Today we have the release blitz of The Secret by Christie Ridgway! Check it out and grab your copy today!
Title: The Secret
Author: Christie Ridgway
Genre: Contemporary Romance
About The Secret:
Being butler to a widower and single father is a dream job in more ways than one for Charlotte “Charlie” Emerson. She helps keep businessman Ethan Archer’s household running without a hitch and enjoys every minute she has with his six-year-old son, Wells. But as time passes, the situation feels alarmingly intimate and when her heart starts beating faster each time Ethan steps through the door, Charlie must exert rigid control over her feelings.
With her secret, falling in love would be all kinds of bad…
Ethan Archer values the woman who keeps his life in order and cares so much for his motherless boy. He and Charlie act in harmony with each other and it’s not hard to picture them as a little family…in fact, it’s so easy, one reckless night he proposes a marriage of convenience.
What will he do if Charlie says yes? And worse, what if she tells him no?
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Exclusive Excerpt:
Ethan’s soft laugh brushed along Charlie’s spine, and he slid his hands down to her bottom, tilting her hips and giving her a better feel of him. All over, her skin heated.
He must have seen her reaction, because he let loose a low groan. “Baby. Your face.” Glancing away, he put a bit of distance between their bodies. “Tell me something to get my mind off what I want to do to you all night long.”
His obvious need jolted through her, followed by another wash of heat. God, she desired this man.
“Charlotte…” he said, low and tortured.
“Sorry, sorry,” she answered, trying to think. “Um…culaccino.”
“Wait a minute.” His eyes narrowed. “That sounds dirty.”
She laughed. “It’s the circle left on a table by a wet glass.”
He considered. “Okay, I feel slightly less combustible now.”
“Good,” she stepped away from him, “as long as you can relight that fire tomorrow night.” She gave him an especially lascivious once-over, very un-serious and un-butlerlike, lingering on his crotch.
He groaned again, then snatched her arm to drag her close once more. Instead of kissing her, though, he just stared into her eyes.
“Age-otori,” he murmured.
“Which means?” she asked, smiling.
“Wait, not that one. That one’s Japanese for looking worse after a haircut.”
She laughed. “Have you been on the internet again?”
“Yes,” he said. “I want to impress you.” Then he touched his lips to her forehead to again. “I meant to say forelsket. It’s Norwegian—and I’m likely butchering the pronunciation.”
“Is that a fish dish?” she guessed.
He shook his head. “Look it up later.”
Then he moved off toward Wells, who was coming awake after his short cat nap.
Charlie managed to make it until night, alone in her cozy bungalow, before doing a search on the word forelsket. She expected to find it was something funny. Or maybe something a little bit filthy.
That raw, sexual side of Ethan had come as an exciting surprise.
Her lips were curved in anticipation as the results scrolled onto her screen. When she read the definition, she fell onto her bed, her world rocked.
Forelsket described the giddy exhilaration one feels when beginning to fall in love.
Did Ethan mean…
Her head reeled and her stomach roiled too.
Surely he didn’t mean it. He’d told her he’d had his love of a lifetime—Michelle. That his marriage to Charlie would be a practical arrangement between two people with a fierce attraction to each other.
But either way, she was beginning to realize that her lie of omission could too easily become a wedge between them—one capable of destroying the exact thing she wanted to build.
Oh, God. Did this mean she was going to have to find a way to tell Ethan the truth?
