Leanne Banks - When Shes Bad (Warner Forever)

Copyright 2003 by Leanne Banks

Excerpt from Trouble in High Heels copyright 2003 by Leanne Banks All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Cover design by Shasti OLeary Soudant

Cover photograph by Jethro Soudant

Book design by Giorgetta B. McRee

Warner Books, Inc.,

Hachette Book Group,

237 Park Avenue,

New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

ISBN: 978-0-446-54836-6

First eBook Edition: December 2008

YOU KNOW YOURE BAD WHEN:

Your idea of dressing for success calls for a short skirt, killer heels, and a thong.

Your next-door neighbor is off-limits, and all you can think about is having your way with him.

You greet a man at his door wearing nothing but a smile.

You cant resist temptation especially when it comes in a buff package.

Your prescription for your downtrodden assistant: Take one stud-muffin and call me in the morning.

BUT WHAT CAN YOU DO WHEN BEING BAD FEELS SO GOOD!

WHEN SHES BAD is a perfect romp! Leanne Banks writes smart and sexy.

Patricia Rice

ACCLAIM FOR LEANNE BANKSS PREVIOUS NOVEL, SOME GIRLS DO

Lively writing, appealing, well-drawn characters, and a wealth of insightful, often hilarious, pithy quotes courtesy of the heroines late mother add sparkle to this story.

Library Journal

An engaging road story. Banks gives us a funny, alluring romance with just the right amount of sizzle for a summer read.

Oakland Press

A witty, feel-good read with charming characters and a page-turning plot.

Booklist

ALSO BY LEANNE BANKS

Some Girls Do

This book is for all you wonderful readers

who told me you loved SOME GIRLS DO

and wanted to read Delilahs story

and for us sometimes-bad-girls who know

that being a little bad can be a lot of fun!

Special thanks and acknowledgments to the amazing Karen Kosztolnyik for continued guidance, Michele Bidelspach for terrific responsiveness, and to Diane Luger for creating the best cover art on earth. Thank you to Tony and Alisa for enduring deadlines and picking up take-out meals. Thank you also to some special people in my life who continue to encourage and inspire me: Cindy Gerard, Donna Kauffman, Pamela Britton, Millie Criswell, Marilyn Puett, my creative consultant and Mom and Dad. I am so blessed.

Deathbed promises are a pain in the butt.

DELILAHS DICTUM

T onights the night.

Full of hope and anticipation, she told herself that tonight would be filled with lazy, sensual pleasure that would sate her body and soul. A night that would provide release from the frustration that had built to unbearable levels during the last two weeks.

Restless hunger burned inside her, building with each passing moment. Her need had risen to fever pitch and it pounded inside her like a primitive drumbeat. She slid her hand over her body with a comforting stroke. Soon, she told herself. She wore cotton, the fabric of babies, but this lover wouldnt mind the absence of silk and satin. She would seduce this lover in other ways. In fact, she had already begun with a champagne cocktail, a long, warm scented bath surrounded by candles, and now with secret, expectant darkness.

What she wanted was a satisfaction as old as time.

What she wanted was a freakin full night of sleep.

More than anything, all Delilah Montague craved was a peaceful, uninterrupted night of sleep. She needed it to forget for just a little while that her best friend in the world had died one month ago. She needed sleep to ease the ache in her heart and head. She needed to pretend that eventually everything would work out and she wouldnt always be the object of disdain and distaste. She needed it so she could keep a razor-sharp clear head in the morning, especially since shed inherited a large interest in the spa.

Shed been told she had a smile that opened doors and a body that made men want to empty their pockets and lower their zippers. With a father who was a fire-and-brimstone preacher and a mother who had won more wet T-shirt contests than all the Baywatch babes combined, Delilah had a lot to live up to or live down, depending on ones perspective. She knew she wasnt a good candidate for marriage or motherhood, so it was easy to focus on her career. She hadnt, however, grown accustomed to the new responsibility Howard Cash Bradford had bequeathed her yet.

Delilah would trade her most treasured possessions for one nights sleep; designer shoes, a perfectly mixed champagne cocktail, perhaps even her secret stash of M&Ms. She would even trade her body except her poor body was too tired for anything more than intimately melding itself with her mattress.

Its not too much to ask, is it? she muttered to the sleep gods as she flipped her pillow over to press her cheek against cool Egyptian cotton. Her mattress was the perfect degree of firmness, a far cry from the cot in the homeless shelter where shed slept a few years ago. Her duvet provided the exact weight and warmth to ease her trip into Lala-land.

A professional interior decorator had furnished her boudoir as a sanctuary of peace from the harsh outside world. She kept waiting for the day when she felt comfortable in her own condo. Until now, shed felt as if she were walking on eggshells, afraid of messing up the white carpet and ivory leather furniture, afraid of messing up everything and ending back on the streets.

Her heart raced at her thoughts and she tried to take a calming breath. As director of Spa DeMay, the most elite spa in Texas, she worked in an environment where she pulled knives out of her back on a daily basis. No one believed she truly had a lick of business sense. No one thought she would last more than a month after her mentor Howard Bradford died. Everyone believed she had achieved her present position by lying on her back for Howard Bradford. Only she knew the real truth, and it was her job to keep the truth a secret.

Delilah pushed the hated plugs into her ears as protection from her neighbor, whom she was convinced had been hatched from some alien species which didnt require sleep. That was the only explanation she could think of for doing renovations in the wee hours of the morning.

Sighing, she closed her eyes and began to count backward from two thousand. One thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. One thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight

Howard lay in his large bed, a cigar in one hand, a glass of scotch in the other, his heart medication on his bedside table.

Tsking in disapproval, Delilah took the cigar and scotch away.

Hey! Give that back! he protested. Im a dying man. You shouldnt deny me my meager pleasures.

You wouldnt be dying if you didnt indulge your pleasures so much. You just had your third heart catheterization and I know the doctor didnt recommend scotch and a Cuban as part of your recovery.

Howard sighed, but smiled his wily winning grin. You know Im in love with you, Delilah.

Me and fifty others, she said. Delilah couldnt resist smiling in return at the ornery multi-millionaire, but she tried not to show that he scared her to death. His complexion was gray and she didnt want him to die. She wanted Howard Bradford to live forever. He had transformed her life when hed taken her on as arm candy. Shed expected to become his lover, and for a time, she had wanted that, but then shed learned the truth Howard was determined to hide. Howard might be one of the most wealthy and powerful men in Houston, but he couldnt quite, shall we say, lift his crane. His sexual difficulties were such an embarrassment to him that he made it a practice to keep a young woman on his arm at every public opportunity.