Abby Gaines - That New York Minute

This Christmas, we’ve got some fabulous treats to give away! ENTER NOW for a chance to win £5000 by clicking the link below. www.millsandboon.co.uk/ebookxmas

Rachel’s mouth was no longer quivering … her lips were full and nicely shaped and more tempting than he could believe.

“I don’t do kissing, either,” she said firmly. “Not with you.”

Too bad Garrett couldn’t get the idea out of his head.

“I don’t think you should write off the possibility. I already like your legs.” It wasn’t her legs he was eyeing right now … he found the V of her yellow blouse. “Maybe I’d like the whole—”

“Don’t you dare say hog,” Rachel warned.

“Shebang,” he said, grinning.

Dear Reader,

Last year, I visited New York City. I’d forgotten how incredible it is, how its streets make you feel so alive. Yet despite being frenetic, it’s easy to get around, and friendly.

New York is the setting for some great movies— An Affair to Remember, Sleepless in Seattle, Two Weeks ’ Notice . The city has also inspired many books … including That New York Minute .

In That New York Minute , Rachel Frye and Garrett Calder, rivals in a Manhattan advertising agency, are complete opposites—such fun for the writer, helping them find their way to each other!

But they have one thing in common: each needs someone who’ll stick with them no matter what.

My visit to NYC will stay in my heart forever … but not for the obvious reasons. You see, I’d planned to travel there with two of my best friends and fellow authors, Sandra Hyatt and Karina Bliss. We were particularly excited because Sandra was up for an award at the conference we would attend. But a volcanic ash cloud forced the cancellation of my friends’ flight; to our mutual devastation, they never made it to NYC.

A few weeks later, Sandra died suddenly of a brain bleed. It was a terrible shock to her family and friends, and a reminder to us all to make time for those we cherish (as, indeed, Sandra always did). I will never get to visit the Big Apple with Sandra, but she will always be in my heart.

You can read more about Sandra, and the Trust established to honor her memory, at www.sandrahyatt.com.

I hope you enjoy That New York Minute . To share your thoughts, please e-mail abby@abbygaines.com. To read an After-the-End scene, visit the For Readers page at www.abbygaines.com.

Sincerely,

Abby Gaines

ABBY GAINESwrites contemporary romances for the Mills & Boon ®Cherish ™line, and Regency romances for the Love Inspired Books Love Inspired Historical line. Those might sound like two completely different genres, but Abby likes to say she writes “stories that leave you smiling”—wherever and whenever they are set. Her Mills & Boon Cherish novel The Groom Came Back won the 2010 Readers Crown Award, and her novella One in a Million won the 2011 Readers Crown. That New York Minute is Abby Gaines’s eighteenth book for Mills & Boon.

Abby loves cooking, reading, skiing and traveling … though not all at once! She lives with her husband and children—and a labradoodle and a cat—in a house with enough stairs to keep her semi-fit and a sun-filled office whose sea view provides inspiration for her writing. Visit her at www.abbygaines.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the memory of

Sandra Diane Hyde

(1965–2011)

As Sandra Hyatt, a wonderful writer of romance

As a wife and mother, the heart of her family

As a friend…irreplaceable

HE’S BREAKING UP WITH ME.

Rachel Frye took a swig of champagne. No longer the appropriate drink for the occasion, but she needed something to do with her hands. Something other than clasping them together on the table while she begged Piers not to end it.

Given they were sitting in one of Manhattan’s coolest bars, a little dignity was called for.

“Don’t get me wrong, you’re really attractive and smart. I enjoy spending time with you.” Piers leaned forward with the earnestness that Rachel found ninety-nine percent charming and one percent temptation to tell an off-color joke. “But, you know … Oyster?” He pushed the silver plate they were sharing across the highly varnished table for two.

“Thanks,” Rachel muttered, as her mind scrambled for compelling arguments as to why they shouldn’t break up just yet. She picked up one of the mollusks remaining from the dozen they’d ordered. She’d suggested Crush, a new champagne and oyster bar, for this date because she’d been considering sleeping with Piers tonight.

Also because it was around the corner from her Madison Avenue office, but still. When a woman suggests to her boyfriend of three months that they start their evening at a place serving well-known aphrodisiacs, the last thing she expects is to get dumped.

She’d unbuttoned two buttons of her blouse, for goodness’ sake!

“It’s just, I get the feeling we’re not on the same page,” Piers said.

Rachel realized too late that slurping an oyster from its shell wasn’t dignified. She swallowed hastily, the salty mass gliding past the lump in her throat.

Was this about sex? Piers had wanted to sleep with her on the first date, something Rachel would never contemplate. Nor the second. Nor the third. Was it unreasonable to want to believe they might have a future together before she jumped into bed?

“Actually, I think we have a lot in common,” she said, as she set the empty shell back on its bed of crushed ice. They were both hardworking, capable people. And Piers had the kind of family she’d like to have come from: his father was the second-generation owner of an upstate accounting firm, and his mother ruled the local bridge club with an iron, yet friendly, grip.

“You glanced at your watch when I walked in tonight,” he said. It sounded like an accusation.

“I … was checking the time,” she said uncertainly. She dabbed at a drop of oyster juice on her chin with her napkin.

“Rachel, I was two minutes late. It’s not a crime.”

“I never said it was. I never even thought it. That’s why you’re dumping me? Because I looked at my watch?” Ugh, she needed to rein in that shrillness.

She turned away from Piers’s concerned gaze to take a deep breath.

And encountered another gaze, this one altogether unsympathetic.

Garrett Calder, her fellow creative director at Key Bowen Crane, New York’s largest independent advertising agency, was watching her from his black leather bar stool.

Rachel had noticed him at the bar when she walked in, noticed the bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne—which would set him back at least two hundred bucks in a place like this—in front of him. She’d assumed he was waiting for someone, but he was still alone and she realized there was only one glass on the bar.

She knew the guy was a loner—small wonder, with that scowl on his face—but drinking a bottle of champagne by himself?

“—and it feels like you’re clinging ,” Piers said, finishing a sentence she’d failed to hear.

She jerked back to face him. “I don’t cling!” She was loyal and committed, sure. But those were good things. “I admit, punctuality is important to me, but I never meant to make you feel, uh, pressured.”

What was wrong with him, that a glance at her watch could terrify him into thinking she wanted a pledge of undying love?

Which she didn’t. Not yet. She just wanted to be certain the relationship would last more than five minutes.

“We shouldn’t rush to break up at the first obstacle,” she said, “when there’s every chance we can get past it.”

Piers was an actuary, a man who calculated risk to the nth degree, and she liked the way his analytical approach spilled over into his personality. There was a lot she liked about him, frankly. His low-key sense of humor, his easy conversation. She was attracted to him physically, and they’d done some serious making out to prove it.

Though now, when she eyed his receding hairline, she saw it for what it was. Imminent baldness, not a sign of dependability.

Nothing wrong with bald. Hair was unarguably a nice-to-have, but it was nowhere near the top of the list.

“When I’m late,” Piers said, “I get the feeling that you worry I’m not going to show up. When we’re together, I feel like you’re always watching me, to make sure I’m still interested. That’s a lot of pressure, Rachel.”

She forced a laugh. “Piers, I’m a businesswoman with a high-level job and an excellent salary.” She felt as if she was interviewing for the role of Steady, Nonclinging Girlfriend. “I hardly think I’m that insecure.”

She didn’t assume a guy was a no-show after five minutes. It was more that she started to wonder just how reliable he was. She knew it was illogical, so she tried not to let Piers’s occasional tardiness color her opinion of him.

She reached across the table for his hand. A nice hand. Neatly squared fingernails. Pale, but that was okay. “I don’t think we should be too quick to end a good thing. How about,” she continued, lowering her voice to what she hoped was husky, “we go back to my place and … work this out.”

Wariness flickered in his eyes. Then his gaze dropped to those two buttons she’d undone— about time —and the hint of black bra she knew he’d see there.

Rachel wriggled her shoulders just a little.

He let out a sigh. “You are a very special woman, Rachel,” he admitted.

That was more like it! He’d simply had cold feet. Rachel pushed her chair back. It scraped loudly on the wooden floorboards. “Let’s go,” she said.

Piers stood. “Just so you know, I have an early start tomorrow. I won’t be able to stay the night.”

She paused as she reached for the jacket she’d slung over the back of her chair. “That’s okay, I have a meeting first thing, too.” The most important meeting of her life, in fact. But was now the time to be discussing work? “We can do dinner tomorrow, instead of breakfast.”

If her meeting went the way she anticipated, they’d be celebrating her inevitable promotion come dinnertime. She grinned at the thought, and her worries about her love life eased.

Piers helped her into her jacket, then pulled some bills from his wallet. When he frowned, Rachel knew he was calculating the seventeen-and-a-half percent tip he liked to leave.

Shouldn’t he be tossing money onto the table willy-nilly, in his haste to get out of here and into her bed?

Rachel turned away. And once again met Garrett Calder’s gaze. His scowl had gone. He raised his glass to her in a toast that was intended to be ironic, if the tiny, mocking curve to his lips was anything to go by.

What was that about? She didn’t know Garrett well—no one did—but he always managed to unsettle her, even when she was at her most together. Not because of the stupid nickname they gave him in the office: The Shark. That little piece of hyperbole didn’t bother her at all. What disturbed her was the blend of intelligence and aloofness in his eyes, the suggestion that he knew everything and he didn’t give a damn.