A Hard Man to Love (16 page)
Read A Hard Man to Love Online
Authors: Delaney Diamond
The Arrangement
Fight for Love
Private Acts
Hawthorne Family series
The Temptation of a Good Man
A Hard Man to Love
Here Comes Trouble (summer 2012)
Bailar series (sweet/clean romance)
Worth Waiting For
Short Story
Subordinate Position
Free Stories
About the Author
Delaney Diamond (
delaneydiamond.com
) was born and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She has been an avid reader for as long as she can remember and wrote her first novel at the age of 14, which she only shared with her friends. Her writing won her several trophies in high school and a scholarship to help pay for college. In 2008 she started freelance writing, and in 2009 she gave fiction writing a try again, which resulted in her debut novel,
The Arrangement.
A diehard foodie, when her head’s not buried in a book, she’s in the kitchen trying out new recipes or dining at her favorite restaurants with friends. She speaks fluent conversational French and can get by in Spanish.
Excerpt from
The Temptation of a Good Man
, Book 1 of the Hawthorne Family series
Can true love be found after one night of passion?
Celeste Burton goes out with her girlfriends to celebrate turning thirty and winds up spending an unforgettable night with the man of her dreams. One week later, as a favor, she attends a wedding with a friend as his date and is shocked when she sees Roarke again.
Roarke Hawthorne despises cheating. Cheating tore apart his family years ago. When the physics professor sees the woman he spent the night with show up at his sister’s wedding on the arm of his brother, he knows he should keep his distance. But because of the night they set fire to the sheets in his hotel room, he can’t resist the urge to be close to her–nor can he resist the temptation to have her back in his bed.
Excerpt
Lust flickered in his eyes, and for tense moments they stared at each other, lost in the memories of heated whispers and tangled sheets. Then, as suddenly as he’d grabbed her, he dropped her arm like a hot coal.
“Derrick doesn’t deserve to be lied to and made a fool of.” He stepped around her toward the door.
Celeste grabbed his forearm to stall his exit. “Wait, please.”
“Celeste, I can’t do this.”
She slipped between him and the door. She couldn’t be the reason for a confrontation between the two brothers, and she couldn’t bear the humiliation of Derrick finding out she’d slept with his brother the first night they met. “Please don’t say anything to Derrick. I’ll stay out of your way. I promise. You won’t even know I’m here.”
He looked down at her hand, and she followed his gaze to where her fingers wrapped around his arm. She withdrew them with haste. When her eyes found his again, desire shimmied down her spine at the hunger she saw in his.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, his voice thick and low. “I can’t be near you. You’re too much of a temptation. Maybe you can stay away from me, but I don’t know if I can keep my hands off of you.” He slammed his palms against the door above her shoulders.
Celeste jumped, her eyes widening in shock. Shaken, she pressed back against the hard door to distance herself from him. They were too close, and the instinctive movement did little to protect her from the heat of sexual frustration emanating from his pores.
His chest rose and fell with each deep breath, and a storm brewed in his dark brown eyes. “
What are you doing to me?
”
The tortured question needed no answer. Even if she’d been obliged to respond, he seized her mouth before she could, and his tongue thrust between her lips. The muscular, dark cords of his arms encircled her waist and held her against his body, crushing her soft curves into each hard contour of his.
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