Excerpt
How did that happen? Yes, she wrote about this kind of thing every day.
But it wasn’t something that happened every day in real life. Leastways, not to
her.
A complete scoundrel, whose very name was in doubt, was kissing her.
Okay, so he was an all-round, physically damned attractive scoundrel, but he was
quite obviously a scoundrel nonetheless.
It wasn’t like Tara hadn’t kissed men when she didn’t know their entire
life story, but hell, she’d known them more than five minutes before. And she
had been kissed by the odd scoundrel before, but she hadn’t been forewarned back
then. This time she most definitely was, thanks to all the Fiona's and Philomena's.
She should have been prepared. His reputation preceded him. This really
shouldn’t have been such a big surprise.
But the most amazing thing was, if she was going to face up to the truth
of the matter, he wasn’t doing too bad a job. Not too shabby at all. In fact,
her fantasies started to fall a little short…
She stood absolutely still, determined not to participate even as her
eyes flickered closed. His mouth moved across hers. Not tentative, but firm -
not too firm though. She stopped analyzing the experience for future
literary use, and instead sensation took over.
Strength. She could feel the overwhelming strength of his body as it
enveloped her own. She felt small, vulnerable, and deliciously female.
Musk. Whether it was from his skin or something manufactured, it was
heady, sweet. Filling her nostrils with the unfamiliar maleness of his scent.
Sweet-tasting warmth. His mouth opened slightly, his tongue flicking
between her lips, encouraging her participation, sending waves of similar sweet
warmth throughout her body. Mmm.
The moment he felt her soften, he smiled in satisfaction against her mouth.
The moment he smiled she stiffened and struggled until he let her loose.
With only a glare she turned, lifted her shopping bag, and swung it at
his head. It hit the side of his left eye. Immediately he stumbled sideways,
before meeting the ground for the second time when his large feet got tangled.
‘You arrogant -!’
‘What the hell’s in that bag?’ He lay on his back, both hands held tight
against his rapidly swelling eye.
‘How dare you kiss me!’
He squinted up at her. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time. What’s
wrong, didn’t you write that bit out?’
‘If you ever touch me again I’ll call the police, you hear me?’ She
stood over him, shopping bag swinging. ‘I know the local constable and he’ll
look out for me.’
‘I’ve met the local constable and unless he’s managed to get new glasses
he’s incapable of looking out for pink elephants, never mind you.’ Jack
struggled to his feet. ‘Well, if I didn’t have concussion before, I’ve sure as
hell got it now.’
Tara failed to notice his slight swaying. ‘You can’t just go round
kissing women who don’t want to be kissed!’ She watched as he removed his hands
from his eye. ‘Oh God.’
He looked at her expression with his one good eye. ‘That bad, huh?’
She looked down at the bag and then back at his eye. ‘Oh God.’
‘Great. I’m disfigured.’ He turned towards the house and tilted
dangerously sideways.
‘I forgot.’ She moved to his side, setting his arm across her shoulders
to support him. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘You forgot you bought an anvil?’
‘No, tomato soup.’
He glanced down at her. ‘You just hit me with a tin of soup?’
Tara smiled weakly at him. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
‘And you’re the one calling the police?’
They made it up the porch steps and through the large entrance hall.
‘Where to?’ Tara glanced from side to side, into large empty rooms with peeling
wallpaper and workbenches.
‘Kitchen.’ He pointed ahead. ‘I need an ice pack and possibly a stiff
drink.’
He sat down at a worn table while Tara walked to a large fridge. She
opened the freezer door, glancing back over her shoulder. ‘Peas or sweet corn?’
‘What?’ He already had a headache and she was going nutty on him again?
‘You don’t have any ice so do you want frozen peas or
sweet corn?’
‘You pick the vegetable. You’re good at that.’
She sat opposite him at the table as he placed the bag against his eye. Her eyes
studied him as guilt kicked in. Even a scoundrel didn’t deserve attempted
murder. ‘I really am sorry I hit you with the tin. But at least the bread
cushioned some of the blow, or I’d probably have knocked you out.’
‘That’s reassuring.’
She attempted reasoning. ‘But you still shouldn’t have kissed me like
that.’
Jack sighed. ‘Okay, then, how should I have kissed you?’
'You shouldn’t have kissed me at all.’ She frowned at him, her eyes a
mixture of regret and annoyance. ‘Not if I didn’t ask you to.’
Drips of water began to appear on the edge of the bag as the heat from
Jack’s eye began to defrost the contents. ‘You always ask a man to kiss you?
Don’t tell me, you wear the trousers in all your relationships, right? You give
them instructions every step of the way, right from “Would you kiss me now?”,
through to “Do you mind throwing me down and giving me –”’
The glint of anger in her eyes stopped him. He took a deep breath. ‘How
about you and I call a truce?’
‘What kind of truce?’
Her obvious distrust irritated him but he continued. ‘The kind of truce
where we promise not to hit each other with any food, tinned or otherwise, and
try to be friends.’
‘Friends? You and me?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think that would
work, to be honest.’
He was beginning to wonder about that himself. ‘Why not?’
‘We don’t get on.’
‘How do you know we don’t? We haven’t tried.’
‘I just hit you with a tin of soup!’
‘Okay, I’ll give you that.’ He smiled weakly. ‘But you got to admit
life’s not boring when we’re together.’
One hand reached across to examine the eye below the frozen vegetables.
‘You willing to risk your other eye?’
‘Promise to use mushroom next time?’
She smiled. ‘You’re crazy.’
‘I wouldn’t throw stones in that department if I were you.’
‘You’d have to promise not to flirt with me,’ she leaned back in her
chair, ‘and you’d have to be less annoying. Think you can manage that?’
‘No.’
‘Well then...’
‘Flirting is part of my character. It’s apparently something I do
without thinking.’
‘Says who, your ego?’
‘All of my sisters. They’ve been saying for years it would get me into
trouble some day.’ He held the bag away from his face. ‘And today’s that day, it
would seem.’
‘I really don’t see how we can be friends then.’
He smiled gently, his eyes warming. ‘You could try to cure me of it? Or
maybe you could just get used to it as you get to know me better?’
She sighed. ‘Why do you want to be friends with me?’
A shrug. ‘I might just like you. For some unknown reason.’
Tara studied him for several long, silent minutes. Jack stayed quiet,
for once. She was curious about him - who he really was. What kind of
person he might turn out to be below the thick layer of smart-ass. He was right
about one thing: life wasn’t boring when they were together. And they lived next
door to each other. It would be just too awkward if they didn’t make some
attempt to get along.
For research purposes maybe? To find out more about what it was like
being a scoundrel? She could go with that reasoning. Scoundrels were rife in her
writing after all. Research could be a good thing. Especially if she was
forearmed. If she already knew he was a scoundrel then she could resist, right?
She’d just have to get past the whole ogling thing and limit her fantasizing to
her fiction.
That all taken into account, there was one thing that sure as hell
couldn’t happen. ‘You can’t kiss me again.’
He reached his hand across the table to shake hers. Her smaller hand
enclosed in his, he smiled. ‘I won’t kiss you again. Or do anything else from my
wide repertoire.’ The smile promoted itself to a grin. ‘Until you ask me to.’
Back to books
Text Copyright © 2004 by
Trish Wylie Cover Art Copyright ©
2004
by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Permission to reproduce text granted by Harlequin Books S.A. Cover art used
by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited. All rights reserved. ® and ™
are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its affiliated
companies, used under license.
Behind The Scenes
Her
Real-Life Hero
was the book that would test my resolve about
becoming a writer. Known as
second-book-syndrome, it's when you believe your first was a fluke
and they'll discover with a second one you can't actually write after
all. Coming from the profession which as good as coined the
phrase 'one-hit-wonder' probably didn't help, so when I first submitted this
story and
it was suggested I 'set it to one side', I had a crisis of confidence and ran
off to tour Ireland for eight months instead of starting anew. When I came back,
the stubborn part of my genetic make-up refused to let this story go, so I went back to
it, tore it apart and put it back together again, several times, until eventually-thanks to a very patient editor-it sold!
The story stemmed from my love
of the movie Romancing
The
Stone. I loved the idea of a romance author being swept up in an adventure
which mirrored her stories. Wishful thinking quite possibly, but from that
starting point my heroine became a writer of swash buckling
adventures who made the mistake of finding hero inspiration right outside her window
where her
new neighbor was working on his run down house. Once I had Tara and a few
of her eccentricities clear in
my mind, it was time to focus on that neighbour...
Enter Jack
and here I
was a teeny bit ahead of my time, choosing to make him an architect before they became popular in movies like The
Lakehouse-go me! Maybe it was the influence of the Coke advert where women
ogle the man outside their window during their break but in my head,
Jack was drop dead gorgeous. Mind you-that could also have been the part of me wishing
I had the same kind of inspiration outside my window. What I
hadn't foreseen as I was writing the story was how Jack's family of sisters and his business partner Adam
would influence my next book, because out of Her
Real-Life Hero came the follow-up story
Her Unexpected Baby.
Location, Location,
Location
'Tara's Hero' was set in a fictional coastal village with both Jack and Tara's houses
on cliff's over-looking the
sea. I based the location on a real-life place-a popular beach called Rossnowlagh in Co. Donegal-and the first little seeds of an idea for this story came while
I was having lunch
in The Smuggler's Cove, a pub sat on the cliffs overlooking the bay. It's a pretty darn inspirational
and if it was inspirational for me as an author then surely it would be equally
as inspirational for the author of swashbuckling pirate-type romances, right? As
a result the
story Tara is currently writing filters though the book too, mirroring some of
the emotions she's experiencing.
As
for Percival, the cat that stomps all over Tara's keyboard in the very first
chapter? Well the inspiration for that comes from real life too. Though my version of Percival only
arrived a year after the book was written, I regularly had my
keyboard stomped all over by either or both of my cats. Daisy and Max just
plain don't get the theory of waiting to be fed. In their opinions my
life was supposed to revolve around them. Sadly I lost Max in the summer of 2011
and I have to say, even now, I miss his half of the interruptions. He was my
cuddle cat, whereas Daisy would rather remove my arm than have that kind of
contact.
All told there was probably a lot
of my life in Tara's story. All I need is a Jack...
*All Photographs are used to
give a visible representation of the Authors 'view' and are in no way
representative of the people or places in real life beyond the realms of the
Authors imagination.
Reviews
"Sparky interaction,
sexual tension, hilarious one-liners and heart-warming romance all
combine to make Her Real Life Hero a spellbinding story which you will find very
hard to resist."
Julie Bonello -
Cataromance
"I
love Trish Wylie, her writing style is light, a little humorous, so just up my
street and this book had everything I expected after reading her first book. All
the emotion with a smile and characters that are as imperfect, yet lovable,
right from the start."
Amazon Reviewer -
South Africa
