Spotlight & Giveaway: The Boyfriend Arrangement by Andrea Laurence

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Andrea Laurence’s new release: The Boyfriend Arrangement

Fake it until you make it…

to the altar?
 
Instead of attending yet another friend’s wedding alone, Harper Drake asks Sebastian West—sexy, available and not a total stranger—to pose as her adoring boyfriend.
 
With sparks flying, a little faux affection could be fun, and no one, especially Harper’s ex, will guess the truth. Except things get very hot very fast, for real… And then a blackmailer’s threats force them to reveal all their secrets!

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from The Boyfriend Arrangement 

“Can I at least come in and—?”

“No,” Finn interrupted. “Go home. Go shopping. Just go away.” With a smug expression Finn waved at him through the glass and then turned his back on his business partner.

Sebastian stood there for a moment, thinking maybe Finn would come back and tell him he was just kidding. When it was clear that Finn was deadly serious, he wandered back to the elevator and returned to the lobby of the building. He stepped out onto the busy Manhattan sidewalk with no real clue as to where he was going to go. He’d planned to take it easy for a few days and head back to work today. Now he had two full weeks of nothingness ahead of him.

He had the resources to do almost anything on earth that he wanted. Fly to Paris on a private jet. Take a luxury cruise through the Caribbean. Sing
karaoke in Tokyo. He just didn’t want to do any of those things.

Money was an alien thing to Sebastian. Unlike Finn, he’d never had it growing up. His parents had worked hard but as blue collar laborers they’d just never seemed to get ahead. And after his brother Kenny’s ATV accident, they’d gone from poor to
near destitute under the weight of the medical bills.

Scholarships and loans had gotten Sebastian through college, after which he’d focused on building his company with Finn. The company eventually brought money—lots of it—but he’d been really too busy to notice. Or to spend any. He’d never dreamed
of traveling or owning expensive sports cars. Honestly, he was bad at being rich. He probably didn’t even have twenty bucks in his wallet.

Stopping at a street corner, he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and noticed the leather had nearly disintegrated over the years. He’d probably had this one since grad school. Maybe he should consider getting a new one. He had nothing better to do at the moment.

Up ahead, he spied Neiman Marcus. Surely they sold wallets. He made his way across the street and over to the department store. Sebastian stopped long enough to hold the door for a group of attractive women exiting with enough bags to put a kid through a semester or two of college. They looked vaguely familiar, especially the last one with the dark hair and steely blue eyes.

Her gaze flicked over him for a moment and he felt it like a punch to his gut. His pulse pounded in his throat as he tried to unsuccessfully swallow the lump that had formed there. He didn’t know why he would
have such a visceral reaction to the woman. He wanted to say something but he couldn’t place the woman and decided to keep his mouth shut. Half a second later she looked away, breaking the connection, and continued on down the street with her friends.

Sebastian watched them for a moment with a touch of regret then forced himself into the store. He made a beeline for the men’s department and quickly selected a wallet. He wasn’t particularly choosy with that sort of thing. He just wanted black leather and a slim profile with enough room for a couple cards and some cash. Easy.

As he found a register open for checkout, he noticed a strikingly attractive brunette ahead of him. Sebastian realized she was one of the women he’d just seen leave the store a few minutes before. The one with the blue-gray eyes. He wished he
remembered who she was so he could say something to her. They’d probably met at one event or another around town—Finn forced him to go to the occasional party or charity gala—he couldn’t be sure, though. Most of his brain was allocated to robotics and
engineering.

Not all of it, though. He was red-blooded male enough to notice her tall, lean figure, long, chestnut hair, big blue eyes and blood-red lips. It was impossible not to notice how flawlessly she was put
together. She smelled like the meadow behind his childhood home after a warm summer rain. Deep down inside him something clenched tightly at the thought.

What was it about her? He told himself it was probably nothing to do with her, exactly. The doctor had told him to refrain from strenuous physical activity—Yes, that includes sexual relations, Mr. West—for at least a week. It had been a while since he’d indulged with a lady, but maybe since it was forbidden, his mind was focusing on what it couldn’t have.

As Sebastian got closer to the counter, he realized the woman was returning everything in her bag. That was odd. If the register was correct, she’d just purchased and immediately returned about fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of clothes. He watched as she slipped out of her leather coat and shoved it into the empty department store bag, covering it with the packing tissue so you couldn’t see inside.

His chronic boredom was temporarily interrupted as she piqued his curiosity with her actions. “Excuse m—?” he started to say.

She turned suddenly and slammed right into his chest, forcing him to reach out and catch her in his arms before she stumbled backward on her sky-high heels and fell to the ground. He pulled her tight against him, molding her breasts to his chest until she righted herself. He found he really didn’t want to let go when the time came. He was suddenly drunk on her scent and the feel of her soft curves pressing into his hard angles. How long had it been since he’d been this close to a woman? He had no clue.

But eventually he did let go.

The woman took an unsteady step back, pulling herself together with a crimson flush blooming across her cheeks. “I am so sorry about that,” she said. “I’m always in such a hurry that I don’t pay attention to where I’m going.”

There was a faint light of recognition in her blue-gray eyes as she looked up at him, so he knew he was right about meeting her somewhere before. “No, don’t apologize,” he said with a wry smile. “That’s the most exciting thing to happen to me all week.”

Excerpt. ©Andrea Laurence. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: 2 Autographed print copies The Boyfriend Arrangement (US) and 2 digital copies of The Boyfriend Arrangement (worldwide).

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Meet the Author:

Andrea Laurence is an award-winning contemporary author who has been a lover of books and writing stories since she learned to read. A dedicated West Coast girl transplanted into the Deep South, she’s constantly trying to develop a taste for sweet tea and grits while caring for her collection of animals that includes a Siberian Husky that sheds like nobody’s business. You can contact Andrea at her website: http://www.andrealaurence.com.

Buy Link: http://andrealaurence.com/bookshelf/the-boyfriend-game/