First Chapters: Nobody’s Angel by K.T. Wells

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Pump Up Your Book is proud to bring you the first chapters of fantastic books from magnificently talented authors. Not only does this give you a chance to see the author’s writing style, but it also helps in your book buying decisions. Today’s first chapter is from K.T. Wells’ contemporary romance novel, Nobody’s Angel. Click on title to purchase for only $3.99!

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Nobody’s Angel

By K.T. Wells

Boroughs Publishing Group (December 15, 2011)

Contemporary Romance

378pages

Chapter One

Some part of him always had to touch some part of her.

It had been that way from the beginning. Like the time they were going to the shore. Senior year. Just weeks before prom. Her best friend drove and she rode shotgun. He sat behind her. The seat, an obstacle between them, overcome when he squeezed his leg between the car door and the safety belt, wedging his foot on her armrest. A message. Insisting she run her hand up and down his bare leg.

They had been connected in a way that mattered.

She felt it.

He knew it.

God, how she loved him.

Angie came awake with a start, sat straight up, cursed and wiped away the tears that were streaming down her face. Another dream, this time one that hadn’t cropped up for years, but so vividly remembered.

The four of them in Dianne’s car, mid-morning, ditching. They’d been stuck on the Long Island Expressway during a heat wave in a car that had no air conditioning and they couldn’t’ve cared less.

As clearly as if it had been last Thursday, she remembered peeking through the space between the seat and the car door, spying his wicked smile, thefull head of tousled brown curls and beautiful chocolate eyes that twinkled with mischief. She could tell he was imagining them wrapped in each other’s arms creating mayhem with their mouths and she smiled at him, knowing, just knowing he was meant to be hers forever.

Alone in the middle of her queen-sized bed, she now knew teenage certainty had gone the way of other shattered dreams, but none haunted her the way he did, nothing could erase those memories.

“Hey Ange,” Scott yelled from the bathroom. “You coming with me to the game this Friday?”

She loved the Dodgers but she couldn’t weather another evening of Scott trying to impress his boss. She supposed she should be more supportive, a better girlfriend, but increasingly she didn’t care enough to make the effort. The end of them was in sight.

She knew it, he didn’t.

Scrubbing the wet from her face with the back of her hands, she got out of bed and pulled her robe around her as she made her way to the bathroom. She needed to create a fiction he could live with, one which wouldn’t be probed that would reduce, if not eliminate, the chance for future confrontation.

“Sorry. No can do. Gotta work over the quarterly budget report. Big school board meeting Tuesday. You remember. I mentioned it before.”

“A-huh, yeah, sorta.” He twisted his head to look at her from his tooth-brushing lean over the sink.

“Vice principal gets all the shit work and this is one of my least favorite jobs.” Well that part was true, but she’d finished the budget mess on Monday.

Wiping his mouth with a washclothhe drew closer, all naked chest and boxer shorts. “You’re so dedicated Ange. They don’t know how lucky they are to have you.” He ran his hand through her hair.

She used to enjoy when he did that. The gentle tug, his hand resting on her neck, the careless contact laced with unspoken affection.

“No. I guess they don’t.” The chill settled in. His touch wasn’t as welcome as it used to be.

Damn. She hated being right.

Here she was. Again. Another perfectly decent man with a relationship expiration date. She’d known it the moment they hooked up. And as with every other man – exceptone –she ignored it, hoping against hope she was wrong.

Cynical. Jaded. Tainted.

Maybe.

But she wasn’t wrong.

Angie knew her heart even when she wouldn’t admit it to herself. This time she’d let it go too far. Scott had stayed overnight. During the week. He was getting comfortable. He was seeing a future. With her.

He was seeing a mirage.

As he turned back to his morning routine she began the horrid task of plotting how and when to break his heart.

Scott Lawson deserved much better than what was about to happen. He had been an accidental date, the friend of a friend she bumped into at a party. Scott fell hard and fast. Foolishly, she allowed his enthusiasm for ‘them’ to sweep her away. Why she still believed she was capable of forming a long-term attachment to a man was a testament to the human spirit, or more correctly, her ability to engage in self-delusion. In any event, poor Scott was done before he started.

Weighing whether she should make a clean break of it or give him the slow push, she assessed his character. Bright, articulate, earnest, devoted. He wouldn’t be fooled by her outcome engineering, he’d need a good whack to the ego-plexus to make him leave and stay gone.

Enter Nigel DeVries.

Closing the door to her office after having given Anthony Franco, Kevin Dooley and Shane Freedman yet another week of detention, she pulled her cell out of her bag and called Nigel.

“No you did not.” Nigel on speakerphone. “Hang on darling” he said sotto voce,“I’m getting ready to fire my suck-hole of an assistant.” Loudly,“You did not tell that beautiful young man I would not represent him.”

“Ugh. He’s so eighties.” Ian. Whining. Getting ready to throw a temper tantrum. She could hear the impending hissy fit in his distant mewling.

“Since when have you become the arbiter of good taste?” Nigel. Caustic. Cruel. “I swear Ange, I couldn’t get good help if I gave away free fucks with Brad Pitt.”

“I quit.” Ian in full torque. “I’m sick of your abuse … you, you limp-dicked faggot.” The door slammed and she could just about feel the glass rattle in Nigel’s curio cabinet.

“A new world’s record,” she poked. “Bravo Nigel. That’s the fourth time he’s quit this month.”

“Fifth, you sly bitch, but who’s counting. Now what can I do for you?” She heard the match strike; he lit a cigarette. “Let me guess.” Long exhale. “It’s nearly eleven … you’ve been pondering all morning … it’s a Wednesday … weekend plans are being made … but you have a someone, so why call me? Thinking … I’m mulling … uh-o … Ange, don’t tell me Scott’s getting the boot already? Sweetie, he’s lovely. All tall, bronzed and hung. And he adores you. Oh Ange, he didn’t even last out the year.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “He’s not that tall, he uses a tanning bed and yeah, he’s hung, I’ll give him that. But it’s not enough.”

“Ange, honey, it never is, is it?” Deep drag. Ash crackling paper.

“No, but we’re not going there. I need you to send someone over … a little acting job. Young, gorgeous, buff and convincingly hetero.”

“Don’t tell me. You’re going to be cruel to be kind.” The metal ashtray clinked against the glass desk.

“He won’t go if I try to push him away. He thinks he’s in love.” She knew she sounded monstrous.

An after-cigarette breath mint wrapper crinkled open.“Honey, he is in love.”

“Real love requires reciprocity and there’s none here.”

He choked on the mint. “You don’t believe that bullshit, do you?”

“Nigel, please. I need help here. It went too far. I let it go too far. I’ll never be able to give him what he needs and he deserves that. Scott deserves to be happy.” Her throat was closing up.

“I hate it when you implore meaningfully. What are we looking at?”

He’d resigned himself to help her. Thank God.

“This Saturday morning, around nine. Half dressed bedroom scene … Scott walking in on some deep kissing next to a rumpled bed.” She had thought this out. It was the only way Scott would leave.

“Shit, Ange. Why don’t you just shoot the guy in the balls and be done with it?” Another cigarette.

“I thought that’s what I was doing. Euphemistically, anyway.”

As virile young actors went, Brock – that couldn’t be his real name – was perfect.

And he played his part to the hilt.

Just as planned, Scott came over at nine-fifteen with bagels and orange juice. She heard him put everything down on the kitchen counter and on cue she wrapped herself around Brock.

Great kisser. If lips won Academy Awards, Brock was a shoo-in.

Scott was talking as he walked into the bedroom. “Hey Angie. You can’t still be asleep …. What the fuck?”

Slipping out of Brock’s embrace, she turned pouty lipped and disheveled to face Scott. She saw the moment his heart broke, the tears welling in his eyes. That was just seconds before he threw her keys on the bed and walked out.

As arranged, Brock grabbed up his clothes – he was wearing nothing but his tidy whities – and went into the kitchen to wait for Nigel, who, blessedly, arrived a few minutes later, paid Brock and sent him on his way.

By that time she was under the covers sobbing her eyes out, her ineptitude in relationship-world complete.

“There, there.” Nigel climbed onto the bed and wrapped her in his arms. “Go ahead honey, have yourself a good cry. Nigel’s here.”

Clinging to his narrow waist, she cried so hard she almost heaved. Through all fifteen iterations of her crying Nigel kept rubbing her back. Finally, when she was completely cried out and all that was left was a little weeping, he ran his hand over her head and said, “You have to cut this out. I can’t have you ruin one more silk sweater.”

“I’ll buy you another one.” She hiccupped.

“Damn right you will. But not before you’ve showered and spent a couple of hours with an ice pack on those eyes. You can’t possibly think I’d be caught dead in public with anyone looking as awful as you do right now?”

“You’re such a bitch.” She managed a little smile.

He treated her to that megawatt grin he reserved only for premieres and prospective lovers.“Oh, honey, you don’t know the half of it.”

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