Old habits die hard. Her sexy young lover can make her body hum, but can she ignore the secrets of his past?
Rachel is drawn to the sexy young gardener offering to do odd jobs around her neighbourhood, no reasonable offer refused. She soon dreams up something for him to do at the bottom of her garden, and the view from her window is much improved as he works outside.
Callum can feel her gaze on him, can sense her fascination, but he has very particular requirements and he’s not at all sure his taste runs to middle aged freelance accountants, and a single mother at that.
However their attraction to each other is powerful, and as Callum starts to recognise the signals of willing submission which Rachel unconsciously gives off, he knows he must have her. Their passionate encounters liberate Rachel, unlocking her desires and demanding her surrender, while challenging all her inhibitions.
But when she learns the secrets of her sexy young lover’s misspent youth, can she get past her pre-conceived certainties to find a way for them to move on – together. Or was their new-found happiness doomed from the start?
Opposites attract, but are some differences just too deep to overcome?
Reader Advisory: This book contains scenes of dominance and submission, including sex toys, pain play, anal play, oral sex, nipple clamps, restraints and spanking.
General Release Date: 21st March 2014
She’s there again. Watching. Always bloody watching. Nice legs though…
Callum O’Neill flexed his shoulders as he poured a healthy glug of cool water down his throat. He replaced the half-empty plastic bottle on the wall beside him and picked up his spade. Another couple of hours should see the heavy work done, then he could get on to the planting up. Mrs Saunders wanted a rockery, so she’d have one. By Tuesday.
He put his back into shovelling loose soil from an underused patch of scrub round the back, before hefting it onto his customer’s sturdy if somewhat battered wheelbarrow. Once full, or fullish, he shoved the load around to the front of the house. There he upturned it onto the growing heap of soil and rubble that was, by Tuesday, to become magically transformed into a rock garden.
He stood for a few moments to assess his progress so far, contemplating once more the uncertain wisdom of creating a rockery in the shade of a horse chestnut tree and a four foot high wall. Rock plants needed dry, well-drained soil. They also needed sun. Mrs Saunders’ aubretia and candytuft would struggle to get either tucked away in this dark corner. This spot called for ferns, primulas or maybe some bluebells. Pretty, shade-loving plants not sun-worshipping perennials.
A diligent and knowledgeable plantsman, Callum had offered his advice. Leave the rocks where they were in the sunny back yard. He could make them into a rock garden for her there if she liked, it would take him half the time to build and be so much cheaper for her. But his words had fallen on deaf ears. The lady had insisted. He needed the work so he’d shrugged pragmatically, cast another doubtful glance at her preferred rockery site, and had got on with the job.
It didn’t do to argue, or to turn down trade. But he wasn’t especially happy. He took pride in his creations, he knew Mrs Saunders’ heathers and sedums wouldn’t thrive in the dark, dank spot. And despite her apparent indifference to their plight that mattered to him. Callum wanted Mrs Saunders to look out of her window and enjoy the fruits of his labour. He wanted her to be pleased with his work. He had a business to build, he needed more clients like Mrs Saunders, so it would help if she’d recommend him to her friends. She wouldn’t do that if her aubretia shrivelled and her heathers flopped.
He sighed, shook his head in resignation, and grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow to trundle it back round to the rear of the house. Best get on with it.
He was never sure just how to refer to the half a dozen or so people who engaged his services to help them wage that war of attrition which is gardening. Strictly speaking, he was self-employed so that probably made them clients. Whatever, gardening was nice work—good, outdoors work, creative, satisfying. Better than working in an office—not that anyone in their right mind would have given him a job anywhere near their computers and phones. Plus it was a lot better than being locked up. He should know, having spent just under a year cooling his heels in HMP Leeds, that auspicious establishment in Armley where the likes of him tended to end up. By that he meant car thieves stupid enough to get caught and cocky enough to think they could manage to bluff their way through the judicial system without the services of a half-decent solicitor.
Once was enough though. Short, sharp shock tactics had worked on Callum O’Neill. Lessons learnt, career change required. Hence the self-employed jobbing gardener. He’d been out of prison for six months and had spent the first few weeks applying for jobs, initially as a mechanic because he did at least know his way around motors. But he’d soon got tired of trying to explain to prospective employers that he was a reformed character, and fed up of assuring them that their precious customers’ cars would be safe with him. No more dodgy number plates for him, no nicking top-end vehicles to order and passing them on to his contacts to be shipped abroad. No. All that was behind him now.
Until 2010, Ashe was a director of a regeneration company before deciding there had to be more to life and leaving to pursue a lifetime goal of self-employment.
Ashe has been an avid reader of women's fiction for many years—erotic, historical, contemporary, fantasy, romance—you name it, as long as it's written by women, for women. Now, at last in control of her own time and working from her home in rural West Yorkshire, she has been able to realise her dream of writing erotic romance herself.
She draws on settings and anecdotes from her previous and current experience to lend colour, detail and realism to her plots and characters, but her stories of love, challenge, resilience and compassion are the conjurings of her own imagination. She loves to craft strong, enigmatic men and bright, sassy women to give them a hard time—in every sense of the word.
When she's not writing, Ashe's time is divided between her role as resident taxi driver for her teenage daughter, and caring for a menagerie of dogs, cats, rabbits, tortoises and a hamster.
Reviewed by Jeep Diva
This is one fun hot read.
Another great book by Ms. Barker. Seriously, in my book, this woman can’t write anything bad. As funny as the title is, Carrot an...
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