Spotlight & Giveaway: Sweeten the Deal by Katie Shepard

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Katie Shepard to HJ!

Hi Katie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Sweeten the Deal!

 
Hello readers! I’m so glad you’re interested in my second book.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Sweeten the Deal is a romcom about an MBA student who unexpectedly inherits two million dollars and decides the first order of business is acquiring a cute artist boyfriend off a sugar baby site to teach her how to enjoy the sophisticated life.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“She was a good sugar daddy. Someday she’d be a good girlfriend.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I wrote this book during the pandemic and sent my characters to all the places I wanted to visit! The orchestra, the farmer’s market, the opera, the art museum. They get to live it up because I was stuck inside. I really wanted my biggest problem to be which European vacation I ought to plan.
• I listened to a strict diet of Taylor Swift while while writing this book. It’s dedicated to her because Folklore and Evermore fueled the entire composition.

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

Caroline, the FMC, was an NCAA tennis player, and in her profile picture she’s wearing a tiny white tennis outfit. Adrian, the MMC, thinks the picture she’s using on the sugar baby site has to be 30 years old, but it isn’t. Caroline isn’t even 30 years old.

Caroline was looking for the most sophisticated sugar baby, not necessarily the hottest one, so she’s a little overwhelmed by how handsome Adrian is. She’s worried she’s paying too much for his good looks when she’s not even planning on getting romantically involved with her fake boyfriend.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

When I decided to write an artist MMC, I knew I had to have a tribute to Titanic’s ‘paint me like one of your French girls’ scene, because that was so formative. But when Adrian starts painting Caroline’s portrait, they’re not involved yet, so I wanted it to have maximum sexual tension because obviously they’ve both seen that movie too.

***
Adrian was prepared to start his underdrawing, so he took a step closer to Caroline and caught her chin between two fingers. He gently tilted her face back into position. Had he ever touched her before? He couldn’t remember. She touched him often, small brushes of her hand on his arm or shoulder. He’d probably remember if he’d touched her before. Her skin was warm, despite the coolness of the day and the temperature inside the studio.
“Can you hold this position?” he asked quietly as she made big eyes up at him. Her throat moved as she swallowed.
“I think so,” she said in a tiny voice.
He rubbed a thumb briefly between her eyebrows to soften the expression there, then drew it to the flowers to focus her gaze on them.
He stepped backward to see if she’d comply. She didn’t budge.
“Good,” he said.

Readers should read this book….

Wish fulfillment! I gave Caroline some relatable problems: a new town, an unsupportive family, and big city dreams, then gave her exactly the tools we’d all want to solve those problems with: two million dollars, a hot fake boyfriend, and a mission to see the best of Boston.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

There’s a follow-up to Sweeten the Deal based on two characters we meet in the book, Tom and Rosie, and it’ll be out next fall with Berkley Romance. It’s called No One Does It Like You, and I hope readers are as invested as I am in seeing those two get back together!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: (1) A finished copy of SWEETEN THE DEAL by Katie Shepard

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: If you suddenly inherited two million dollars, what would you spend it on?

 
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Excerpt from Sweeten the Deal:

Caroline sent another serve across the net, the ball passing a couple of feet to his left.
“Backhand,” she said.
He watched the ball go.
“Sir, your attitude needs some work,” she said firmly, her accent deepening. “Don’t you want to win?”
“You are literally paying me to be here,” Adrian reminded her.
“I’m not paying you to suck!” she yelled back, a giggle beginning to work its way into her tone. She scooped up another ball from her bag. She sent it over to his left, slightly closer. “Backhand!”
Adrian made one last, abortive lunge for the ball but spun it off the edge of his racket.
“That was better,” Caroline chirped. She picked up another ball. “Backhand!”
“I’m done,” Adrian growled. “You win.”
“Noooo,” Caroline mock wailed. “We can make some real improvement on your backhand.”
She served another ball to his left, which he ignored. Then a second one that barely missed him. He looked up at her sharply to see if she’d done it on purpose.
“Backhand!” she called.
The next one grazed him. She was doing it on purpose.
“Oh, come on!” she yelled. “You’re not that old. Are you tired already?”
Adrian squared his shoulders and gave her his sternest look, to no apparent effect. “I’m done,” he repeated. He turned to look at all the balls he’d need to pick up, and she hammered a serve directly into his shins. He yelped and swore as he jumped, turning to freeze her with a promise of vengeance. That was going to leave a bruise.
“Backhand?” she said.
He dropped her racket on the hard court.
“Uh-oh,” she gasped, quickly bending to scoop up another couple of balls. As she continued to pelt him with tennis balls, he charged across the court, using his last surge of adrenaline to vault the net and barrel right at her. She was in the middle of a final volley when he caught her and wrapped his arms around her, trying to wrestle her racket out of her grip. She squealed and turned so that her back was against his stomach, both of their hands grappling to hold on to her tennis racket.
“Oh, no, no, no, you’re covered in sweat!” she yelped, barely able to form words over her desperate, hysterical laughter.
He ground the side of his face into her neck, wiping sweat into her skin and hair, which still smelled like drugstore shampoo and clean woman, with not even the faintest hint of exertion.
He should have let go then. She wasn’t letting go of the racket, and they were making a scene. If he’d let go first, he wouldn’t have had to think about it later. Holding on meant he had to admit that he wanted her, that an animal portion of his brain had noted that this position would do, and that Caroline pressed against the entire length of his body was a very good position indeed. In fact, she was the perfect height for this position, might as well have been designed for him to lean over and wrap around and press his hips into. It felt like sex, like living, like every sharp-edged and vital impulse he’d smothered for years.
You’re a disgrace, said a more rational part of his mind. But that part was not in control anymore, and perhaps had not been for the entire length of time he’d known her. So he held on tighter until they stumbled and fell on the court, Caroline sprawled out over his chest, both of them panting.
His chest was on fire as he rolled to his back, exhausted, aroused, and bewildered. Every emotion and sensation was centered on the woman laughing on top of him. He couldn’t make himself let go. He couldn’t see how he ever would.
“I win,” she whispered, expression exultant.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

MBA student Caroline Sedlacek knows her personal balance sheet is a little lopsided. On the asset side, at twenty-two she’s got an NCAA trophy, a great education…and the two million dollars she unexpectedly inherited. Liabilities? She’s never had friends, a boyfriend, or any life experiences away from the tennis court or the classroom. She’d love to invest herself in everything else, but “everything else” never came easily for her.

In the ten years since he left art school as a vaunted prodigy, Adrian Landry has won shows and major prizes—and done his best to shed his reputation as a pretty man who makes pretty paintings. Though currently broke and sleeping off a bad break-up on his college roommate’s couch, he knows this is the chance to get his life back on track at thirty-three—he just needs the money to find a new gallery.

When Adrian’s roommate lists him on a thinly veiled escort site, Caroline is not the patron he expected. She’s way too young, way too naive, and loudly uninterested in having sex with him. Instead, they’re both going to get exactly what they want: a little culture on her side, and a lot of cash on his. Aside from their sugar baby arrangement, they’ve got nothing in common. But as they reel from the symphony to the Haymarket, they learn that what they want and what they need might be two very different things.
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Meet the Author:

Katie Shepard is, in no particular order, a fangirl, a gamer, a bankruptcy lawyer, and a romance author. Born and raised in Texas, she frequently escapes to Montana to commune with the trees and woodland creatures, resembling a Disney princess in all ways except age, appearance, and musical ability. When not writing or making white-collar criminals cry at their depositions, she enjoys playing video games in her soft pants and watching sci-fi shows with her husband, two children, and very devoted cats.
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