All I Want (Animal Magnetism #7) by Jill Shalvis Blitz @ninabocci @JillShalvis @BerkleyRomance
I don't know about you, but that quote above would get me to pick up the book. All I Want is the book by author Jill Shalvis and we have an excerpt from Chapter One down below. Enjoy!
All I Want (Animal Magnetism #7)
by Jill Shalvis
Contemporary romance
Paperback, 304 pages
Expected publication: October 6th 2015 by Berkley
From the “awesomely, incredibly talented”* New York Timesbestselling author of Still the One, comes a sexy new Animal Magnetism novel set in Sunshine, Idaho, where the sky is the limit when it comes to love.
Pilot-for-hire Zoe Stone is happy to call Sunshine, Idaho, her home base. But her quiet life is thrown for a loop when her brother’s friend Parker comes to stay with her for a week. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife special agent is a handsome flirt with a gift for getting under her skin. And the situation only escalates when Parker hires her to fly him around the area while he collects evidence on a suspected smuggler.
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Excerpt
Chapter 1
Zoe Stone had tried on everything
in her closet and not only did her room now look like an explosion in a
mattress factory, not one single item of clothing had worked for her.
She was still standing there eyeing the carnage when her sister, Darcy, appeared in the doorway, arms loaded with clothing. “Got your 911 freak-out text. Here’s all the stuff I’ve ever borrowed from you.”
She was still standing there eyeing the carnage when her sister, Darcy, appeared in the doorway, arms loaded with clothing. “Got your 911 freak-out text. Here’s all the stuff I’ve ever borrowed from you.”
“You mean stolen?”
“Tomayto, tomahto.” Darcy dumped
the entire pile of loot in the only space available—on top of the slightly
tubby Bernese mountain dog snoring in the center of Zoe’s bed.
“The pretty little black dress of
yours is in there,” Darcy said. “You should absolutely be wearing that for your
date instead of the granny dress you’ve got on. Seriously, how old are you,
eighty-five?”
She’d just had the first
anniversary of turning thirty, thank you very much, but Zoe looked down at
herself. Her floral print dress was soft and clingy, fell to just past her
knees, and hid a multitude of sins—such as the fact that she’d been
stress-eating her feels all week. “It’s not that bad.”
“Zoe, you could walk into any
Denny’s before five o’clock and get a discount.”
“I like this dress,” Zoe said, “and
so does Oreo.”
Oreo, the aforementioned Bernese
mountain dog, cracked open an eye and looked up at Zoe with love and adoration.
“See?” she said, ruffling the dog’s big head. “And not that I have time to
change anyway, but I don’t see what’s wrong with this outfit.”
“Absolutely nothing,” Darcy said,
“assuming that you don’t care if you ever get laid again. And for God’s sake,
stop taking fashion advice from a dog who rolls in bear poo and thinks he
smells good.”
Panting happily, Oreo smiled up at
the both of them.
Through the open window came the
sound of a vehicle pulling up. Darcy moved to the second-story window and
peered out. “Looks like your blind date’s here. What’s his name again?”
“Newman Taylor.”
“Well, Newman’s in a black Jeep
with the top off. Not his top, the Jeep’s top, but still very nice—Whoa.”
“What?”
Darcy’s nose was glued to the
window now. “Holy crap on a stick—he’s hot for a guy named Newman. Way too hot
for that dress you’re wearing. Quick,” she said, waving a hand at Zoe.
“Exchange it for the LBD.”
“I’m fine in this,” Zoe said. Maybe
because she couldn’t wear the LBD; she hadn’t shaved her thighs—her own little
insurance policy against making any rash decisions tonight such as getting
naked. No way would she be tempted knowing she had hairy thighs. “And get away
from there and stop spying on him.” But then she moved to the window next to
her sister and sucked in a breath because Darcy was right, Norman was hot. Dark
hair, a little wavy, a lot wind tousled. Black shirt that fit him well enough
to define broad shoulders. Dark jeans. An easy gait that said confident male.
Butterflies took flight low in her
belly and she pressed a hand to it. “Oh boy.”
“And I bet he’s got a six-pack,
too,” Darcy whispered. “Maybe even an eight-pack. I’m going to need you to
remember every detail for me.”
For Darcy, abs were a requirement
in a man.
But Zoe had learned a lot for a
woman who’d just had her thirtieth birthday—again. She had a completely
different list of requirements. Honesty and kindness. That was it. Easy to
remember and simple. But she’d also learned that nothing about men was simple.
“I wonder what color his eyes are—”
Darcy broke off as the guy stopped on the path to the house and unerringly
looked up at the window where the two of them stood staring at him.
With a commingled squeak, they
dropped to the floor.
Afraid he was missing some fun new
game, Oreo barked happily and leapt off the bed and right on top of them.
“Oomph.” Darcy pulled the silly dog
in for a hug. “You big lug. You need a diet.”
Zoe pushed Oreo’s tail out of her
face. “Think he saw us?” she asked, panicked.
“Nah,” Darcy said.
Zoe let out a relieved breath.
“Really?”
“No.” Darcy grinned and sat up. “He
totally saw us.”
Oh for God’s sake. The guy’s a
dentist, she reminded herself. By definition, that meant he most likely was
a people person, right? Right, she decided. And him being a people person was a
good thing since one of them needed to know what they were doing.
She and Darcy—and Oreo—crawled away
from the window and stood.
“Feels a little like old times,
doesn’t it?” Darcy asked, dusting herself off. “Remember when we sneaked out of
the house to do that midnight full moon climb up White Eagle with the Connelly
brothers? We climbed out the window and got caught by Grandpa and were grounded
for the rest of the summer.”
“That was you and Wyatt,” Zoe said.
Their brother had always been able to find trouble. “I never got grounded.”
“That’s right. Wyatt was way more
fun than you.”
Zoe slipped into a pair of flats
and Darcy rolled her eyes.
“What’s wrong with the flats?” Zoe
asked. “You wear flats all the time.”
“Yes, because I have a spinal
injury that makes me want to drop to the floor and curl up in a ball whenever I
wear heels,” Darcy pointed out. “You don’t have such an excuse. Plus you have
legs a mile long that look amazing in heels, which makes me hate you just a
little bit.”
“Flats,” Zoe insisted.
“Fine. So what do we know about
this guy?”
“He’s a dentist from Hennessey
Flats,” Zoe said. “Karen set me up with him, he’s her neighbor.”
“The Karen who does your hair, the
Karen who’s been married and divorced three times?” Darcy asked.
“Yeah, so?”
“Sooooooo,” Darcy said, “don’t you
think if her neighbor was hot, she’d date him herself, if not make him husband
number four?”
Well, crap. She hadn’t thought of
that.
“Plus . . . a dentist?”
Darcy asked doubtfully.
“What’s wrong with him being a
dentist? At least he’s gainfully employed.”
“Nothing’s wrong with it at all,”
Darcy said reasonably. “If you want to sleep with a guy whose hands have been
inside other people’s mouths all day long. Do you know how many germs that is?
A million. A million trillion.”
Zoe shuddered. “Great. Thanks for
that. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Yep,” Darcy said, but moved back
to the window. “You got a reprieve; he stopped to take a call.”
Zoe grabbed her purse and turned to
Oreo. “Hold down the fort for Mommy, okay?”
Darcy snorted. “If a bad guy showed
up, he’d hide in your closet.”
This was probably true but the big,
goofy dog was the only home security system she had right now. In the past few
months both Wyatt and Darcy had moved out, Wyatt to live with his fiancée,
Emily, and Darcy to live with her boyfriend, AJ.
Zoe had told herself she was good
with that. Sure, she missed bossing them around as she’d been doing since the
dawn of time because one, their foreign diplomat parents had never seemed to
notice that they’d had children, and two, well, Zoe kind of just loved to boss
people around. But she wasn’t going to complain. Not when she’d seen just about
every corner of the world and knew exactly how good she really had it right
here in Sunshine, Idaho, alone or not.
Besides, with her newfound freedom
she had a lot planned for herself. She wanted to fix up the house, although she
admittedly had very little talent in that area. She wanted to learn to bake,
even though she had even less talent in that realm. She wanted to date—where
she had absolutely zero talent.
It might seem silly, but to a woman
who’d been uniquely unlucky in her love life, Zoe had never gotten the hang of
dipping her toes into the wading pool, especially with the audience of her
siblings.
But now, with the house empty, it
seemed like a perfect time.
Hence blind date number one. And
she was ready. She wanted this. She totally almost did.
About the author
New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis lives in a small town in the Sierras with her family and far too many assorted quirky characters. Any resemblance to the quirky characters in her books is, um, mostly coincidental.
Look for Jill's latest, ONE IN A MILLION, on shelves and e-readers now, and get all her bestselling, award-winning books wherever romances are sold.
Visit Jill's website for a complete book list and daily blog detailing her city-girl-living-in-the-mountains adventures.
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