Introducing
PALM SPRINGS HEAT
by DC Thome
Can an ordinary woman make a billionaire bachelor fall in
love with her…so she can dump him as soon as he’s hooked? Lara Dixon sets out
to make it happen with infamous international playboy Clay Creighton.
Lara embarks on a mission of justice, certain that Creighton’s Fast Lane media
empire, with its philosophy of “fast women, fast cars and fast living,”
encourages men to stray from happy homes. And by “men,” Lara means her ex, a
Fast Lane devotee who turned out to have had not a single shred of respect for
women.
Lara finds backers to help her get revenge on the notorious, but decidedly
handsome, tycoon. With new fabulous clothes and a glorious makeover, she
infiltrates Clay’s inner circle and uses her research about his likes and
dislikes to charm him into believing she’s not just another L.A. woman looking
to romance a rich guy.
But as she becomes steeped in the Fast Lane culture during a weekend involving
an exhilarating ride in a very fast car and passionate moments in Clay’s very
exotic Palm Spring resort, “Heat,” Lara discovers nothing is what she expected.
Especially Clay. Women’s perceptions of him, it turns out, are based on
fiction—the products of a skilled public relations team. Lara’s startled by how
well Clay treats her, how much they have in common—and how much she’s falling
for him.
So now Lara has a new problem: Can she put the brakes on her plan to destroy
Clay and make the turn toward a happily-ever-after instead?
This light-hearted romp into today’s jet set includes a cast of wacky
assistants, bubbly fashionistas and unexpected enemies—and friends.
Palm Springs Heat is a fast, fun read—a contemporary romance with a touch of
intrigue and a reminder that nothing, not even a waterfall, is exactly what it
seems.
EXCERPT
The limo jerked hard to the right,
sending Lara Dixon sliding across the slick leather seat.
That can’t be good.
The man seated across from her—the
man Gina had found to introduce her to Clay Creighton—scrambled upright and
banged on the Plexiglas partition separating them from the driver, a uniformed
woman who had quarter-inch silver hair peeking from beneath a livery cap.
“What the hell?” he demanded as the
partition slid open. “Did you hit something?”
The driver met Lara’s questioning
gaze in the rearview mirror. “Oops.” The partition slid shut.
That really can’t be good.
Lara flipped down a mirror to fix
her hair. Her natural color shimmered through the semisweet chocolate veneer. Hard
to get used to after thirty-two years as a blonde.
“Just a bump in the road.” Anton
Roche worked his neck like a preening turkey and settled back in as the limo
raced past Paradise Cove on the road to Malibu. “As I was saying, the girl
thought she was the aurora borealis, Liberty’s torch and the leprechaun’s pot
o’ gold rolled into one. But she knew she looked even hotter in my bustier.”
Lara suppressed a sigh. How does
Gina put up with this guy? The lingerie designer had prattled about his
life with the glitterati from the minute he’d picked her up at her humble Santa
Monica apartment. She wished he’d let her concentrate on this new experience of
riding in luxury. After tonight, she might never step into a limo again. Then
again, Roche had put his turkey neck on the line to talk up Lara to Clay
Creighton.
He has his own axe to grind, but
I should at least pretend to be interested.
“Why is it the ‘STP’ bustier?” Lara
asked, though after weeks of researching Creighton’s Fast Lane empire, she knew
the answer. Never hurts to practice. You’ll be lying all the time if
everything goes right tonight.
Roche straightened with pride.
“‘Seconds to Paradise.’ It’s goddamn brilliant. Builds up the bust—and a man
can unhook it one-handed like that.” He snapped his fingers. “You know how much
money Creighton’s made from that thing? It’s the biggest seller in the Toy
Store. But do I get the credit?” He looked more closely at Lara. “It wouldn’t
have been a bad idea for you to wear one tonight.”
Lara had considered buying one from
Fast Lane’s notorious online gift shop back when she was married. “I thought
STP had something to do with gasoline.”
“Yeah, well…Fast Lane: Racy cars,
the high life…and all that.”
Fast women, fast cars, fast
living. I know all about Fast Lane and Clay Creighton.
Lara looked out the window as Roche
chattered on. The sun drifting down through the maritime haze toward Point Dume
reflected in her diamond-blue eyes. The conflagration of red, orange and purple
looked no different from here than it did from the bluffs on the other side of
Santa Monica Bay.
The limo jerked again as they
turned up a gravel road. Lara’s heart quickened. We must be close.
“We’re here!” Roche announced as
the car turned into a driveway that twisted skyward through desert terrain.
“Are you ready?”
Lara thought about the weeks she’d
spent in the gym. The coaching sessions on how to lie with a mysterious woman
whose name and accent changed daily. The hours poring through the enormously
popular Fast Lane website, reading Creighton’s daily encyclicals on materialism
and carnality until she could easily extemporize on the advantages of gadgets
she’d never use and the attributes of running backs she’d never cheer for.
But everything she learned did
nothing to change her opinion: Fast Lane was nothing but a place where men like
her asshole ex, Kyle, could leer at naked women and find validation for
believing they deserved their own harems.
An instructional guide on
how to screw over your wife.
She closed her eyes and her mind to
escape Roche’s jabber. When she had approached Gina Wray, creator of the
pro-woman website HardCoreGrrrls.com, with the idea of infiltrating Fast Lane
to reveal its sordid secrets, Lara had never expected to be the one doing the
infiltrating.
“I know plenty of people who’d like
to bring Clay Creighton down—people who’d pay big bucks for an exposé,” Gina
had told Lara. “Putting an end to The Rotation wouldn’t be so bad, either.”
The Rotation consisted of three
women who were at Creighton’s beck and call 24/7. Every six months, he dumped
the most senior member and introduced a new plaything. Relationships arced, he
said, starting out passionate and ending up routine, so a man had to bring in
“new talent” to keep things exciting. Gina’s plan was for Lara to become the
first woman in The Rotation’s disgraceful sixteen-year history to dump him
instead.
“I don’t know,” Lara had protested.
“I’m not exactly Fast Lane material.”
“The material is there,” Gina had
assured her. “You just have to move it around a little.”
Nothing’s simple. The world is
warm and cool and open and mysterious and bright and muddled—all at the same
time. How do you live with that?
Lara opened her eyes to see Roche
staring at her chest. He frowned. “Can’t you show a little more cleavage?”
Lara reflexively looked down the
ruffled collar of her dress—a sleeveless midnight blue Roland Mouret crepe Gina
had purchased for this night. Lara marveled at how easily the
twenty-five-hundred-dollar price tag convinced her the dress fit and felt
better than anything she’d ever worn.
But does it look good enough?
Even with her new body and hair,
even with every follicle below her forehead sugar-waxed and ripped clean, her
nails filed, polished and buffed to a mother-of-pearl sheen, her feet soaked in
lavender-scented Dead Sea salt water and tucked neatly into a pair of Guillaume
Hinfray platform slingbacks, even after two months of Gina’s pep talks, she had
to ask this clown, “Do you believe I can even get into The Rotation?”
Roche leaned back against the
velvety leather, his beady black eyes taking in Lara’s slender
five-foot-eight-inch frame, long legs, toned and spray-tanned arms. She held
steady under his gaze. He reached up and pushed a lock of hair off her
forehead. She knocked his hand away and moved the hair back.
“Eh,” Roche said. “Stranger things
have happened.”
Just what I needed: a big boost
of confidence.
The limo crested a hillock and
slowed to a stop. A busty young woman wearing the lowest-cut Lakers jersey Lara
had ever seen opened the door. “Welcome to the ICE House!”
