Spotlight & Giveaway: Hot Christmas Kisses 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, Hot Christmas Kisses!

 
Hello lovely readers!
 

Tell us about the book with this fun little challenge using the title of the book:

Matt and DJ have exchanged hot kisses for over six years, meeting up in hotel rooms in various cities. But when Matt returns to Boston during the festive season, life gets complicated.
And the kisses get hotter!
 

What’s your favorite line(s) from the book?:

There’s a secondary story running through the Love In Boston books and it tells the story of Callie and Mason, a more mature couple trying to make sense of love. I love Mason, he’s spectacular!

Mason’s heart accelerated into a flat-out gallop and all the moisture in his mouth dried up. “As I recall, there were only two items on your list that you couldn’t manage on your own. A one-night stand and phone sex. I’m happy to help with either, darlin’.”
Very, very happy to help. He was a good guy that way.
Callie didn’t reply and Mason could easily imagine her blushing, staring at the ceiling in mortification. The silence between them widened and Mason was about to back off, to crack a joke to break the tension, when Callie spoke again.
“If I can’t even ask you for phone sex how can I actually do it?” Callie whispered.
Thank you, baby Jesus.
Mason closed his eyes, relief seeping out of every pore. He was already rock-hard at the suggestion and he wanted Callie wet and writhing as well.
“I’d love to have phone sex with you, Cal.”
Callie’s sigh of relief was audible. After a moment, she spoke again. “So, how does this work? Do I just say a whole bunch of sexy stuff?”
Mason was glad she couldn’t see his grin. “Why don’t you let me make love to you, Cal?”
“You can do that?” Callie asked, skeptically.
Damn straight he could. Mason released a low laugh. He’d start with the easy stuff. “What are you wearing?”
“Uh…um.” Callie hesitated. “A short black transparent negligee?”
No, she wasn’t. Mason suspected she was wearing something comfortable, something she wore every night. “I think you are wearing a long T-shirt and sleeping shorts, maybe just the shirt. Your hair is down, you have no makeup on and your eyes are that stunning shade I call horny blue.”
“God.” Callie released her first moan and Mason felt like he’d won a million-dollar lotto ticket. He intended to have her moaning a lot longer. “For your information, Cal, I don’t need to see you in negligees or heels. As soon as I see you, no matter what you are wearing, I go instantly hard.”
“You…do?”
How could she not have noticed?

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Matt and DJ have an on-on relationship, they’ve been hooking up for sex for six years so for both of them, it is about mutual attraction.
But when they are forced to face each other in the real world, I think DJ recognizes that Matt is someone she can trust and rely on, someone who respects her ability to stand on her own two feet and fight her own battles.
Matt respects DJ’s sharp mind and her ability to get things done. But underneath the sharp businessperson is a vulnerable woman who has had a tough life and has kept on fighting.

When you sat down to start this book, what was the biggest challenge you faced? What were you most excited about?

I was really looking forward to experiencing a white Christmas, even if only through the pages of my book! (Christmas in South Africa is boiling hot!)
In terms of DJ and Matt, I had to make sure that I was careful to make their conflict deep and sustainable, there had to be a really good reason why they kept coming back to each other for the best part of six years.

What, in your mind, makes this book stand out?

I wanted to try something different with the reunion romance trope and I think casual hook-ups aren’t something that is often addressed in romance novels. It was especially important to me that my characters not apologize for having a casual attachment, especially my heroine!

The First Kiss…

Matt crossed the room to her and his hand lifted to cradle her face, his thumb brushing across her lower lip. He looked down, and she felt the heat of his gaze on the tiny triangle low on her hips and her equally frivolous bra. She was, in turn, both entranced and brutally turned on by the passion flaring in his eyes. Being wanted by this sexy man always shot a ray of enhanced sunshine through her veins.
“Nice outfit, Dylan-Jane,” Matt said when their eyes locked again, his voice extra growly.
He was the only person, apart from her mother, who’d ever called her by her full name, and on Matt’s lips it was a caress rather than a curse.
“Hi.”
The single-syllable greeting was all her tangled tongue could manage.
“Hi back.” Matt lowered his mouth to hers and as their lips touched they both hesitated, as they always did. DJ had no idea why Matt waited but she enjoyed stretching out the moment, ramping up the anticipation. Yes, she was desperate for his touch, but she also wanted to make the moment last. The first kiss, after so long apart, was always exceptional.
Finally, Matt’s clever mouth touched hers and it was, as always, sweet and sexy—a little rediscovery and a whole bunch of familiarity. The kisses they’d exchange later would be out of control, like a wildfire, but this one was tender and, in its way, as soul-deep sexy as what would come later.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

After a bombshell revelation, Matt and DJ make love. But they have to talk and both don’t want to. I think this scene contains a truckload of pushed down emotion that the actors would have to convey…

“Why the frown?” Matt asked her.
DJ jerked up her head to find him looking at her. Ignoring his question, she tipped her head to the side. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you call before you came over?”
“I tried. Once or thirty times.”
DJ remembered she’d turned off her phone after fighting with Matt and the twins, in an effort to find some much needed solitude. She should turn it back on. “After you left, the twins and I had a disagreement about business, so I took some time to recharge.”
Matt sent her a steady look. “I saw your friends on the way in. An argument over business wouldn’t cause all of you to have red noses and wet eyes.”
Dammit. He wasn’t just a pretty face.
“Whatever you are fighting about is deep and personal and while a part of me wants to kick ass and take names, I’m going to assume you know how to fight your own battles.
“Besides, I’m nobody’s white knight,” Matt added, his voice rough. “Unless it involves statutes and penal codes and a check at the end of it, I’m not interested in saving anyone.”
Yeah, she got the message: don’t expect him to run to her rescue. If she hadn’t learned, a long time ago, that the only person she could fully trust was herself, she’d be disappointed.
DJ pushed her hair back from her face. “You never answered my question—why did you come by, Matt?”
She wouldn’t insult him by suggesting that he’d only come over for sex because it seemed like he’d been as caught off guard at that happening as she’d been.
It was Matt’s turn to ignore her question. “Have you got a beer?”
A drink sounded like a great idea. Why hadn’t she thought of that? “Sure.”
Matt followed her across the room, past the designer dining table to the kitchen area. He leaned his elbows on the counter and looked at her. “I never imagined your place to look like this, Dylan-Jane.”
DJ frowned as she took a beer from her fridge and reached for a glass. “Like what?”
Matt shook his head at the glass she offered and took the bottle. “Minimalistic. So very luxurious but so damn tidy. I’m a bit of a slob but I thought you were even messier than me.”
DJ leaned back against the counter and folded her arms. “I was on holiday, taking a break from being tidy. I told you, my time away from Boston with you was fantasy, and in my fantasy I don’t have to be perfect.”
“Who demands perfection from you?”
DJ turned back to the fridge, opened it and took her time removing a bottle of wine before reaching for a glass. She had no intention of answering that loaded question. When he didn’t push, DJ turned around and poured herself some wine.
DJ looked up and met his eyes. “I suppose you want to talk about what happened.”
“I’ll listen to anything you want to tell me, DJ.”

If your hero had a sexy-times play list, what song(s) would have to be on it?

• Chase Rice– If I’m Being Honest
• Female- Keith Urban
• I Don’t Dance-Lee Brice
• Brown Eyed Girl- Van Morrison
• Wild World-Cat Stevens
• A Good Night- John Legend

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

A happy Christmas, aw man feeling!
I really just hope it makes you smile.

What are you currently working on? What are your up-coming releases?

I’m always working on something! A new single title project, more Harlequin Desires and, hopefully, more romantic suspense books.

Look out for another Christmas cowboy book from me at the end of the month and the third book in the Love in Boston series (Darby’s story) coming in January 2019! It’s called The Rival’s Heir.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: I am giving away four ebook copies of Hot Christmas Kisses!

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: In Hot Christmas Kisses, the Brogan family spend the weeks leading up to Christmas doing various “Christmassy” things. Do you have any family traditions before, during or after Christmas?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Excerpt from Hot Christmas Kisses:

Christmas, the year before

In a rural part of Devon, three thousand miles from her home in Boston, Massachusetts, DJ Winston smoothed her hands over the maroon-and-silver dress and turned to face her computer screen.
Her two best friends, twins Darby and Jules Brogan, lounged on Jules’s couch in her office back in Massachusetts, coffee cups on the table in front of them. As was their custom, they’d shortly be closing their business for the Christmas break, ending the year by treating their staff to lunch.
“Send everybody my love and tell them I hope they have a lovely minivacation.”
DJ ignored Darby rolling her eyes at DJ’s inability to wish anyone a merry Christmas. She tried, she really did, but the words always got stuck in her throat. Merry Christmas! Happy holidays! Ho, ho, ho…nope, she couldn’t do it. She could talk interest rates and contract terms, equity and cash flow, but she stuttered and stammered her way through December. The festive—hah!—season made her feel like she was eight again, alone, frightened and wondering why neither of her parents loved her.
DJ knew the twins would like to discuss her antipathy toward Christmas, but it was, like so many other subjects, off-limits.
DJ adored the twins, but she believed in keeping some distance between her and the people she loved. Distance was her safety net, her belay rope, her life vest. Distance was how she’d always protected herself. And since it had worked for her as a child and as a teen, what was the point of changing her strategy now?
Darby cocked her head to one side. “That dress looks fantastic with your dark hair and eyes, DJ.”
Jules nodded her agreement. “Vibrant colors suit you. But with your height and build, anything looks good on you, you know that.”
She didn’t, though.
While the twins saw her as attractive, she still saw herself as the gangly, dark-haired teenager who embarrassed her blond, blue-eyed mother. DJ was smart enough, Fenella reluctantly admitted, but she was too tall, too lanky, with not enough charm. So Fenella said when she was in a good mood.
DJ tried not to remember the words Fenella let fly when she was angry.
“What shoes are you wearing?” Darby asked.
“My Jimmy Choos, the ones you made be buy last week.” DJ nodded to the sexy silver shoes on the bed.
“So…” Darby drawled. “When is Matt arriving?”
DJ released an irritated sigh. “He’s not.”
“He stood you up? Nice Christmas present.” Jules was sarcasm personified.
DJ sighed. Darby and Jules didn’t understand that her and Matt Edwards’s ad hoc arrangement worked for them, as it had for the past six years. Depending on their schedules, she and Matt met for a night or a weekend. That was when DJ stepped out of her life, pushing aside numbers and profit margins, cash-flow issues and cost projections. When she was with Matt, she allowed herself the freedom to be another version of herself—fun-loving, exuberant and sensuous.
Neither she nor Matt had any expectations, and DJ was very conscious of the fact that, despite making this unusual situation last for many years, their arrangement was a temporary thing.
They had no ties to each other, nothing to bind them except for the expectation of good sex, a few laughs and a relaxing time spent in undemanding company. She didn’t need more. A partner, boyfriend or permanent lover wasn’t something she wanted for herself; after being abandoned by her father and rejected by Fenella, DJ wasn’t prepared to hand over her battered heart to another human to kick around. She was keeping possession of that fragile organ.
Spontaneous weekends spent with Matt worked well for her, but yesterday he’d blown her off, saying that he, despite it being Christmas, needed to stay in the Netherlands, to consult with a client who was in a world of hurt. Because Matt was a fantastically successful human-rights lawyer, hurt could mean his client was a political refugee ducking prison time, or a tribe of aboriginal people who’d been kicked off their ancestral land and were facing the imminent loss of their culture and way of life.
The fact that his on-and-off lover needed to escape Christmas and was horny as hell didn’t nudge the needle of his what-international-laws-did-this-violate? scale.
DJ had considered missing her friend’s wedding but that meant doing Christmas in Boston. Ugh. Attending this Christmas Eve wedding was the lesser of two evils.
Her friends on the screen were still waiting for her response. Right, they’d been discussing Matt’s nonarrival. “We have an understanding that work always comes first. He’s tied up doing something terribly important.”
What he wasn’t doing was her.
DJ pulled a face, glanced at the corner clock on her laptop screen and sighed. “I’d better slap on some makeup or else I’m going to be late for the church service.”
Darby frowned and waved at DJ’s dress. “Take that off first. You do not want to get makeup on that dress.”
Good point. Friends since kindergarten, she was superbly comfortable disrobing in front of them. Allowing them to see her messed up inner world was what she found difficult. DJ gently pulled the dress over her head and laid it on the bed.
Jules whistled. “Push-up bra, tiny thong, heels. Edwards has no idea what he’s missing out on.”
“I agree.”
That voice.
DJ whipped her head up and looked toward the doorway. Her heart, stupid thing, did cartwheels in her chest.
Matt, a shoulder pressed to the door frame, looked as effortlessly sexy as he always did. A tall blond with deep green eyes and a surfer’s tan, he had the face and body to advertise sun, sea and sex. He didn’t look like what he was: a brilliant international lawyer with a steel-trap mind.
The moisture in DJ’s mouth disappeared and it took all her willpower not to run to him and start removing his clothes. She desperately wanted to slide the cream linen jacket down his arms and rip apart his navy button-down shirt. The leather belt would be next, and she’d soon have the buttons of his designer jeans undone. In her hand he’d be hot and hard…
It had always been this way. Matt just had to look at her with those incredibly green eyes and she went from cool and collected to crazy in ten seconds flat. She didn’t love him—hell, she barely knew him—but, damn, she craved his mouth, his hands on all her long neglected and secret places.

Excerpts. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 

Book Info:

“You’re my escape. Just a temporary indulgence.”

But Christmas has a way of changing things…

On and then off again, Matt Edwards and DJ Winston share hot sex, hotel rooms—and nothing else. But now Matt is suddenly in DJ’s real life, where she’s not sentimental about anything—not her lovers or the holidays. Just one hot kiss has them back in bed… Will Christmas magic turn their fantasy into forever?
Book Links: Amazon | B & N | iTunes | Kobo |
 
 

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.)
Website | Facebook | Twitter |