How to Get Over Your Ex
Being rejected is one thing. Being rejected live on radio
takes it to a whole new level!
After her on-air proposal is turned down by her
commitment-phobe boyfriend, Georgia Stone must learn to survive singledom.
Unfortunately, thanks to a clause in her contract, she has to do it under the
watchful gaze of brooding radio producer Zander Rush.
And so begins the Year of Georgia! Lurching from salsa
classes to spy school, Georgia discovers a taste for adventure. Her biggest
thrill so far? Flirting with danger—aka the enigmatic Zander. But admitting
she’s ready for more than just a fling…? Definitely Georgia’s scariest challenge
yet!
Next month, look for the second book in this duet:
The Guy To Be Seen With
by Fiona Harper
SNEAK PEEK EXCERPT FROM
HOW TO GET OVER YOUR EX
“Why are we here, Zander?” she breathed into the fading
light.
He stared at her in the rapidly cooling, darkening evening.
“Because you followed me up here?”
Half of her was terrified he'd just shrug and blame
tradition. That this
thing
between them wasn't
mutual. But she wasn't about to be put off so easily. “Here, by the twinkling
water as the sun sets.”
“Do you want to leave?” he murmured, eyes locked on hers.
She should. “No.”
“Do you want to feel?”
Her lungs locked up. Suddenly the grass and cows and water
around them seemed to grow as if the two of them had just hauled themselves over
the top of a beanstalk, forcing them closer together and making the scant
distance separating them into something negligible.
Her pulse began to hammer in earnest.
Zander raised his hand and slipped it behind her head,
lowering his forehead to rest on hers. His heat radiated outward. His eyes
drifted shut.
Dear Reader,
How many times have you been tempted to change yourself for someone?
I’m so thrilled to be part of the release lineup for Harlequin KISS and to be the first half of the Valentine’s Day Survival Guide duet set in vibrant London. This was a wonderful chance to immerse myself in the chic, urban adventure of one of the world’s biggest cities, yet zoom right in on two of its loneliest inhabitants.
In
How to Get Over Your Ex
Georgia Stone spends the best part of a year trying to be someone she’s not. Someone more pleasing, someone an entire city will find acceptable. She starts her journey making a really bad decision and then compounds it trying to reinvent herself, when all along there wasn’t much wrong with plain old George.
I hope Georgia and Zander’s story reminds you why it’s so important to be true to yourself. And I hope you pick up
The Guy to Be Seen With
by Fiona Harper next month to see what happens to “Mr. Five Percent” after he rejects Georgia’s proposal live on air. Everyone deserves a happy ending.
May love always find you.
Nikki
How to Get Over
Your Ex
Nikki Logan
ABOUT NIKKI LOGAN
Nikki Logan lives next to a string of protected wetlands in
Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred,
feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theater at university, and
worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling
down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she
considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes
fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that
the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and
beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature,
and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the
pages, she knows her job is done.
For Aaron, who knows just how hard
the getting over part can be.
Give my regards to Broadway.
ONE
Valentine’s Day 2012
Close. Please just
close.
A dozen curious eyes followed Georgia Stone into Radio EROS’
stylish elevator, craning over computer monitors or sliding on plastic floor
mats back into the corridor just slightly, not even trying to disguise their
curiosity. She couldn’t stand staring at the back of the elevator for ever, so
she turned, lifted her chin...
...and silently begged the doors to close. To put her out of
her misery for just a few blessed moments.
Do. Not. Cry.
Not yet.
The numbness of shock was rapidly wearing off and leaving the
deep, awful ache of pain behind it. With a humiliation chaser. She’d managed to
thank the dumbfounded drive-time announcers—
God, she was so
British
—before stumbling out of their studio, knowing that the radio
station’s output was broadcast in every office on every floor via a system of
loudspeakers.
Hence all the badly disguised glances.
The whole place knew what had just happened to her. Because of
her. That their much-lauded Leap Year Valentine’s proposal had just gone
spectacularly, horribly, excruciatingly, publicly wrong.
She’d asked. Daniel had declined.
As nicely as he could, under the circumstances, but his
urgently whispered, “Is this a joke, George?” was still a no whichever way you
looked at it and, in case she hadn’t got the message, he’d spelled it out.
We weren’t heading for marriage. I thought
you knew that...
Actually no, or she wouldn’t have asked.
That’s what made our thing so
perfect...
Oh. Right.
That
was what made it
perfect? She’d known they were drifting in a slow, connected eddy like the
leaves in Wakehurst’s Black Pond but she’d thought that even drifting
eventually
got you somewhere. Obviously not.
‘For God’s sake, will you close?’
She wasn’t usually one to talk to inanimate objects—even under
her breath—but somehow, on some level, the elevator must have heard her because
its shiny chrome doors started to slide together obligingly.
‘Hold the lift!’ a voice shouted.
She didn’t move. Her stomach plunged. Just as they’d nearly
closed...
A hand slid into the sliver of space between the doors and
curled around one of them, arresting and then reversing its slide. They
reopened, long-suffering and apologetic.
‘You mustn’t have heard me,’ the dark-haired man said, throwing
her only the briefest and tersest of glances, his lips tight. He turned, faced
the front, and permitted them to close this time, giving her a fabulous view of
the square cut of the back of his expensive suit.
No,
you
mustn’t have heard
me.
Making a total idiot of
myself in front of all of London
. If he had, he’d have given her a
much longer look. Something told her everyone would be looking at her for much
longer now. Starting with all her and Daniel’s workmates.
She groaned.
He looked back over his shoulder. ‘Sorry?’
She forced burning eyes to his. If she blinked just once she
was going to unleash the tears she could feel jockeying for expression just
behind her lids. But she didn’t have the heart for speech. She shook her
head.
He returned his focus to the front of the elevator. She stared
at the lights slowly descending toward ‘G’ for ground floor. Then at the one
marked ‘B’, below that—the one he’d pressed.
‘Excuse me...’ She cleared her throat to reduce the tight
choke. He turned again, looked down great cheekbones at her. ‘Can you get to the
street from B?’
He studied her. Didn’t ask what she meant. ‘The basement has
electronic gate control.’
Her heart sank. So much for hoping to make a subtle getaway.
Looked as if the universe really wanted her to pay for today’s disaster.
Crowded reception it was, then.
She nodded just once. ‘Thank you.’
He didn’t turn back around, but his grey eyes narrowed. ‘I’ll
be driving out through the gates. You’re welcome to slip out behind me.’
Slip
out. Was that just a figure of
speech or did he know? ‘Thank you. Yes, please.’
He turned back to the front, then, a heartbeat later, he turned
back again. ‘Step behind me.’
She dragged stinging eyes back up to him. ‘What?’
‘The door’s going to open at Reception first. It will be full
of people. I can screen you.’
Suddenly the front-line of the small army of tears waiting for
a chance to get out surged forward. She fought them back furiously, totally
futile.
Kindness. That was worse than blinking. And it meant that he
definitely knew.
But since he was playing pretend-I-don’t, she could, too. She
stepped to her left just as the doors obediently opened onto the station’s
reception. Light and noise filled the elevator but she stood, private and
protected behind the stranger, his big body as good as a locked door. She
sighed. Privacy and someone to protect her—two things she’d just blown out of
her life for good, she suspected.
‘Mr Rush...’ someone said, out in the foyer.
The big man just nodded. ‘Alice. Going down?’
‘No, up.’
He shrugged. ‘I won’t be long.’
And the doors closed, leaving just the two of them, again.
Georgia sagged and swiped at the single, determined tear that had slipped down
her cheek. He didn’t turn back around. It took only a moment longer for the
elevator to reach the basement. He walked out the moment the doors opened and
reached back to hold them wide for her. The frigid outdoor air hit her
instantly.
‘Thank you,’ she repeated and stepped out into the darkened
parking floor. She’d left her coat upstairs, hanging on the back of a chair in
the studio, but she would gladly freeze rather than set foot in that building
ever again.
He didn’t make eye contact again. Or smile. ‘Wait by the gate,’
he simply said and then turned to stride towards a charcoal Jaguar.
She walked a dead straight line towards the exit gate. The
fastest, most direct route she could. She only reached it a moment or two before
the luxury car. She stood, rubbing her prickling flesh.
He must have activated the gate from inside his vehicle, and
the large, steel lattice began to rattle along rollers towards her. He nudged
his car forward, lowered his window, and peered out across his empty passenger
seat.
She ducked to look at him. For moments. One of them really
needed to say something. Might as well be her.
‘Thanks again.’
For sanctuary in the
elevator. For spiriting her away, now.
His eyes darkened and he slid designer sunglasses up onto the
bridge of his nose. ‘Good luck’ was all he said. Then he shifted his Jag into
gear and drove forward out of the still-widening gate.
She stared after him.
It seemed an odd thing to say in lieu of goodbye but maybe he
knew something she didn’t.
Maybe he knew how much she was going to need that luck.
* * *
Hell.
That was the longest elevator ride of Zander’s life. Trapped in
two square metres of double-thickness steel with a sobbing woman. Except she
hadn’t been sobbing—not outwardly—but she was hurting inwardly; pain was coming
off her in waves. Totally tangible.
The waves had hit him the moment he nudged his way into her
elevator, but it was too late, then, to step back and let her go down without
him. Not without making her feel worse.
He knew who she was. He just hadn’t known it was her standing
in the elevator he ran for or he wouldn’t have launched himself at the closing
doors.
She must have bolted straight from the studio to the exit the
moment they threw to the first track out of the Valentine’s segment. Lord knew
he did; he wanted to get across town to the network head offices before they
screamed for him to come in.
Proactive instead of reactive. He never wanted someone higher
up his food chain to call him and find him just sitting there waiting for their
call. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Or the power.
By the time he got across London’s peak-hour gridlock he’d have
the right spin for the on-air balls-up. Turning a negative into a positive.
Oiling the waters. The kind of problem-solving he was famous—and
employed—for.
The kind of problem-solving he loathed.
He blew out a steady breath and took an orange light just as it
was turning red in order to keep moving. None of them had expected the guy to
say no. Who said no to a proposal, live on air? You said yes live and then you
backed out of it later if it wasn’t what you wanted. That was what ninety-five
per cent of Londoners would do.
Apparently this guy was Mr Five Per Cent.
Then again, who asked a man to marry her live on radio if she
wasn’t already confident of the answer? Or maybe she thought she was? She
wouldn’t be the first to find out she was wrong...the hard way.
Empathy curled his fingers tight on the expensive leather of
his steering wheel. Who was he to cast stones?
He’d recognised that expression immediately. The one where
you’d happily agree for the elevator to plunge eight storeys rather than have to
step out and face the world. At least his own humiliation had been limited to
just his family and friends.
Just
two hundred
of his and Lara’s
nearest and dearest.
Georgia Stone’s would be all over the city today and all over
the world by tomorrow.
He was counting on it. Though he’d have preferred it not to be
on the back of someone’s pain and humiliation. He hadn’t got that bad...yet.
He eased his foot onto the brake as the traffic ground to a
halt around him and resisted the urge to lean on his horn.
Not that he imagined a girl like that would suffer for long.
Tall and pale and pretty with that tangle of dark, short curls. She’d dressed
for her proposal—that was a sweet and unexpected touch in the casual world of
radio. Half his on-air staff would come to work in their pyjamas if they had the
option. But Georgia Stone had worn a simple, pale pink, thin-strapped dress for
the big moment—almost a wedding dress itself. If one got married on a beach in
Barbados. Way too light for February so maybe public proposals weren’t the
only thing the pretty Miss Stone didn’t think through?
Or maybe he was just looking for ways that this wasn’t his
fault.
He’d approved the Valentine’s promotion in the first place. And
the cheesy ‘does your man just need a shove?’ angle. But EROS’ listeners were—on
the whole—a fairly cheesy bunch so it had been one of their most successful
promotions.
Which had made the lift ride all the more painful.
Something about her pale, wide-eyed courtesy. Even as her heart
ruptured quietly in its cavity.
Thank you
.
She’d said it four times in half the minutes. As though he were
a guy just helping her out instead of the guy that put her in that position in
the first place. It was his contract she’d signed. It was his station’s
promotion she’d put her hand up for.
Her life was now in shreds around her feet but still she
thanked him.
That was one well-brought-up young woman. Youngish; he had to
have at least fifteen years on her, though it was hard to know. He reached for
his dash and activated the voice automation.
‘Call the office,’ he told his car.
It listened. ‘EROS, Home of Great Music, Mr Rush’s office. This
is Casey, can I help you?’
Christ, he really had to have their company-wide phone greeting
shortened.
‘It’s me,’ he announced to his empty vehicle. ‘I need you to
pull up the contract with the Valentine’s girl.’
‘Just a tick,’ his assistant murmured, not taking offence at
his lack of acknowledgement. She knew life was too short for pleasantries. ‘OK,
got it. What do you need, Zander?’
‘Age?’
Her silence said she was scanning the document.
‘Twenty-eight.’
OK, so he had nine years on her. And her skin was amazing,
then. He would have said twenty-two or -three, max. ‘Duration of
contract?’
Again a brief pause. ‘Twelve months. To conclude with a
follow-up next February fourteenth.’
Twelve months of their lives. That was supposed to include
engagement party, fully paid wedding, honeymoon. All on EROS. That was the
fifty-thousand-pound carrot. Why else would anyone want to make the most
private, special moment of their lives so incredibly public?
The carrot was cheap in international broadcast terms, for the
kind of global exposure he suspected this promo would get. Even more so now,
given it had probably already gone viral. Exposure brought listeners, listeners
brought advertisers, and advertisers brought revenue.
Except that follow-up twelve months from now wasn’t going to
make great radio. At all. His mind went straight to the weakest link.
‘Casey, can you send that contract to my phone and then call
Rod’s assistant and let her know I’m about half an hour away?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He rang off without a farewell. Life was too short for that as
well.
A year was a long time to manufacture content, but if they
played their cards right they could salvage something that would last longer
than just the next few days. Really make that fifty thousand pounds work for
them. He still expected EROS to directly benefit from the viral exposure—maybe
even more now—but that contract locked them in for the next year as much as
her.
A black cab cut in close to his bonnet and he gave voice to his
frustration—his guilt—finally leaning on the horn the way he’d been wanting to
for twenty minutes.
He spent the second half of his drive across town formulating a
plan. So much so that when he walked into his network’s headquarters he had it
all figured out. A way forward. A way to salvage something of today’s mess.
