My Next Book Boyfriend (Book Boyfriend #1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  My Next Book Boyfriend

  My Next Book Boyfriend

  Prologue

  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

  My Next Book Boyfriend

  by

  Vicki Green

  My Next Book Boyfriend

  Copyright © 2016 by Vicki Green

  Amazon Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Editor: Kathy Krick @K2 Editing:

  www.facebook.com/K2Editing

  Cover Design by Kari Ayasha of Cover to Cover Designs:

  www.facebook.com/CoverToCoverDesigns

  Featuring cover models:

  Faith Danielle: https://www.facebook.com/faithydanielle/

  Don Allen: https://www.facebook.com/DonAllenFitness/

  Photography by Kelsey Kukal-Keeton

  https://www.facebook.com/KKEETONDESIGNS/

  Formatting by Mari of E & F Indie Services:

  www.e-and.f.webs.com

  *Due to strong language and sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18+.

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to you, the readers.

  I hope you enjoy Rylie and Jax’s story, laugh a lot, and find your next book boyfriend.

  My Next Book Boyfriend

  Book Boyfriend #1

  A girl can’t have too many

  Imagination can turn into reality when you least expect it

  Rylie Clark’s life is happy. She loves her best friend, her job, and a good romance story. She lives in her dream world, being taken away to another place, another time. Her list of book boyfriends is a mile long. It grows almost daily but she loves them. Every. Single. One.

  Being the owner of a coffee shop is no easy task when you’re a bit of a klutz and are so shy you can’t form a coherent sentence when speaking to a guy. Every day is a new adventure in the land of hopeless romantics and the book boyfriends who enter her life. Literally.

  Come find out what happens when her next book boyfriend walks into her coffee shop.

  **This book is intended for 18+ readers

  Prologue

  One day, a very long time ago, there lived a beautiful girl. She loved to read and spent most of her waking days and nights heavily enthralled in words. She had no time for a normal life, her imprisonment – a paperback book, the pages turning mesmerized her. Then one day, the most handsome of boys came into….

  Oh! Are you fucking kidding? What boy?

  I’m Rylie Clark. I am thoroughly, explicitly, madly and completely a hopeless romantic, addicted to every word on every page. The strong and empowering women, the chivalrous men, the sexy ladies, and the ever lovin’ bad-boy, rocker God! Many would think I have a problem. I think not. So I had to purchase another bookshelf, adding to the other five. They’re beautiful pieces of furniture, even more so with all my cherished paperbacks sitting on them.

  In alphabetical order by author.

  Every day it’s the same thing. I wake up remembering what I read last night. Dreamt of every feeling and emotion of that last scene. How I was so hot and bothered that I had to take matters into my own hand. Well, the vibrator’s hand. You know, B.O.B. or Battery Operated Boyfriend. Or maybe it was the ending of the book that made me cry. Made me sad that it was over. Maybe it was the sweet Happily Ever After or the bittersweet horrible ending you dread. Or it could have been that cliffhanger and the anxiousness for the next book in the series that WON’T BE OUT FOR ANOTHER THREE MONTHS! Why? Why didn’t I notice it had another book that wasn’t out yet? I would have still bought it but waited to read it until the next one was released. But then…. What if it would have another one after that and I didn’t know about it? Ugh! Either way, it’s the same thing every morning and each morning I’m left with another book hangover and another book boyfriend that I add to my list. A list that is growing by leaps and bounds. I sit up in bed and rub my eyes, open my nightstand and pick up my notebook.

  #244 – Rory Davis

  Sigh. I seriously need to get a life. But then again – I love my life. I love my friends, family, my coffee shop and all the books I’ve read. I love living in the make believe world and have no problem feeling like I’m there, even if it’s only for a little while. And I’m lucky! After finding a new book boyfriend in one book I finish, another one appears within the next book I read. Sigh.

  I make myself get up and walk upstairs to one of my spare bedrooms. My own private place where my comfy oversized chair and library is. My fingers brush over the soft feel of the paperback spines, and my heart speeds up when I find the book I’m looking for. The One. I’ve been dying to read this, and I just received it in the mail yesterday, but I had to finish the book I was reading last night first. I pull the book out of its comfy confines and move my finger over the cover. Chance Geary. Swoon. He’s not only dreamy in my imagination, but I’ve seen the two movies he’s been in too.

  Twenty.

  One.

  Times.

  Some say I lead an ordinary life, hum drum if you will. But they have no idea all the imaginary places I’ve been and the many book boyfriends I’ve imagined myself with, instead of the female lead characters. Oh yes! My life is fulfilled daily and nightly. I mean, who else can say they have a new book boyfriend every day? Can you?

  I look around the room and sigh. “I really need to clean up all the trash in here,” I mutter to myself. Wads of candy wrappers, empty soda cans and bags that once contained popcorn are left on the chair, the table, and even the floor. Okay, so maybe I eat a little while I read.

  I make quick work of taking a shower, shave all the hair that needs to be evicted from my body, brush the hair on my head and then my teeth and look in the mirror. My long blonde hair seems to want to be in a scrunch up lazy fashion today so I shrug and flip off the light. On the way out of my modest condo, I grab my messenger bag, throwing in the book and my reading glasses, making sure my billfold and bubblegum are there and then lock the front door. Okay, so it’s not that modest. I love all the brick buildings. You know the brow
nstones in the movie The Intern? The ones that when you look at them from the tree lined street you just beam inside, feeling warm and cozy, like you’d want to live there? Yeah, my street looks like that. The condos are lined up two to each section, kind of like townhouses yet they are so much bigger. The bay windows give a nostalgic look to them. Like a scene in one of the books I read a while back. Smiling, I just about skip down the sidewalk, only having a couple of blocks to walk to my shop. There’s just the faintness of a cool breeze, but I know it will warm up as the day progresses. I run my fingers over the iron railing of the fence surrounding the patio on the side of my shop, then walk around it to the front door of the old brick building. I was so fortunate this area in the neighbor has made my shop into a little gold mine. I love that part of it has a small reading area and across from it is a place with tables and chairs to relax and do work or have fun on your laptop. The other side has open seating with a few booths and tables and chairs to eat and drink. Then of course the outside patio is perfect, with tables that hold umbrellas for those beautiful warm days. It’s a great area to enjoy the days or evenings. The umbrellas are raised during the sunny days and closed at night or when the weather is inclement.

  The shop also holds so many memories for me as well. I remember helping out here when I was little. Loving it when Gram let me help her bake some goodies and was proud when she’d tell customers that I made them myself, even when she did most of the work. It filled my heart when Gram left the business to me when she passed away but the hardest part was letting her go. I lived with her after Mom left, wanting to go away to school and to make something of herself instead of being tied down with a baby. And Dad? Oh, he was some boyfriend my mom had in high school that she couldn’t live without at the time. But once he found out about her being pregnant with me, he hit the road and never looked back. Yes, I was one of those kids who was made from a short-lived high school romance, most likely conceived in the back seat of his car. Thank God for Gram. She was everything to me, and I miss her terribly.

  Mom, you ask? Just like good ol’ Dad, she never looked back either. I haven’t heard from or seen her for eighteen years and neither did Gram. I felt bad for Gram. Her only daughter, only child, treating her that way. I’m never having kids. I love babies but why would I want to go through that? It’s kinda like the overpopulation of animals. Some people should get them neutered but don’t. But then again, I know if I met the right person I’ll want to have kids. I know I’d love them and never let them have a life without love. Yeah, I’m not gonna get fixed or anything. For now, I just choose not to do anything that would let that happen, if you know what I mean. I’m just fine with B.O.B. That reminds me – I need to get more batteries. I should really think about buying stock in the battery company. I’d make a fortune on just my purchases alone.

  I peek in the front window and see Molly’s already in there setting up everything, getting ready to open for the day. Molly. My bestie and someone I couldn’t have ever gotten through my life without. I unlock the door, shifting the lock back into place, and waltz to the counter, stop, set my backpack down and tiptoe around the counter. She’s hunched over, taking out milk from the small fridge below it and I grab her waist. “BOO!” She throws the jug up in the air, milk spews all over the floor, hitting the cabinets and counter in its wake. “Buahahahaha…. Oh! Oomph!” She turns in fear and grabs my arms, both of us sliding and landing on the sticky slick floor, my bum pulsating from the impact.

  She slides around in the milkiness and lowers her eyebrows. “What the hell, Ry! Trying to give me a freaking heart attack?” She gives me her famous smirk, and I press my lips together trying not to laugh full out. “I’m running out of clean clothes here!”

  Molly has been my best friend since grade school. I was the quiet and klutzy one where she was the loud and always cool one. My nose was always stuck in a book while she was always trying to coax me to go out with her and have fun. I was shy where she was – uh – not. I have long blonde hair and blue eyes where her eyes are a different shade of blue, but her blonde hair was always cut short, spiked, and always had streaks of different colors in different places, and the colors changed all the time. I had a few tattoos and a belly piercing where she had many tattoos and many piercings. We were like night and day. I was Shirley to her Laverne. Mindy to her Mork. But we became inseparable early on and complement each other.

  I pout but then a laugh bursts from my mouth. I reach over and grab some rags, throwing one at her, and then start to help clean up the mess, while my other hand rubs the soreness on my bum. “I have extra clothes in back.” I laugh again as her feet slide in the thick milky creaminess as she tries to stand. I manage to get up and bend over extending my hand. She grabs it and I lean back pulling until my feet slide again and down we go. She raises her head from my crotch and smiles. “Ha. Get outta there and quit fooling around.” She gives me a growl as her face scrunches and she backs up, getting up on her knees. I manage to grab hold of the counter and carefully stand again, turn and walk out of the mess and into the back room. Grabbing the mop and bucket, I roll it into the room and start cleaning. “Can’t believe you’re clowning around when we need to open in....” A timer in the back room dings and I look at the clock over the front door. “Fifteen minutes!”

  She slides past me, her feet on rags, cleaning as she goes and finally makes it behind me. I hear one of the oven doors open with a squeak. “Yeah, I’m clowning around. You almost needed to call 911.” The door closes with a bang and the familiar sounds waft around me along with the fantastic aroma of donuts and pastries. I’m surprised after all these years that I don’t weigh three hundred pounds. Somehow I’ve managed to keep my slim figure. Gram used to say I have a hollow leg and that everything I eat just goes down it and evaporates. “Not sure why I was so surprised. Not like you haven’t done that a gazillion times.” I need to come up with some new stuff. I finish mopping the floor, pushing the bucket of milky water aside, and grab a sponge from the sink under the counter and start wiping off the cabinets and counters. “Who is it today? Derk Bentley?” Her voice louder as she walks into the room. “You’re not still brooding, are you?”

  Brooding? Me? I would never. Okay, I would but not today.

  I sigh and roll my eyes, then shake my head from that dream of a story. “No. He was last week. Rory Davis.” I sigh again, watching her walk around me to place a tray of fresh assorted donuts on the glass counter. “But today… I start The One,” I say dreamily. She reads some of the stories I’ve read. Okay, she reads them all, once I’ve finished. But she doesn’t read nearly as fast as I do and still teases me, endlessly. Secretly, she loves them all too but would never admit it. We love to have some of our treats and coffee at night after we clean up and lock the doors, and we’ll talk about the books. Now that’s my idea of a fun night!

  “Oh! Who’s in that one?” she asks as she flits by on her way back for more goodies.

  I rest my elbows against the counter and look at the front door in my dreamy state. My eyes widen as a man appears, looking in through the glass of the front door, his hand over his forehead, like that will make him see inside any better. It can’t be? Can it? I blink several times, my heartrate increasing to speedboat mode, and my hand covers my chest, like that will make it slow down. Chance Geary?

  “Hey, isn’t that guy in those two movies? Oh, what’s the name of them? And didn’t we meet him one time?” Molly asks.

  My eyes keep blinking, like they have something in them that won’t come out. “A Time For Love and Breaking All The Rules,” I whisper.

  “Yeah! That’s them! What the….” I feel her next to me, but I can’t move my eyes from the man at the door. He taps on the glass. His beautiful smile widens across his handsome face.

  “Chance Geary,” I whisper.

  “Oh, my fucking God!” I feel her move and then her back is filling my eyesight, walking toward
the front door.

  “NO! Don’t open that door!” I scream and back up until I hit the counter behind me.

  She turns her head, giving me a confused look. “What the hell, Ry?”

  I start walking sideways, his face coming into view behind the window again. I reach the safety of the door to the back room and grip the wide frame. His eyes zone to mine and his smile spreads. “Don’t you dare open that fucking door until I’m safely back here. Wait on him and then get him outta here fast.” I start backing into the room and peer around the doorframe. I really should have put that peephole into the wall like I wanted to years ago. I would have too, except she told me that would be creepy. She looks at me and laughs, knowing how shy I am. She’s letting it slide now, but I know once he’s gone, I’m gonna get an earful. I step back more when she turns and unlocks the door and then I take off running to the safety of the bathroom and shut the door.

  Story of my life.

  Now, let’s take a step back, shall we?

  Chapter 1

  I find myself looking around the living room, her belongings and memories everywhere. How can I box up a lifetime of things? A lifetime of her. How do I know which things to keep and which to give to the needy? So many decisions I don’t want to make. She was everything to me, and now she’s gone. Four days ago was the day I had to say goodbye to her for the final time, then yesterday I’m told by her lawyer that she left me the condo that I grew up in, which is paid for, and The Coffee Shop, which is not. Gram always hoped that when she left me, she’d be able to help make my life easier and she did. But I’d give it all back in a heartbeat if she was here with me now.