Excerpt - Hard Feelings - An Indecent Proposal

One more excerpt from Hard Feelings. So how does an introvert like Rylan end up in a casual frenemies-with-benefits arrangement with a coworker? Well, the conversation goes something like this....

Rylan shut the door behind him, thunked his empty water bottle on the counter, and reached into the cupboard for a glass. He was still thirsty. “You want some?”

“What? Oh, water. Sure,” Miller said. “Thanks.”

Rylan poured two glasses from the pitcher in the fridge. “So. You wanted to talk.” A better host might have asked if Miller wanted to sit down, but Rylan didn’t want them to get comfortable. The sooner Miller left, the sooner Rylan would feel at ease.

Miller took a sip of his water and put it on the counter. “Yeah, I did. I do. I… fuck.”

“That’s how this whole thing started in the first place,” Rylan muttered under his breath, but Miller must have heard him, because he snorted.

Excerpt - Hard Feelings

Here's a little scene from Hard Feelings. In it, Rylan's newly minted frenemy-with-benefits, Miller, meets Rylan's friends Holly and Gina. Let's just say Gina's skeptical of the arrangement.

At Brain Freeze, Miller deliberated over the nine flavors on offer before deciding on pumpkin pie. Rylan, Gina, and Holly ordered too, and then they left Brain Freeze to settle at a picnic table in the park next door.

“You know, you can tell a lot about a person based on their ice-cream choices,” Miller observed as he stared into the distance.

Rylan looked at his plain vanilla cone and scowled when Gina burst into laughter. “Shut up,” Rylan grumped, not sure if he felt more betrayed by her or Miller. “You got licorice,” he pointed out in disgust, looking over at Gina’s paper cup.

Excerpt: Hard Feelings - Prologue

In honor of our upcoming release, Hard Feelings, Morgan James and I would like to share with you the following excerpt. 

“Wait! Hold the elevator!” A long tanned arm shot out and prevented the doors from closing. Then the person attached to it followed, still wet from his spiky brown hair to the red sandals that matched his board shorts.

Yet more proof God hated Rylan Williams: Red Shorts, the surfer whose body he’d been perving on for the past hour, was none other than the kid who'd fallen asleep in his lecture. He barely looked old enough to rent a hotel room, never mind attend a graphic design conference, but he had a conference badge clipped to his shorts: Miller J. A few of the letters had blurred where water had dripped on them. At least he hadn’t worn it in the ocean.

To make matters worse, his face matched his body: hot brown eyes framed with thick lashes, pert nose, and that wide mouth that seemed inclined to smirk. He even had the perfect amount of chest hair.

Rylan gritted his teeth and wondered why the universe hated him.

New cover, new project, new mindset!

I'm just going to come out and say it: social media is hard. I look at people who manage to blog every day and or even twice a week and I'm amazed. Where are they getting this energy and creativity? I'm jealous. And lazy.

Anyway, I'm going to try to do better. We'll see what works for me: Twitter, Tumblr, LiveJournal, Facebook....

I'm crying a little inside right now.

But as a reward for staying with me, here's a peek at the cover to my latest, A Good Vintage, coming this December from Dreamspinner Press.



In other news, Morgan James and I have been hard at play on a new project. This is really breaking new ground for me, because for the first time in, oh, a very long time (maybe ever?), my characters are getting it on before page seventy. I blame Smith. He's a horny little bastard.

Anyway, here's a blurb about that.

Hard Feelings (working title)
by Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James

Rylan Blake hates conferences: too many people, not enough routine, and way too much interaction with strangers. When he gets stuck in an elevator with Miller Jones, the kid who fell asleep in his lecture, he figures things can’t get worse. Then Rylan realizes he’s the same guy he just spent an hour perving over from afar.

Rylan wants to await rescue in silence, but Miller insists on conversation, or at least banter. But just because they don’t get along doesn’t mean they don’t have chemistry, and Rylan breaks all his rules about intimacy for a one-time-only conference hookup. He’ll probably never see Miller again anyway.

So of course two months later Miller shows up at Rylan’s office, having just been hired to work on a new computer program—with Rylan.

And Rylan thought being stuck in an elevator with him was bad.

Soon Rylan and Miller learn that they get along best when they take out their frustrations in the bedroom. Their arrangement goes against everything Rylan believes in, but the rules are simple: Don’t stay overnight. Don’t tell anyone. And don’t fall in love.

This is probably a bad idea.