the dark at the insides of a car I couldn’t see.
Then I remembered my phone. The flashlight app was handy in moments like this. Even with the engine and innards of the car visible I had no clue what was wrong with it.
“I am so getting a new car,” I sighed. I called up the number to Triple A in my phone (I might not know how to fix cars but I knew how to call people who did) and wondered how long it would take them to send a tow.
A pair of headlights appeared traveling in my direction. I raced around the side of the car and leapt into the driver’s seat, slamming the door behind me. After the way this week was going I would not be surprised at all if the person behind the wheel of that car was a serial killer out looking for his next victim.
The car slowed and pulled directly behind my car.
See? Total serial killer.
I heard the slam of the door and watched as a large dark figure approached. I could make out nothing because his headlights turned him into nothing but a dark shadow.
The only thing I knew for sure was that it was a man. Unless of course it was a woman. Judging from the sheer size of the black shape if it was a then she would have to be a professional body builder.
Seconds later a darkened face appeared at my window.
“Car trouble?” he rumbled. His voice was deep and his southern accent was strong.
I screamed.
I forgot my window was down!
I jammed the key back into the ignition and turned the engine over. It made a puny, pathetic sound and stalled out. The windows were electric. I couldn’t get it up if the car wouldn’t start.
“Please don’t kill me!” I burst out.
A laugh floated through the night air and wrapped around my body. He put one of his hands on the door, so that it rested where the window should be, his fingers falling down the inside of the door.
I snatched the keys out of the ignition and swung down to stab the fleshy part of the back of his hand. Seconds before I made him bleed he jerked away.
“I’m not going to murder you!” he shouted.
“Don’t you yell at me!” I retorted.
“You tried to stab me!”
“You tried to kill me!”
“I stopped to see if you needed help. You know, because your junker car here stopped working.”
“How dare you call it a junker.” I fumed. My car definitely was a junker but I wasn’t about to let him insult me. I’d had enough of men to last me a lifetime.
“Sweetheart, I call it like I see it.” he drawled.
Damned if I didn’t get goose bumps. His voice was like the velvet sky I was admiring only moments ago. “Well, okay, it’s a piece of crap.” I allowed. Obviously his southern accent was making me stupid.
“I’m just going to take a look,” he said. Before I could tell him no he was walking around the front of my car. The glow of his headlights gave me a glimpse of the way his hips rotated when he walked.
He had long legs, the kind that owned the ground whenever he took a step. He was tall… he had to be at least six two. Other than that I couldn’t make out anything else about him. He was wearing a baseball hat and it was pulled down low, shading all of his face from the little light out here.
A light clicked on up front (he must have the same app as me) and I saw him reaching down into the engine. The sound of something being pulled out of the car had me leaping out of my seat and rushing around the front.
“What the hell are you doing!” I demanded horrified as he pulled out this long black thing. “Is that a snake?” I shrieked. Had I somehow run over that giant thing and it got caught in my engine?
He paused and looked up at me. “A snake?” he asked like he couldn’t understand what I was saying. Then he shook his head. “It’s the drive belt,” he muttered, going back to pulling it out.
“Well if it’s supposed to be in there why are you pulling it out?”
“This way when I go to kill you, I know you won’t be able to get away.”
Giveaway
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Torch (Take It Off, #1)
Amazon US – Amazon UK
If you can’t take the heat… stay away from the flame.
Katie Parks has been on her own since the age of fifteen. All she’s ever wanted is a place to call her own—a life that is wholly hers that no one can take away. She thought she finally had it, but with the strike of a single match, everything she worked so hard for is reduced to a pile of smoking ash. And she almost is too.
Now she’s being stalked by someone who’s decided it’s her time to die. The only thing standing in the path of her blazing death is sexy firefighter Holt Arkain.
Katie’s body might be safe with Holt… but her heart is another story.
As the danger heats up, sparks fly and the only thing Katie knows for sure is that her whole life is about to go up in flames.
Tease (Take It Off, #2)
Amazon US – Amazon UK
You can look, but you can’t touch…
Harlow is a broke college student. When her tuition assistance is taken away, she is faced with a choice: admit to her mother she couldn’t hack it on her own or make a lot of money fast.
So she gets a good-paying job.
As a stripper.
She thought it would be easy, but it turn out being sexy is a lot harder than she thought. When a few mishaps work in her favor, she manages to hang on to her job and catch the eye of the Mad Hatter’s best-looking bartender, Cam.
She’s also caught the eye of someone who wants to do more than look, someone who’s decided she’s nothing but a tease.
As the clothes come off, Harlow finds herself caught between list and murder, The only thing she knows for sure is that her new risqué job is a lot more than she bargained for.
Tempt (Take It Off, #3)
Amazon US – Amazon UK
Stranded and alone with not one, but two wickedly enticing men.
Ava arrives at the airport, expecting to board a commercial flight to Puerto Rico. But a plane ticket isn’t waiting for her. Instead, she finds a guy with dark curly hair wearing seriously ratty jeans and holding a sign with her name on it.
He may not look like a pilot, but he is. And he’s her ride.
So now it’s just Nash and her on a tiny tin can of a plane flying over the Atlantic. When a thunderstorm comes out of nowhere, it proves to be too much for the little aircraft.
Ava and Nash plunge from the sky and end up on an uncharted deserted island.
Stranded.
As if that isn’t bad enough, Ava starts to desire more than just rescue—hunger for more than food. Nash is only too happy to oblige… but it seems they might not be as alone as they thought.
And Nash might have some competition in claiming Ava’s body… and her heart.
Text (Take It Off, #4)
Amazon US – Amazon UK
One text can change everything.
Honor Calhoun never thought her life would ever be like the books she writes for a living. One morning while out for a run, she learns not all bad things are plots in novels. Some horrors can actually come true. She faces off with a persistent attacker, holds her own, but in the end is taken hostage and thrown into a hole. In the middle of the woods.
But Honor didn’t go down there alone. She took her kidnapper’s phone with her. With a spotty signal and a dying battery, her hope is slim.
Nathan Reed is an active duty Marine stationed at a small reserve base in Pennsylvania. All he wants is a calm and uneventful duty station where he can forget the memories of his time in a war-torn country. But a single text changes everything. Nathan becomes Honor’s only hope for survival, and he has to go against the clock, push aside his past, and take on a mission for a girl he’s never met.
Both of them want freedom… but they have to survive long enough to obtain it.
Tipsy (Take It Off, #5)
Amazon US – Amazon UK
Julie Preston is an artist. But her canvas isn’t paper or clay. It’s hair. She spends her days coloring, blow drying and styling her clients hair at the Razor’s Edge salon. Julie is also annoyed. She went out on a date and had a great time, gave the guy her number and the jerk never called.
So when he waltzes into the salon and sits down in her chair she briefly considers strangling him with the pink cape she fastens around his neck.
Too bad she can’t.
Blue Markson, the guy who never called, is a police officer so causing him bodily harm would be a first class ticket into the slammer. Just looking at him again makes Julie forget why she was mad in the first place, but she’s already learned that Blue is nothing but heartache. So when he starts coming around, acting like he hadn’t made her stare at the phone for days, she tries to brush him off.
Only…
Her life is about to blow up in her face, she’s about to get caught up in a sticky web of crime and the one guy who can help her is the one guy she vowed never to trust again.
Tricks (Take It Off, #6)
Amazon US – Amazon UK
Love can play tricks on your heart… After serving several years in the United States Marine Corps, Sergeant Tucker Patton decides to hang up his uniform and go to work at a private investigative firm owned by his buddy. His boxes are packed and he’s got one foot out the door when a phone call changes everything.
Instead of going to North Carolina, he heads to New York City to literally step into the life of his twin brother, who died under suspicious circumstances. But pretending to be someone else isn’t easy.
Especially when the person you’re supposed to be is wanted dead.
Not only that, but he’s going from being blissfully single to living with his brother’s woman. An uptight, no-nonsense lawyer.
Charlotte Rose Carter doesn’t have time for fun and games. She graduated with honors and made all the right moves fresh out of college to jumpstart her career as a successful young lawyer. She even snagged the most eligible bachelor in New York City’s corporate world.
So what if her and Max’s relationship isn’t burning up the sheets? So what if their life doesn’t read like a chapter from a sizzling romance novel? This is the real world, and in the real world that stuff is just fantasy.
Until it isn’t.
Suddenly, just the slightest touch or a single glance from Max has her heart doing somersaults. Suddenly, the lackluster relationship begins to spark, and Charlotte finds herself tied in a knot of desire.
But she has no idea about the tricks being played right under her perky little nose.
Tattoo (Take It Off, #7)
Amazon US – Amazon UK
A tattoo gets them in trouble… He will get them out.
After years of cultivating an undercover identity, Brody West is finally off the case and free to live a life of his own. All that time spent in the company of criminals and killers left him a little jaded… and with an identity crisis. He isn’t sure who he is anymore, or who he wants to be.
To give him time to think, he takes a few days off to go fishing. On his way out of town, he makes a routine stop at the bank and finds himself flirting with the girl behind the counter.
But his flirtation is cut short when criminals burst into the bank and shoot her right before his eyes.
In attempt to administer first aid, Brody reveals a tattoo on his upper arm. A mark that will drag him and the girl into the kind of situation he was trying to get away from. But he can’t walk away because he’s the only thing capable of keeping Taylor alive and bringing down the guys who shot her—guys who are seriously dangerous.
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