Lori Wilde - By Invitation Only: Exclusively Yours Private Party Secret Encounter

Look what people are saying about these talented authors

Lori Wilde

Wildes clever combination of humor, sorrow and
love brings a deeply appealing sense of realism.

Publishers Weekly

Lori Wilde pens a winner with terrific characters
who feel like friends, chemistry, great sex scenes
and a happily-ever-after.

RT Book Reviews

Wendy Etherington

Another winner from Etherington with
great humor and unexpected characters.

RT Book Reviews on After Dark

Gavin is, as the title suggests, irresistible,
and readers will be delighted with the antics
of this Indiana Jones of the high seas.

RT Book Reviews on Irresistible Fortune

Jillian Burns

With Let it Ride, Jillian Burns has written a
wonderfully steamy, fast-paced story that will keep
you turning pages until the very end.

Kwips and Kritiques

Jillian Burns is an author who can take an ordinary,
everyday story and make it her own. Burns fans will
love this beautifully woven story and new readers
will become lifelong fans!

FreshFiction on Seduce and Rescue

LORI WILDE

is a New York Times bestselling author and has written more than forty books. Shes been nominated for a RITA Award and four RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Awards. Her books have been excerpted in Cosmopolitan, Redbook and Quick & Simple. Lori teaches writing online through Ed2go. Shes also an R.N. trained in forensics and she volunteers at a womens shelter. Visit her website at www.loriwilde.com.

WENDY ETHERINGTON

was born and raised in the deep Southand she has the fried-chicken recipes and NASCAR ticket stubs to prove it. The author of more than twenty books, she writes full-time from her home in South Carolina, where she lives with her husband, two daughters and an energetic shih tzu named Cody. She can be reached via her website, www.wendyetherington.com.

JILLIAN BURNS

has always read romance, and spent her teens immersed in the worlds of Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennett. She lives in Texas with her husband of twenty years and their three active kids. Jillian likes to think her emotional naturesometimes referred to as moodinesshas found the perfect outlet in writing stories filled with passion and romance. She believes romance novels have the power to change lives with their message of eternal love and hope. For more information on Jillian, check out www.julietburns.com.

Lori Wilde
Wendy Etherington
Jillian Burns

BY INVITATION ONLY

CONTENTS

Lori Wilde

Wendy Etherington

Jillian Burns

EXCLUSIVELY YOURS

Lori Wilde

To Debi Little. I so appreciate all your support.
Thanks for reading!

YOUVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. Olivia Carmichael crumpled the printout of the odious Nicolas Greers blog in one hand and stared at her boss as if hed just ordered her to strip off her clothes and streak naked through Austins state capitol building.

The managing editor of the Austin Daily News, Ross Gregson, shook his head. Ross was a crusty holdout from journalisms hard news heyday and she loved him for it. He was a visage of her childhood filled with arguing reporters ringing the dinner table and the television set perpetually tuned to CNN.

Much as it pains me to say this, kiddo, fraid not. Ross was pushing seventy and sported a shock of stark white hair that sprouted straight up from his head in an old-fashioned crew cut. He always wore white dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up three turns so that the makeshift cuff hit him mid-elbow. At his neck lay a stained tie gone crooked from where he repeatedly tugged at the knot. He possessed a sandpaper-like voice, pugnacious nose and caterpillar eyebrows. He kept an unlit cigar permanently chomped in the left corner of his mouth and a foam cup of stale coffee on his desk.

You want me to write like an uneducated frat boy high on Krispy Kreme doughnuts and late night reruns of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle?

Ross shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth and held out both his palms low and wide. Hey, I feel your pain, but the times are changing, and we either change with them or get ground under the wheels of progress.

Platitudes from you, Ross? Whats the world coming to?

The likes of Nick Greer.

Ugh. She held the printout away from her as if it were soiled laundry. Out of all the bloggers in the world, why had Ross chosen this particular cretin for her to emulate? Shed had more than one run in with Greer, who was too handsome for his own good, and she had been less than impressed with his flip, in-your-face style. I was born in the wrong generation.

I hear ya, and I hate being the bearer of bad news, but you know the brass is all about the bottom line. Its a shark tank out there.

Its bad enough I got pulled from cop shop to work on lifestyles for crying out loud.

Two months ago, the budget had been cut yet again, and while she should consider herself lucky to have a job, reporters had been shuffled and shed lost the coveted police beat and landed in her own personal hell of fluff features. Her goal was to do so well in lifestyles that the upper echelon would realize they were wasting her talents on interviewing charity-ball-throwing socialites and put her back where she belonged amidst murder and mayhem.

She flexed her left wrist so the platinum bracelet shed worn since college slipped down and flipped the Pulitzer medal charma replica of the one her grandfathers paper had won in 1946into her palm. Her grandfather had had it made for her and had presented it to her at her college graduation. Olivia cupped her fingers around the charm, felt the warm weight of family obligations against her skin. She was a Carmichael after all; she had a tradition to uphold. Her ultimate goal was to be the best reporter at the Austin Daily News so that when her mother regained her health, she could return to D.C. and snag back her old job at the Washington Post.

I know youre eager to make your mark, Ross said, his gaze going to her fist, but the number of people following Nick Greers blog outstrips our circulation numbers threefold. Weve got to adapt or die off. Readers want instant news delivered in a flashy package.

Journalistic integrity be damned?

Ross shrugged. I wish it wasnt so, but you cant fight reality.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light, she quoted Dylan Thomas.

Gotta leave the battle up to you, kid, he said. This old dinosaur is ready for retirement. But if you want to keep your job, youve gotta start writing snappy and sensational copy. Greer is your competition now. Not other print reporters.

She did not want to accept this. Shed cut her teeth on Walter Cronkite and William Randolph Hearst. Her favorite movie was All the Presidents Men. From early childhood shed dreamed of becoming the next Judith Miller or Maureen Dowd.

Those hopes had taken a stumble when her mother had been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, and shed come home to Austin to help Dad take care of her. Mom was now steadily improving after months of chemo and radiation. And while Olivia had begun to think that maybe her dream wasnt totally dead, she couldnt deny the insidious virus that was the internet.