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Category: Romance
Description: When her husband is killed in the car accident, Sophie McGraw finds herself all alone and desperate. The one person who reaches out to help her by offering her both a job and a place to live is her husband's best friend Erik Sebastian. Even as Erik tries to convince himself that his only interest in the widow of his best friend Kevin is one of loyalty, that she is strictly 'off limits', he knows that what he feels for Sophie is much stronger than the friendship he believes she wants from him. There is a chemistry that ignites between them that cannot be denied. But the closer Erik gets to Sophie the more he realizes that her marriage to Kevin was anything but perfect, as she would have him believe. The truth is nothing about Sophie McGraw is remotely as it seems.
eBook Publisher: New Concepts Publishing, 2010
eBookwise Release Date: February 2010

14 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [224 KB]
Words: 55148
Reading time: 157-220 min.

Chapter One

Even after Erik Sebastian parked his SUV close to the entrance of Sophie's apartment building, he still couldn't bring himself to get out of the vehicle.

Instead, he sat staring up at her apartment and wondering what in the world was wrong with him lately. What had happened to the in control, never-lose-any-sleep-over-a-woman guy. The guy who didn't let anything shake him--especially not a woman.

The guy looking back at him in the rearview mirror had never felt so uncertain about a woman before. Certainly had never tried this hard to make one happy.

This whole friendship slash I-don't-have-any-idea-what-I'm-doing-anymore thing with Sophie McGraw was bordering on obsessive and as out of character as it got for him.

Friendship--with a woman he found attractive? Was this the first real sign he'd finally slipped over the edge? Maybe working twenty-hour days was starting to take its toll on his mental stability. This was not the Erik Sebastian that anyone who knew him would recognize, that's for sure.

Nevertheless, friendship was all that Sophie had left to offer any man. After all, Kevin, Erik's best friend, had been the love of her life.

Still, Erik couldn't keep from cringing all over again at the thought of badly he was betraying his best friend by even having these feelings for Sophie in the first place.

Was it betrayal? If he was the only one who felt this way? Friendship was the only hope he had with her and he was just desperate enough to take whatever she would give him. He could be happy being her friend, couldn't he?

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to convince himself of that now anymore than he had been the dozen or more times he'd had this very same argument. What he felt for Sophie went way beyond wanting to be her friend. It might be all she had to offer him, but it was the last thing he wanted to settle for with her.

No matter how hard he tried to convince himself that he had her best interests at heart, Erik knew he would do anything to keep in his life. Even if it meant just being her friend.

Eight months ago, this whole conversation he was having with himself right now would have seemed pretty funny. After all, the thought of him, one of New York's most notorious bachelor's, falling helplessly in love with any woman was hilarious. Especially one who didn't know he existed beyond that dreaded F word.

Love wasn't even supposed to be a part of his vocabulary. He was business first, and then women, which translated to physical satisfaction, second.

Oh sure, he enjoyed the dating thing--the hunt--but that was all it was. Just a game. There wasn't time in his life for love, or romance, or happily-ever-afters.

At least that was what he'd always believed until eight months ago when Sophie McGraw, brand new wife to his best friend since college, walked into his apartment and destroyed all of those excuses once and forever.

Until that particular Wednesday night at exactly seven minutes past eight in the evening, he'd never believed in the existence of such things at love at first sight--or love at any sight, for that matter. But then again, he'd never met the right woman.

Until now. Until Sophie.