When Ian Devilish loses a bet to his twin brother, he didn’t expect to end up on a reality cooking show. Shame he can’t cook. The one bright spot is that he’s teamed up with a pretty little female – and now he’s going from a simmer to a full-on burn.
Laughter makes the world go around, love makes it sweet, and the Devilish clan of men make it a very hot and entertaining ride!
A fast, fun and steamy read.
Targeted Age Group:: 18+
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I like to read fun, steamy romances, and sometimes I'm looking for a series that also features shorter reads. I came up with the idea of doing a series of short, steamy novellas featuring a a group of men related to each other – hence the Devilish clan <g>. It's just plain fun and feel-good, not meant to be taken seriously.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Oddly enough, these characters just came s easily to me. I was playing Mahjong and the idea slowly crept into my mind, along with the characters needed. The more I pondered the series and what I wanted, the characters just popped out at me, like they'd been waiting all along to surface!
Book Sample
“I am not bloody doing it and that’s final!”
“You are.”
“Not in this bloody lifetime!”
“You will.”
“I will fling myself in front of a fucking truck first!”
“Kurt is right here.”
“I wouldn’t let that bastard touch me with a ten foot pole!”
“He’s a qualified ambo.”
“I wouldn’t let him near a dead dog!”
“But you’re not a dog, so all’s good.”
“It is not good!” Fuming, Ian shoved his face within inches of his identical twin’s. “You bastard!”
Isaac yawned.
CJ looked up from where he sprawled back in a chair reading a motorcycle magazine. “What?”
“This!” Ian waved the piece of paper in front of his cousin’s nose.
“And that is…?”
“My idiot brother’s idea of a joke.”
“Not a joke,” Kurt observed from where he sat munching on Isaac’s chocolate cake.
CJ looked blank for a second before his eyes widened. “Oh, mate. You lost the bet, didn’t you?”
Ian ground his teeth.
“He did,” Isaac said with supreme satisfaction. “I won, he lost. He goes on this cooking show.”
“And you laugh your arse off.” Licking his fingertip, Kurt scraped it through the crumbs on the plate, ensuring he’d not missed one bit of the delicious heart-clogger. “Oh man, this is sooooo good.”
Rob pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You look like you’re going to orgasm any second.”
“Right now, I could happily shoot my load.”
At this, the men gathered on the front veranda of Wes’s house gagged a little.
“Dirty bastard.” CJ threw the magazine at his cousin.
Kurt ducked and it sailed neatly over the veranda rail to land amongst a nest of weeds. Straightening, he peered over the rail. “When are you going to clean this shit up, Wes?”
“Sometime.” Wes yawned from his slouched position in the big chair, his bare feet stuck up on the rail. “Maybe never. Never sounds good.”
“He doesn’t intend to stay here,” Isaac said. “So why would he drag his idle bones around a garden he doesn’t care about?”
“Never mind the bloody garden.” Ian screwed up the paper and threw it at Isaac, bouncing it off his forehead. “I’m not doing this.”
“You are.”
CJ got up and jumped over the veranda rail into the patch of weeds – or what was once a daisy patch.
“Have to,” Kurt agreed.
“Them’s the rules,” Wes added.
CJ tossed the magazine back over the rail. “Besides, if you refuse this, then you cannot bet against us ever again.”
Ian’s jaw clenched.
Vaulting with ridiculous ease over the rail, CJ narrowly missed ending up in a swearing Kurt’s lap. Dropping back into the camp chair, he picked up the magazine and opened it. “I lost that bet to you and you made me honour it by riding around town on my beast in a tutu with a pink bow stuck onto my helmet.”
A round of snickering went around the group.
“I fucking got pulled over by Johnno. He and his rat-faced cop buddy even took a photo, which I’m sure goes against the whole cop ethics or some shit, but did I fucking complain?”
“Yes,” they all chorused.
“No I fucking did not. So suck it up, Ian. It’s just a cooking show. What the hell can go wrong with a cooking show?”
“The fact he can’t even boil water,” Wes replied.
“Hey.” Rob turned a thoughtful expression Isaac’s way. “How did you manage to get Ian on the show? I mean, doesn’t he have to pass a demo or casting or something?”
“He does.” Isaac grinned. “He did. And he did very well.”
Everyone stared at Ian.
Ian stared at Isaac. “I didn’t.”
“Oh yeah, you did.” Isaac’s grin widened.
“Holy shit. You went to the demo pretending to be me, didn’t you?”
“Great to be identical twins, right?”
“You don’t think they’re going to know the difference?”
“I’m supremely confident.”
“You’re supremely full of shit.”
Now that the cake was gone, Kurt focused on Isaac. “So this show, what’s Ian got to do?”
Sitting back in the chair, Ian folded his arms and scowled. These bastards might think it was funny, but it was the least funny thing he could think of. A cooking show? Seriously? Him on national TV making a fucking idiot of himself? Never going to happen, even if he had to kill Isaac to make the bet null and void.
Might just kill the grinning idiot anyway to make himself feel better.
“And what is this show anyway?” Wes queried.
Opening the screwed-up ball of paper, Isaac smoothed out the crinkles and explained. “It’s called ‘Strangers Cooking’ with the prize being $200,000. Basically, the producers get a group of strangers together and match them up into teams of two. Then they pit them against the other teams in cooking contests. It’s more the drama than the cooking.”
Ian glared at him.
Isaac continued happily, “It’s a study in human reactions as two strangers have to rely on each other to work together and produce the best dishes.”
Another round of snickers went around the group of cousins and brothers.
Except for Ian. Nothing about this was even remotely funny. How could his brother do this to him?
Quite easily, apparently.
“So how’d you get Ian in?” Wes queried. “Was it hard?”
“Not really. I filled in the application form, sent in my photo, got a call up, went and did a demo of my cooking, spoke to the galahs that choose the contestants, and got the acceptance letter.” Screwing up the paper, Isaac flung it back at Ian.
It bounced off his brother’s nose.
Ian glared at him.
“All the dates and details are there,” Isaac informed him. “Read up on it.”
“When this shit is over, I am going to fuck you up good.”
“Mate,” CJ said, “Isaac’s your brother. That’s incest.”
“And you, you’re next.”
“I’m your cousin. Still comes under incest.”
Fuming, Ian glowered.
Isaac smiled widely. “I’ll give you a crash course in cooking.”
“You bastard.”
“Never let it be said a Devilish man doesn’t rise to the challenge. That’s a cooking joke, in case you don’t get it.”
Ian was out of the chair and on his brother in seconds. Drinks went flying, chairs went over, and cursing filled the air.
Sitting to one side, Rob took his glasses off and polished them with the hem of his shirt.
“Want to lay a bet on the winner?” Wes asked.
“Doesn’t matter who wins the fight,” Rob replied. “Isaac’s already won the bet.”
“I’m going to tape this show,” CJ declared. “Put it in the Devilish Men Hall of Infamy. When does it start?”
“Not soon enough.”
~*~
This is it. This is my big chance.
Looking around the room, Rachel wondered who was going to be her partner in this get-rich scheme. There was a wide assortment of men and women of all ages, colours and sizes.
Maybe she’d get that cosy-looking woman with the calculating eyes. She’d be ideal. Looked mumsy but had the eye of a cold-blooded go-getter. Yeah, she’d be a good partner. She had a good chance of getting that money with Dead-Eye Mum by her side.
Rachel’s gaze skimmed around, mentally ‘okaying’ and ‘noping’.
Weedy Bloke – nope. How much cooking could he do when he was built like a pipe cleaner? Then again, maybe he had a fast metabolism.
Busty blonde? She was eyeballing the producer like she wanted to eat him. Huh, might be a possible ‘okay’, she could probably charm him into letting them win.
Little Indian bloke? He had a kind face and she just bet he could cook a curry hot enough to make a person’s eyes water. Good thing, because she couldn’t cook curry to save her life.
The tall, blonde bloke with the killer blue eyes and strikingly handsome face? With those shoulders and muscular arms, he probably slaughtered cattle all day and hauled them around on his back. He also looked bored shitless. Probably up himself. So that’d be a big fat nope.
The busty blonde might give him a go, however, because her attention had switched to him and she looked hungry.
Blondie Boy grinned at her. Blondie Girl simpered back. Blondie Boy winked. Blondie girl thrust her boobs out. Blondie Boy’s eyebrows bobbed up and down.
Oh boy. Rachel did a mental eye roll.
Several people from the production team were walking around sizing everyone up while talking into their headsets. Cameras were being angled towards a certain spot, and people doing various other things were walking backward and forward.
Standing to one side, Rachel nervously tugged her skirt straight. No idea why, but wardrobe had dressed her to look like little Miss 1960s Housewife. Blondie Girl looked like beach bunny in tiny jean shorts and a tight shirt, the bottom of which was tied in a neat knot to bare a very flat belly. Blondie Boy was dressed like some kind of surfie, complete with board shorts and shirt with blue print palm leaves all over it. Dead-Eye Mum was in pink slacks with pale green t-shirt and bright orange lipstick. She looked like the leftovers from a 70s sitcom. As for the Indian bloke, he was dressed in a rather loose brown/beige shirt and daggy shorts that reached his shins.
What the hell was that about?
In fact, every person there had been dressed by wardrobe, and heck if Rachel knew why any of them were dressed the way they were. She certainly didn’t remember any of them walking in looking like that.
Still, she supposed there was a reason for it all. Maybe she should have taken more notice of this show when her friend had raved about it. Maybe she should have watched more than two episodes before agreeing to enter the contest to win money.
Maybe she should have done a lot of things instead, but this had seemed like a good idea at the time. It also helped that she’d gone through an entire bottle of red wine by herself while filling out the application form.
After a bottle of red, it had seemed like a fantastic idea.
The only saving grace was that she had inside information from her friend who was boinking someone in the know, mainly because their niece’s cousin’s daughter’s sister worked on the show. The big secret this season was that one person could cook and the other person they were teamed up with couldn’t cook as well as they believed. But that was okay, she was confident. Had to be confident. All she had to do was follow the rules and she was halfway home. She could also keep her cool under pressure.
At the end of the day, she had as good a chance as anyone of winning that money.
A sudden flurry of activity had her glancing up to see a woman in a headset start to split the people in two groups, calling out names and waving those who replied to the left or the right of a set of stairs.
“Rachel Walder!”
“Here!” She held up a hand.
“This isn’t school, honey. Stand over there.” The woman pointed to the group on the right.
Flushing a little at the snicker from Weedy Bloke, Rachel hurried across the room to take a position beside him. Blondie Girl came up on her other side.
The group opposite them was also growing, with Blondie Boy helping to swell the ranks.
“That hunk of beef is mine,” breathed Blondie Girl.
“Just him?” Rachel asked.
“And the producer.”
“Anyone else on the list? How about the camera man for a good angle?”
Blonde Girl actually studied the camera crew. “Which one?”
“Geez. Take your pick.”
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