My Thoughts
Holy hell Russell is off the charts hot. He's a delicious naughty talking protective man. I loved how over the top he was about and for Abby. They are the last of the unattached in their group and are often paired up because of it. There is an undeniable attraction between them, but damn the man has some she's got money issues to deal with. They are scorching hot and share some seriously steamy moments together. Have I mentioned that I heart Russell? He's another in the line of fantastically sizzling men that Tessa writes. She also has a way with the women who steal their hearts. I so look forward to each and every one of her books and this one reminded me why.
I give Make Me 5 hearts!
I give Make Me 5 hearts!
About the Book
In the final Broke and Beautiful novel from bestselling
author Tessa Bailey, a blue collar construction worker and a quiet uptown girl
are about to discover that the friendzone can sometimes be excellent foreplay.
Construction worker Russell Hart has been head-over-work
boots for Abby Sullivan since the moment he laid eyes on her. But he knows a
classy, uptown virgin like her could never be truly happy with a rough,
blue-collar guy like him. If only she’d stop treating him like her personal
hero—a role he craves more than oxygen—maybe he could accept it.
With the future of her family’s hedge fund on her shoulders,
Abby barely has time to sleep, let alone find love. And her best friend Russell
acting like a sexy, overprotective hulk any time their Super Group goes out in
public definitely isn’t helping her single status. But after a near-tragedy
lands Russell in her bed for the night, Abby’s suddenly fantasizing about what
he looks like shirtless. Chest hair and tattoos—who knew?
As Russell struggles to keep Abby at a safe distance, she
begins to see through his tough-talking exterior—and acknowledge her own
feelings. Now she’s ready to turn the friend-zone into foreplay…and make him
lose control.
Purchase Links
Excerpt
Chapter One
Day
one hundred and forty-two of being friend-zoned. Send rations.
Russell Hart stifled a groan when
Abby twisted on his lap to call out a drink order to the passing waiter, adding
a smile that would no doubt earn her a martini on the house. Every time their
six person “super group” hung out, which was starting to become a nightly
affair, Russell advanced into a newer, more vicious circle of hell. Tonight,
however, he was pretty sure he’d meet the devil himself.
They were at the Longshoreman,
celebrating the Fourth of July, which presented more than one precious little
clusterfuck. One, the holiday meant the bar was packed full of tipsy
Manhattanites, creating a shortage of chairs, hence Abby parking herself right
on top of his dick. Two, it put the usually conservative Abby in ass-hugging
shorts and one of those tops that tied at the back of her neck. Six months ago,
he would have called it a shirt, but
his two best friends had fallen down the relationship rabbit hole, putting him
in the vicinity of excessive chick talk. So, now it was a halter-top. What he
wouldn’t give to erase that
knowledge.
During their first round of
drinks, he’d become a believer in breathing exercises. Until he’d noticed these
tiny, blond curls at Abby’s nape, curls he’d never seen before. And
some-fucking-how, those sun-kissed curls were what had nudged him from
semi-erect to full-scale Washington monument status. The hair on the rest of
her head was like a…a warm milk chocolate color, so where did those little
curls come from? Those detrimental
musings had lead to Russell questioning what else he didn’t know about Abby.
What color was everything else? Did she have freckles? Where?
Russell would not be finding out
– ever – and not just because he was sitting in the friend zone with his dick
wedged against his stomach – not an
easy maneuver – so she wouldn’t feel it. No, there was more to it. His friends,
Ben and Louis, were well aware of those reasons, which accounted for the
half-sympathetic, half-needling looks they were sending him from across the
table, respective girlfriends perched on their laps. The jerks.
Abby was off-limits. Not because
she was taken – thank Christ – or because someone had verbally forbidden him
from pursuing her. That wasn’t it. Russell had taken a long time trying to find
a suitable explanation for why he didn’t just get the girl alone one night and
make his move. Explain to her that men like him weren’t suitable friends for
wide-eyes debutantes and give her a demonstration of the alternative.
It went like this. Abby was like
an expensive package that had been delivered to him by mistake. Someone at the
post office had screwed the pooch and dropped off the shiniest, most beautiful
creation on his Queens doorstep and driven away, laughing manically. Russell
wasn’t falling for the trick, though. Someone would claim the package,
eventually. They would chuckle over the obvious mistake and take Abby away from
him, because really, he had no business being the one who’s lap she chose to
sit on. No business, whatsoever.
But while he was in possession of the package
– as much as he’d allow himself to be
in possession, anyway – he would guard her with his life. He would make sure
that when someone realized the cosmic error that had occurred – the one that
had made him Abby’s friend and confidant – she would be sweet and undamaged, just
as she’d been on arrival.
Unfortunately, the package didn’t
seem content to let him stand guard from a distance. She innocently beckoned
him back every time he managed to put an inch of space between them. Russell
had lost count of the times Abby had fallen asleep on him while the super group
watched a movie, drank margaritas on the girls’ building rooftop, driven home
in cabs. She was entirely too comfortable around him, considering he saluted
against his fly every time they were in the same room.
“Why so quiet, Russell?” Louis
asked, his grin turning to a wince as his actress girlfriend, Roxy, elbowed him
in the ribs. Yeah. Everyone at the damn table knew he had a major thing for the
beautiful, unassuming number whiz on his lap. Everyone but Abby. And that’s how
he planned to keep it.
“I know why,” Ben said, causing
Russell’s stomach to catapult itself across the bar. Before he could change the
subject, Ben pulled his student-turned-main squeeze closer and continued. “He
doesn’t need to give us advice on girls anymore. His powers have been
diminished.”
“We’ve slain the beast.”
Ben and Louis toasted their
plastic beer cups without a single glance at one other. Why was he friends with
these two again? Oh right. The power of beer had brought them together. Praise
be to Heineken. Smug as they were, though, Russell knew humor was their way of
showing support. If it wasn’t humor, it would be sympathy, aka dude kryptonite.
“What kind of advice did he give
you about us?” Roxy wanted to know, shooting Louis and Ben stern glances.
“Uh-uh.” Russell shook his head.
“I’m calling bro confidentiality on you both. That includes pillow talk and
supersedes any and all forms of sexual coercion.”
Ben adjusted his glasses. “That reasoning, however, should lend
some insight into what you ladies missed.”
Honey leaned across the table and
patted Russell’s arm. “It all worked out in the end, big guy. Who knows? You
might have had something to do with it after all.”
Russell opened his mouth to
respond, but whatever he planned to say withered in its inception because Abby
spun in his lap again, sending the world around him into slow motion. A left
jab of her scent – which after careful consideration he’d termed white grape sunlight – caught him in the
chin and he barely restrained the urge to shout oh, come on, at the top of his lungs. Her big hazel eyes were
indignant on his behalf, mouth pursed in a way that shouldn’t have been sexy,
but damn-well was. She’d snapped her spine straight, hip bumping his erection
in the process.
Please,
almighty God, just kill me now.
“Russell gives great advice,” Abby protested and
Russell would have smiled if he wasn’t busy earning his master’s degree in
boner-soothing meditation. She really had no idea her outrage only made her
sweeter because it looked so unnatural on her. “Remember the man on the first
floor of our building? The one who used to clear his throat loudly every time
we walked by?” She waited for Honey and Roxy to nod. “Russell told me the next
time it happened, I should just shout TROUBLE
at his door. I did. And it hasn’t happened since.”
When Louis and Ben started
laughing into their beers, Russell flipped them off behind Abby’s back. What
his friends knew that Abby didn’t? As soon as she’d told him the problem, he’d
paid a visit to their downstairs neighbor and explained that trouble would find him if he so much as
breathed in Abby – or any of her roommates’ – direction again. Hence, the
single word being so effective. Russell was
trouble.
But as Abby turned a bright,
encouraging smile on him, swelling his heart like an inflating balloon, he
recognized that his brand of trouble
had nothing on Abby’s. She didn’t even know how dangerous she was to his
health. Because while Abby was the package that had been delivered by mistake,
he’d gone and fallen for her, despite his attempts to simply be her friend.
And maybe it was his imagination,
but the loss of her seemed to loom a little closer each day. Like any minute
now, she would peer a little closer and realize he was in imposter. Loss was
something with which Russell was familiar. Loss had cut him off at the knees at
a young age, made him hyper aware of how fast it could happen. Whoosh. Chopped
off at the knees. So he was already in damage control mode, hoping to limit the
fallout when she inevitably headed for a younger version of Gordon Gekko. For now, it was all about keeping a
comfortable gap between him and Abby.
She scooted back on his lap to
make room for the waitress who had returned with a round of drinks, and Russell
gritted his teeth.
Okay. Comfortable definitely wasn’t the right word.
***
I
have friends. I have friends now and it’s glorious.
Six months ago, when Abby
Sullivan had placed the ad on Craigslist, seeking two roommates to share her
Chelsea apartment, her highest hope had been for noise. Maybe it sounded silly,
but apart from the Ninth Avenue traffic trundling past and the occasional
shouting match on the street, her life had been so quiet before Honey and Roxy
showed up. She’d been hoping for hair dryers in the morning, dishes being
tossed in the sink, singing in the shower. Anything but the void of sound she’d
been living with, alone in the massive space.
Then, oh then, she’d gone and done something even more impulsive than
placing an advertisement for massively discounted rent in cyberspace. She’d
blurted upon meeting them for the first time that she didn’t need help paying
the rent; she merely wanted friends. Unbelievably, it hadn’t felt like a
mistake to reveal such a pitiful secret to a couple of strangers. There had
been a feeling when all three of them first stood in the same room that it
would work out, like a complicated math equation that would prove itself worth
the work.
Now? She couldn’t imagine a day
passing without them. The guys had been an unexpected bonus she hadn’t counted
on. Especially Russell.
As they walked crosstown toward
the Hudson River where they planned to watch the Fourth of July fireworks, Abby
smiled up at Russell where he towered over her. She received a suspicious look
in response. Suspicious! Ha! It made
her want to laugh like a lunatic. All the way back to her furthest memory,
she’d been reliable, gullible, sugar-filled Abby to everyone and their mother.
Even Honey and Roxy, to a degree, handled her carefully around subjects that
might offend her or hurt her feelings. She was too grateful for their presence
to call them on it, though. Sometimes she opened her mouth, the words I’m not made of spun glass hovering
right on the tip of her tongue, but she always swallowed them. They meant well.
She knew that with her whole heart. Maybe someday, when she was positive they
wouldn’t vanish at a rare show of temper—the way people always did when she bared a flaw—she’d tell them. Until she worked
up the courage however, she would stay quiet, and appreciate her new best
friends for the colorful positivity they’d brought into her life.
But Russell? She appreciated him
even more for getting mad at her.
Such occurrences were her
favorite part of the week. Russell stomping into the apartment, grumbling about
her not checking the peep hole. Refusing to go out on a Saturday night until
she changed into more comfortable shoes. Giving her that daunting frown when
she revealed they’d had a leak in the bathroom for three weeks and hadn’t yet
called the super to repair it. He’d had it fixed within the hour, but he hadn’t
spoken to her the entire time.
It was awesome.
Because he kept coming back.
Every time. No matter what—no matter what she said or did—he never washed his
hands of her. Never got so fed up with her admittedly flighty behavior that he
skipped a hang out. Or didn’t respond to a text. He was the steadfast presence
in her life she’d never had.
No one spoke to Abby at her job.
She’d been hired after graduating at the top of her Yale class and placed in a
silent power position at a hedge fund. Her father’s
hedge fund. So she could understand her co-workers’ reticence to invite her for
happy hour. Or even give her a polite nod in the hallway. At first, she’d been
prepared to try anyway. Force them to acknowledge her in some small way, even
if it was just passing the stapler in the conference room. Then she remembered.
When she forced her opinion on people, or had an outburst, they went away, and
didn’t come back for a long time.
Her coworkers assumed she sat in
her air-conditioned office all day playing Minecraft or buying dresses online. And
why wouldn’t they? She’d done nothing to sway that notion. In reality, however,
she worked hard. Showed up before the lights came on and stayed later than
everyone else. Brought work home with her and often, didn’t get to sleep. She
had no choice.
Stress tightened like a shoelace
around Abby’s stomach, but she breathed through it. Tonight was for fun with
her friends. Tomorrow morning would be soon enough to face her
responsibilities.
“It’s the shoes, isn’t it?”
Russell demanded, encompassing Abby, Roxy and Honey with a dark look. “This
always happens in the eleventh hour. You girls started limping around and we
just have to watch it.”
Ben sighed. “Here we go again.”
“No, really. I think I’ve finally
figured it out.” Russell swiped impatient fingers over his shaved head. “You
ever heard of sympathy pains? When my sister-in-law gave birth, my brother
swore someone was firing a nail gun into his stomach. To this day, the guy has
never been the same.” He pointed at Abby’s electric blue pumps. “Women wear
these evil creations around to confuse us. Sure, they make a girl’s legs look
good, but that’s the black magic, my friends. They want us to feel their pain
and not understand why.”
Louis turned, walking backwards
on the sidewalk so he could face them. “I have to admit, I’m with Russell on
this one.” He smiled at Roxy’s outrage. “You could go barefoot and it wouldn’t
make a difference to me.”
“I’ll round it out with a third
agreement,” Ben chimed in. “I like Honey in her Chucks.”
That statement earned Ben a kiss
from Honey and a groan from Russell. “I’m thrilled you assholes have found a
way to use my amazing logic to earn points.”
Abby loved the familiar argument
simply because it was familiar—a
routine she had in common with others—but she had to admit her feet were
throbbing. After a night of dancing, the crosstown walk was giving her
blisters. She wore heels all day at the office, but they were sensible and
low-heeled. Nothing like the stilettos she’d borrowed from Roxy. In fact, now
that she’d acknowledged her tired feet, every part of her seemed to sag with
exhaustion, as if she’d finally given her bones permission. “I can end this
argument right here,” Abby interrupted with a weary, but determined smile. The
group stopped to watch as she slipped off her shoes and placed her bare feet
back onto the cool sidewalk with a hearty sigh. For some reason, everyone’s
gazes swung to Russell who – God love him – was frowning at her like she’d just
crashed his beloved truck.
“A new tactic, gentlemen. Take
note.” Their four friends laughed at Russell’s ominous tone, but Abby stayed
pinned under his scowl. Although now, his scowl had a hint of uncertainty
behind it. “Put them back on, Abby. You’re going to step on something. Broken
glass, or—”
Abby breezed past Russell.
Honestly, he worried constantly for no reason. They were only a few blocks away
from the river and the streets were well lit. What was the worst that could—
Her feet left the ground, her
gasp cutting off as she was cradled against Russell’s big chest. His expression
was hidden, thanks to the streetlights shining blindingly above his head, but
Abby knew from experience, he would be annoyed. She couldn’t prevent the smile
from spreading like wildfire across her face, feeling as if it reached as far
as her chest. It seemed impossible, but somehow she’d earned a place among
these people who cared about her. Friends. Good friends. The kind you can’t
live without.
Especially Russell. Her favorite.
“You were put on this earth to
make me crazy, Abby. You know that?”
“I’m not sorry about it,” she
whispered. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“No. It makes you a woman.”
She muffled her laugh with the
use of Russell’s shoulder. “Men make women crazy, too. It’s not a one-sided
affair.”
He frowned down at her. “What
would you know about it?”
That question coming from anyone
else might have embarrassed Abby, but for all Russell’s bluster, he never
judged her. Not for her lack of a love life, anyway. Shoes were another matter
altogether. “I know things.”
“Things, huh? Maybe Louis and Ben should spend more time at their
own apartments.” His arms flexed as he hefted her higher, with minimal effort.
“Do you actually like watching the fireworks or is this just a patriotic custom
we’re upholding?”
“No, I love fireworks.” She tilted her head back and looked at the sky.
“Everyone forgets over the course of the year how incredible fireworks are. You
know? They forget until they’re standing beneath them again. You don’t like
them?”
He stared ahead as he answered.
“I like that you like them.”
Abby smiled, knowing Russell
would have to be extra gruff for the remainder of the night to make up for that
slip. And needing to torture him a little over it. “That’s how I feel when you
make me watch the Yankees.” She laid a hand against his cheek. “It’s worth it
just to see your adorable man eyes light up.”
His sigh was sharp, but she
caught the corner of his mouth kicking up. “All this time, I thought you were
enjoying it.”
“The blooper reel is my
favorite.” Drowsiness settled more firmly over her and she stifled a yawn
against his shoulder. “Also, I love when kids in the audience catch foul
balls.”
“Crowd. It’s called a crowd.”
She hummed in her throat, eyelids
beginning to weigh down. “I knew that. Just seeing if you were paying
attention,” she murmured.
Russell chewed his bottom lip a
moment, worry marring his features. “You’re so tired lately, Abby. Everything
okay?”
“Totally fine,” she lied. “Just
going to rest my eyes a minute.”
Positive he would wake her up
when they reached the Hudson, she wound her arms around his neck and dozed off.
It was the first time she’d slept in three days.
About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Tessa Bailey
lives on Long Island with her husband and young daughter. When she isn’t
writing or reading romance, Tessa enjoys a good argument and thirty-minute
recipes.
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