Celebrate the recent release of The Athlete and the Aristocrat with author Louisa Masters and Dreamspinner Press. Find out more about this contemporary romance and read an exclusive excerpt! Be sure to enter the giveaway of a swag bag from the author too! Good luck!
Exclusive Excerpt: The Athlete and The Aristocrat
With his feet propped on Lucien’s coffee table, Si closed his eyes and leaned back in the extremely comfortable chair that was twin to the one in Lucien’s apartment in Monaco. “If I thought I could get it past the security guard, I’d steal this chair,” he muttered.
Lucien chuckled nearby, and a moment later Si’s hand was lifted and wrapped around a cold bottle. He cracked his eyes open and saw that it was his favorite brand of beer and that Lucien was taking a seat on the sofa, a glass of white wine in hand.
“How’d you know I like this one?” he asked, letting his eyes close again even as he lifted the bottle to his mouth.
“I pay attention,” Lucien said. “That’s also how I know that something upset you today.”
Si shrugged. “I was just being stupid,” he said. “It wasn’t important, and I’m over it now.”
“Are you sure? If moving to Paris is going to be a real—”
He opened his eyes fully, sitting up and putting his feet on the floor. “No. It’s nothing to do with that, or the program. I was just… um, well… it’s stupid. I feel like a fool for even thinking it.”
Lucien looked at him expectantly, and Si sighed, his eyes firmly fixed on his beer bottle. “I was jealous. Marie was being all flirty with you, and it’s stupid because we’re just casual, but I was jealous. And then I started wondering if maybe I assumed too much by not booking a hotel, and… it just got dumber from there.”
Laughter pealed through the room, and Si looked up, surprised. Lucien was laughing so hard, he had to put down his wineglass. Si reluctantly allowed a smile to tug at his own lips. A happy Lucien was impossible to resist.
“Are you laughing at what a dolt I was?” he asked, and Lucien shook his head and swiped moisture from his eyes.
“No,” he said finally. “I’m laughing because Marie was flirting with me only because you don’t speak French and she doesn’t speak English. She was trying to convince me to act as intermediary between you.” He picked up his wineglass and sank back into the sofa.
Si’s jaw dropped. “What? Really? But she barely looked at me the whole time!” He felt even more ridiculous now.
Lucien shrugged. “I believe she was starstruck at first, but once she’d finished her sales pitch on the office suite, all she spoke about was you. She even asked me what your favorite food was.” He smirked, and Si chuckled.
“I once said in an interview that I was looking forward to pizza at a friend’s house that evening, and for the next week, I had pizzas delivered to my apartment night and day,” he confided. “I really hope you told her you didn’t know, because I don’t think it would look good for the program if she started turning up at the office with food.”
Shaking his head, Lucien huffed a laugh. “I do not know what your favorite food is, and that is what I told her. However”—his tone turned gleeful—“I did tell her that you are a fan of music that features whale song.”
Si choked on the sip of beer he’d just taken. “You what?” he wheezed. Lucien merely smiled wickedly and sipped at his wine. “Cheeky bugger,” Si groused, but it was kind of funny. Or it would be, as long as Marie didn’t show up at the office with a whales of the south seas greatest hits compilation or something.
The Athlete and The Aristocrat:
Sometimes love takes balls.
Newly retired championship footballer Simon Wood is taking on his next challenge. His plan for a charity to provide funding for underprivileged children to pursue football as a career has passed its first hurdle: he has backers and an executive consultant. Now it’s time to get the ball rolling.
Lucien Morel, heir to the multibillion-euro Morel Corporation, is shocked—and thrilled—to learn his father has volunteered him as consultant to a fledgling football charity. Better yet, the brains behind it all is heartthrob Simon Wood, his teenage idol and crush.
Although Simon and Lucien get off on the wrong foot, it’s not long before they’re getting along like a house on fire—sparks included. But with the charity under public scrutiny, can their romance thrive?
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About the Author:
Louisa Masters started reading romance much earlier than her mother thought she should. While other teenagers were sneaking out of the house, Louisa was sneaking romance novels in and working out how to read them without being discovered. She’s spent most of her life feeling sorry for people who don’t read, convinced that books are the solution to every problem. As an adult, she feeds her addiction in every spare second, only occasionally tearing herself away to do things like answer the phone and pay bills. She spent years trying to build a “sensible” career, working in bookstores, recruitment, resource management, administration, and as a travel agent, before finally conceding defeat and devoting herself to the world of romance novels.
Louisa has a long list of places first discovered in books that she wants to visit, and every so often she overcomes her loathing of jet lag and takes a trip that charges her imagination. She lives in Melbourne, Australia, where she whines about the weather for most of the year while secretly admitting she’ll probably never move.
And don’t forget to Enter the giveaway through the link below to win this swag bag from the author!
http://bit.ly/2CnrBFQ
