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Coming Apart at the Seams
Riley O'Brien & Co #2
Jenna Sutton
Releasing Dec 1st, 2015
Berkley
Love
can take some time to break in...
Teagan O’Brien, heiress to the Riley
O’Brien & Co. denim empire, is anything but a spoiled rich girl. She’s
worked hard to secure her place in the family business and can hold her own, in
and out of the office. Only one man has ever been able to get under her
skin—sexy football star Nick Priest. Years ago they crossed the line from
friends to lovers, but he left her heartbroken. Since then, she’s been
determined to keep him at arm’s length—no matter how tempting he looks in his
jeans...
Nick has fortune, fame, and looks
that make most women hot and bothered. But he doesn't have the woman he really
wants. He knows he screwed up when he walked away from Teagan, and now that he
has a second chance, he’ll do whatever it takes to win her over—no matter how
tongue-tied he gets...
San Francisco—Present Day
Blunder. Gaffe. Misstep. Error. Snafu. Although plenty of
words described the huge, life-altering mistake Nick Priest had made, none of
them quite conveyed his stupidity. He’d had a chance with Teagan O’Brien, but
he’d blown it. That was his biggest regret, and he had a lot of them.
As he stared at her across the ballroom, he had to remind
himself to breathe. Her long, red dress clung to her curvy body, just tight
enough to make every man in the room wish his pants were a little looser behind
the zipper.
She reminded him of a starlet from the 1950s with her
abundant breasts, narrow waist, and round hips. He’d had the pleasure of
shaping those hips with his hands, tonguing her rosy nipples, and sinking into
her luscious body, although pleasure didn’t really describe what he’d felt when
he had been with her.
She laughed, her deep blue eyes glinting in the light from
the chandeliers, and her date leaned closer, licking his lips as he got an
eyeful of her tits. Nick clenched his hands into fists, barely controlling the
urge to ram the fucker’s head into the wall.
For more than a year and a half, he had been trying to
persuade Teagan to give him another chance. But she hated him with all the
passion she’d given him during their one and only night together.
He thought about approaching her but discarded the idea.
She had become a master at avoiding him, and she would find a reason to excuse
herself immediately.
Forcing himself to relax, he settled more comfortably
against the wood-paneled wall. He wasn’t trying to blend in. He knew that was
impossible.
His face and form were highly recognizable from years of
playing pro football, and most recently, appearing in commercials for Riley
O’Brien & Co., the nation’s oldest designer and manufacturer of blue jeans.
Since he’d thrown his lot in with the company, he had figured he ought to
attend the annual holiday party. Plus, he had known Teagan would be here.
This wasn’t the first O’Brien celebration he had attended.
He’d known the family for about fifteen years. He had played football with
Quinn O’Brien at the University of Southern California, and he had formed
friendships with both Quinn and his younger brother, Cal.
The O’Brien brothers were Nick’s best friends, two of his
favorite people. But his absolute favorite person was their little sister,
Teagan. He’d known her almost as long as he had known Quinn and Cal, and before
he’d messed things up, they had been friends. Best friends, in fact.
How
disciplined are you when it comes to writing?
Before I became an author, I worked as
journalist, first as a magazine staffer and then as a freelancer. So I had to
be very disciplined, organized, accurate, and efficient. At one period in my
career, I turned in seven articles a day and had deadlines at 8 am, 10 am,
noon, 2 pm and 4 pm. Those years as a journalist prepared me well for a career
in fiction writing. Deadlines don’t faze me. I expect to be edited. And I know
how to make boring subjects sexy, so that’s a big plus. Fortunately, I don’t
have to be quite so disciplined with my fiction writing.
Are
there certain scenes that are harder/easier for you to write?
Sex scenes are hard for me to write
(and yes, I know how that sounds). They’re hard for a lot of authors to write.
I’ve heard a lot of other authors say they have to be “in the mood” to write a
sex scene, but that’s not an issue for me. I’m pretty sure I think about sex as
frequently as a teenage boy—all in the name of research, of course. For me, sex
scenes are difficult to write because
there’s so much that goes into them—you have to be cognizant of logistics while
communicating both emotion and dialogue. For example, if one of my hero’s hands
is threaded through my heroine’s hair and his other hand is on her ass, he
can’t also have a hand on her waist because he doesn’t have three hands (all my
heroes are human, so this might not be a problem for authors who write alien heroes
with multiple hands...). Anyway, you get my point.
In Coming
Apart at the Seams, there’s a sex scene that occurs on a conference room
table, and despite the fact that at least 15 people read this scene, no one
caught the fact that heroine never takes off her shirt, but toward the end of
the scene I had her looking for her shirt to put it back on. Fortunately, I caught
the error when I was doing final edits.
What
are you working on now / what is your next project?
I’m working on getting the third book
in the Riley O’Brien & Co. series, Hanging
by a Thread, ready for publication. It’s available for pre-order now, and
it’s scheduled for release on June 7, 2016. Hanging
by a Thread is Cal O’Brien’s story, and I’ve paired him with his sister’s
best friend, Bebe Banerjee. We get to know Bebe in Coming Apart at the Seams, and I think she’s the perfect match for
Cal. Bebe is a 30-year-old virgin with a turbo-charged brain who’s stuck in an
arranged marriage. Cal, being the helpful guy that he is, offers to assist Bebe
with her de-virginization plan. Who could resist an offer like that?
What
is your guilty pleasure?
Watching too much TV. I’ve tried to
work out while watching TV, but apparently I lack the ability to walk and watch
since I almost killed myself on the treadmill because I was too entranced with one
of my favorite shows.
What
book have you recently read that you would recommend?
I discovered Jackie Ashenden last year,
and I fell in love with her writing. She writes such fabulous dark, tortured
characters and the most amazing, sizzling sex scenes. I devoured her most
recent release, You Are Mine, and I’m
telling everyone now: read this book! The premise is great, the hero is someone
I want to be alone with in a dark room for several hours, and the heroine seems
fragile, but is anything but. And the cover is gorgeous.
Can
you tie a cherry stem in a knot in your mouth?
I cannot. And I cannot make a taco with
my tongue either. However, I’ve been told that my mouth and my tongue are
talented in other, more important ways.
Do
you sing in the shower?
Absolutely. I have a very large walk-in
shower (yes, I know I’m spoiled), and the acoustics compel me to sing. More
often than not, I sing everything in operatic style. No one would ever confuse
me with Adele, but at least my voice doesn’t make dogs howl or glass break.
Who
would you want to play you in a movie of your life?
I shudder to think of my life being
turned into a movie. Everyone ends up looking like an ass in a biopic. Case in
point: Steve Jobs.
How
old were you when you had your first crush/first love and are you still in
contact?
I was a junior in high school the first
time I experienced more than just a crush. Call it love, call it stupidity, but
it lasted through my senior year and even into my freshman year of college. I
was seriously hung up on this guy. In retrospect, I think he liked me too, but
I was too insecure to do anything about my feelings. I’m sure that’s a very normal,
commonplace story. What is not normal or commonplace is the fact that I
regularly dream about this guy (several times a week), even though it’s been
almost 20 years since I’ve seen or talked to him, and I am very happily married
to another man. I wonder what a dream interpretation expert would have to say
about that?
Jenna Sutton spent most of her career as an award-winning journalist covering business-related topics including healthcare, commercial real estate, retail, and technology. Nowadays she writes about hot, lovable guys and the smart, sexy women who make them crazy. It’s the culmination of a lifelong dream, and she feels so lucky to be able to do it.
Jenna has a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Texas Christian University and a Master’s degree in Integrated Marketing Communications from Northwestern University.
Jenna and her husband live in a 103-year-old house in Texas.
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