Saturday, February 15, 2014

Excerpt From Behaving Badly by Kristen Beairsto




 As promised, here is the excerpt from Kristen Beairsto's Behaving Badly.

 
Blurb:  Delaney Pierce is desperate, no, determined, to rebuild the family business, Manners Matter, after the disaster her own mother brought down on it, and her, a year ago. With two crazy aunts living life moving from one misadventure to the next and her younger sister waitressing to help make ends meet because Manners isn't bringing in enough money to sustain them, she pins her hopes on her commission to curb the undesirable habits of Cyrus Chapman, one of New York's premier businessmen and one of the city's most eligible bachelors.

            Cyrus Chapman is less than thrilled to find out his father hired a life coach (whatever the hell a life coach does) of all things to help him cease the behaviors his father finds unfavorable rather than just discussing the manner with him. He’s not really surprised by his father’s heavy handedness, however he isn’t about to comply that easily. But when his father threatens him with his future position as CEO of Chapman Industries, Cyrus has little choice but to agree to the farce. At least, until he can come up with an alternative.

            Delaney’s resolve to succeed with Cyrus is immediately put to the test during her very first meeting with him and she realizes that no matter how much she prepared for all that was Cyrus, it all paled in comparison to the real man. She believes they come to an understanding, even going so far as to agree to act like his girlfriend to hide their arrangement from the press. But when her reputation, along her mother’s antics, get rehashed and dragged through the mud by the press less than twenty-four hours after being hired because of Cyrus’s actions, she’s rethinking her ability to handle the situation.

             When his new life coach aptly puts him in his place, Cyrus finds himself in the unfamiliar position of feeling guilty. And intrigued. Before long, he also finds himself in the unaccustomed position of fighting for more than just a professional relationship with Delaney while she tries to keep him at arm’s length.

         But Delaney can’t entertain the idea of having more than a professional relationship with Cyrus. After all, that’s something her mother would do and she’s not about to start emulating that woman now. However, fighting her attraction to Cyrus becomes harder and harder the more she’s around him and she finds herself wondering if she’s become so wrapped up in trying not to be her mother that she’s forgotten to just to be herself.

 
Excerpt:

Pausing, he tried to feel a little guilty about the bomb he planned to drop on her and the fact that he couldn’t wait for her response.  But he failed miserably.  “We’ll have to pretend to be lovers.”

Her jaw dropped.

“After the sessions are over,” which will be quickly if he had anything to say about it, “I’ll let it be known we broke up and we can go from there.”  It would probably be the longest relationship he ever had, but he tried to not think about that.

A horrified expression slid over her face.

“Absolutely not!”  She shook her head emphatically.

Not exactly the reaction he hoped for, but then again she didn’t exactly act like he expected, so he guessed that made it par for the course.  Despite that, he couldn’t help feeling a little irritated.  He could easily think of a dozen women that would kill to be in her position.

Arching a brow, “Why not?” he asked, trying to hold back his reaction.

A mutinous expression slid over her face, her pale aqua gaze flashing.  “I’m not that good of an actress.”  Despite the clear physical signs of her agitation, her tone came out flat and devoid of any hints of her emotions.

“Okay.”  He let the word slowly roll over his tongue as he tried to think of where she might be going with this.  “So you really don’t know how to smile?  Or is it that you don’t know how to hold hands?  Please don’t tell me you’re a virgin,” adding the last in a teasing tone in an attempt to goad her into revealing something about herself.

Brows narrowing into a scowl, she shook her head.  “That’s none of your business.”

Tempted to check his hair for icicles that had to have formed from her frosty tone, not a virgin, but not getting a lot of action either.

“Are you seeing someone?”  For some reason, the idea of another man being in the picture left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Not that my personal life is any of your business, but no, I’m not seeing anyone right now.”  Returning to her pad, she started making quick notes.

Relief blossomed at her answer.

“So what’s the problem then?”

“The problem is I don’t like you very much.  I’m not capable of pretending to be someone’s lover that I don’t even like,” she replied tightly without looking up at him.

Mentally, he heard the gauntlet hit the floor.  The smug smile that slowly slid across his lips couldn’t be stopped even if he really wanted to.

“I can make you like me,” he promised in his best bedroom voice.

The woman just added to the list of things he found intriguing about her.  Even at moments of being an extreme jerk, he never had a woman admit they didn’t find him attractive.  Not that he could really blame Delaney after the way he acted earlier.

Snorting, Delaney shook her head and rolled her eyes before returning her gaze to her pad of paper.  “I doubt that.”

Challenge accepted!

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Bio:
As with just about every other writer on the planet, Kristen grew up an avid reader. She started with young adult before she technically hit the age range and moved on to sci-fi classics by Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. At fifteen, her best friend gave her a book she just had to read! The book was Honest Illusions by Nora Roberts. Always a sucker for a happy ending, she was a goner and fell in love with the romance genre. Having started writing novel length stories at the age of eleven, Kristen’s stories all took a romantic turn from that point on.

In between her to-be-read pile and trying to bring the characters in her head alive, Kristen spends as much time as she can with family and friends. Much to her husband’s dismay, she enjoys collecting purses, shoes, and jewelry. During those rare times she’s not working at her day job, rushing her daughters somewhere, watching movies with her husband, and trying to meet a deadline, she can usually be found energetically cheering for one of her favorite New York sports teams.


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