Bending the Rules

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From Publishers Weekly Anderson ( Cutting Loose ) creates a sexy, feel-good contemporary romance starring down-to-earth Seattle artist Poppy Calloway and handsome but rigid police detective Jason de Sanges. When three teenagers are caught defacing some neighborhood stores, Poppy suggests they clean up their mess and replace it with a mural. Jase, vexed by beautiful and unpretentious Poppy, scoffs at the mural idea, but his higherups agree to it and put him in charge of the teens. Poppy and Jase have met previously and seem perpetually at odds, but they can't deny sharing a visceral and intense chemistry. After some suspicious accidents, Jase leaps to protect the woman he once dismissed as a damn bleeding-heart liberal. Palpable escalating sexual tension between the pair, a dangerous criminal on the loose and a cast of well-developed secondary characters make this a winner. (July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Of all the rooms in all the field houses in all the parks in Seattle, he had to walk into this one? What the hell is he doing here? Poppy did her best to continue her conversation with the manager of the Ace hardware store. But the man had a tendency to drone on at the best of times and with the new arrival striding through the milling crowd of business owners as if he owned the joint, it was difficult to focus her attention. Her gaze kept wanting to follow his progress. That was de Sanges, right? She just barely swallowed the self-derisive snort that tickled the back of her throat. Because, please. This might be the last place she expected to see him, but of course it was. Considering their one and only encounter, however, she didn't feel a burning need to beat herself up for allowing her mind to shy away from the admission. Still, the truth was, it had taken no more than a glimpse to recognize the tall, lean, muscular body she'd seen only once before. She'd documented the prominent bony nose, those sharp cheekbones and that black-as-a-crow's-feather hair. Was familiar with those long, white-nailed fingers and the dark olive skin that she had a feeling owed more to genetics than exposure to the sun. And Oh My God Really remembered those dark, chilly eyes. Which she'd watched go hot for a few insane minutes last fall as they'd stood toe-to-toe in Miss A.'s parlor. Whoa. She firmly corralled her wayward thoughts. Don't even go there, girl. Okay, so it was Detective Sheik, as Janie insisted on calling him. Big deal. But her face went hot and her mouth went dry, and she had to fight like hell not to squirm at the memory of Ava saying that for a minute there she'd feared Poppy and de Sanges—a man none of them had even met until that afternoon—might start going at it hot and heavy in the middle of the parlor. Because her friend had been right. Poppy had never experienced anything quite so visceral as what she'd felt that day with the tall, dark cop. "Everyone seems to be here," Garret Johnson, the president of the Merchants' Association, said over the babble of conversation in the Park Department's field house conference room. "Let's take our seats and get this meeting under way." Eking out a breath of relief at having the plug yanked on that particular memory, she watched de Sanges from the corner of her eye until he pulled out a chair at the rectangular table. Then she took a seat at the opposite end. It would have been even better if she could've nabbed one on the same side. That way she wouldn't be able to see him at all without making a concerted effort. But Penny, the owner of Slice of Heaven Pies, beat her to the last chair on de Sanges's side. Oh, well—too bad, so sad for her. Taking a seat across from the other woman, she exchanged idle chitchat for a few moments until the president rapped his knuckles on the wooden tabletop to call the meeting to order. "Okay, as everyone knows," he said the instant