Love happens when you least expect it…

Jodi is panicking. It’s only weeks until her little village in Devon holds its first ever festival and everything is falling apart.

Desperate to avoid disaster, she brings in notorious party planner Christian to save the day. Although she wasn’t prepared for just how gorgeous he would be!

Men are off the cards for Jody and surely Christian is the last man she would ever date? But with tensions rising – along with the bunting and home-made scones – she’s about to find out…

 Is there anything more fun than playing the puppet-master? Perhaps not in real life (too much hard work from what I can imagine), but in romance-land – it’s so much fun! I love putting characters into positions that they’d rather not be in. In this excerpt Jody’s attraction to Christian begins to feel all too real, and there’s nothing she can do about it. Mwahahahahaha.

Jody’s attempt at pulling herself together fell completely apart and, next thing she knew, they’d collapsed on the pavement. Their shoulders pressed together in mutual support as they cackled.

When her abs were aching, her shoulders had stopped shaking and the tears had slackened off from a torrent to a dribble, she tilted her head up and inhaled the fresh, sun-warmed air. Her hand felt hot and tight and she glanced down to see that, all this time, it had been clutching Christian’s. Fused even. As if against her will it had chosen to stay interlocked with his hand, happy as a magnet that had found a pole that clicked. Her hand had betrayed her and forgotten her number- one rule. No men allowed.

She dared to sneak a look at Christian. He’d gone as still as she had. His brow creased. A look she couldn’t place in his eyes. Confusion? Worry? Surprise?

He gave her a gentle nudge. ‘Why didn’t you tell me the butcher was more than just your usual small- town butcher? The man’s making products that, if cheesageddon or deli meatageddon ever happened, people would sell their first-born children for. Heck, they’d sell their souls.’

‘How do you know they’re that good? You haven’t even tried them?’ Jody flicked her gaze down to their hands. Still interlaced. Still together. Why hadn’t she remedied that problem yet?

‘I guess I didn’t even have to taste them to know they’d be good. They had that look about them, you know? That look that tells you if something’s going to work or not.’

Jody’s heart, only minutes earlier thumping at a rapid rate of BPMs, stalled as their eyes locked. The distant buzz of a chainsaw became a hum, the sparrows chirping in the trees faded into an unmelodic tune of blips and bleeps. The balmy breeze picked up, whipping tendrils of hair in front of Jody’s face. She watched, mesmerised, as Christian’s hand moved towards that hair in slow motion, his eyes not leaving hers. He swept the locks gently to the side of her face and tucked them behind her ear, his fingers tracing the delicate skin of her ear down to the lobe, where they stopped, his thumb stroking the tender piece of flesh, sending piercing quivers straight to her lower stomach, causing liquid heat to pool.

‘Yeah, I think I know what you mean,’ she said, nodding, and somehow that nod morphed into a slight angling of her head, and a tiny tip forward. As if her lips were betraying her along with that hand. Was it her imagination or was Christian getting closer? Out of focus. Hell, he was disappearing altogether. Why was she closing her eyes?

At the age of five Kellie Hailes declared she was going write books when she grew up. It took a while for her to get there, with a career as a radio copywriter, freelance copywriter and web writer filling the dream-hole, until now. Kellie lives on an island-that’s-not-really-an-island in New Zealand with her patient husband, funny little human and neurotic cat. When the characters in her head aren’t dictating their story to her, she can be found taking short walks, eating good cheese and hankering for her next coffee fix.

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