Excited about Vi Keeland’s upcoming release,
The Rivals? Check out this SNEAK PEEK
Title: The Rivals
Author: Vi Keeland
Genre: Standalone Contemporary Romance
Release Date: July 13, 2020
Blurb
The feud
between Weston Lockwood and me started at the altar.
Only
neither of us attended the wedding, and the nuptials happened decades before
either of us was born.
Our
grandfathers had been best friends and business partners, at least up until my
grandfather’s wedding day—when his bride-to-be blurted out she couldn’t marry
him because she was also in love with Weston‘s grandfather.
The two men
spent years fighting over Grace Copeland, who also happened to be their third
business partner. But in the end, neither man could steal half of her
heart away from the other.
Eventually,
they all went their separate ways. Our
grandfathers married other women, and the two men became one of the biggest
business rivals in history.
Our fathers
continued the family tradition of feuding.
And then Weston and I did, too.
For the
most part, we kept as much distance as possible.
Until the
day the woman who started the feud died—and unexpectedly left one of the most
valuable hotels in the world to our grandfathers to share.
Now I’m
stuck in a hotel with the man I was born to hate, trying to unravel the mess
our families inherited.
As usual,
it didn’t take long for us to be at each other’s throats.
Weston
Lockwood was everything I hated: tall, smart, cocky, and too gorgeous for his
own good. We were fire and ice.
But that
shouldn’t be an issue. Our families were used to being at war. There was just
one minor problem, though. Every time
Weston and I fought, we somehow wound up in bed.
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Excerpt
Sophia
“What
the hell?” I pressed the button on the elevator panel a second time. It
illuminated, yet the car continued to sit there. So I jabbed my finger at it a
third time. Finally, the doors started to glide closed. Just as
they were about to shut completely, a shoe blocked them from closing.
A wingtip shoe.
Weston’s
smiling face was there to greet me when the doors bounced open.
My
blood was near boiling. “So help me, Lockwood, if you try to get in this car, I
can’t be responsible for what happens to you. I’m not in the mood
anymore.”
He
entered the elevator anyway. “Come on, Fifi. What’s wrong? I’m just playing
around. You’re taking things way too seriously.”
I
counted to ten in my head, but it didn’t help. F$%& it. He wanted
to get a rise out of me? He was going to get one. The doors slid shut
again, and I turned and backed him into a corner. Seeing my face, he at least
had the decency to look a little nervous.
“You
wanna know what’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong! My father thinks I’m inept
because I don’t have an appendage dangling between my legs. The man I spent the
last eighteen months with was cheating on me with one of my cousins. Again.
I hate New York City. I despise the Lockwood family. And you think you can get
away with anything you want just because you have a big d$%&.” I jabbed my
finger into his chest and punctuated each staccato word with another
stab.
“I’m
Tired.
Of.
Men.
My
father.
Liam.
You.
Every
single f$%&ing one of you. So leave me the hell alone!”
Frazzled,
I turned back around and waited for the door to open, only to realize we hadn’t
started to move yet. Great. Just
f$%&ing great. I jabbed the button a few more times, closed my eyes, and took
deep, cleansing breaths as we started to move. Halfway through breath three, I
felt the heat of Weston’s body behind me. He had to have moved closer. I
continued to try to ignore him.
But
the f$%&er still smelled good.
How
the hell could that be? Whose cologne lasted for—what had it been
now?—twelve hours? After the gauntlet run he’d sent me on across town this
morning, I probably smelled like BO. It pissed me off that the a$%hole smelled...f$%&ing
delicious.
He
moved closer, and I felt his breath tickle my neck.
“So,”
he whispered in a gravelly voice. “You think my d$%&’s big.”
I
turned and scowled at him. While this morning he’d been clean-shaven,
he now had a five o’clock shadow all along his chiseled jaw. It gave
him a sinister look. The suit that hugged his broad shoulders probably cost
more than Liam’s entire sweater wardrobe. Weston Lockwood was everything I
hated in a man—wealthy, good looking, cocky, arrogant, and fearless. Liam would
hate him. My father already hated him. And at the moment, those were actually
Weston’s strong points.
While
I struggled with my body reacting to his scent and how much I liked the stubble
on his face, Weston slowly reached out and put a hand on my hip. At first, I
assumed he thought he needed to steady me, as he had when I’d wobbled in the
bar. Had I wobbled again? I didn’t think I had. But I must’ve.
Though
when his hand glided from my hip around to my ass, there was
no misunderstanding his intention. He was not trying to
help me stay on my feet. In my head, my immediate reaction was to scream at
him, but somehow my throat felt too clogged to speak.
I
made the mistake of looking up from his jaw into his blue eyes. Heat flickered,
turning them almost gray, and his eyes dropped to my
lips.
No.
Just no.
This was not happening.
Not again.
My
heart thundered in my chest, and the blood in my ears roared so loudly I almost
didn’t hear the ding of the elevator announcing that we’d arrived at my floor.
Thankfully it snapped me out of whatever moment of insanity I’d slipped
into.
“I…I
need to go.”
It
took all of my focus to put one foot in front of the other, but I managed to
walk down the hall and make it to my room.
Though…
I
wasn’t alone.
Author Bio
Vi Keeland
is a #1 New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestselling author.
With millions of books sold, her titles have appeared in over a hundred
Bestseller lists and are currently translated in twenty-five languages. She
resides in New York with her husband and their three children where she is
living out her own happily ever after with the boy she met at age six.
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