Spotlight & Giveaway: Back in His’s Ex’s Bed by Joss Wood

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Joss Wood to HJ!

Hi Joss and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Back in His’s Ex’s Bed!

 
Hello!
 

Please summarize the book a la Twitter style for the readers here:

They were married young, got divorced, have avoided each other for years. Now they have to work together. Do they have it in them to risk their hearts again?
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

Bhea Jenkinson exited the black taxi at the swanky entrance to Claridge’s, grateful for her long vintage cashmere coat. Ignoring the light drizzle, she paid her fare, tucked her designer clutch bag under her arm and sucked in a deep breath.
She could do this; she had to do this…
It was only dinner with one of the most important and elusive art collectors in the world.
And her ex-brother-in-law Carrick.
And her ex-husband, Finn.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Bhea and Finn is the last book in my Murphy International series.
• There’s a second love story that plays out in the book.
• Dare Seymour is named after my dad, to whom the book is dedicated.
• I researched the world of high-end art and found it was a fascinating, quite secret place.
• I’m fascinated by second chances, it’s one of my favorite tropes/hooks.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Bhea, back when she first met Finn, was (and still is) fascinated by the fact that he has this brilliant mind but is also an adrenaline junkie. Finn loves Bhea’s mind and her fascination with art.
 

Using just 5 words, how would you describe Hero and Heroine’s love affair?

• Stubbornness
• Chemistry
• Fear
• Tension
• Inevitability

The First Kiss…

pants was a solid clue, too.
Finn lifted his other hand to hold the side of her face and Bhea held her breath as his mouth descended toward hers. She needed to know whether he still tasted the same—sex and sunshine and wind and heat—and she placed her palms on his chest, her fingers curling around the lapels of his jacket. If he didn’t make the connection, she would.
Bhea closed the last inch of space between them, standing on her toes to close the gap. His mouth brushed hers and she released a tiny, just-for-him moan. She felt his smile, inhaled his scent and then his lips covered hers, his short beard tickling her lips. Bhea felt his hand slide around her to her back, and he pulled her closer so her stomach pushed into his erection. Dizzy from lust and want and need, she opened her mouth and Finn’s tongue slid inside to tangle with hers, heating her from the inside out.
She was lost, in his smell, in memories, in the sheer masculinity of this man she’d never been able to forget…
From a place far away, Bhea heard the doors to the elevators slide open, the chatter of guests leaving. She should pull her mouth off his, put some distance between them, but it had been so long and he felt so damn good.

Without revealing too much, what is your favorite scene in the book?

I loved writing the scenes between Keely and Dare and I wish they’d had their own book! They are two very strong, complex characters…

Dare linked his arms across his flat stomach and Keely was grateful the sheet covered his groin area. A bare-chested Dare was distracting enough; Dare in all his glorious nakedness would be too much to resist. “Cut the crap. You’re just scared.”
Keely forced herself to lift one, just one, arrogant eyebrow. “Nothing about you scares me, Seymour.”
Dare had the temerity to smile. “Oh, honey, everything about me scares you.”
Keely tipped her head to the side and ignored her tumbling heart. “Are you experiencing a rush of blood to your head? An aneurysm? A little brain episode? Because you’re acting weird.”

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would be absolutely crucial to include?

Finn, finally!, realises that he loves Bhea but at the first hurdle, it all falls apart…

Bhea stopped talking and Finn held his breath, knowing he wasn’t going to like the next words out of her mouth. It was something to do with the guilt on her face, in the way she couldn’t meet his eyes. Oh, yeah, he was about to hear whatever Bhea had been hiding from him, and he wasn’t going to like it.
And waiting wasn’t something he did well. “Just tell me, Bhea.”
Bhea rubbed her temples before sitting up straight and gripping the edge of the desk. “For the last couple of years, Michael Summers has been asking me to join him.”
Everyone in the art world knew of Michael Summers. He was one of the world’s most influential art consultants, someone who was respected, even revered. He was the go-to guy for high-net-worth individuals who wanted to start or expand their art collection.
Finn needed to make sure he understood her correctly. “Explain.”
“He’s wanting to semi-retire and he wants me to take over his business. He’s offered me a partnership and I think I’m going to take it.”
Bhea wanted to leave Murphy’s? What the hell? She was a Murphy. She couldn’t leave! Finn stood up and slapped his hands onto the surface of her desk. “Not happening.”
Bhea’s eyes cooled. “You do know you have no say about who I work for, right?”
“You’re a Murphy. Your loyalty is to us,” Finn ground out, feeling the world shifting beneath his feet. While he’d been thinking of her moving in with him, of love, of their future, she’d been obsessed with going back to London, jumping ship.
It was amazing how someone with a decent IQ could be so intensely stupid.

Readers should read this book …

Readers should read this book because it’s a curl up in your seat and escape for a while book. My job is to put a smile on a reader’s face and I think that this book does that.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

In September, Reckless Envy, will be released and it’s book five in Harlequin Desire’s Dynasties: Seven Sins series.

In December, I have a holiday book out called Hot Holiday Fling.

And in January, my first Harlequin Presents book, How to Undo The Proud Billionaire– set in South Africa on a safari ranch, will be released. I’m so excited!!!

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: I’m giving away 5 ebook copies of Back In His Ex’s Bed to 5 Harlequin Junkie fans.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Are you a fan of category romance? And, if you are, do you stick to one series or do you read across series?

 
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Excerpt from Back in His’s Ex’s Bed:

It was just another dinner with another client in a swanky restaurant. While he wasn’t a fan of the concept, he’d attended more than a few as an owner of Murphy International.
There was no reason to feel nervous.
Finn Murphy lifted his hand to loosen the tie cutting off his air supply and silently cursed when he realized he wasn’t wearing a tie and the collar to his black shirt was open.
He was not nervous. Stressed maybe, but not nervous. He and his brothers were in the final stretch of preparing for one of the biggest art auctions in a generation and it was his responsibility to ensure every piece auctioned—including paintings by the old masters, impressionists and cubists, negatives by Ansel Adams, and one of the best collections of Jade in the world—was beyond question and reproach. Every provenance for roughly eight hundred items needed to be checked, verified, collated.
If his nerves didn’t play up when he was falling off three-hundred-foot buildings BASE jumping or flying down black-diamond ski runs, then he had no reason to feel jittery while waiting for the arrival of one of the wealthiest art collectors in the world.
And his wife.
Ex-wife, dammit.
Finn picked up his water glass, put it down again and reached for his glass of red wine, lifting the crystal rim to his lips. He would not look at his older brother, not just yet. Carrick could look past Finn’s devil-may-care attitude to the rolling mess below his seemingly steady surface.
He didn’t want to talk about how the thought of seeing Bhea again, even if it was just a business dinner, made him feel nerv—a little tense. They’d once been as close as two people could legally be; now they were little more than across-the-pond work colleagues, vague acquaintances.
“Take a deep breath, Finn.”
Finn narrowed his eyes at Carrick. His oldest brother looked calm and controlled, but amusement flickered in his light green eyes. Finn considered, as subtly as he could manage it, flipping off his brother. At fifteen, when he’d been the biggest rebel and pain in the ass, that might’ve been his reaction. At thirty-three, he was way past acting like a child. Or he should be.
But the urge was there.
“Why are you acting like a cat on a hot tin roof?” Carrick asked, picking up his tumbler of whiskey.
“I’m fine,” Finn replied through gritted teeth. “You know I prefer to be left out of these client dinners. I’m not good at making small talk.”
It wasn’t a lie—he really wasn’t. Carrick and Ronan were able to charm and coerce, to make small talk, but Finn tended to be too terse, too abrupt. His bluntness was legendary throughout Murphy International. There was a reason why he preferred to work alone, why he buried his head in books and texts and research. He was better with art and objects than he was with people. Inanimate objects didn’t talk back, dammit.
He was the company nerd, the brain, the Murphy recluse. He had no problem with any of those descriptions. They were all, to a degree, true.
Carrick’s gaze was steady. “You are here because Cummings wants to meet you. Apparently he’s quite a fan.”
Finn snorted. “He’s a fan? You make me sound like the front man of a boy band.”
“He was very impressed that, despite being blasted by every authority on D’Arcy, you refused to cave when the art world insisted you were wrong.”
This again? Years ago, fresh out of college with a PhD in art history, he’d published a paper suggesting the painting Thief in the Night, by the celebrated French artist, was painted by one of his apprentices and not by the master himself.
He’d been called an upstart and arrogant and worse, but he hadn’t cared then and didn’t care now. He knew what he knew and was rarely proved wrong. It had taken a year, and a series of forensic tests, for the art world to accept he was right. The owner of the D’Arcy, whose painting lost millions because Finn refused to budge, was still not a fan. But as Murphy International’s head of world art, Finn’s responsibility was to the art, not to the owners.
“Anyway, Paris Cummings was impressed by your research and your steadfastness under intense pressure.”
Finn picked up his wineglass and swirled the liquid around the bowl. “I don’t regret sticking to my guns but I do regret the bad PR around that incident.”
His arrogant attitude hadn’t helped. Back then he’d been particularly impressed with himself, thinking his double degree in art and forensics, and his ability to speak a half dozen languages, made him special, and he’d liked his reputation for being something of an art genius. He most definitely hadn’t liked being questioned. Admittedly, he’d been a bit of an ass.
These days, after a failed marriage and a decade to grow the hell up, he wasn’t so quick to tell people he was better, smarter, quicker. He’d come to realize that while he was smart in certain areas—he excelled at anything book-based and was naturally sporty—he was shockingly bad with people.
Unlike his brothers, he wasn’t emotionally intelligent. Concepts were easy; people weren’t.
People, and their sticky, complicated psyches, were a complete mystery to him. He didn’t think that would change anytime soon.
Finn leaned back in his chair and glanced at his oldest brother. His brother and Sadie— the art detective he’d hired to do a deep delve into a painting that might be a lost Homer— were engaged and besotted with each other. The air crackled whenever they were in the same room and the glances they exchanged were blowtorch-hot.
Ronan, the middle Murphy brother, was also currently distracted by his, so he said, inconvenient attraction to Joa, his temporary nanny.
Finn’s brothers’ preoccupation with their women suited Finn; it took their attention off him—BASE jumping, Finn, are you mad? Shark diving without a cage? You take too many risks—and he was grateful for the reprieve. They didn’t understand his need for adrenaline, his willingness to push the envelope.
He didn’t understand why, after experiencing divorce and death, they were even flirting with love and commitment, so he considered them even.
To Finn, handing over his heart was the biggest risk of all. Allowing oneself to be vulnerable was, to him, the definition of crazy.
He’d tried love once but hadn’t allowed himself to go all the way, to risk everything, with Bhea. And, not surprisingly, their marriage had crashed and burned.
Carrick pulled back the cuff to his designer jacket to check his watch. “Cummings will want to talk art with you. He’s a bit of an art history and science nut. Just go along with it. Bhea and I will jump in if you start getting…impatient.”
Finn knew Carrick wanted to add irritated.
But holding an intellectual conversation with one of the world’s wealthiest collectors of art, in front of Bhea—the woman who still starred in his every sexual fantasy—was going to be a challenge.
“I saw your email saying you are wanting to take some vacation time in a few weeks. Where are you going?” Carrick asked.
“Ice climbing in Colorado.”
Three, two, one…
“Is that safe?” Carrick asked, frowning.
Well, no. Because if it was safe, Finn wouldn’t be doing it. Half the fun of adventure sports was the risk. He couldn’t, wouldn’t risk his heart, but he had no problem putting his body on the line.
Because when he stood on the knife-edge of danger, that was when he felt most alive. And, yeah, he liked the excitement of achieving something exceptional. The complete focus the sports required also switched off his washing-machine brain, and it was his way to stop thinking, analyzing, planning.
And the dopamine rush kicked ass…
“Aren’t you scared something will happen?”
Finn considered the question. Sure, it was a factor, but he didn’t let fear stop him. “You know we can’t control the future, Carrick. Bad things happen.”
Carrick didn’t reply and Finn knew he was thinking of their past, the many tragedies the Murphy siblings had been forced to handle. The world saw them as this successful, rich, we-have-the-world-at-our-feet family but people rarely remembered the hell they’d walked through, hand in hand.
But they’d stuck together and yeah, here they were. Scarred, battered, but still a unit, still stronger together than they could ever be apart.
Yet their pasts had shaped them, had molded him. All his siblings had their issues: Finn didn’t like how love made him feel vulnerable and he knew it was better, easier, less risky, to hold back than to love someone completely.
It was better, safer, to keep his distance than to love someone and lose them.
Rolling his shoulders, Finn sent Carrick a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry so much, Carrick. Nothing is certain, so we might as well live in the present and not worry about the future. Besides, I plan on being around for a long time, if only to keep annoying you and Ronan.”
“Cummings is here,” Carrick said, standing up. “Play nice.”
Finn rose to his feet and buttoned his suit jacket. He rearranged his face into what he hoped was a genial smile as he watched the tall, thin man cross the room. Catching a flash of cobalt blue behind him, Finn moved his gaze from the art collector to the bold redhead talking to the maître d’, wild curls pulled back into a ruthlessly tight chignon.
Her makeup was perfect, hiding the spray of freckles on her nose and cheeks, and her once-lush, curvy body was fifteen pounds lighter.
Finn felt his stomach twist. Bhea looked older, sleek and sophisticated, every inch the successful London businesswoman. Wildly attractive but cool, remote…
He couldn’t help wondering whether anything remained of his arty, curly haired, impulsive wife.
Ex-wife.
You speak many languages, Murphy, you can remember she’s your ex.

Excerpts. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Though it has been nine years since Finn Murphy’s marriage combusted, his attraction to art dealer Beah Jenkinson has never dimmed. When work obligations throw them together in a London hotel, Finn hopes a casual affair will satisfy his yearnings. But as events lead them from Europe to Boston to plan their best friends’ wedding, he quickly discovers he and his ex have a lot of unfinished business…
Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | Goodreads |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Joss Wood loves books and travelling— especially to the wild places of Southern Africa and, well, anywhere.

She’s a wife, a mom to two teenagers and slave to two cats. After a career in local economic development, she now writes full time.

Joss is a member of the RWA (Romance Writers of America) and ROSA (Romance Writers of South Africa.)
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