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Her Last Wild Ride
Some guys know just what a girl needs...
Fresh off a brutal breakup—with a guy who was running for the World’s Biggest Liar—Ashling Sullivan has returned to New York City to start over. Priority number one is getting her new business started with her BFF, Jenna. Hence their strict no-guys pact. No dating, no sex, no exceptions! Until temptation walks into her brother’s bar in the form of a really, really hot guy!
She must resist. She will resist. Except that Johnny Ryan, with his cool, edgy but brooding attitude (what is it with this guy?) and his so, so strong carpenter’s hands, is six-foot-three inches of ripped, Irish sexiness that turns Ash into a puddle of lust in about half a second. Worse yet, he offers her a deal that she can’t refuse—a down ‘n’ dirty and wickedly hot two-week fling. Just one last ride before she gets down to business. No one will know! Ash is definitely not thinking with her head or her heart when she agrees...
Because this thing with Johnny goes way deeper than just chemistry. And what started as a last wild ride with a bad boy is definitely headed for a major head-on collision...
Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon
www.millsandboon.co.uk/Cosmo
About the Author
Abby Green lives in Dublin, the capital city of a generally rain-soaked Ireland. When she was small she was obsessed with American TV and thought that if she ever went there, it would be like Dallas or Dynasty, where women looked like Joan Collins and wore power suits and all the men wore cowboy hats like JR in the shower. But as we all know by now, it was just a dream. Since then she’s been to America lots of times and is happy to report that the reality is far better than ’80s TV shows.
She used to work in the film and TV industry bossing a lot of people around, but now she’s happy to live in slovenly bliss and make up stories about hot, sexy men and gorgeous women who give as good as they get (with as many sex scenes as she can manage to throw in before her editor gets suspicious.)
You can find out more at abby-green.com or find her twittering on Twitter, @abbygreen3. For more books from Mills & Boon by Abby Green, visit millsandboon.co.uk.
Dear Reader,
I’ve loved writing these novellas for the Cosmopolitan Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon brand. I’ve especially loved writing this one, featuring the wayward Johnny Ryan, the older brother of my last heroine, Caitlin Ryan. Johnny has been a tortured character for quite some time now, and I don’t know about you, but who can resist a dark, brooding hero? Add a sexy Irish accent into the mix and poor Ashling Sullivan doesn’t know what’s about to hit her.
I hope you enjoy Ashling’s valiant fight against Johnny’s ruthless seduction, but as we all know, in the end, resistance is futile ;).
Happy reading!
x Abby
Her Last Wild Ride
Abby Green
Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon
www.millsandboon.co.uk/Cosmo
This is for Heidi Rice, who is my partner in crime in this crazy brilliant world of making up sexy stories and getting paid to look at pictures of gorgeous men. (Purely for research of course.) Thank you, honey. X
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Dear Reader
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Copyright
Chapter One
The guy came into the bar toward the end of the evening, and I summed him up in an instant: tall, dark and handsome, with a broad, lean build that couldn’t hide how ripped he was under his long-sleeved top and worn dark jeans. Eye color indeterminate from where I was, but big, and dark. Brown hair and a sensual mouth with a heavily stubbled jaw that screamed just got out of bed and couldn’t be bothered to hide it.
Cheekbones that could cut ice. I could almost imagine the spontaneous hyperproduction of female ovum his presence was sparking, and I could have sworn I heard Kings of Leon skip for a second on the sound system.
Some men oozed a silent sex appeal, like a force field that was naked to the eye but tangible to every other sense. I’m not talking about the cocky, arrogant guys who thought they were God’s gift to the women’s clits they invariably failed to find no matter how much poking and prodding or relentless sucking they did. And man, did that get sore after a while.
No, this was far more subtle, this was the type of guy who you just knew would get you off in a way that you’d only ever fantasized about, and even in some ways you hadn’t. And he knew this, too, evidenced by the quietly cocky confidence.
Damn. There went that betraying little pulse between my legs, joining in the Mexican wave of adulation as people followed his progress to the bar.
Hence the hushed reverent silence. And hence the sinking of my stomach, because I’d just sworn off men to focus on some me time and a brand-new career direction.
“Hey, Ash! What’s a guy gotta do to get a drink? I’m dyin’ over here!”
The stranger’s dark gaze had been making a leisurely appraisal of the bar and suddenly caught mine. Wham. It was the most bizarre thing. Almost as if an explosion had just happened, turning everything mute and muffled, like the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan.
I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot by the darkest blue eyes I’d ever seen in my life. Navy. Long lashes that should have looked feminine, but didn’t.
“Yo! Earth to Ashling Sullivan. How about a bit of service?”
More than a little humiliated and annoyed to have been caught mesmerized like every other female within a mile radius, I broke the connection and went over to take some orders.
Not cool, Ash, not cool at all to notice someone so...noticeable. Thanks to my job as a film makeup artist, I’d worked with some of the hottest men in the world, so it wasn’t as if I’d never seen a gorgeous guy before.
I sucked in a deep breath. Kings of Leon were still playing—Sex on Fire —mockingly enough. Everyone was chattering again. Maybe it had been some kind of mad hallucination? But then I felt a prickle of awareness. I looked to my left along the bar and my skin sizzled.
Nope. He was real and he was still here. And looking at me. Even if it was just to get a drink. After all, I was on my own in the bar tonight and for the foreseeable future, thanks to a litany of minor disasters with the other staff.
I told myself he was probably gay, even though every feminine instinct I had screamed in protest at this. But the laws of dynamics in New York said that any half-decent guy was gay, or an asshole, or taken.
I couldn’t keep ignoring him. But as I went over to take the stranger’s order, I hated that I was so aware of him. Dammit, I wasn’t a fifteen-year-old virgin anymore! I was an independent twenty-six-year-old woman who’d had her fair share of sweaty, earth-pounding sex, so why was this pretty boy making my palms damp?
Because when I stood in front of him I realized that he wasn’t pretty at all. He was devastating. And unsmiling. Tense, almost wary.
I forced down my libido, which was jumping up and down like an overexcited dog dry-humping my leg. “Hey, what can I get you?”
“Whenever you’re ready, I’ll have a beer. Please.” His voice was deep, his tone dry.
Whenever you’re ready. And please almost as an afterthought. I only dimly registered that his accent wasn’t American because hackles were rising. I smiled sweetly and cocked my head. “Any beer in particular, sir?”
He glanced behind me and back. Slightly distracted. “Local is grand.”
My insides twisted. He was Irish. And there was something about an Irish accent that made me melt. This was getting ridiculous. Gorgeous and Irish. Who cared if he wasn’t a smiler?
I got a bottle and felt as self-conscious as I had when I was a teenager. All awkward limbs and burgeoning boobs and clumsy with everything.
When I put it in front of him, I said casually as I wiped the bar, “If you like Guinness, we have it on draft here.”
He arched a dark brow as he took a gulp of his beer, his Adam’s apple moving. Even that was sexy. He put the bottle down, and after another enigmatic glance somewhere behind me, he said coolly, “I’ll stick with the local brew.”
He managed to make it sound almost like an insult. As if any proper Irishman would even consider drinking the national drink outside Ireland.
Someone called me then, and I used the opportunity to escape, not liking how disappointed I was that he was living up to his brooding intensity, and borderline rude to boot.
One look at him and any resolutions to swear off men had been slinking away like weak traitors given the slightest chance to escape. But not anymore. He had danger written all over him. Just what I didn’t need.
He was welcome to the veritable quivering queue of pretty women lining up to give him some company. And sure enough, when I looked again some girl had perched on the empty stool beside him and was all but pushing her chest into his face. Not that he looked remotely impressed. The fact that that mollified me somewhat was not appreciated.
* * *
Johnny Ryan curbed the urge to snarl at the girl who seemed intent on thrusting her oversize breasts into his mouth. It wasn’t her fault he was edgy as fuck tonight. How was she supposed to know he was sweating at the thought that any moment now he might see his baby sister for the first time in years?
Pneumatic breasts brushed his arm boldly again and he gritted his jaw. He’d tried ignoring her, but he was well used to the tenacious zeal of the single New Yorker woman by now, so he sighed and turned to her, saying, “Look, I just came in for a quiet drink, okay?”
For a second her heavily made-up eyes took on the glint of a challenge, but then she must have seen something on his face, because she finally admitted defeat and said, “Aw crap. Fine.” And then she swung off the stool to go back to her friends.
Johnny could have sworn he heard her say something like, “He’s gay,” and he gave a little smirk. At least that would dissuade the others from coming over. He was under no illusions about his appeal to the opposite sex. He’d been aware of it since he was fifteen, when an eighteen-year-old Sinéad Morissey—the best looking girl in school—had pulled up her skirt, dropped her knickers and instructed him in the fine art of cunnilingus, before instructing him on a whole lot more.
A shadow covered the memory. Fifteen had been before his world had been ripped apart for good. When he’d still had some sense that life was a pretty benign place and that nothing too bad would ever happen.
But it had. And he’d only just started coming out the other side again, nearly a decade later.
The cute bartender came into his line of vision and his conscience smarted because he’d been rude to her. Coming into this bar was loaded for him, and he was raw, but it wasn’t her fault.
What was it someone had called her? Ashling...Sullivan. So she had to be related to Liam Sullivan, the owner of the bar and his little sister’s boyfriend, according to the PI who had tracked Johnny down. The PI had been sent to look for him by Liam on Johnny’s sister’s behalf.
Luckily he’d been able to persuade the man to give him a chance to come and see Caitlin himself, before the PI gave Liam and Caitlin his whereabouts. Except neither Liam or Caitlin appeared to be here this evening. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not, but something in him eased out of a tight grip. He was ill enough prepared to see his baby sister, never mind deal with the fact that she had a boyfriend.
He scowled at himself; as if he even had a right now to act like the possessive big brother. He’d given up that right when he’d left Dublin three years ago. Familiar guilt made Johnny’s hand clench around his beer. Guilt on top of guilt. Heaped in so many layers now, he’d never find his way out.
After his world had imploded with the death of his parents at the age of seventeen, he’d been plunged into the depths of grief and had created not a little havoc.
New York had become his hiding place for the past three years. A space for him to lick a lot of wounds and explore what he really wanted to do. And now with his baby sister on his doorstep, it was time to come out of hiding. But perhaps not today.
Now that he felt fairly certain he wouldn’t see Caitlin, he watched Ashling Sullivan work. It was no hardship; she was exquisitely pretty. Big blue eyes, slightly almond shaped. High cheekbones, a straight nose and a wide mouth with full, very kissable lips.
Desire pulsed through his blood, heating it up. When he’d caught her gaze earlier, it had been so blue it almost hurt. She lifted her hands now to tuck some stray dark blond hair into the messy bun on top of her head. The movement lifted smallish but firm-looking breasts, and a jolt of electricity and heat went straight to Johnny’s groin, surprising him with its force.
He grimaced and shifted on the stool. He’d had lovers since he’d come to New York. For the first year he was ashamed to admit that he’d lost himself a little in a spiral of booze and meaningless hookups. Anything to take the edge off the turmoil simmering in his system.
And then thanks to a job opportunity with a fellow expat, he’d finally begun to climb out of his self-destructive streak and had gone the opposite way, giving up booze and women for almost a year, concentrating on his work.
Since then...he’d settled somewhere in the middle. He still wasn’t remotely interested in anything serious romantically. He’d left his own family behind for crap’s sake, so women were fleeting diversions to him. He didn’t need to be responsible for hurting anyone else.
But when a woman came along and she was happy to take what he could offer, then he took full advantage. It had been a while, though, since anyone had piqued his interest the way this woman was...
He watched her bend and twist to put glasses in a dishwasher. He wanted to know how long her hair would be if left down. Would it look wild? Like her? Because she looked wild, and knowing. As if she’d seen a little too much of the world, too. It was in the directness of that blue gaze.
She was relatively tall, about five foot seven. Slender with delicate curves, yet a surprisingly lush ass in tight black jeans. And those tantalizing breasts under a snug Sullivan’s Bar and Eatery V-neck T-shirt. He was already wondering what they’d be like naked—firm, and tip-tilted with small berrylike nipples? He had to shift again on the stool at that visual.
She turned away now to reach up and get a bottle of liquor from the shelf along the wall at the back of the bar, and Johnny’s gaze was riveted on the juncture between her legs where the shape of her ass was like an upside-down heart.
His mouth went dry and his dick strained against denim. Shite. All he could think about was cupping that ass and spreading his fingers along her cleft to see if she felt as hot as she looked. He imagined slick folds of flesh, wet with arousal, pushing against the gusset of her panties, slipping a finger inside, easing those plump lips apart, spreading her juices, then slipping two fingers—
It took him a second to realize that she was standing in front of him and looking at him with a raised brow. Clearly she’d just asked if he wanted another drink. Feeling seriously disoriented and turned on in a way that he couldn’t remember feeling in...ever, Johnny knew he had to get out fast. He shook his head abruptly, throwing down a couple of bills before getting off the stool and adjusting himself discreetly, so he wouldn’t make a complete ass of himself walking out of the bar. Damn her.
The last thing he needed was to be lusting after a relative of his sister’s boyfriend! He took the long walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge, keen to get some air to his overheated brain cells. He’d take a taxi on the other side. It was only when he’d reached his apartment that he realized he hadn’t even asked where Caitlin was.
Shite.
Chapter Two
“Who was that?”
I looked at my oldest and best friend, Jenna MacAuley, who had just arrived and perched herself, wide-eyed, on the other side of the bar. I didn’t need to ask who she meant because her arrival had coincided with the brooding sexy stranger’s departure. I didn’t like that I was smarting because he’d just looked at me as if I’d grown two heads before he’d left. As if I cared! I was officially a man-free zone. Just call me Sister Ashling.
I forced myself to look blank. “Who? What?”
She snorted. “Nice try, Ash. The tall, lean drink of water who just walked out of here.” She leaned forward and said lasciviously, “I’d like a drink of that.”
I scowled. “Don’t know. Never seen him before. He was rude.”
Jenna sighed. “He can be rude with me anytime. Seriously, those eyes. I mean, did you see those eyes? And those arms?”
Yes I had, and I could imagine them all too well right now, eyes and arms and broad shoulders. I was annoyed that he’d apparently had the same effect on Jenna. Under her narrow-eyed look, I forced myself to smile. “We’re nearly closing up... Want to wait and I’ll have a drink with you?”
She nodded, her green-eyed gaze far too assessing. “Sure. Give me a beer while I’m waiting.”
About half an hour later I was locking up behind the last customer, and as I came back to Jenna, she swiveled around on the stool and grinned. I took her cue. “Cosmos? For old times’ sake?” We were still celebrating my return to New York after fifteen years in LA.
Her grin got wider. “Line ’em up, baby.”
We’d both been obsessed with Sex and the City in our teens and had loved Samantha the most, rewinding her many sex scenes, and pausing to ask, “Wow, do you think we’ll ever have sex like that?”
We were sisters from another mother: best friends since the moment in kindergarten when Noah Goldberg had said Jenna’s hair looked like dirty, squiggly carrots and I’d kicked sand in his face in her defense. We were both the younger sisters of annoyingly protective older brothers, and both from staunchly Irish-American backgrounds. Although mine was a little more diluted on my mother’s side.
We’d suffered together under the tutelage of the nuns and used to spend most of our time separated for bad behavior. And we’d both been through the acrimonious divorce of our parents within years of each other.
Except where Jenna’s folks had stayed just blocks away from each other in New York, my mom had moved to LA and taken me with her, leaving my older brother behind, so I’d only ever come home for the holidays.
As I mixed the cocktails, Jenna said carefully, “So, how are you doing?”
I smiled brightly. “Great! As long as you’re not referring to a lying, cheating bastard by the name of Steve.”
Jenna winced and looked at me with sympathy. “You had no idea, sweetie. How could you? He was from New Zealand! How would you have ever found out that he had a wife and baby if they hadn’t come to surprise him on the last day of the movie?”
“I can’t believe I let him move in with me.” Even now my skin crawled to think of it. I’d never even usually let a guy sleep over. The betrayal and humiliation was still painful. After a lifetime of trusting my instincts not to let guys get too close, my defenses had come crashing down spectacularly. And all because Steve the Rat had seen me as a challenge because I wasn’t giving in as easily as every other girl.
It had been a red rag to a bull for a man who refused to take no for an answer. His single-minded seduction had taken me off guard, and it was still galling that his zeal had had more to do with his ego than any great passion for me. The fact that his family hadn’t been on the same continent had given him plenty of room to maneuver.
Film shoots were notorious hotbeds of extramarital affairs, but I never thought I’d get caught like that. Considering my own scars from being the product of a broken home, the fact that I might have contributed to someone else’s misery, even unwittingly, was excruciating.
“Look,” Jenna said stoutly. “He was a gorgeous stunt guy with a cute Kiwi accent, and your job was to draw freaking tattoos on his practically naked body every day.” She rolled her eyes. “You’d have to have been Mother Attracta to avoid that kind of temptation, and even she probably would have gone down on him.”
The thought of the very strict Mother Superior of our primary school getting on her knees to give a blow job made me convulse inelegantly. Thank God for Jenna; she could always made me laugh. When I got myself under control again, I put the cosmos on the bar counter and came around to perch on a stool beside her. She picked hers up. “Here’s to giving up men to concentrate on us and our fabulous new business, and your homecoming!”
“Amen!” I said with feeling. Jenna had just been through a pretty brutal breakup of her own, demonstrating once again how our lives always seemed to freakishly sync up. We clinked glasses and took a gulp of the bright pink concoctions.
A sense of lightness and excitement gripped me. I was so happy to be home, much happier than I’d ever thought I might be. And even happier to be leaving the frenetic pace of working on films behind me. The long hours and insecure freelance nature of the job had taken its toll. Not to mention my recent crappy dating experience.
I pushed down the lingering bitterness and looked at her. “So, we’re really doing this, aren’t we?”
She nodded, making her abundance of curly red hair bounce around her shoulders. “Abso-fricking-lutely.”
Nerves mixed with anticipation gripped me. We were setting up a joint business venture, a company called MacSullivan Inc. Jenna was a stylist, and together we were going to provide an all-in-one service for the hair/makeup/styling end of things for commercials, photo shoots and videos. Normally a production company called any number of freelancers to fill those roles, but we were going to be a one-stop shop and make a name for ourselves as the go-to girls everyone needed on their shoots.
We already had another old friend lined up who could do hair. The plan was to do it ourselves for the first few years, get it off the ground and then train up newbies so that they could take over. Eventually we’d hopefully have built up something of an agency with a byword in excellence. It also helped that one of my specialties from working on films was prosthetics, so we’d be able to do quirky stuff, too. I was also planning on teaching some workshops.
Ever since I’d gone to LA with my mother, I’d felt a little out of control of my own life, which had manifested as severe teenage rebellion. And even though I’d had a great career, it still felt as if I’d never really made the choice, because I’d been all but forced into an internship in the movie industry by my mother in a bid to keep me out of trouble.
