Indecent Proposal (Boys of Bishop)
Praise for Molly O’Keefe
The Boys of Bishop Novels
Wild Child
“If there is one contemporary romance novel you must read in 2013, this is it … this book, this book … I could go on and on … but I will just end with this: not only was the plot beautiful but the writing was as well.”
—Love’s a State of Mind
“One of my favorite things about [O’Keefe’s] books is the way they refuse to shy away from messy, complicated characters and relationships. Wild Child is no different in that regard … It is a testament to O’Keefe’s skill as a writer and a storyteller that she imbues Jackson and Monica’s stories (as a fledgling couple and as individuals) with a tremendous amount of emotional depth and sensitivity … O’Keefe can bring characters … into vivid and compelling life as they stumble, sometimes joyously, often painfully, always passionately, toward love and mutual happiness.”
—Dear Author
“I fell in love with this book from the very beginning … It has the right amount of romance … And the sex scenes were hot, too.”
—Night Owl Reviews, 4 stars
“As I have come to expect from Molly O’Keefe, Wild Child is a deliciously steamy romance that has plenty of substance … Another fabulous book by a very gifted author that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys contemporary romances.”
—Book Reviews and More by Kathy
“Molly O’Keefe is one of my favorite writers. You can count on her to create characters that will test you and take your emotions for a spin, one moment loving them the next wanting to give them a good shake. Well, she didn’t let me down with this story … The writing is spectacular and meaningful, the story has depth and the characters are extremely interesting and true to their designed nature. I make no bones about O’Keefe being one of my favorite writers and, even though I was prepared for a good book, I was blown away by this one.”
—The Book Nympho
“Super hot scenes, funny moments and some of the most romantic gestures I have ever read.… Happy reading!”
—The Reading Café
“It’s no secret that Molly O’Keefe’s novels are my favorites in the very crowded contemporary romance genre. Her books … are brilliantly subversive. All of the novels I’ve read by this author riff on romance archetypes and conventions in a deliciously satisfying manner … When it comes down to it, if you’re looking for an authentically complex romance narrative … read Wild Child.”
—Clear Eyes Full Shelves
Crooked Creek Novels
Crazy Thing Called Love
“There is no stopping the roller coaster of emotion, sexual tension and belly laughs. O’Keefe excels in creating flawed characters who readers will root for on every page. Despite very serious subjects and tear-worthy emotion, the tone of the novel is a perfect balance of fun and heart.”
—RT Book Reviews, 4½ stars
“O’Keefe’s newest romance hits the high notes with a storyline that tugs on the heartstrings, maintains a sizzling degree of sexual tension, and plays on realistic, authentic conflicts that keep the audience emotionally invested from start to finish. Gripping storytelling and convincing character-building allow the story to unfold in the present and in the past, offering windows into the psyches of a damaged hero and his restyled first love. An intense, heartwarming winner.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Crazy Thing Called Love has become my all-time favorite contemporary romance!… Don’t miss out on O’Keefe’s Crooked Creek series! These are the books you will still be talking about in twenty years!”
—Joyfully Reviewed
“There is nothing lacking in Molly O’Keefe’s Crazy Thing Called Love. I am glad to say that it has every possible thing a woman could want in a good romance story. The Crooked Creek series is something that you will definitely want to get your hands on.”
—Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews
“Wonderful story … unlike anything I have read before … Highly addicting.”
—Single Titles
“This was an absolute joy to read … Definitely a book worth picking up.”
—Cocktails and Books
“O’Keefe keeps the momentum of the present story going at a breathtaking pace with well placed visits back to the past, providing insight into these characters.”
—Fresh Fiction
Can’t Buy Me Love
“Readers should clear their schedules before they pick up O’Keefe’s latest—a fast-paced, funny and touching book that is ‘unputdownable.’ Her story is a rollercoaster ride of tragedy and comedy that is matched in power by believable and sympathetic characters who leap off the pages. Best of all, this is just the beginning of a new series.”
—RT Book Reviews
“From the beginning we see Tara’s stainless steel loyalty and her capacity for caring, as well as Luc’s overweening sense of responsibility and punishing self-discipline … Watching them fall for each other is excruciatingly enjoyable … Can’t Buy Me Love is the rare kind of book that both challenges the genre’s limits and reaffirms its most fundamental appeal.”
—Dear Author
“Can’t Buy Me Love is an unexpectedly rich family-centered love story, with mature and sexy characters and interweaving subplots that keep you turning the pages as fast as you can read. I really enjoyed it. It’s also got some of the most smooth and compelling sequel bait I’ve ever swallowed.”
—Read React Review
“If you love strong characters, bad guys trying to make good things go sour, and a steamy romance that keeps you guessing about just how two people are going to overcome their own angsts to come together where they belong, then I highly recommend Can’t Buy Me Love by Molly O’Keefe. You won’t be disappointed.”
—Unwrapping Romance
“A stunning contemporary romance … One of the most memorable books I’ve read in a long time.”
—DEIRDRE MARTIN,
New York Times bestselling author
“Molly O’Keefe is a unique, not-to-be-missed voice in romantic fiction … An automatic must-read!”
—SUSAN ANDERSEN,
New York Times bestselling author
Can’t Hurry Love
“Using humor and heartrending emotion, O’Keefe writes characters who leap off the page. Their flaws and foibles make for an emotional story filled with tension, redemption and laughter. While this novel is not a direct continuation of the first in the series, it makes the reading richer and more interesting to devour the books in order. Readers should keep their eyes peeled for the third book and make room on their keeper shelves for this sparkling fresh series.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Have you ever read a book that seeped into your soul while you read it, leaving you feeling both destroyed and elated when you finished? Can’t Hurry Love was that book for me.”
—Reader, I Created Him
“Can’t Hurry Love is special. It’s that book that ten years from now you will still be recommending to everyone because it is undeniably great!”
—Joyfully Reviewed
“An emotion-packed read, Can’t Hurry Love … is a witty, passionate contemporary romance that will capture your interest from the very beginning.”
—Romance Junkies
* D P G R O U P . O R G *
Indecent Proposal is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Bantam Books Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2014 by Molly Fader
&nb
sp; All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
ISBN 978-0-345-54905-1
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54906-8
www.bantamdell.com
Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi
Cover photograph: Josep Ma Suria/ImageBrief
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Dedication
Other Books by This Author
Chapter 1
July 16, 2013
“Ken Doll is back.”
Ryan Kaminski didn’t have to look to see who Lindsey was talking about.
Ken Doll had been Lindsey’s obsession for the last three nights.
“Yeah? What’s he doing?” Talking on his phone? Texting? Ignoring the rest of the world? She did not understand why people came to a bar to stare at their phones and ignore people. If they didn’t want to talk to people, they should just hide out in their apartments like she did. Ryan scooped ice into the martini shaker and then poured in vermouth, followed by high-end vodka that cost about a week’s worth of tips, and slid on the top before giving it all a good shake.
“Ken Doll looks sad,” Lindsey added.
That made Ryan look over her shoulder at the handsome blond man at the far corner of the bar. For three nights he’d been coming in, working on two different phones. Making calls. Sending texts—never looking up. Never acknowledging that he was actually in a room full of people.
He ordered beer—Corona in a bottle. Tipped double the bill and usually left every night without saying anything more than “Corona” and “thank you.”
Ken Doll would be totally unremarkable—there were plenty of men at The Cobalt Bar spending more time on their phones than actually talking to people, and wearing beautiful tailor-made suits that clung just right to their bodies while they did it.
But they were not nearly as interesting as Ken Doll.
Because Ken Doll was just so damn pretty.
His blond hair had a slight curl to it, just enough that you knew it probably made him crazy. Piercing blue eyes. Like they’d been computer enhanced, that’s how blue they were. In the soft, smooth plane of one cheek there was a dimple—she’d only seen it by accident when he smiled at a woman who asked to take the bar stool to his left the other day. But the real kicker—the show-stopper—was how he moved, efficient and graceful, like there was simply no time to waste, because he was A Man Who Got Things Done.
Watching him unbutton his jacket before sitting down was like watching a mission statement. A planted flag.
Gravitas.
That’s what Ken Doll had that every other man in this bar was lacking.
But tonight he didn’t have his phones out. He sat there, hands pressed flat against the mahogany bar, as the raindrops caught in his blond hair gleamed red and blue under the moody lights. He was wearing a University of Georgia Bulldogs tee shirt under which his shoulders … oh, that slump, it told a very sad story indeed.
Ryan poured the martini into the chilled glass, took a twist off the fresh lemon behind the bar, and put the glass on a napkin before sliding the drink over to the woman who’d ordered it and collecting the twenty the woman had left on the bar.
These meaningless transactions made up her life. Over and over again.
“I want to ease Ken Doll’s pain.” Lindsey didn’t even pretend not to watch Ken Doll while pulling a draft for one of the guys working the couches. “Like. Really.”
Lindsey was well suited to that task. The bar’s uniform—the short leather shorts, the fishnets and tall boots—took on a whole new level of sexy with her. She was a twenty-one-year-old party girl from the Bronx who could take care of herself and anyone else who wanted to have a good time.
Next to her Ryan felt old, way older than thirty-two. She felt old and crotchety and like she was only days away from yelling at kids to get off her lawn. Not that she had a lawn.
Ryan should just get out of the way and let Lindsey take care of Ken Doll.
But she didn’t.
Once upon another lifetime she modeled, and she still did when she could get the work. When she couldn’t, she worked at an overpriced bar inside the very swanky Cobalt Hotel in midtown Manhattan.
She knew all kinds of pretty.
But there was something about pretty and sad that got her antenna up.
“Switch sides with me,” Lindsey said, referring to the neat-down-the-middle split between her side of the bar and Lindsey’s.
“Nope.”
“Come on,” Lindsey pouted. “You hate the guys that come in here. He’s wasted on you.”
“This is true.” Ryan had a fervent dislike for the posing and the posturing, the manicured and manscaped version of masculinity that walked into this bar. She hated the ego and the way the men watched her body—admittedly on display—but when she caught their eyes, no one was home. Or they were constantly looking past her for someone else.
For something better.
“But he’s not like the other guys that come in here,” Ryan said.
This was so true; other people in the bar watched him out of the corner of their eyes, as if they knew he was different from the rest of them. Or he was familiar and they just couldn’t remember why.
She didn’t want to ease Ken Doll’s pain, at least not in the way that Lindsey did. But she’d been serving him for three nights and she was dying to know his story. “And he’s on my side. Sorry, Linds.”
She tossed a black bar towel toward a scowling Lindsey and sauntered over to Ken Doll’s corner. There was a weird energy rolling off him tonight, and the air in this small part of the bar was electric and still. Humid, from the water burning up from the heat of his body.
“The usual?” she asked, waiting for him to look up at her so she could smile.
He ran a hand through his blond hair, sending water droplets into the air.
“I’ll have scotch. Neat.”
“Single malt?”
Finally, he looked up at her, and the distracted but polite distance she was used to seeing in his sky-blue eyes was replaced by a sizzling, terrible grief. Or anger. She couldn’t be sure. Not that it mattered, really.
Because tonight, Ken Doll burned.
“Whatever,” he said, his voice low and broken. “Just bring me whatever.”
She poured him Lagavulin, and she barely had the tumbler on the bar in front of him before he grabbed it and shot it back. “Another,” he said.
Two more shots later, she brought him a glass of water and a menu.
“Thank you,” he said, glancing at her through impossibly long eyelashes. But he pushed the menu away.
“My name is Ryan,” she said. “Apparently I’ll be the woman getting you drunk tonight.”
His laughter was dry, like wind through November trees, but he didn’t say anything.
“And your name?” she asked. “That’s usually how it works, in case you’re unfamiliar. I tell you my name, you te
ll me yours.”
“Harri-… Harry. You can call me Harry.” His voice was laced with traces of the South, pecans and sweet tea.
She held out her hand, and after a moment he shook it. “Nice to meet you, Harry,” she said.
There were no calluses on that hand, which wasn’t all that surprising in the land of his-and-hers manicures. But every time she shook a man’s hand she thought of her dad’s big palms, the blisters and cuts, the thick calluses—a working man’s hands.
Harry’s palms were smooth and supple, but his grip was sure and strong and he didn’t do anything skeevy—so points for him.
“You too, Ryan.”
“Everything okay?” she asked.
He blew out a long breath, laughing a little at the end, as if he just couldn’t believe how everything around him had turned to shit. “Have you ever done everything in your power and not have it be good enough? And not just a little bit, but have everything you are capable of be not even close to enough?”
“No idea,” she joked, deadpan. “Ever since I was a girl I dreamt of making overpriced martinis for men who only stare at my chest.”
It took him a second, the weighty stare of his checking to see if she was being serious or not, but finally he laughed. A weary humph that made her feel just a little victorious.
“Well, it’s a first for me.”
“It’s no fun, is it?”
He shook his head, the muscles of his shoulders flexing under his shirt like he was about to twitch out of his skin. Empathy, something she very rarely felt at work, swarmed her.
“I’m …” he trailed off, his hands on the bar curled into fists.
“Angry?” she supplied, watching his knuckles grow white.
He nodded slowly. “And sad. Mostly … sad.”
Inside, deep inside, a penny dropped and the complicated mechanism of her desire—of her elusive and rarely seen want—was engaged.
Well, shit, she thought. Maybe I will be easing his pain after all.
Later, she brought him the chicken and waffles, because while he’d slowed down on the Lagavulin, he hadn’t stopped.
“I didn’t order this,” he said, looking down at their signature dish, guaranteed to soak up the alcohol in his stomach while making him thirsty enough for more.