Spotlight & Giveaway: Tempted By Her Best Friend Billionaire by Michelle Douglas

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Michelle Douglas to HJ!

Hi Michelle and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Tempted By Her Best Friend Billionaire!

 
Thanks so much! It’s fabulous to be here.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Nina and Blake have been besties since they were four years old. When Nina’s mother dies and Blake doesn’t return home for the funeral, Nina is devastated. Blake has good reason to hate their hometown, and he hasn’t returned in a decade, but he should’ve returned for something as important as this. Hurt and furious, she ignores his phone calls and emails. When his beloved Grandmother dies—Nina’s honorary grandmother—it forces his return, and Blake is crushed at the distance that has grown between him and Nina. He’ll do anything to fix it.

Gran provides him with the perfect opportunity. Her will requests that he and Nina take a Mediterranean cruise to scatter her ashes and tick off the bucket-item list she never had a chance to tick off for herself. As the two of them embark on this trip of a lifetime, fences are slowly mended, but they find it’s not just friendship that’s on their mind. A fierce and compelling attraction now burns between them. Surely it would be the height of foolishness to give into it? Or could it lead to something new and wonderful?
 

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

I love the moment before their first kiss—it’s a blend of high spirits and raw honesty.

‘It’s one of those nights I’ll never forget.’ She’d started walking again, gestured out in front of them at the harbour. ‘I’m in Monte Carlo, I won at blackjack.’
‘And bombed at craps.’
‘And then totally cleaned up at French roulette.’
‘Dined with a Hollywood star.’
‘With my own personal James Bond. Who, it must be said, in his tuxedo, was the most dashing man in the room.’
Her words drew things inside him tight. ‘Dashing, huh?’ He’d meant the words to be teasing, but they emerged on a husky whisper.
She glanced up, her feet slowing, her smile dissolving, but the heat in her eyes remained. ‘I shouldn’t have said that, should I?’ Biting her lip, she shrugged. ‘But you really do rock a tuxedo, Blake.’
‘And you rock a bikini.’
‘And you shouldn’t have said that.’ She swallowed, but she didn’t look away. ‘You looked?’
‘Hell, Nina, I can’t seem to stop looking.’
Her mouth formed a perfect O, before she straightened and glanced around. ‘And now here we are in Monte Carlo, walking beside the water beneath an almost full moon…’
Wind rushed in his ears and his heart thundered in his chest. Every atom arched towards her. ‘That sounded like an invitation.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe it was.’

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• It took me a very long time to decide on the itinerary for Nina and Blake’s cruise. There were so many glorious destinations to choose from. I now really want to go to Portofino, LOL.
• I scrapped the entire first chapter of my first draft. I LOVED what happened in that chapter but realised the action and events weren’t right for this hero and heroine. But I do have it saved and hope to write a different story based on it one day (with a heroine called Stevie).
• Songs! It’s not just that they are such a great source of inspiration, they can also help me find the tone for certain scenes and/or help me capture the emotions of my hero and heroine. The songs that made up my playlist for this story were Sailing (Rod Stewart), The Long and Winding Road (The Beatles), Can’t Get You
• Out of My Head (Kylie Minogue) and Boys of Summer (Don Henley). These songs will now forever be linked to Tempted By Her Best Friend Billionaire.

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

Blake is shocked by how physically aware he now is of Nina. It’s been ten years since they’ve been in the same country. She was nineteen when he left and she must’ve had legs and breasts then, but… When did her legs become so long and her chest so shapely? He finds it hard to reconcile his memory of her with the desire that grips him whenever he looks at her now.

Blake is now full of contradictions and Nina finds herself intrigued despite herself. He has seriously broad shoulders that are somehow at odds with the shadows in his eyes; he can stride onto a luxury yacht as if he owns it, but at other times he’s so seriously buttoned-up she could scream. She finds herself craving a chance to unbutton him—not just figuratively, but literally!

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

There’s a scene I adored writing where Nina goes skinny-dipping at night, not expecting anyone to discover her. Of course, Blake does…

Oh my God. She was naked—completely and utterly. She swam a few strokes of freestyle…and then breaststroke, before turning on her back to stare at the moon. Hot damn. Iris was right—skinny-dipping was a sensory experience definitely worth having. With nothing between her and the sea—she closed her eyes to relish the feeling—she’d never felt so unfettered. She gave a soft laugh. It felt extraordinary and she wondered now why she’d been so worried about it. Why—
‘What are you doing?’
She gave a muffled scream and immediately jackknifed into a vertical position so nothing peeked out of the water other than her head.
Blake. Oh, God.
He made his way down to the lower platform. Reaching down, he picked up her bikini. His jaw sagged. ‘You aren’t?’
Something in his tone made her chin lift. ‘I am.’
Both his jaw and his fist clenched, the gold bikini glittering between his fingers like stardust, and he shook it at her. ‘You have to be joking me.’
She dog-paddled a little closer so they could keep their voices low. ‘I am skinny-dipping because I am not stuffy or hung up on what people might say about me behind my back. I, for one, am young and free enough to enjoy every new experience that comes my way without being tied in knots by convention.’
His hands slammed to his hips. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Seriously?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m skinny-dipping, Blake. Not stupid. Midnight swims and drinking don’t seem like a particularly good combination.’
He pointed a shaking finger at her. ‘This can’t be legal.’
She shrugged, careful to make sure everything that mattered stayed below the water. ‘Europeans are far more relaxed about nudity than Australians.’
‘You could get us arrested.’
‘Well, as you aren’t the one skinny-dipping, I’m thinking you’ll be fine. So turn around and walk away and stop spoiling my fun.’
Not a single muscle moved and yet hurt still somehow managed to radiate from him. Her heart slipped to her toes and then sank down to the bottom of the sea. Oh, Blake. She ached for him. Ever since his parents had been arrested he’d refused to step a foot outside the rigid boundaries he’d set for himself—holding himself to impossible standards.
She refused to let her chin drop. ‘Or you could stop your bellyaching and join me.’
Her words made him blink. Was that yearning that crept across his face?
‘I dare you.’

I chortled at how outraged and prissy Blake was in this scene.

Readers should read this book….

If they love friends-to-lovers stories with high stakes and lots of emotion. Oh, and also if they’re partial to a little armchair travel—the destinations in this story are divine.
 

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

My next release is Forbidden Cinderella in his Castello which releases early next year. I’m currently working on my next book, and I’ve teamed up once again with Ally Blake, Kandy Shepherd and Rachael Stewart to write another four-book Outback series (the books in our first series were all bestsellers). This series follows the stories of four brothers and is set in the remote and wild Kimberley region of Australia’s north west. We adored writing the first series and are loving this one too.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: The winner will receive a signed paperback copy of Tempted By Her Best Friend Billionaire (open internationally).

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: If you could visit only one place in the Mediterranean, where would you go?

 
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Excerpt from Tempted By Her Best Friend Billionaire:

At a little after five Blake couldn’t stand it any longer. Grabbing a lemonade from the fridge, he headed outside to the back veranda, stopping short when he saw Nina sitting in a vinyl armchair in a startling shade of electric blue at her end of the veranda, staring out at her garden. Dragging in a breath, he forced his legs towards her, stopping at the knee-high iron railing that separated the two properties. ‘I didn’t think you were home.’
She didn’t turn to look at him, but continued to stare out at her garden. He glanced at it too and his brows shot up. Nina had loved green things and gardening ever since Gran had put a trowel in her hand as a five-year-old and set her up with her own little plot.
He’d known she’d extended her garden, but this was amazing! Native trees and shrubs wound among raised garden beds that he knew would be filled with vegetables. The effect was an odd combination of wild and ordered.
‘The garden is looking great.’ He sat in the matching chair on his side of the railing, his heart beating too hard. ‘You didn’t hear my knock on the wall?’
‘Am I supposed to come running whenever you knock?’
Right. Wrong opening. He should’ve said something like, ‘Isn’t this awful?’ or ‘How are you holding up?’ because she’d loved his grandmother every bit as much as he had.
He ached to reach across and hug her, kiss her cheek, but the frosty eyebrow she’d briefly raised had warned him not to try it. His stomach hollowed out. He concentrated on his breathing and stared at the garden on his grandmother’s side of the fence.
Nina had obviously taken over Gran’s garden too—the native plants and shrubs irresistible to the birds who made a cacophony of sound in the dusk of the late August afternoon—but the rose garden his grandmother had so loved still proudly stood at its centre. Staring at it now made him ache and throb. ‘You didn’t hear me arrive?’
‘I heard you were back in town before you left Joey’s workshop.’
He shook his head. This town. Was that when she’d ducked across with those few groceries? Was that her dinner in his refrigerator? She might be giving him the cold shoulder, but she’d cared enough to make sure he had something to eat.
‘You didn’t think to come on over?’
‘What for? You’re a grown-up, aren’t you? Besides, I was too busy getting over my shock that you’d actually turned up.’ She raised her glass in his direction in a mock toast.
He went as cold as the ice that clinked in her glass. ‘You didn’t think I would?’ Had she honestly thought he’d stay away and leave her to deal with everything?
‘Showing up isn’t what you do.’
Silently he swore. And swore. ‘Look, Nina, about your mum’s funeral…’
That eyebrow rose again when he hesitated. ‘Go on. My mum’s funeral…?’
When he didn’t she gave a mirthless laugh. ‘My mother, as in the woman you called Auntie Jo? The woman who took you under her wing and was a second mother to you because your own parents were miserable excuses for human beings? That’s the woman you’re referring to?’
‘Nina, I…’ But how to explain when he could barely explain it to himself.
‘You didn’t come back home once in ten years to see her. Not once. And you knew that, unlike your grandmother, she couldn’t travel.’
For the last seven years he’d treated his grandmother to an annual European holiday—so he could see her at least once a year and make sure she was doing okay. He’d have done the same for Auntie Jo and Nina. Jo’s illness, though, had made that impossible.
He hated Callenbrook with the fire of a thousand suns. He’d never wanted to return to the godforsaken place. Nina had always told him she understood.
Until February. When she’d stopped talking to him altogether.
Fact was he had tried to come home for the funeral. His hands clenched at the memory. He’d made it as far as Singapore airport before the pain in his chest and the drumming in his head had overpowered him. The shortness of his breath. The struggle for air. The way his left arm had tingled before going numb.
He’d collapsed, too dizzy and weak to communicate, unable to tell anyone what was wrong with him. A part of him had watched from afar as the cabin crew had called for an ambulance and he’d been raced to hospital. He’d thought he’d die before they arrived. A heart attack at thirty. Rare but not unheard of.
Except it hadn’t been a heart attack. It had been a panic attack.
Prior to experiencing one for himself first-hand, he’d had no real idea what a panic attack involved. He hadn’t known the symptoms could be so severe. He hadn’t realised how debilitating they could be. He’d still been intent on getting the next flight to Australia, but no sooner had he verbalised that thought to the doctor than he’d found himself in the grip of another panic attack. Apparently telling yourself to snap out of it, that you were strong and successful and had overcome adversity before, didn’t make an iota of difference. Panic attacks didn’t care how wealthy you were, or how intelligent or successful or competent.
It had rocked him to his marrow. He’d never wanted to experience another one as long as he lived.
By the time the doctor had discharged him from hospital, it’d been too late to get to Callenbrook in time for the funeral. So he’d texted Nina that he’d had a work emergency so she wouldn’t worry when he didn’t turn up in Callenbrook, had grabbed the next flight back to London and had sought the professional help the doctor in Singapore had urged him to seek. He’d had therapy, had slowly worked through his issues, hence the reason he was here in the flesh now—and relatively coherent. But actually verbalising all of that…
Closing his eyes, he swallowed and prayed to God his voice would work. ‘None of that means I didn’t care.’ He and Jo had spoken regularly on the phone, they’d video-conferenced every couple of months. She’d known how much he’d loved her.
‘Actions speak louder than words, Blake.’
She crossed one remarkably shapely leg over the other and he found himself frowning. Nina didn’t have shapely legs. She just had…legs.
‘Luckily for them both, Mum and Granny Day continued to believe in you until the end.’
His heart jackhammered in his chest. ‘But…you don’t?’ She was supposed to know him. Really know him. She was the only person left on this earth who did. She had to know there was a good reason why he hadn’t made it back for the funeral.
Pursing her lips, she glared at her garden and shook her head. Just once. But it hit him like a sucker punch.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

A LUXURY CRUISE—WITH HER FRENEMY!

Growing up, Blake Carlisle was Nina’s best friend—until he let both her and his grandmother down. Now his gran’s will has instructed them to cruise the Mediterranean together and fulfill her dying wish! It’s a holiday Nina desperately needs…but having the tech billionaire in tow is bringing up their painful pasts—and their undeniable attraction! Nina’s tempted into a “holiday with benefits” arrangement, but with Blake’s life on the other side of the world, can they ever be anything more than friends?
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Meet the Author:

Michelle Douglas is a is an award-winning author who has been writing for iconic romance publisher Mills & Boon since 2007, and believes she has the best job in the world. In 2019 she completed a Creative Writing PhD in Popular Romance and Feminism. She’s a sucker for happy endings, heroines who have a secret stash of chocolate, and heroes who know how to laugh. She lives in a leafy suburb of Newcastle on Australia’s east coast with her own romantic hero, a house full of dust and books, and an eclectic collection of 60s and 70s vinyl.
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