The Love Triangle: Decadent and Apparently Deadly

I recently set up a Google Alert with the phrase “love triangle.” Love triangles are a popular theme in romance novels. Usually with a heroine faced with choosing between two men. If you’re reading erotica it could be more, but you get my point. I’m a big fan of romantic love triangles and tend to include them in my writing. I figured the Google Alert would give me some interesting articles like: how to tell if he really loves me, when to go with your heart, or similar advice along those lines.

That’s not what I got. Instead, my Google Alerts are full of death and mayhem. Here are some of the headlines: “Neighbors, family allege love triangle in fatal deputy shooting”, “Love triangle turns into driving rampage”, “Reno men found guilty of 1^st degree murder in love triangle beating death”, and the worst “Caught in the middle 9-year-old burnt in alleged love triangle”.

Needless to say the results were unexpected and disturbing. What I thought would give me great info on choices about love, turned into the research materials for a suspense filled murder mystery. If love triangles are so deadly in real life, why is this situation such a favorite in romance novels (mine included)?

Oh, you want an answer. Sorry no time for that type of market research, but I can tell you why I like love triangles in romance. It’s exciting and it adds an extra layer of tension. The idea of a heroine with not one, but two, smart, handsome and successful men vying for her attention gives me a girl power moment. And even if one of the men in the triangle is clearly a villain, I like the anticipation of discovering will the heroine figure out he’s a douche bag in time.

So, despite the real life ugliness of love triangles, keep them coming in my romance novels. At least there I get a happily ever after. Do you like love triangles in romance?

Biography:

Synithia Williams has loved romance novels since reading her first one at the age of 13. It was only natural that she would begin penning her own romances soon after. It wasn’t until 2010 that she began to actively pursue her dream of becoming a published author. Her first novel, You Can’t Plan Love—which includes a steamy love triangle—was published by Crimson Romance in August 2012. When she isn’t writing, this Green Queen, as dubbed by the State Newspaper, works to improve air and water quality, while balancing the needs of her husband and two sons. You can learn more about Synithia, and her novel, by visiting her website, www.synithiawilliams.com, where she blogs about writing, life and relationships.

www.synithiawilliams.com
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Twitter: www.twitter.com/@synithiaw

I’m late! I try to post first thing in the morning, but today’s already been crazy busy. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but between two crips (the three-year-old who broke her leg and my mother who broke her shoulder) things have been very, very hectic. Then this morning, the Red-Headed Hellion needed a little help with homework (mostly translation, because she doesn’t get why teachers have to use ten-dollar words when they could go cheap), and there you have it. No time left for me to do anything!

I did want to mention that I completed some updates to my website. Be sure to check the Coming Soon page. I’ve posted new covers and have links to excerpts for the books that will be available in the next few months. Plenty for you to drool over there.

And I wanted to remind you about the new releases I had this past week, Tarzan & Janine and Wild at Heart. If you scroll down to Thursday’s post, you will see a description of all the new books. I’d love it if you had time to click on the covers and head to Amazon to “Like” and “tag” the books. It really does help. And if you happen to buy the books, I would be forever your bestie if you posted a review!

One last thing. I forgot to mention a couple of months ago, but Ellora’s Cave did new covers for my very first series, the Desire series. Aren’t they lovely? If you’re curious, click on the covers to go read excerpts!

I have guests lined up for most of this next week. It’s the only way I’m going to cope with all the drama here. I promise to get back to a more regular posting schedule for myself. Or maybe you’ll like the guests so much you won’t even notice I’m not around much. 🙁

Y’all have a terrific week! It can only go up from here for me!

The Fearless Love Playlist

I love Americana music. It’s one of the things I picked up when I lived in Texas, where it’s sometimes called Third Coast music (the Gulf Coast is the Third Coast, you see). It’s a spicy amalgamation of all kinds of genres—roots rock, blues, Tejano, zydeco, alt country, and folk, depending on who’s singing and who’s counting.

When we lived in San Antonio, we were in the midst of what I think of as the Honky Tonk Belt, a cluster of towns and suburbs with places that played live music on the weekends, frequently outside under the stars. These are places like Floore’s Country Store, Gruene Hall, and Luckenbach (yeah, it’s a real town). I got to hear all kinds of wonderful musicians live and on CD, and it’s one of the things I miss most about Texas.

Flash forward to the present. I live in Colorado now, but whenever I want a little taste of the Hill Country, I can go back to my very own town, Konigsburg. When I got ready to do Fearless Love, I decided I wanted to include the Hill Country music scene, this time from the point of view of a musician rather than an audience member. My heroine, MG Carmody, is an Americana musician who came back from Nashville with her confidence in tatters. This isn’t exactly an unusual story—lots of Texas musicians, from Willie Nelson to Robert Earl Keen, have deserted Nashville when they realized their music just didn’t fit the mold for Commercial Country. In MG’s case, she wants to start singing again, but she needs to take it in baby steps. She plays gigs at a small club in the country outside Konigsburg, then slowly works her way up (with the help of her true love, Joe LeBlanc, a chef at a local restaurant). I got to describe several shows that MG plays, as well as her practice sessions in her own backyard (with chickens).

This, in turn, gave me a chance to include some of my favorite songs, and I have to admit it—I had a blast. I went through my iPod and picked out all those tunes and all those singers I love. And then I got to match the song to the mood (MG and Joe have a fight and she sings a whole collection of “you dog” songs). After the books was finished, I went back and listed all the songs I included, just for my own amusement. And since I love to watch performances on YouTube, I managed to run down performances for just about all of them (I haven’t included the songs that I couldn’t find anything for). So here it is, the Fearless Love play list. Enjoy!

Five Hundred Miles 
Bring It On Home To Me
Bye Bye Love
Me and Bobbie McGee
Silver-Tongued Devil
Something To Talk About
Mockingbird
Jambalaya
Help Me Make It Through the Night
Born To Run
Maybe, Maybe, Maybe
Texas Cooking
I’m Movin’ On
Runaway Train
Fearless Love

Fearless Love Blurb

Sweet music doesn’t come without a few sour notes.

Konigsberg, Texas, Book 7.

MG Carmody never figured her musical dreams would crash against the reality of Nashville. Now the only thing she has going for her is her late grandfather’s chicken farm, which comes with molting hens that won’t lay, one irascible rooster, and a huge mortgage held by a ruthless opponent—her Great Aunt Nedda.

With fewer eggs to sell, MG needs extra money, fast. Even if it means carving out time for a job as a prep cook at The Rose—and resisting her attraction to its sexy head chef.

Joe LeBlanc has problems of his own. He’s got a kitchen full of temperamental cooks—one of whom is a sneak thief—a demanding cooking competition to prepare for, and an attraction to MG that could easily boil over into something tasty. If he could figure out the cause of the shy beauty’s lack of self confidence.

In Joe’s arms, MG’s heart begins to find its voice. But between kitchen thieves, performance anxiety, saucy saboteurs, greedy relatives, and one very pissed-off rooster, the chances of them ever making sweet music are looking slimmer by the day.

Warning: Contains hot kitchen sex, cool Americana music, foodie hysteria, and a whole lot of fowl play.

Buy Link: https://store.samhainpublishing.com/fearless-love-p-7011.html

Meg Benjamin is an award-winning author of contemporary romance. Her Konigsburg series for Samhain Publishing is set in the Texas Hill Country. Book #3, Be My Baby, won a 2011 EPIC Award for Contemporary Romance. Book #4, Long Time Gone, received the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Indie Press Romance. Book #5, Brand New Me, won the Holt Medallion from Virginia Romance Writers and was nominated for Book Of the Year at Long and Short Reviews. Meg lives in Colorado with her DH and two rather large Maine coon kitties (well, partly Maine Coon anyway). Her Web site is https://www.MegBenjamin.com and her blog is https://megbenj1.wordpress.com/. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Meg loves to hear from readers—contact her at meg@megbenjamin.com.

Life’s Not Fair—Even in Fairy Tales

So lately I’ve been kind of preoccupied with fairy tales. It’s almost as if I have a series coming out soon with Ellora’s Cave Publishing based on them with some really cool, sexy name like Breathlessly Ever After. Or something like that. As I was saying, I’ve been reading a lot of fairy tales lately. You have your old favorites. Sleeping Beauty. Snow White. Beauty and the Beast. And then there are your lesser known tales. Brother and Sister. The Six Swans. The Bushy Bride. Seriously, I did not make that up. Reading these stories have brought back so many memories of my mother, sister and I sitting on the couch while she read The Boy Who Cried Wolf and Billy Goat Gruff to us. *sigh* Those were great times. Great stories. And some serious WTF moments. Listen, I know the great thing about fairy tales is the happily-ever-after but, man, some characters were stuck with really raw deals! I mean they were shafted! I know what you’re thinking. That’s crazy talk! Or get a grip! But follow me here for a moment…

The Six Swans. In this story the most obvious people wronged are the six brothers that were turned into swans by their evil stepmother. But the sister, who not only has to sew—sew?? For real??—six shirts for them is also struck mute and is unable to laugh for six years—the number of years she has to complete these shirts before the enchantment is permanent. Raw deal #1. Then a king sees her, is mesmerized by her beauty and marries her. All good, right? But no, another wicked stepmother steals all three babies she births and blames their disappearance on the sister/queen. Does king-y stand by his woman? Nooo. Instead she’s sentenced to burn at the stake. Shaft #2. Just as the match is ready to be set to kindle, the six swan brothers flock to her, she throws the shirts that she’s finally finished in the air and her brothers return to human. Yay! Except, here’s Shaft #3. She didn’t have time to finish the sleeve of the youngest brother’s shirt so he has to live life with one wing. *&^%$#!!!

Rumpelstiltskin. The princess was treated so wrong, right? Wrong! There was one character in this story crying out here. And that was Rumpelstiltskin! Rumpy—as we’re calling him because, hey, Rumpel-etc.-etc. is simply too much to type!—is used for his talents, lied to, cheated on and he’s the bad guy. Now the miller’s daughter is conscripted into doing the impossible—turning straw into gold—because of liar-dreams-of-grandeur father. She faced execution from the greedy king but Rumpy shows up and does the task for a small price. I mean really, what’s a ring and necklace compared to her life? Well when Rumpy requests her firstborn in exchange for the last ginormous pile of straw, the miller’s daughter agrees. I mean she never imagined the greedy-selfish-fill-my-coffers-with-gold-or-I’ll-decapitate-you king would offer his hand in marriage and she would actually have a baby. So of course that’s enough reason to renege! What did Rumpy do but hold up his end of the bargain? He didn’t throw his daughter to the wolves. The miller did that. He didn’t threaten an innocent woman with beheading over the idea of gold. No, the kind did that. And he didn’t go back on his word, not delivering on his end of the bargain. The queen did that. So what does Rumpy get for being a man of his word? One foot in hell. Literally. Now I know what you’re thinking. But he wanted her baby. Look, I have kids and let’s face it. After one week with the kid, he would’ve given it back!

Sleeping Beauty. Just purge the Disney version of this tale out of your mind. Sleeping Beauty had her happily-ever-after but she went through straight Not-Heaven before she got it! First because Queen Mom neglected to invite one pissed-off fairy, Sleeping Beauty ended up with a curse over her head that they didn’t tell her about! Forget the fact that due to mom’s mistake—drink more ginkgo, lady!—a lot of people lost their livelihood with the banishment of the spindle! If they had only told Sleeping Beauty about the curse she wouldn’t have went anywhere near that spinning wheel, not to mention the creepy old lady locked up in a room she knew nothing about! That’s sooo not a red flag. So she pricks her finger and falls into a coma-like sleep for one hundred years. One hundred years! Do you know how many balls, parties and fashions she missed in a century? So she awakens to a kiss from a prince with no gum in sight. Que music. They all lived happily-ever…*screech* Nope, that’s so not the end of this story. The prince secretly weds Sleeping Beauty and keeps her his little secret from his stepmother. In the meantime he continues to make booty calls and she has two children. Where do these princesses in these tales find these men? Well when his father kicks the bucket, he ascends to the throne—and surprise!—springs his ready-made family on the stepmother, who happens to be wicked (No! Didn’t see that coming!) and of ogress lineage. Talk about the mother-in-law from hell! Her husband leaves on some kingly duty and abandons his wife and children to the tender care of his stepmother. Tender as in tender meat, because that’s what she tries to turn them into. Succulent tender meat on her dinner table. Long story short, Sleeping Beauty has to face the voracious appetite of her Shrek-like mother-in-law, save her kids from becoming rack of lamb and elude a pit of vipers. King shows up just in time and stepmother ends up in her own viper pit. All this because Sleeping Beauty’s mother forgot a name…this whole thing could have been avoided if her mother had just made an invite list to that doggone christening!

Have I made a believer out of you yet? Or am I being incredibly anal and neurotic? Hey…don’t answer that…

Naima Simone is a multi-published author in erotic romance. She’s a member of RWA’s Southern Magic chapter, mother of the Dynamic Duo, lover of everything Vin Diesel and wife to the fabulous husband who tolerates this affair. Come visit Naima at www.naimasimone.com.

What a whirlwind week! Mom shattered her shoulder on Monday, so we spent hours at the emergency room. We took her to an ortho guy on Tuesday, then yesterday she had surgery to replace everything. I’m sticking close to home today to rest up. Everyone’s tired. Poor dad is exhausted, but at least he has the worry of the surgery past him. Now, we’re planning for her to come home tomorrow. I’ll ramp up again tomorrow to help out.

In the meantime, my website needs updates. I’ll try to take care of those today. But here’s what went out this week. The first is a project my sister and I co-wrote that’s years in the making. T&J was one of those stories we had sitting under the bed until we had time and had learned enough to do it right. It’s a comedy. So if you like funny, sweet romances (there are sexy interludes, have no fear!), this might be the book for you! The second two are anthologies my RWA chapter is sponsoring to raise money for a wildlife refuge. I have a story in the YA anthology (gulp…for realz!)!

Click on the covers to find them at Amazon.com! If you have time while you’re bumping around Amazon, please click on “like” and the “tags”! Thanks, everyone!

A laugh-out-loud romantic adventure!

See what happens when a secret billionaire and an aspiring actress get a little wild in Texas.

A man with a soft spot for women…

Closet Texas millionaire, Tanner Peschke has three months to prove he can make a profit at the family used car dealership or he will lose his job, disappoint his father and break his promise to his dying mother. The root of his problem is women. He can’t resist them–any of them. All it takes is the scent of delicate perfume or a misty-eyed gaze from an elderly woman with a sob story, and he becomes silly putty in the hands of his feminine customers. Until, with a stroke of luck and a buck of a mechanical bull, he hires Janine Davis to star with him in the dealership’s live TV ads.

A woman who won’t let a handsome cowboy get in the way of her dream…

Determined to make a name for herself, Janine needs to pay the bills between acting jobs. The offer to do a series of commercials for Peschke Motors is a chance to get her face “out there”. Recognizing a player when she sees one, Janine agrees to co-star with her handsome employer fully intending to keep their relationship strictly professional. First break she gets, she’s heading to Hollywood.

Their jungle-themed commercials take a crazy twist, and Tanner finds himself falling…from a sales banner while chasing a monkey. But more importantly, he’s falling for Janine. She’s just the one woman to tame this cowboy’s wild heart. Convincing her to stay with him might be harder than catching a mischievous monkey.

This is a volume of short stories about wild animals, big cat rescues, shapeshifters and anything that would showcase the plight of large wild creatures and their need to have safe homes and/or freedom.

This anthology was produced by the Diamond State Romance Authors as a project of love to benefit the rescued animals of the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. All profits from this collection will go directly to the refuge to help with the care and feeding of these wonderful creatures.

Stories Included in this volume are:

Spirit of the Tiger by Elle James
Archer Falls by Lauren Smith
A Boy, A Girl, A Tiger by Cynthia D’Alba
The Wedding Crasher by Lindy Dierks
Beached by Dustin Stevens
Sunlight and Solace by Gina Wilkins
Saving Angel by Lynda Frazier
Buck by M. Marie
True Instinct by Vanessa North
Storm Haven by Charlene Roberts
Saving Akira by Candace Sams

This volume of short stories includes a wonderful variety of contemporary and paranormal tales, and was produced by the Diamond State Romance Authors as a project of love to benefit the residents of the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. All profits from this collection will go directly to the refuge to help with the care and feeding of the rescued animals.

The stories in this volume were inspired by the animals. If you enjoy them, we hope you’ll recommend the book to friends, and doesn’t everyone need to feel a little Wild at Heart?

Stories in this collection include:

Freedom by Connie Wilkins
Teens Gone Wild by Margaret Etheridge
Home by Midnight by Brinda Berry
Cats Rule by Aileen Fish
Refugee by Lori Freeland
The Girl and the Puma by Jayne Grey
Heart’s Solace by Tara Fox Hall
Vision Quest by Karis Walsh
The Bully in the Piney Woods by Delilah Devlin
Fierce Wild by Megan Mitcham
Salvaje by Anna Meadows

I haven’t had a lot of time to check out the new fall TV shows. What should I be setting up to TIVO? What has you hooked?

Adele Dubois Goes Wild

–CONTEST ALERT!–

I’ve always had a wild streak. Before I became a wife and mother, my adventurous spirit sometimes turned reckless. In the names of fun and excitement, I didn’t always think through my choices. When I look back at some of the risks I’ve taken, I thank my lucky stars the cosmos threw a blanket of protection over me. I reached adulthood mostly in one piece, though my heart might say otherwise.

These days, I’m as domesticated as a house cat. My most reckless choice on a Friday night might be to drink a wine cooler with pizza instead of iced tea. Still, that wild child inside me longs to come out and play. Most of the time, I ignore that voice, but every once in a while I give in to my adventurous nature. Those impulses have taken three predominant forms. First, I refuse to tame my naturally curly hair. Second, I drive a convertible with the top down unless it’s raining, freezing, or snowing. Third, I forged a career as a romance author and will write stories until I have none left to tell.

When the opportunities came along to submit to the Cleis Press and Delilah Devlin anthologies GIRLS WHO BITE and SHE-SHIFTERS, my wild child soul shouted, “Count me in!” Here were chances to experiment with something entirely new, where I could be as adventurous as I wanted to be. I have to say, writing vampire and shape-shifter duel heroines is the most fun I’ve had in a while.

If you think erotic F/F stories aren’t for straight women, I hope you’ll reconsider. A whole new world opened to me as both a writer and a reader with GIRLS WHO BITE and SHE-SHIFTERS.

Here’s a taste of my steamy short story “She’s Furry Yiffy.” Available separately, only .99 at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. You might like my story so much you’ll want to buy the whole SHE-SHIFTERS anthology. And GIRLS WHO BITE too!

Question: Are you, or have you ever been, a wild child? Or are you the more sedate type? Tell us a little about yourself in the comments section. One person will win a PDF copy of my steamy short story “The Crystal Altar” from GIRLS WHO BITE.

SHE’S FURRY YIFFY

A hot-bodied shape-shifter finds more than a hook-up at an X-rated Fur Con.

Excerpt:

“Mundanes aren’t supposed to be in here,” a masculine voice said behind Anika. His tone sounded more flirtatious than threatening. Furries had a reputation for friendliness, so he was probably harmless. She’d learned that, and the lingo, the first time she worked a Fur Con, months before her life-changing event.

Anika turned toward the man dressed in moose costume from the neck, down, and forced a polite smile. He wore long thick antlers over his neatly cut brown hair, possibly to signal a YIFF looking for a good time. Fur Con XXX was for mature conventioneers looking for fun and hook-ups; unlike the family-friendly Furry events held elsewhere.

Anika touched her tongue to her bottom lip. She could almost taste the animal he pretended to be, but not in the way he might wish.

“She obviously works here, idiot,” the wolf-clad male next to him replied. “Can we get drinks?” He gave her a friendly tailwave with the long gray plume he pulled from behind his back. “That is, unless you’re feeling yiffy. Blue-eyed blondes with great legs and big, uh.are my weakness.”

Anika knew he wasn’t referring to the YIFF acronym. Yiff in its many grammatical forms had its root in one word. Sex.

She eyed the faux wolf and noted the SPH, strategically placed hole, in his costume. Not a chance. She hadn’t had sex with a guy since high school, and had been mostly celibate since Lori moved to Seattle eight months ago for a job promotion. The move was a transparent excuse to break up with her following Anika’s attack in the woods.

What hurt most was that Lori didn’t deny the abandonment. “I can’t handle it,” was all she would say. She’d refused to make eye contact before she walked out the door. Anika had been inconsolable for weeks afterward.

Since then, she’d been alone, but her need for companionship had become a painful ache that tormented her night after lonely night. Her rare one-night stands had been disasters of epic proportions. The women had run from her house and refused to return her calls. There simply weren’t many choices for a lesbian with her particular new… penchants.

Available for .99 on Amazon! Available for .99 on Smashwords! Available for .99 on B&N!

Buy SHE’S FURRY YIFFY on Amazon!
Buy SHE-SHIFTERS on Amazon!

I’m heading to the hospital with my mother (she broke her arm last night!), but wanted to get the news out about T&J! It’s a brand new book, 45,000 satisfying words I guarantee will tickle your funny bone! Click on the cover to head to Amazon! And while you’re there, be sure to like and tag it, and if you read it, Elle and I would appreciate your comments in the reviews!! Enjoy!

A laugh-out-loud romantic adventure!

See what happens when a secret billionaire and an aspiring actress get a little wild in Texas!

A man with a soft spot for women…

Closet Texas millionaire, Tanner Peschke has three months to prove he can make a profit at the family used car dealership or he will lose his job, disappoint his father and break his promise to his dying mother. The root of his problem is women. He can’t resist them—any of them. All it takes is the scent of delicate perfume or a misty-eyed gaze from an elderly woman with a sob story, and he becomes silly putty in the hands of his feminine customers. Until, with a stroke of luck and a buck of a mechanical bull, he hires Janine Davis to star with him in the dealership’s live TV ads.

A woman who won’t let a handsome cowboy get in the way of her dream…

Determined to make a name for herself, Janine needs to pay the bills between acting jobs. The offer to do a series of commercials for Peschke Motors is a chance to get her face “out there”. Recognizing a player when she sees one, Janine agrees to co-star with her handsome employer fully intending to keep their relationship strictly professional. First break she gets, she’s heading to Hollywood.
Their jungle-themed commercials take a crazy twist, and Tanner finds himself falling…from a sales banner while chasing a monkey. But more importantly, he’s falling for Janine. She’s just the one woman to tame this cowboy’s wild heart. Convincing her to stay with him might be harder than catching a mischievous monkey.

A knock on the door made her groan.

“It’s time, Miss Davis,” came a male voice, not Tanner’s, through the hollow panel of the bathroom door.

“I’ll be right out,” she called. Alternating between tugging down the hem of the bottoms to cover her fanny, and pulling up the top to cover her breasts, she stormed out of the bathroom, across the showroom floor, and out into the lighted car lot.

Judging by the gauntlet of wolf calls she passed through to get to the television crew, every salesman in the dealership must have stayed late. They all wanted to witness the live filming by a group of college students Tanner hired to keep the budget low. As part of the crew’s curriculum requirement, the commercial would air live on the university’s public television station.

A man carrying a spider monkey approached and shoved the critter into her arms. “This is Spunky. You need to keep a hold on the monkey at all times, or he’ll take off. Catching him will take us hours.”

“Hey! Nobody said anything about a monkey.” Janine pushed the little guy back at his handler, but the jerk turned and trotted to a position beyond the spotlights. Her chances of being taken seriously as an actress slipping through the seams of her skimpy costume and the busy fingers of the monkey, Janine suppressed the urge to scream.

“Quiet, everybody. Two minutes to take,” the young director’s voice boomed through a megaphone. “Where’s Tanner?”

The animal handler called to Janine from the sidelines. “Remember, whatever you do, don’t let go of the monkey.”

“Right, don’t let go of the monkey.” Janine’s head swiveled side to side in search of the nutcase who’d talked her into this crazy commercial. She’d felt more in control on the bucking mechanical bull at the convention than she did right now.

Suddenly, the crowd of used car salesmen parted. Tanner strode toward her with his long, loose-limbed gait and all the confidence and charm of a professional actor. Tanner, dressed casually in his ever-present blue jeans, chambray shirt, cowboy hat and cowboy boots, smiled as he worked his way through the crowd of onlookers.

Janine snorted.

I’ll bet he’s never ridden a horse a day in his life.

He walked right up and turned the full force of his smile on her.

Damn. Her knees went weak, complementing the butterflies in her stomach and the monkey fidgeting in her arms.

As the cameras moved into position, panic filled her. “You never told me what my lines were. What am I supposed to say?”

“Just stand over there and look beautiful. I’ll do all the rest.” He adjusted his hat with enough confidence for both of them. “And smile when I introduce you. That frown makes you look mean.”

Janine opened her mouth to carve his enormous ego down to size and remind him she was an actress, not a model.

Before one word could cross Janine’s lips, she was cut off by the cameraman. “Mr. Peschke, I hope you’re ready because this is not a rehearsal, you’re going live in five…four…three…two…” He pointed ‘one’. The camera was trained on Tanner, the red button lit, and the feed was direct.

Without missing a beat, Tanner smiled, looking completely at ease in front of the camera. “Howdy, folks. It’s a jungle out there. We know how difficult wading through the gimmicks and sales jargon is when buying a used car.”

She had to admit he sounded charming and genuine. After sabotaging her job with BS-Squared, he’d conned Janine into taking this job. She bet he could sell ice to Eskimos.

Spunky’s hairy little hand slipped beneath the bra of her outfit.

Janine slapped at his hand, eliciting a shriek from the monkey. “You must be a male,” she muttered, wishing Tanner would fall on his pretty face in front of the camera.

“Are you sick of the new car prices and immediate depreciation when you drive a car off the lot? Let us take the monkey off your back…” Tanner swung an arm in her direction.

Spunky crawled up on her shoulders and played with her hair.

How about getting this monkey off my back? Crap. She’d spent hours trying to fix her hair beautifully for the commercial. Great, when they finally get the cameras on me, I look like the monkey.

“…and show you what we’ve got in low mileage, pre-owned vehicles at rock-bottom prices.”

At that moment, the creature latched onto the strings holding her halter-top in place. She felt her boobs dip and her stomach knotted.

“Stop that, Spunky,” she whispered, making a grab for both of his tiny, dexterous fingers and the tail that seemed just as facile.

The monkey ignored her, chattering happily, hands and tail dodging her flailing attempts.

“Join us this weekend for our ‘Monkey Off Your Back Sale.’ We’ll be servin’ free banana milkshakes to all the folks who come out.” Tanner’s voice kept up the running monologue despite the monkey’s antics, true to form for a car salesman.

Janine simmered as she struggled for control.

Let’s get this over with before this monkey craps on me.