This Week’s #TBT (Thanksgiving) Book Suggestion

Image of pinup woman offering the book

Her Naughty Holiday
Men at Work # 2
Tiffany Reisz
October 18th, 2016

A feast she wasn’t expecting!

Clover Greene would sooner crawl into her oven than host family for Thanksgiving dinner. Yet another annual ritual of too much food, served with a side of criticism over “Clover’s Bad Life Choices.” This year, she needs to distract them all—with a handsome fake boyfriend. And she has the perfect guy in mind.

Contractor Erick Fields is the poster boy for sexy single dads, and Clover has been secretly crushing on him for ages. She certainly wasn’t expecting Erick to agree to her insane charade…or to add lots of hot, wicked sex to the deal. If they can pull it off, the worst Thanksgiving ever might give them something to be really thankful for!

Erick stared, slightly slack-jawed, at Clover, who stared back, slightly sheepishly, at him. She was blushing, which he’d never seen her do before. It looked good on her, that blush. A little color in her pale cheeks. He’d thought more than once about the various ways of making her flush, blush and redden, but he hadn’t considered this one. He should have.
“Are you offering to pay me to sleep with you?” he asked. “I hope so. That’s been a fantasy all my life. I can go to a bar and you can come in and pick me up. We don’t have to use real money. I’ll accept Monopoly—”
“That is not what I’m asking.”
“Bummer,” he said. It was. He’d been nursing a crush on his daughter’s boss for a good year now, ever since he met Clover the day Ruthie started working at the nursery. He hadn’t done or said anything about the crush. Ruthie needed a job and a steady female presence in her life much more than he needed a girlfriend. But that fact had only stopped him from asking Clover out. It hadn’t put a dent in his crush.
“Here’s the thing,” she said. “I could really use somebody to play boyfriend for Thanksgiving. That’s all.
Somebody to deflect all those questions I get from my family about why I’m not married yet, when I’m getting married, when I’m having kids…”
“Can’t you tell them to mind their own damn business?”
“You sound like Ruthie. Does it work when she tells you to mind your own damn business?”
“Well…no.”
“See my problem? It would make everything so much easier if I had a date for Thanksgiving. I know you’re alone this week. Ruthie told me. It’s a free meal and you wouldn’t have to be alone on the day. Interested?”
“Hmm…”
“Hmm…?”
“I kind of like being alone,” he said. “Thanksgiving isn’t a huge deal in my family. My grandmother’s Coquille. She’s always called Thanksgiving ‘What exactly am I supposed to be thankful for?’ Day.”
“Yeah, can’t blame her for that. Do you like free food?”
“I don’t usually turn it down, but I don’t drive out of my way for it.”
“Okay,” she said. “Just thought I’d ask.”
“Wait. You’re giving up on me already? That hurts.”
“I’m not going to try to convince you to do something you don’t want to do,” Clover said.
“Why not?”
“Because no means no.”
“I didn’t say no.”
“Then it’s a yes?”
“I didn’t say that, either. Come on. I’m a businessman. Let’s haggle.”
Clover laughed a nervous laugh, almost a giggle. She sat behind her desk and he sat on the desk next to her.
“You’re pretty when you laugh,” he said. “But you’re also pretty when you don’t laugh.”
“You’re sweet,” she said. “I feel like I shouldn’t have brought this up. I had a weak moment and your daughter set me up.”
“She left her phone here on purpose, didn’t she?” Erick asked.
“I am ninety-nine percent certain of it,” Clover said.
Goddamn, she was pretty when she blushed. No doubt about it. Blue eyes, blond hair and the natural beauty of a woman too busy to bother wearing much makeup. She always sported lip gloss, though. An icy pale pink that gave her a sixties mod look. A kissable color like bubble gum. He wondered what she tasted like.

Tiffany Reisz

Tiffany Reisz is the author of the internationally bestselling and award-winning Original Sinners series for Mira Books (Harlequin/Mills & Boon). Tiffany’s books inhabit a sexy shadowy world where romance, erotica and literature meet and do immoral and possibly illegal things to each other. She describes her genre as “literary friction,” a term she stole from her main character, who gets in trouble almost as often as the author herself. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband, author Andrew Shaffer, and two cats. If she couldn’t write, she would die.