Bidding on Brooks
The Winslow
Brothers, Book 1
Katy
Regnery
Genre: Contemporary romance
Cover Artist: Kim Killion, Hot Damn
Designs
One
bachelor auction.
Two
good friends.
When
Skye agrees to bid on her friend, Brooks, the last thing she expects to lose is
her heart.
Bidding
on Brooks
is the first of four books about the Philadelphia-based, wildly-handsome
Winslow brothers who are all on the look-out for love.
(Except Preston. He's been down that road before and still has the scars to prove it. And maybe Cameron, because he's super-hot, but too hot-headed to be decent boyfriend material...)
Railroaded into a bachelor auction by his sister, Jessica, Brooks Winslow asks his friend, Skye Sorenson, to bid on him to avoid the possibility of any romantic entanglements. Fiercely competitive and protective of those he cares for, Brooks was profoundly affected by the loss of his father at an early age. A witness to his mother's terrible loneliness and his siblings' grief, the ex-Olympian has never allowed himself to fall in love.
Skye Sorenson, the plucky mechanic at Sorenson Marina, where Brooks moors his three sailboats, is a credible sailor in her own right...and has quietly lusted after Brooks for years. But her longstanding friendship with Brooks has always made romance seem impossible.
When Skye agrees to bid on Brooks, the two cast off for a weeklong ocean adventure on Brooks' sailboat, The Zephyr, where the last thing Skye expects to lose is her heart.
Return to the world created in the English Brothers books with this fresh foursome of scorching hot Winslow Brothers!
(Except Preston. He's been down that road before and still has the scars to prove it. And maybe Cameron, because he's super-hot, but too hot-headed to be decent boyfriend material...)
Railroaded into a bachelor auction by his sister, Jessica, Brooks Winslow asks his friend, Skye Sorenson, to bid on him to avoid the possibility of any romantic entanglements. Fiercely competitive and protective of those he cares for, Brooks was profoundly affected by the loss of his father at an early age. A witness to his mother's terrible loneliness and his siblings' grief, the ex-Olympian has never allowed himself to fall in love.
Skye Sorenson, the plucky mechanic at Sorenson Marina, where Brooks moors his three sailboats, is a credible sailor in her own right...and has quietly lusted after Brooks for years. But her longstanding friendship with Brooks has always made romance seem impossible.
When Skye agrees to bid on Brooks, the two cast off for a weeklong ocean adventure on Brooks' sailboat, The Zephyr, where the last thing Skye expects to lose is her heart.
Return to the world created in the English Brothers books with this fresh foursome of scorching hot Winslow Brothers!
Excerpt
from Chapter 1 Bidding on Brooks
(All
rights reserved. Used with permission from Katy Regnery)
“Please, Skye. Just listen. You’re
the perfect person for this. You’ve got to help me out.”
Skye Sorenson
rolled her eyes at Brooks Winslow, adjusting the brim of her baseball cap as
she swept past him and headed down the dock for her next job.
“I mean it, Skye.
I’m up a tree…and we’re friends. Can’t you give me a hand?”
Dreamy
Delight needed a new float switch and bilge pump, which would
be difficult to manage with Brooks Winslow standing on the dock, looking
casually gorgeous as he yammered at her about some charity event he wanted her
to attend.
Gazing at her
hands, she noted they were still covered with engine grease from the oil change
she’d just handled on the outboard motor of a J-24 sailboat. Not wanting to get
black fingerprints on the white fiberglass of the motorboat she was about to
service, she took a bandana out of the back pocket of her overalls then turned
to face Brooks as she wiped her fingers.
“Are you going to
follow me around all afternoon if I don’t listen?”
“Umm…pretty much.”
She sighed with
feigned annoyance. “Fine. You have my attention. Tell it to me again.”
Brooks looked
relieved and gave her a small grin that—damn
it—made Skye’s stomach flutter.
“Knew you wouldn’t
let me down.”
“Haven’t said yes
to anything yet,” she said, shoving the bandana back into her pocket and
crossing her arms over her chest.
“My sister,
Jessica, is back in Philly this summer to get married. To keep busy, she’s
organized some big benefit for the Institute of Contemporary Art. She and her
girlfriends thought it would be fun to volunteer their single brothers to be
auctioned off.”
“Auctioned off?”
“Yeah…a bachelor
auction.”
“Some sister,”
said Skye, unable to keep the teasing from her voice.
“It’s for
charity,” he said defensively, running a hand through his waves of jet black
hair.
“Okay. So you got
roped into it.” She thought back to an old movie she’d seen once where women
were auctioned off as dates. At each of their feet had been a pretty lunch
basket, and the man that was the highest bidder won a homemade lunch with the
girl of his choice. “What do you have to do? Have lunch with someone?”
“Oh, no,” he said
with irritation, pursing his lips. “Nothing that painless. Jess wants to make
money. Big money. She had to think
bigger than lunch.”
Skye stared up at
him. “Dinner?”
“Nope.”
“Two dinners?”
“Nuh-uh.”
She gestured to
the sleek Sportscruiser moored at the end of the dock that she was supposed to
be working on. “I’m out of guesses, Brooks…and that pump isn’t going to fix
itself, so—”
“A sail. She’s
auctioning off a sail. With me.”
“Well, I don’t
know why you’re complaining. You love sailing. You love women. What’s the
problem?”
Skye tilted her
head to the side, looking at Brooks’ way-too-handsome face with a cheeky grin.
Long ago Skye had
accepted the fact that Brooks would never see her as anything but a great
mechanic, a proficient sailor, and a long-time friend. She was—honestly and
truly—satisfied with that status quo between them. He was rich and powerful, an
ex-Olympian and world-renowned sailor from Philadelphia, while Skye lived a
much quieter life, working as a “handyman” at her dad’s marina in Maryland.
What they had in common was a deep love of boats and mutual respect for one
another’s nautical skills, and that was just enough to keep their friendship
intact.
The first time
Skye had ever seen Brooks Winslow was the day he came down to her father’s
marina to claim the fifteen foot Primrose wood-hulled sailboat gifted to him
from his parents for his fifteenth birthday. He swaggered into Sorenson Marina,
flashing his perfect smile at her, and her ten-year-old heart had grown wings
as she’d discreetly followed him down the dock. She was instantly infatuated
with Brooks, of course, but much more, Skye harbored a deep devotion to his
Primrose, the most beautiful little double-ended Daycruiser she’d ever seen.
Her stomach had been in knots as she walked behind him from a discreet
distance, hopeful that he would handle the little sailboat with the grace and
care she deserved. But Skye’s worries turned out to be unfounded. He’d treated
that pretty boat with respect and skill, and Skye had breathed deeply with
relief, whispering, “I’m gonna marry you someday,” as he sailed away.
Twenty years
later, Skye knew two things for certain:
One, that Brooks
was one of the most talented, natural, organic sailors she’d ever met in her
life. Heck, he’d made it all the way to the Olympics and come home with a medal
to prove what Skye had always known—that any boat was safe in his hands. She
respected him more than most of the sailors she knew.
And two, the
chances of her ever marrying him were next to none in the approximate area of
zero. He was gorgeous and rich and talented and fascinating…and completely out
of her league.
“Not a one-day sail,” Brooks continued in a
terse voice, jettisoning her memories as he prompted her back to their
conversation. “Not even two. Jessica signed me up for a cruise. From Baltimore
to Charleston.”
Skye felt her eyes
widen as she stared at him. “That’s a week. Minimum.”
“Yeah.”
“Crew?”
Brooks grabbed the
back of his neck with his hand, rubbing. “Nope. It’s supposed to be… romantic.”
A romantic cruise.
For a week. Alone. With Brooks.
Lucky
girl, she thought, ignoring the ridiculous spike of jealousy
that jabbed a little at her heart and made her feel instantly guilty.
She couldn’t help
her attraction to him, but the fact that it was totally unreturned made it
manageable in a way that didn’t hurt. For heaven’s sake, it wasn’t like she had
feelings for Brooks beyond
friendship. She just liked looking at him. Her eighty-year-old granny’s heart
would flutter at the sight of Brooks’ thick, dark hair, flashing sea-green eyes,
square jaw, muscular body, and perennially-tan hands that handled a boat with
the same finesse that he probably handled his women. Noticing Brooks’ good
looks didn’t make Skye unique or special, and it didn’t mean she wanted more
from him than friendship either (she tried to convince herself). It just made
her human.
“Romantic,” she
murmured. Turning away, she looked out at the harbor where sailboats bobbed up
and down in afternoon sun.
“Yeah.”
“But you won’t
know who she is,” said Skye, “until she wins you.”
“Bingo,” he said.
“And then you’ll
be trapped at sea for a week.”
“Precisely.”
“She could be anyone.”
“Yep.”
“Does your sister
really hate you?”
Brooks scoffed.
“No. But she really loves modern art.”
“Okay. Yeah. It’s
a pretty sucky situation. But how can I help?”
He grinned. “You
can bid on me.”
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
“Really? Because it seems to me he left you for two
years. Sorry to be the homo harbinger of
ghastly news, but that doesn’t scream ‘commitment’ in my book.”
“He couldn’t
have her, but he wanted her. It was as
simple and stupid as that.”
“Her history
was instantly rewritten, because she thought she’d been kissed before, but she
was wrong.”
“I may not be
the man of your dreams anymore, but I’m going to try like hell to make your
dreams come true.”
My Review:
Katy Regnery
must be a sweet person as she writes sweet endings to her love stories,
although she always makes the reader and characters work for it before we get
there. I enjoy and admire her writing
style, plot lines, and characters – who all turn out to be hidden gems with moderate
flaws and a history of personal pain. Skye
and Brooks knew of each other since childhood, and had spent time with each
other during adulthood, but actually knew little about each other. There is a lot going on under the surface of
both. Worlds collide, sparks fly,
perceptions are shattered, and life plans are realigned, thankfully, all for
the better. Katy Regnery’s writing is
unfailingly entertaining, easy to read, well-written, and addicting. Of course most of the men in her stories are rich
and successful alphas of considerable prowess.
Hmm, sign me up for that neighborhood.
Empress DJ
About
the Author:
Katy Regnery, award-winning and
Amazon bestselling author, started her writing career by enrolling in a short
story class in January 2012. One year later, she signed her first contract for
a winter romance entitled By Proxy.
Now a hybrid author who publishes
both independently and traditionally, Katy claims authorship of the six-book
Heart of Montana series, the six-book English Brothers series, and a Kindle
Worlds novella entitled “Four Weddings and a Fiasco: The Wedding Date.” Katy’s
short story, “The Long Way Home” appears in the first RWA anthology, Premiere, and she has published two standalone
novels, Playing for Love at Deep Haven
and the Amazon bestseller, The Vixen and
the Vet, which is book one in Katy’s a
m o d e r n f a i r y t a l e
collection. The Vixen and the Vet was
nominated for a RITA® in 2015.
Katy lives in the relative wilds of
northern Fairfield County, Connecticut, where her writing room looks out at the
woods, and her husband, two young children, and two dogs create just enough
cheerful chaos to remind her that the very best love stories begin at home.
Upcoming
(2015) Projects:
The Winslow Brothers (Books #1-4)
Never Let You go, a modern fairytale
Ginger’s Heart, a modern fairytale
Connect with Katy:
Katy LOVES connecting
with her readers and answers every e-mail, message, tweet and post personally!
Click below to connect with Katy!
Katy’s
Email
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