Ulterior Motives (27 page)

“Can we get married in Chicago after I resign?” she said as he started undressing her.

“Okay. I’ll live here until we leave Cincinnati”

“Okay.” She gasped. “Oh, do that again. Mmm...”

“Tu sei la piu bella donna in tutto il mondo.”

“That’s quite a good line,” she admitted. “What else did your Italian buddy teach you?”

“Vuoi una cigaretta?”

“I don’t smoke.” She caught her breath as he unfastened her bra and let it drop to the floor.

“How about
cerco un momento estatico,”
he murmured, his lips hot against her breasts.

She slid his shirt from his shoulders and trailed her hands across his hard chest. “I want more than just one ecstatic moment with you.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said as he slid her skirt down her hips. “I love to touch you, Shelley.”

“And you do it so well,” she whispered, pressing her breasts against his chest. Everything about him excited her.

She started unbuckling his belt, eager to touch every part of him.

“It’s like learning a language,” he told her. “I get even better with daily practice.”

She laughed as he tumbled her onto the bed, murmuring to her in loving English, intimate French, inept Italian, and garbled Arabic. She opened herself to him, body, and soul, giving and taking love, and knew that this special magic would always exist between them, in any language.

The End
 

Author's Note

A long time ago, I worked for a few months at a language school in downtown Cincinnati. I had been a languages major in college (French and Italian), and when I returned to the US after several years of living overseas and needed to find work, a language school seemed like a natural fit for me.
 

I sold my first book soon after I started working for them, but I didn’t intend to quit my day job because of that. I had been raised in a writer’s household, so I was well aware of how unstable the writing life is—and particularly of how unstable writing
income
is. But I kept encountering the same problems in that job that Shelley encounters with her company in this novel, such as poor pay and bad management. Since I’m a much less patient person than the heroine of
Ulterior Motives
is, I quit within months. (I also had three other jobs to keep me going: restaurant work, kennel work, and teaching classes at a community center.)

Fortunately, I sold two more books that year, so things worked out well; and this was one of those books. I was still a new writer learning my craft, and I adhered to the traditional advice in my earliest books: Write what you know. In
Ulterior Motives
, I started with something I knew, such as the daily routines and management problems of a language school, and then added fun elements, such as a world-traveling hero with a roguish past who’s come to town to shake up the heroine’s orderly life.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed
Ulterior Motives.
I’m reissuing the rest of my Leone romance novels in ebook format, so check your favorite ebook vendor to see what’s available. You might also want to try some of my fantasy novels, such as my Esther Diamond series, which are paranormal novels about a struggling actress who gets involved in supernatural misadventures while being wooed by a skeptical cop.

You can find more information about my books, some fun extras, and various excerpts on my website at
www.LauraLeone.com
.

Also By This Author

Romance Novels
(written as Laura Leone)
 

(Singe Title Contemporary)

Fallen From Grace

Fever Dreams

(Erotic)

Nights of Fire

(Category/Series Romance)

Sleight of Hand

Celestial Bodies

Guilty Secrets

Ulterior Motives

The Bandit King

A Woman's Work

Mastersons In Paradise

I:
Untouched By Man

II:
Under the Voodoo Moon

Fame

I:
A Wilder Name

II:
The Black Sheep

Oak Hill

I:
One Sultry Summer

II:
Upon A Midnight Clear

Fantasy Novels
(written as Laura Resnick)
 

Esther Diamond Series
 

(Urban Fantasy)

Disappearing Nightly

Doppelgangster

Unsympathetic Magic

Vamparazzi
 

Polterheist

The Misfortune Cookie

 
The Chronicles of Sirkara

(Traditional Fantasy)
 

In Legend Born

The White Dragon

The Destroyer Goddess

Non-Fiction

A Blonde In Africa
 

Rejection, Romance, and Royalties (The Wacky World of A Working Writer)

Short Fiction

(Collected Works)

Highway To Heaven
 

Maybe You've Heard of Me?
 

The Muse Afire

About the Author

Laura Resnick is the author of many books, short stories, articles, and columns. Her Esther Diamond urban fantasy series, which features the supernatural misadventures of a struggling actress in New York, has received enthusiastic praise from
Library Journal
and
Publishers Weekly
. The author's epic fantasy novels include
In Legend Born
,
The White Dragon
, which made several "Year's Best" lists, and
The Destroyer Goddess
, which
Publishers Weekly
describes as "a marvel of storytelling."

Before she began writing fantasy, Resnick was the award-wining author of more than a dozen contemporary romance novels, which she wrote under the pseudonym Laura Leone. Her romance novel
Fallen From Grace
was a Rita Award finalist and has been listed by DearAuthor.com as one of the best 100 novels in the genre.

A longtime opinion columnist, Resnick's book
Rejection, Romance, and Royalties: The Wacky World of a Working Writer
is a collection of her previous essays about the writing life and the publishing industry.

You can find her on the Web at:
www.LauraResnick.com