Once Upon a Twilight!: Book Highlight: Finding the Right Girl by Violet Duke | Excerpt

Finding the Right Girl by Violet Duke
Published October 30, 2013

From the New York Times & USA Today bestselling author who brought you the Nice Girl to Love trilogy, comes a Nice GUY to Love spin-off…

Brian Sullivan has been in love twice in his lifetime. He lost his first love to early-onset Huntington’s, and he lost the other more recently…to his brother. And somehow, his heart has managed to heal itself after both. Amazingly, without therapy. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t gotten more wary along the way, however. In fact, he’s been thinking lately that maybe his brother’s now retired nothing-but-flings rule isn’t such a bad idea. Unfortunately, being the nice guy poster boy and all, Brian isn’t exactly versed in the fine art of flings. So he looks to the outrageously ‘unique,’ provokingly button-pushing Tessa Daniels for a crash course.

There’s absolutely no way he’s falling in love with this one…right?

Tessa has no idea what she was thinking telling Brian that she was some sort of fling expert. She’s never been flung before and she sure as heck doesn’t know where or how to begin flinging a guy like Brian. It was a temporary lapse in sanity, really—no doubt because of the can’t-help-but-fall-for-him brain fuzz that hits her whenever he’s around. Not only does the man have her being more herself than she’s ever been in her life, but he’s the only person she knows who seems to have as many demons and skeletons in the closet as she does. What’s more, he’s got her thinking of the one thing she stopped letting herself even hope for years ago.

A happily ever after.

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The door slammed shut behind him, cloaking them in darkness.

“You drive me crazy, you know that?”

God, his voice had dropped even lower, to a sexy thunder down under rumble.

“Crazy in a good way or a bad way?” Tessa managed to ask as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light.

“Both.” He circled slowly around her as if she were a dangerous animal…he was getting ready to pounce on. “You have no filter whatsoever. Not with what you do or say, and especially not with how you react.”

“That’s not my fault. You can just point that finger at yourself buddy,” she grumbled back before snapping her mouth shut.

Alright, so maybe he was right about the filter thing.

“What?”

Man, if looks could strip. She’d never felt this naked before, this out of control. Inwardly, she sighed. The guy just brought out the uncivilized in her.

Oh well, she came this far, may as well see where this ride ends. “You heard me.” Her chin came up defiantly. “I can’t think when you talk in that ridiculously sexy voice. Or when your biceps suddenly double in size in the middle of even the simplest of tasks, like lifting a coffee mug. And don’t get me started on your eyes. My god, I almost walked into a wall the last time you smiled and your eyes went from that soft ocean blue to deep turquoise. I mean who does that?!”

It was like she just couldn’t stop talking.

When he came to a standstill and simply stared at her like she’d lost her mind, she huffed. “It’s simply not reasonable to expect a girl to have a filter with all that steamy-eyed, bicep-popping, talking-like-a-wet-dream-voice-over madness going on!”

Silence.

Huh, so where might one buy one of these filters, she wondered.

With a quiet curse, he stomped toward her and picked her by the waist, not even pausing in his stride as he kept right on walking to the bed. Well, if he going to take her for a ride…she speared her hands into his thick, tousled waves and nearly purred with pleasure.

“Stop being so damn open,” he rasped, sounding like a man about ready to do the unimaginable, his lips a whisper away from hers.

“Stop being so damn irresistible,” she threw back, digging her heels into the carpet until his body ran flush into hers and bulldozed her straight back, flat onto the bed.

The air wedged in her throat as she watched the outline of his granite-etched jaw clench and release. He was so beautiful. Oh to hell with it. She wrapped her arms around his neck and touched her lips to his throat. The quiet male hiss she heard shot her attention down to the fact that he was more than a little happy to see her. Impressively so. And her sigh of pleasure against his throat served as a live current of electricity that she felt run through him…everywhere.

New York Times & USA Today bestselling author Violet Duke is a former professor of English Education who is ecstatic to now be on the other side of the page writing wickedly fun contemporary romance novels. When she's not arguing with her story characters or feeding her book-a-day reading addiction, she enjoys tackling reno projects with her power tools while trying pretty much anything without reading the directions first and cooking 'special edition' dishes that laugh in the face of recipes. Violet lives in Hawai'i with her two cute kids and similarly adorable husband.

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