 by Shandi Boyes.jpg)
Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Seeking a contentment she’d never achieve in her home state, Octavia Henslee moved to the other side of the country. But instead of unlocking personal triumphs, she finds herself heel-deep in a steaming pile of poo.
Luckily for her, a knight in a devastatingly-tailored suit is at the ready to swoop in and save her from additional carnage.
Jack Carson has sauve by the bucketload and an infectious grin that has Octavia oblivious to the fact he’s her new boss. He blinds her astuteness with lust, and lowers her guard so fast, instalove seems like the slow route to love when it comes to their fire-sparking connection.
After a night to remember, and a cruel reminder that family skeletons rarely stay in the closet, Octavia attempts to cut ties with Seattle’s newest Hotshot Boss.
Regretfully, Jack is a man who knows what he wants and has the means to get it.
He wants Octavia, but when he learns what kickstarted their instant connection, and exactly how entangled their lives are, he’ll lose more than the millions he invested in their week-long relationship.
Hotshot Boss is a brand new standalone romance from bestselling author Shandi Boyes. It is a fast-paced sexy read that deals with matters of abuse that may be distressing for some readers. Please check the author’s website for TWs.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER 1
OCTAVIA
Horse dung and blowflies the size of Texas are not my ideas of a fun time. Whoever convinced management that this would be a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon should be shot. My Vizzanos don’t have the same red bottoms as shoes triple their price, but their sentimental value means they don’t deserve the manure burial they’re about to face if I don’t get my heel free from the deluge.
This is my punishment for being short with my Uber driver. He wanted to take a west on Prichard. Everyone on this side of the country knows you never take a west on Prichard. You’ll be in gridlock for hours—and then I would have been subjected to the driver’s creepy gawk for longer than our forty-minute trip.
My request for him to lift the rearview mirror back to its original position when I slid into the back of his car already had me one step away from hitchhiking to Emerald Race Fields, so you can imagine how much more dire things became when I insulted his map-reading abilities.
He probably would have dropped me off at the front entrance as planned if I hadn’t mumbled under my breath that maps went out of fashion around the same time people stopped using lamb intestines for protection. Alas, my mouth gets me in more trouble than the inappropriate length of the miniskirt Jess convinced me to wear.
It’s been this way since I was a kid. My father said it would get me in shit, and it appears as if he was right for once. I’m heel-deep in a massive pile of poo, and despite the desperate wiggle of my foot, I can’t get free.
The horse picked well when choosing a patch of grass to defecate. The ground underneath its droppings is extra soft, meaning its poo didn’t simply absorb the heel of my favorite red stiletto when I was almost trampled by a sweaty horse and its even hairier guardian, but it swallowed my foot as well.
“Please,” I beg to no one in particular. “If I miss this meet-up, I’ll be benched for the rest of the year. You don’t want that, do you?”
I stop stupidly waiting for the horse dropping to reply when a crack rips through my ears. It isn’t solely the sound of my heel breaking away from my shoe. It is my heart breaking at the realization a piece of my Vizzanos is about to go to horse-poo heaven.
My heel is no longer attached to my shoe, and as much as I’ve loved and admired it over the years, there is no way I’m going to fish it out from a pile of brown goop that smells worse than Caleb’s early morning rituals.
Caleb is my cousin. He’s a six-foot brute of a man with a face many women have loved at one stage in their life but with the dreadful bathroom habits of a ninety-year-old geriatric who eats prunes every day to keep regular.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t come with us,” I whisper to a piece of my heart before attempting another tiptoe through the poop-riddled grass I once unwisely believed was a shortcut.
I make it halfway to freedom when my heel becomes lodged for the second time.
Thankfully, this time around, it’s minus stinky horse dung.
I thought the rain last night was a godsend. Now, I’m cursing it to hell. Although my heel is stuck solely in muddy goop, my anger isn’t any less notable. “Come on! It’s thirty feet if that. You couldn’t let me walk a measly thirty feet without forcing me to swim in horse poo?”
The one time I’m not anticipating an answer, I get one. “It could have…” The man’s deep timbre is laced with unconcealed humor. “If you had used the footpath designed for such travels.”
After rolling my eyes at his poor attempt of banter, I sling my head to my accoster. It’s one of many poor choices I’ve made today. His inky dark hair, chiseled cheekbones, and a rigid jawline I’m sure Caleb would consider tracing with his tongue at least once shouldn’t belong to a man whose tailored suit showcases every impeccable inch of his body.
His hands are shoved into his trouser pockets, so why does the bulge in his crotch still appear so large?
Talking about crotches, stop staring, Tivy, before you find yourself on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
Mortified, I snap my eyes to the stranger’s face in just enough time to witness a smirk that exposes he noticed my gawk at his crotch.
“Your zipper is undone,” I lie, willing to say anything to get me out of this sticky situation unscathed.
“No, it isn’t,” he replies, his voice still laced with humor. “But I will tell my tailor that you appreciate the high thread count of my zipper’s stitch the next time I see him.” When I angle my head, certain there’s a flirty edge to his reply, he drops his eyes to my stuck foot. “Do you need help?”