Too hot to handle: A curvy girl romance Read online

  Too Hot To Handle

  A curvy girl romance

  River Laurent

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Single Dad

  Acknowledgments

  Author Note

  1. Lincoln

  2. Lincoln

  3. Lincoln

  4. Lincoln

  5. Samantha

  6. Lincoln

  7. Samantha

  8. Samantha

  9. Lincoln

  10. Lincoln

  11. Samantha

  12. Lincoln

  13. Lincoln

  14. Lincoln

  15. Samantha

  16. Lincoln

  17. Lincoln

  18. Samantha

  19. Lincoln

  20. Samantha

  21. Samantha

  22. Lincoln

  23. Lincoln

  24. Lincoln

  25. Lincoln

  26. Lincoln

  27. Samantha

  28. Samantha

  29. Lincoln

  30. Epilogue

  31. Second Epilogue

  The CEO & I

  Appreciation

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Sweet Revenge

  SWEET REVENGE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Coming soon…

  The Rival

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  CAN WE CHAT?

  Author’s Note

  Too Hot To Handle is a full-length standalone novel. It ends before 100% on your kindle file because of yup, you guessed it, awesome extra content and sample chapters from my new WIP.

  Happy reading!

  xoxo

  Too Hot To Handle

  Copyright © 2018 by River Laurent

  The right of River Laurent to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patent act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  978-1-911608-18-9

  Created with Vellum

  Acknowledgments

  Thank You

  Brittany Urbaniak

  &

  Peggy Schnurr

  Chapter 1

  Madison

  “Oh, come on, you know it’s going to be fun!”

  “I’m just not sure,” I rolled my eyes at my best friend, Eleanor, who was sitting opposite me with a look on her face that told me she was never going to take no for an answer.

  “It’s precisely what you need right now.” She nudged my foot with hers beneath the table. “A bit of fun, yeah?”

  “I think it’s more fun for you than for me,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee and shaking my head.

  She leaned back and observed me for a moment, before letting out a long sigh, obviously trying to figure out how she could best twist my arm. “Well, since I’ve had my heart broken by a total jerk.” She nodded pointedly. “I get one wild night on the town with you, no questions asked, right?”

  “I guess so.” I finished my coffee and fiddled with the sugar packets on the table in front of me, arranging them in parallel lines. “It just doesn’t sound like my kind of thing, though.”

  “What? Hot guys aren’t your kind of thing?” She was the one rolling her eyes now. She reached into her bag and pulled out a slightly crumpled brochure, and laid it out on the table in front of me, smoothing out the creases.

  “What are you, their PR person now?” I teased.

  She waved her hand enthusiastically at me. “Just look at this guy,” she said as she stabbed her finger onto the paper. “Chad Weston. How can any woman with blood running in their veins not want to see him in person?”

  “That leaves me out. I have coffee running in mine.”

  She sighed elaborately as if I was too much for her to put up with. I looked down at the man she was pointing to. Okay, I had to admit, Chad Weston was swoon-worthy hot. Well, they were hardly going to put some plain guy on the front of the brochure advertising their male strip show, were they? Even so, his bright green eyes and mess of brown hair were cute, and that big-ass grin was almost as distractingly attractive as his ripped abs and muscular arms.

  “I guess he’s pretty hot,” I shrugged.

  She threw her hands dramatically in the air, attracting the attention of a few people sitting around us. That wasn’t a problem for her. She liked attention, loved it when she was the center of attraction. “Pretty hot?” she squealed. “Do you know they call him Subway Chad.”

  I frowned. “Subway Chad?”

  “Don’t play coy. Haven’t I seen you eating their twelve inch sandwiches before.”

  I flushed bright red. I knew that was a little dig at my weight too. “Oh, that.”

  She smirked. “Yes, that. Don’t you agree it will be worth seeing? You’ve never seen one that big have you.”

  I swallowed hard. Now I was certain everyone was looking at me as if I was some kind of freak. “No,” I croaked.

  “So, you’re going to come with me?”

  “I don’t know, El.”

  “Come on. The boys are only in London for a couple of days more. It’s their last show and our only chance to see him.”

  I shrugged. “It’s really not my thing.”

  “What would you do otherwise. Bury your face in one of those ridiculous books of yours?”

  I bit my lip. That was exactly what I planned on doing. “What’s your game-plan? Just look at him until you get over Jonathan?”

  “Nope,” She grinned widely. “I’m going to get that American dude into my bed. It’s my life work.”

  “What, ever since you saw this brochure, you mean?”

  The sarcasm was lost on her. She no
dded. “Ever since.”

  “So you down for it?”

  I gave a long sigh. I guess it wouldn’t kill me to go out with her for one night. “What time does it start?”

  “Seven, and I promise you won’t be disappointed,” she said nodding at me pointedly. “You never know you might get to go home with one of the other men in the troupe.”

  “I don’t think so,” I fired back immediately.

  “Why not? It’ll just be a one night stand. You know, just let yourself go with a perfectly gorgeous God of a man.”

  I was not the kind of girl men who looked like that would chose to take home for the night. I carried a bit too much weight around my hips and thighs and I had the kind of face you would miss in a crowd. I was a plain Jane. In all probability I would be taking a taxi home on my own, which actually suited me just fine. “I’ll come by your place and meet you at half-six.”

  “Not necessary. I’ve got the transport all sorted out. I’ll come pick you up at half-six.” She got to her feet, and leaned in to drop a quick kiss on the side of my cheek. “Come on, we need to go and get you a dress.”

  “I have plenty of dresses,” I protested. “I don’t need any more.”

  “Trust me, what you have at home isn’t going to do it for an event like this,” She pulled me to my feet. “We’re going shopping.”

  Chapter 2

  Madison

  “Fine,” I got to my feet reluctantly. Hanging out with Eleanor these days left me feeling more exhausted than ever; she was always running around, dragging me to this and that, as though just my company alone wasn’t enough for her anymore. Now that she had split with Johnathan who she had been with for almost a year, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was going to be seeing a lot more of her than I had been before. In the past she tended to get obsessed with dudes, getting stuck on them at the expense of nearly everything else in her life and needing me to offload on, but at least with this stripper, Chad what’s-his-name, he would be out of the city by the end of the night.

  Although, I had to admit, I was a little cynical about her chances of hooking up with him, anyway. How many women must throw themselves at him all the time? I mean, Eleanor was beautiful, with slim hips, a wasp waist, and bee-stung lips that seemed to have men falling at her feet, but this guy got women hot for a living. It wasn’t like he could be short on them.

  “Oh, I’m so looking forward to this.” She was practically prancing down the street as she peered into the windows of shops we passed by, to find something that looked good on me. I really didn’t want to get anything new, but if it would make her happy and help get her mind off the break-up, then I wasn’t sure I, as a best friend, was allowed to argue. Even though it often felt as though we’d gone in different directions these last few years, I still felt this sense of duty towards her.

  “Ooh, what about that one?” She pointed at a blue dress in the window of a shop I knew just by looking would be way out of my price range. The dress looked pretty good on the mannequin, but I wasn’t sure how it would go on me – the deep blue was a pretty color, and I liked the sweetheart neckline that looked smart and not too over-the-top. Like something I could wear to work.

  “I guess we could give it a go,” I replied gamely, and we headed in to try it on.

  The shop was part of a big shopping center. There was a bookshop sitting next to it that I glanced longingly over at. God, if I could just duck in there for five minutes… I never regretted blowing a big portion of my paycheck on books, even if my sister always mocked me for it. Not that I had much of a paycheck these days, the company I’d done sales for two years just shut down last month. That’s part of the reason I didn’t want to drop all this money on a dress, or on tickets for this show tonight. I didn’t have it to spare. But I would do what I had to, to help Eleanor.

  “Come on, try it on!” she urged as soon as she’d found a version of the dress in my size.

  I took it from her and slipped into it in the changing rooms, trying not to look at myself too closely in the mirror. It wasn’t that I hated my body or anything. No, I just didn’t find much use for it these days. I hadn’t dated anyone in a long time, and, not being one for one-night-stands, that pretty much meant that I hadn’t had sex for a very long time. Also, I had put on some weight. I knew that my hips were wider and my thighs softer than they had been before. It bothered me enough to want to try and pretend it wasn’t happening.

  I looked up once the dress was zipped around me, and I twisted back and forth in front of the mirror while I tried to figure out whether I liked it or not. It certainly wasn’t bad. The blue popped against my dark hair, and it cinched in a few bits of me that needed it, but it wasn’t precisely good either. It just sort of was.

  “You dressed in there?” Eleanor called, and before I could reply she had whipped the curtain back. She looked me up and down and nodded slowly, as though this was exactly what she’d had in mind.

  “Yeah, that’s perfect,” she grinned up at me. “Don’t you think?”

  “Uh, it’s okay,” I nodded. “Not…not really much, to be honest.”

  “Once you’re all done up for going out you’ll feel different,” she promised with some authority. “You should definitely buy it.”

  “You think?” I asked doubtfully.

  “For sure,” she replied firmly.

  I glanced down at the tag hanging off the hip and winced once more. The tickets for this place were going to be expensive too, I knew that, and then there would be the taxi there and back and the overpriced drinks at the venue…

  “Stop worrying,” Eleanor clicked her fingers in my face, pulling me back to the real world. “It’s all going to be fine, alright?”

  “Alright,” I conceded.

  Shooing her out of the dressing room I took another look at myself in the mirror. Yeah, I guess the dress looked okay. I had seen myself look better, but that was before I put on all that weight. Also, I just wasn’t used to seeing myself dressed up. It had been more than a month since I’d had to go into the office with anything resembling a nice outfit on. Most of these days, I sat around in my apartment in jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, reading and cooking and jumping every time the phone rang in case it was someone wanting to offer me a job interview. It never was.

  The job market was as rewarding, it seemed, as the dating one.

  I bought the dress and watched as the saleslady careful folded it in tissue before slipping it into a bag. Fortunately, the one pair of heels that I owned were black and would go with it.

  Eleanor was practically skipping along beside me, she was so excited about the rest of this evening. It was starting to get dark, the light leaking from the sky, just like the hope that I had any chance of getting out of this event which was about as far removed from ‘me’ as it could possibly be.

  “I wonder what he’ll be like in bed,” she wondered, like it was just a matter of time before she found out.

  I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out to her that this hook-up wasn’t a given quite yet. If she wanted to have her little fantasy no good would come for me to shit all over that. I just smiled and nodded along. Might as well get used to it. I was going to have to listen to that for the rest of the night.

  Chapter 3

  Madison

  An hour later I was back home. I dropped the bag with my new dress on the sofa and trudged over to the shower, figuring that I might as well start getting ready. But, just as I switched it on, there was a knock on the door. Wrapped in my towel I hurried over to the door. It could only be my sister.

  “Sasha,” I greeted with a smile.

  She stepped over the threshold to my place without saying a word. She nodded at me, the straps of her handbag held in her teeth as she rooted through her pockets for something. When she was done, she plucked the leather handle from her mouth and gave me a massive grin.

  “Hey,” she gave me a quick hug, and then zoomed in on the bag I had dumped on the sofa. “Ooh, what’
s that?”

  “I got a dress for going out tonight,” I explained, and she opened her mouth, her eyes lighting up, but I held my hand up to stop her before she got too excited. “Eleanor’s dragging me out to this male strip thing,” I rolled my eyes. “She says it’s to help her get over the break-up, but she’s just trying to hook up with the lead dancer.”