Hard Limits

When Indali Vadera runs to LA to escape an arranged marriage, borrowing a friend’s identity to stay off her overbearing parents’ radar seems like a good plan. As long as she doesn’t get close to anyone, her secret is safe, and her new boss is an easy man to hate. Mr. Vale. The ass who requires his coffee served at exactly one hundred and forty degrees. But when Indi’s friend goes missing, there’s only one person she can turn to for help.

There’s a reason Braxton Vale hires personal assistants he can’t stand. Giving in to temptation could cost him everything. Between running a business empire and fighting with his hopefully soon-to-be ex-wife, he doesn’t have time for distractions, but there’s something different about this new girl… When Brax’s world begins to fall apart, there’s only one group of people he can turn to: his former roommates. But they’ve been keeping secrets too…

Hard Limits is a standalone romantic suspense novel in the Blackstone House series.

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Excerpt: The Beginning…

“Hey! Watch out!”

Too late. The side mirror of the SUV clipped my hand, and the coffee I was holding flew through the air. A second later, my cappuccino with caramel syrup splattered over a candy wrapper, a crinkled flyer advertising Dr. Jo’s Therapy Services, and the sorry remains of a fancy beaded shoe. If that wasn’t a metaphor for my life on this gloomy January day in Los Angeles, I didn’t know what was.

At least the cup wasn’t broken. The insulated travel mug had been a gift from my best friend, and although the lid bounced off, it had survived the fall with only a small dent. But the coffee… I’d needed that coffee, and I couldn’t afford a refill.

The driver’s tinted window rolled down smoothly. At first, I only saw dark hair, and my insides seized because my older brother drove the same vehicle—a dark-grey Porsche Cayenne—and I feared that my family had finally caught up with me. But the window continued its downward journey to reveal intense blue eyes, smooth white skin, high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a well-defined jaw that definitely didn’t belong to any of the men I was related to.

“Maybe if you’d looked where you were going, you wouldn’t have walked into my car.”

Okay, he and Raj did have one thing in common—they were both assholes. And you know what? I’d had enough of jerks like them. They thought that having money gave them a licence to do as they pleased.

“And maybe if you hadn’t been driving your gas-guzzling penis extension so fast in a parking lot, you would have seen me before you hit me.”

“You just appeared from nowhere.”

“What if I’d been a child, huh? Would you still be using that excuse?”

“I’d like to think a child’s parents would have taught it to look both ways before crossing the road. And for the record, I don’t need a penis extension.”

“Screw you.”

“Not an option, my darling.” He held out a hundred-dollar bill between thumb and forefinger. “Here—get yourself another coffee and a pair of glasses.”

“You can’t just buy me off like that.”

He let the bill fall to the damp asphalt. “Suit yourself.”

A second later, he roared away in his dick-mobile, leaving me fuming. Were arrogance and condescension coded into the Y chromosome? If I’d been allowed to continue my medical career, I could have done a study on it.

The hundred-dollar bill fluttered in the breeze, and I trapped it under my foot. Much as I didn’t want to take the stranger’s money, a hundred bucks was a hundred bucks, and I really needed caffeine. These days, I was too poor to be proud. My pride had gone the same way as my designer shoe collection, my top-of-the-line Mercedes coupe, and my gold jewellery—I’d left it behind when I escaped Massachusetts.

Excerpt: Meet Mr. Vale…

Braxton Vale sifted through the stack of résumés on his desk. Dozens and dozens of them. Getting applicants was never a problem—he paid well over the market rate—but finding the right person for the job always presented a challenge. Some of the candidates had included headshots, and he weeded out all the pretty ones and filed them in the trash. Too tempting. They definitely had to go.

Perhaps he should try hiring a male assistant again? Although that was a minefield too—the first one had tried hitting on a married chef, so Brax had picked out a gay guy as his replacement. Scottie rearranged everything in Brax’s office, his home, and even his car, then started redecorating. Emails went unanswered. The phone kept ringing. Interior design had been Scottie’s passion, not admin. Two years later, Brax was still finding miscellaneous items in strange places. Who stored Scotch in a white wine refrigerator? Horizontally?

Hmm, what about an older candidate? A possibility, but in Brax’s experience, they rarely lasted long. Jealous husbands, family commitments, a dislike of last-minute travel… Although he’d once hired a terrific lady in her sixties, fun yet quietly efficient, a former actress with an adventurous streak and a deliciously warped sense of humour. But Luisa had suffered a heart attack when one of the shows in the basement—the space nicknamed The Dark—got a little wild, and after she recovered, she’d retired to Acapulco.

Brax had adored Luisa.

He missed Luisa.

Today’s candidate was twenty-four, but she’d passed the telephone interview, and Rhonda, his HR manager, thought she had potential. Brax scanned through her résumé. Meera Adams had been educated at Harvard with a concentration in environmental science and public policy and a secondary in European history, politics, and societies. Since she graduated, she’d held two positions in LA, the first as a receptionist at a gym and the second as a PA at a packaging company. She’d lasted two months at the first, four months at the second. Brax’s assistants averaged two and a half months. The record was thirteen months—Luisa—and one girl had quit within five hours.

Rhonda had tagged the corner of the résumé with a sticky note.

Well-spoken, uptight, would turn her nose up at a man like you. A possible?

Bless Rhonda’s heart. She knew exactly what he was looking for in an assistant, and she was Team Brax all the way. Loyalty was invaluable, especially in Brax’s unfortunate situation. Every so often, one of Carissa’s stooges slipped through the net, so he had to remain constantly vigilant, watching for any signs of betrayal.

A sigh escaped. How had it come to this?

Because you let your guard down, asshole.

Eight years ago, Brax had gotten distracted and fallen victim to an ambition greater than his own. When he married Carissa Dunn, signing a prenup with a vicious adultery clause hadn’t seemed like such a problem. Just a mere formality. They’d been young and in love, and she’d appeared as eager to make a success of Dunnvale Holdings as he was.

Appeared as eager…

It turned out that Carissa was allergic to latex, costume jewellery, shellfish, and work. Possibly dogs too, although Brax suspected they just didn’t like her very much.

Fast-forward the better part of a decade, and Brax had come to realise that Carissa had one love in life, and it wasn’t him. No, it was money. Shopping came second, and luxury vacations took third place. He wanted a divorce. So did she, but only if she got the lion’s share of the spoils. And therein lay the problem. Clause eight of the prenup said that if one party to the marriage cheated, they were entitled to one million dollars or ten percent of the joint assets, whichever was smaller. Brax hadn’t spent his adult life building an empire just for Carissa to take ninety-nine point eight percent of it.

Mediation had failed, as had couples counselling, so now they were engaged in a game of sexual chicken—no bestiality involved because even he wouldn’t stoop that low—and Carissa had a definite advantage. Her sex drive had never been as high as his, which had been yet another problem in their marriage.

Brax had taken cold showers, swallowed pills, bought every sex toy known to man, and even spent two weeks in a Peruvian monastery, but he was still trapped in his worst nightmare. Some of the most beautiful women in America worked in his clubs, women who were up for anything, and he wasn’t allowed to touch any of them. And if he hired an assistant who was in any way attracted to him, it would be game over. Hell, she didn’t even have to be beautiful. He could just close his eyes and sink into that warm—

A soft knock stopped him from going down that hole.

“Come in.”

The door opened, and all his prayers were answered.

Halle-fucking-lujah.

Because Meera Adams and the woman he’d nearly run over this morning were one and the same person. In truth, he’d been feeling slightly guilty about that—yes, she’d walked out from between two stationary cars, but he probably shouldn’t have been checking his phone behind the wheel, even in a parking lot.

This was perfect.