can get ALL IN (7-Stud Club Book 1), NO LIMIT (7-Stud Club Book 2), and ANTE UP (7-Stud Club Book 3). Raf’s story is next! Get WILD CARD (7-Stud Club Book 5) here.
If you want more sexy and emotional romances, let me take you to Billionaire’s Beach. The first in the series is TAKE ME TENDER.
Read on for an excerpt.
To not miss out on new Christie Ridgway releases, sign up for my newsletter. You can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or visit my website.
Spread the word by leaving a review on your favorite book site so other readers can find good books!
Excerpt – TAKE ME TENDER
Excerpt – TAKE ME TENDER
Billionaire’s Beach Book 1
© Copyright 2015 Christie Ridgway
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Sabrina fair
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of Lillies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair…
—JOHN MILTON, COMUS: A MASQUE
A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.
—ELSA SCHIAPARELLI, FASHION DESIGNER
Chapter One
Slowly threading through the tables of the darkened restaurant, Nikki Carmichael refused to let a single tear fall. No, she wasn’t going to cry, though the night’s last entree had been plated and served two hours before and the last patron escorted out the door thirty minutes ago. For the final time, she’d heard the clear-bell clink of the wineglasses greeting their partners as they were slid into their nightly resting place in the rack over the bar. The kitchen’s enormous stock-pots that had simmered broth all through the dinner service were now clean, their steam no longer able to corkscrew the baby hairs that escaped her braids.
Pausing beside a table, she tweaked a white linen napkin already folded in the signature Fleming’s twist, ready for the next day’s dinner rush.
The dinner rush Nikki wouldn’t be here to see, sweat over, or even swear about, as from now on a different sous-chef was responsible for the production of the restaurant’s elegant meals.
Still, she wasn’t going to cry.
After all, she’d been the one to turn in her resignation. And she’d had plenty of time to accustom herself to the idea of leaving the place where she’d worked since cooking school.
Not to mention that she never cried—not since she was fourteen and her father told her at her mother’s funeral that crying was something big girls didn’t do. Don’t let anyone think you’re weak.
At the locked door of the employee break room, with nothing left to do but gather her things and head home, she keyed in the pass code and then pushed it open.
“Surprise!”
Startled, Nikki took an instinctive step back and felt that familiar, dangerous doughiness in her right knee. Her leg almost gave way, but she gritted her teeth and fought for balance. The small crowd in the room didn’t seem to notice, and then she was being dragged inside.
Colleen, the youngest member of Fleming’s full-time waitstaff, grinned at her. “You didn’t think we were going to let you go quietly, did you?”
Nikki had really hoped so. She didn’t know how much longer she could remain upright on her listing leg.
But slices of the pastry chef’s celebrated Chocolate Can’t Kill You cake were already set on a rolling cart beside champagne glasses filled with bubbly. The dishwashers, grizzled Joe and his baby-faced sidekick, Carlos, passed out forks. Colleen danced around with the champagne.
“To Nikki!” she finally said.
And everyone there, from the bartender, to the waitstaff, to her favorite prep cook who must have made a return trip just for the occasion, echoed the words, their glasses held high. The enthusiastic goodwill surprised Nikki all over again. She’d inherited her keep-your-distance DNA from her dad, so she didn’t get too friendly with people, not even coworkers.
In the convivial atmosphere, though, Nikki did okay through the next few minutes, sipping at the champagne she hoped would work like ibuprofen. Then Colleen asked her about her future plans.
“Do you have your next chef job lined up? You said you had prospects.”
It took a moment for Nikki to clear her throat of her latest swallow and her sudden awkwardness. “Not, um, yet. I’m still, uh, sifting through those prospects.”
“I have a friend—”
“What about—”
“Why not—”
The room filled with suggestions. Wearing a polite smile, Nikki listened to each of them. Her excuse for leaving Fleming’s was creative burnout, so their ideas ran the gamut from Japanese to Egyptian to a place that touted a Swiss-Argentinean fusion cuisine.
That last gave her pause. Swiss-Argentinean fusion cuisine. What would that be, exactly? Reuben sandwiches?
After the cake and champagne were consumed, the well-wishers