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Turning the Good Girl Bad
Avril Tremayne
How bad can this good girl be? PA Catherine North is twin-set-and-pearls perfect. Her hair is tightly coiled and so is her sex life – it’s safer that way. Her only release comes from the steamy romance novel she secretly pens, featuring her too-hot-to-handle boss, Max Rutherford. After all, a girl has to channel those fantasies into something productive… !But when Max finds the steamy book he sees his perfect PA in a whole new light. Now he wants to know just how bad his good girl can be… and he’s going to enjoy every minute of finding out!
Max was sitting in her chair, eyes glued to her computer screen.
Ohhhhhhhh …
Not much of a thought, but all she could manage initially.
She reminded herself that she had turned everything off—the flash drive was in her drawer, the printed pages were shoved in her briefcase, and there was no way he could be looking at Passion Flower. He was probably looking for the Queensland report, to make some changes.
So breathe. Breathe and be normal.
‘Mr Rutherford? Is there something you wanted urgently? You should have called me,’ she said, forcing herself not to run to her desk but to take it slowly, calmly.
Max raised his head and looked at her—slack-jawed, marvelling, astounded.
And Catherine knew.
Max’s voice, when it finally came, was unbelievably husky. ‘You wrote this?’
Dear Reader (#uef51d82f-7933-53f4-a90c-f539a7873f00),
I’m a Scorpio, so I’ve always loved the idea of the phoenix—rising from the ashes of an old life to claim a new one. And that’s the idea at the heart of TURNING THE GOOD GIRL BAD.
In this case we’re taking one prim and proper personal assistant—who is really a wild child in hiding—mixing her with one tough-talking boss with a secret Sir Galahad complex, and getting …
Well, Catherine North and Max Rutherford aren’t exactly sure.
All they know is that they have a brilliantly unconventional working relationship that shouldn’t be messed with. But when Max accidentally uncovers Catherine’s alter ego messy doesn’t begin to describe the situation.
Catherine suddenly decides it’s time to burst out of the cage she’s built for herself—but she can’t find the key. She thinks Max just might have one that fits, so all she has to do is tell him to open the door. Simple, right?
Wrong! Nobody tells Max Rutherford what to do. Oh, he’ll fit the key in the lock, all right—but he won’t turn it until he’s sure Catherine is ready.
And so starts a steamy high-stakes game of seduction, played by two sets of rules but with only one prize—if only they can agree on when and how to claim the spoils.
TURNING THE GOOD GIRL BAD is a story about coming to terms with who you are and what made you that way. It’s about rising from the ashes, showing off your coloured feathers and fighting for the life—and the love—you deserve.
I hope you enjoy watching Max and Catherine turn themselves inside out along the way.
Avril Tremayne
Turning the
Good Girl Bad
Avril Tremayne
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
AVRIL TREMAYNE read Jane Eyre as a teenager and has been hooked on tales of passion and romance ever since. An opportunistic insomniac, she has been a lifelong crazy-mad reader, but she took the scenic route to becoming a writer—via gigs as diverse as shoe salesgirl, hot cross bun packer, teacher, and public relations executive. She has spent a good chunk of her life travelling, and has more favourite destinations than should be strictly allowable.
Avril is happily settled in her hometown of Sydney, Australia, where her husband and daughter try to keep her out of trouble—not always successfully. When she’s not writing or reading she can generally be found eating—although she does not cook!
Check out her website, www.avriltremayne.com (http://www.avriltremayne.com), or follow her on Twitter, @AvrilTremayne, and Facebook, www.facebook.com/avril.tremayne (http://www.facebook.com/avril.tremayne)
DEDICATION (#uef51d82f-7933-53f4-a90c-f539a7873f00)
This one is for Karen Sloane—quite possibly the funniest woman on the planet, and most certainly one of the kindest, most generous and loyal friends anyone could ask for!
Contents
Cover (#u49dff3ef-6ab3-515e-ae44-01d2f8e6af98)
Introduction (#uee97fbd8-cc6e-5adb-af13-8b62da75169a)
Dear Reader
Title Page (#ua5d271df-a189-55e8-94a6-0f0585fd4c08)
About the Author (#u279a469f-abb3-57c3-ad04-12ba12209dd6)
DEDICATION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE (#uef51d82f-7933-53f4-a90c-f539a7873f00)
...he tugged at the chignon at her nape. Hairpins scattering, the tight knot unwound. His fingers slid through the heavy chestnut silk—
‘Cathy!’
Catherine North jumped in her seat, scoring a bright red mark across the manuscript page she’d been poring over.
Max.
Her boss.
Back early from his overseas trip.
She cast one horrified glance at her computer screen, where the ardent love moves of her fictional hero, Alex Taylor, screamed Disaster! at her. A second glance went to the printer, which was delivering Passion Flower page by steamy page at precisely timed intervals.
‘Cathy? I’m back!’ came the bellow.
Catherine’s breath jammed like a fork in her throat. Heart leapt. Sweat popped.
She shoved at the edge of her desk and shot backwards across the floor on her wheeled chair to the printer. Grabbed the pages. Used her feet to leverage another whizzing roll back to her desk. Shuffled the fresh pages behind the others she’d be marking up. Stopped, panting like a woman in labour. What next?
A click from the printer galvanised her. Duh! She should have cancelled the print job first. She started jabbing, lightning-fast, at the keyboard. Find the printer. Jab. The print queue. Jab, jab. Dammit, where is it? Where is it? Where—
She heard a curse, looked up. Saw Max’s brown leather briefcase swinging into sight, rounding the corner. Froze as six feet and two inches of lean, elegantly suited frame descended on her with its usual churning impatience.
No time to stop the printer. No time to save her changes. No sudden frantic moves now if she didn’t want to look seven shades of guilty.
Catherine dragged in a breath around the fork in her throat as Max came to a stop in front of her desk. A waft of his expensively delicious cologne slid up her nostrils. She looked up at him, smiled serenely, and with an admirable imitation of calm, slid the damning pages under the thick report that was mercifully sitting in her in-tray.
‘Good morning, Mr Rutherford.’
‘Huh,’ he said. Or maybe asked.
Max had become pretty free lately with that slightly mystified ‘huh’, but Catherine hadn’t worked out what the ‘huh’ said about his state of mind and she was not going to start interpreting it today. She just wanted him to go into his office. Like, right that second.
But he didn’t. He just stood there.
Silence. Except for the sound of the printer, relentlessly spitting out pages. Max hadn’t looked in that direction yet, but he would.
Breathe. Think. Breathe.
She needed a distraction. Something dramatic, to keep his attention from straying over there. Something like...throwing up—if only she didn’t have a stomach like cast-iron. Or fainting—which she’d never come close to. Or maybe a heart attack. That was at least a possibility, because her heart was jumping around in her chest so vigorously she thought it might crack a rib.
And then it registered. He hadn’t noticed what was happening over at the printer. He hadn’t noticed her technically perfect in-tray slide. He hadn’t even noticed her ‘good morning’.
Because he was too busy noticing her hair.
Oh, my God.
Her hair. She raised a hand, touched the loose waves. Felt her eyeballs bug out behind her glasses.
Shock, horror, as it all came rushing back.
Last night. Being so carried away with her writing she hadn’t made it to bed until four. Causing her to sleep through her alarm. No time for breakfast. No coffee. Ergo, no wits. Therefore deciding there was no harm in coming to work au naturel today.
Just one day—no biggie, because Max was out of town so it didn’t matter.
And yet...here he was.
And here she was.
At least a disordered version of herself, with swathes of her luxuriant reddish-brown hair, usually ruthlessly disciplined, waving around her face. Wearing a figure-hugging black knit top instead of one of her usual white shirts. Minus the drab cardigan she normally wore—because why swelter in black knit and a cardigan in a Sydney summer, when Max was out of town and wouldn’t see her?
And then Max’s eyes dropped to her chest and Catherine lost it.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
‘What happened to you?’ Max asked simultaneously.
‘What do you mean, what happened to me?’
‘What do you mean, doing here? I work here! I own here!’
Distract, distract, distract.
Catherine arched an eyebrow. ‘Oh, do you work here? I’d forgotten, it’s been so long.’
They stared at each other.
The click and whirr of the printer continued, depositing pages, layer upon layer.
At last Max flicked a glance at it. ‘What the devil are you printing, anyway?’
‘A document,’ Catherine said, and only just managed not to wince at the inadequacy of that.
‘Oh, a document. Enlightening.’
‘You want me to show you?’ Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. She was an idiot.
