Tour Stop, Excerpt & Giveaway: All Fired Up by Kate Meader

fired upTitle: All Fired Up by Kate Meader
Hot in the Kitchen Series Book Two
Publisher: Forever
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Length: 416 pages

Summary:

Her sweetest mistake . . . 
Cool as a Chicago winter, private events planner Cara DeLuca is a model of self-control . . . until she meets the one temptation she can’t resist: Shane Doyle. The sexy, Irish pastry chef is too hot, too sure, too young, and after a crazy night in Vegas-her new husband. While at first Cara wants nothing more than a way out of her sham marriage to Shane, she soon finds that beneath his farm boy demeanor lies a man who can match her drive, both in and out of the bedroom. How can the wrong guy feel so deliciously right?

. . . Tastes so, so good
Shane has carefully structured his career and life around one goal: connecting with the family that doesn’t know he exists. Marrying a woman with more issues than a magazine stand wasn’t part of the plan, but melting Cara’s icy exterior is so worth the detour. Now as the annulment date nears and long-buried secrets are revealed, Shane will have to fight for the one thing guaranteeing the perfect life he craves . . . the current Mrs. Shane Doyle.

Purchase Links: Amazon * B&N * BAM! * IndieBound * iBooks


Excerpt

“We need to talk.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it immediately. Surely, she wasn’t going to protest a civil conversation about their situation? The situation.

“I Googled it.” She moved behind her desk, sat in one of those fancy ergonomic chairs and flipped open her laptop. It had a pink cover that matched her sweats and the post-it note on his door this morning, the one that had told him to move his damn bike out of her damn space before she took a damn baseball bat to it. Except it wasn’t that nice.

“We can get an annulment. Just fill out a form and it can be done and dusted in about three weeks.” She sounded pleased with herself, downright smug in fact. That frosted him a bit.

He stood and moved to her side of the desk, leaning against the edge. “So not a divorce, then?”

“We can get an annulment because we didn’t…well, it wouldn’t have mattered if we did.” She hesitated, and he could see the gears going round as she rethought her position.

“What if we did?” he asked, tamping down on the glee in his voice.

“What if we did what?”

“What if we did sleep together? What if we had sex?”

The way he said it could be construed as past sex or the promise of it. The promise of can’t-walk-for-a-week good times between a man and a woman. “That wouldn’t make a difference?”

“But we didn’t.” Her brow creased in puzzlement and horror descended to her mouth. “But we didn’t,” she repeated, less sure now.

He couldn’t keep it up but every inch of him—every hardening inch—wished it was true. “Nah, we didn’t.”

“Shane!” She socked him in the side, and broke into that laugh that he’d fallen in love with the minute she’d graced him with it in the third bar of the crawl. It had taken him that long to get it but it had been worth every bad joke, every cheesy pun, every flash of the dimple Aunt Jo said would be a woman’s downfall. The old girl had neglected to mention it would be his downfall as well.

The laughter faded, and she turned serious again. “It wouldn’t matter if we had… well, you know. People make these mistakes all the time, so they have procedures in place.”

“Procedures to clean up idiotic mistakes?”

There was that crease between her brows again. She didn’t like that she’d made a mistake and lost control of a situation. That was so not Cara.

“Right.” But her expression didn’t match the word’s surety. “I’ll take care of the papers, then?” she prompted with a couple of quick nods. The swallow in her throat was so pronounced it made the slender column of her neck expand. It made him feel like prodding her some more. See how far he could take it.

“What if I don’t sign?”

She shot up out of her seat, her lemon fall of hair swishing vehemently behind her head. He got a whiff of herbal shampoo and sunshine. “Why would you do that?”

“Just tell me what would happen, LT.”

The nickname slipped from his lips without thinking as if his brain had been waiting for her to get into a sexy hissy fit. That night he had abbreviated Lemon Tart for expediency’s sake and found that it suited her bossy, military-style hauteur. Lemon Tart, the Lieutenant, LT.

She wasn’t so haughty or self-possessed now. Her hands flailed, at complete odds with cool Cara. The more riled she got, the more his attraction to her burned.

“Well, if one party doesn’t sign, it’ll still happen. It just takes longer. Six to eight weeks.”

If one party doesn’t sign. So cold. So clinical. He nodded, thinking about how he wanted to phrase the next sentence. The silence drew heavily between them and he worked it for a few seconds because shit, he was starting to enjoy himself now.

“Paddy, you’re not seriously thinking of not signing those papers. I mean, what would be gained from that?”

“A marriage, Cara. The marriage you wanted.” He hauled a deep breath because he had a feeling he was going to need it. “After all, this was your brilliant idea.”


Author Bio

meaderKate Meader writes contemporary romance that serves up delicious food, sexy heroes, and heroines with a dash of sass. Originally from Ireland, she now makes her home in Chicago, a city made for food, romance, and laughter – and where she met her own sexy hero. When not writing about men who cook and the women who drool over them, she works in an academic library. Visit her website at http://katemeader.com and follow her on Twitter @kittymeader

Author Links: Website * Facebook * Twitter * Goodreads


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1 Comment

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One Response to Tour Stop, Excerpt & Giveaway: All Fired Up by Kate Meader

  1. Timitra

    Thanks for the excerpt and giveaway