What a Woman Needs Read online

  PRAISE FOR JUDI FENNELL AND HER NOVELS:

  “The opening . . . is one of the best hooks I’ve read. I don’t know who could set it down after the first few pages . . . An excellent choice.”

  —Joey W. Hill, national bestselling author

  “One of the most exciting and fun reads I have ever encountered.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Phenomenally written novel . . . One of the best stories I have read this year, and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves a happy ending!”

  —Sizzling Hot Books

  “Will keep the reader enraptured.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “I had a smile on my face and a sigh of contentment . . . lighthearted but full of emotion. The story stirred in me feelings of falling in love all over again. It was just downright enjoyable to read!”

  —That’s What I’m Talking About

  “A light and breezy read for all . . . [Will] amuse the reader to the very last page. Well done, Judi Fennell!”

  —Night Owl Reviews

  “Rip-roaring fun from the very first page . . . This book is one for the keeper shelf.”

  —Kate Douglas, bestselling author

  “A tale that shimmers, shines, sparkles, and sizzles.”

  —Long and Short Reviews

  “Full of vivid imagination.”

  —Seriously Reviewed

  “Sizzling sexual tension, plenty of humor, and a soupçon of suspense.”

  —Booklist

  “Ms. Fennell has captured a new fan.”

  —Romancing the Book

  “Chock-full of surprises . . . with a beautiful twist of romance.”

  —Book Loons

  “Judi Fennell is a bright star on the horizon of romance.”

  —Judi McCoy, author of Till Death Do Us Bark

  “[Fennell] is proving herself to be a solid storyteller.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Titles by Judi Fennell

  WHAT A WOMAN WANTS

  WHAT A WOMAN NEEDS

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  WHAT A WOMAN NEEDS

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2014 by Judi Fennell.

  Excerpt from What a Woman Gets by Judi Fennell copyright © 2014 by Judi Fennell.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorizededition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning,or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writersand allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62548-4

  PUBLISHING HISTORYBerkley Sensation mass-market edition / June 2014

  Cover art by Daniel O’Leary.

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

  Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Contents

  Praise for Judi Fennell

  Titles by Judi Fennell

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Guys’ Night . . . Plus One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from What a Woman Gets

  To my children, as always.

  And to the man who’s been an inspiration for

  this story, thank you.

  Guys’ Night . . . Plus One

  HE’D lost.

  Bryan Manley stared at the cards on the table in front of him.

  Straight flush. Jack high.

  It beat his full house. It beat Liam’s four queens and Sean’s nine-high straight flush.

  He’d lost.

  To his sister.

  The one who’d never played poker.

  And she’d not only beaten him, but all three of them. Mary-Alice Catherine Manley had beaten the Manley men at their own game.

  And now they were going to have to play hers.

  Bryan cleared his throat, disgust burning the back of it. He, leading man, paparazzi fodder, starlet heartbreaker, and People magazine’s Next Biggest Thing, was going to be someone’s maid.

  “I believe, dear brothers, you all need to be fitted for Manley Maids uniforms,” Mac said as if it weren’t the death knell on his image.

  “I’m not wearing an apron.” The words were out of his mouth before he’d even thought that far, but it just proved his instincts were right on. Every director he’d ever worked with had said so, and Bryan was damned glad for it right now.

  An apron. Christ. The tabloids were going to have a field day with this. His agent? Not so much.

  Interestingly, none of the brothers tried to talk Mac out of this ridiculous pay-up. They’d made their bets and lost fair and square.

  But, Jesus. A maid.

  “When do you want us to start, Mac?” Liam was the first to recover—if that’s what it could be called.

  “Whenever you can. I’ve got the business.”

  If Bryan didn’t know Mac any better, he’d swear she was trying not to laugh. But that wouldn’t be like Mac; she’d always idolized the three of them. Called them her knights in shining armor. Or football pads on occasion. But never this. Never an . . . an apron.

  He’d swear it was a joke, but Mac had bet the only thing that could come anywhere close to what he and his brothers had bet: four weeks of cleaning service if she lost, four weeks of indentured servitude if
she won. She wouldn’t risk her business for a joke.

  “I’ve got the time now. I’ll get started first thing Monday.” Sean stacked the poker chips. Meticulously, which was the only indication of Sean’s emotions. He was pissed. At himself, probably. They’d gone against their instincts, all of them, and had let her play when she couldn’t afford the stakes.

  The fact that they were the ones paying was immaterial. They’d been protecting Mac, their baby sister, for pretty much all of her life since their parents had died and Gran had taken them in. They should have stuck to their No Girls rule for this game, but she’d wanted in so bad and they’d all always been pushovers for her that they’d let her.

  And now she was going to be their boss.

  A maid. God.

  The one plus was it looked like Gran’s cleaning lessons were going to pay off. Their grandmother had had her hands full with four young kids, and he and his brothers especially, had been pretty rowdy and messy.

  He never would’ve thought he’d be grateful for those lessons. Hell, he even had Monica, his own maid from Mac’s company, to keep his condo in shape just so he wouldn’t have to dust off those cleaning lessons.

  “Hey, can I do my place?” Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, though the PETA people would probably take issue with that.

  Mac frowned at him. “You’d put Monica out of a job to weasel out of the bet? Really?”

  When she put it like that . . .

  “I’m not weaseling out of anything.” That’s all he’d need the tabloids to pick up on. “You can count me in for Monday, too. I’ve got some time between projects and was looking for something to do anyhow.” He’d hoped it would’ve had something to do with a certain actress, a beach, and a couple of Heinekens, but that wasn’t going to happen now. At least he’d be out of the public eye for a while; maybe he could pull this off without anyone getting wind of it.

  Yeah, and Gran was going to up and leave her new place for the mansion he’d been wanting to buy her, too.

  Chapter One

  BETH Hamilton tripped over a big, yellow, hard-as-all-get-out toy truck, banged her shin on the coffee table, slipped on a page of shiny stickers, and landed butt-first in a basket of dirty laundry.

  Again.

  It’d be hysterical if it weren’t so common.

  She was constantly tripping over things. Constantly swerving one way to avoid an incoming wet dog or the twins chasing each other with lightsabers, only to end up on her butt anyway.

  The sad part was, she had enough padding there that the falls didn’t do a lot of damage to her body—not like the extra padding did to her self-esteem.

  But then, what widowed mother of five could afford self-esteem? Especially when one of the five had attained teenager status, another was fast approaching, and the twins came up with daily nicknames for her from their favorite sci-fi movies—Princess Leia not being among them. No, she got stuck with names like Frodo, Chewy, and the ever-popular Voldemort. At least they hadn’t gone for Barney. Yet.

  Thank God for Maggie. The five-year-old still thought Mom could do anything.

  If only she could.

  The clock on the mantel chimed ten. Great. The cleaning service was going to be here any second and her house looked like a tornado had hit it. Tornado Hamilton. It came through on a daily basis. Sometimes twice just for kicks.

  She needed help.

  “Jason, did you finish straightening up your room?” She picked his remote-control helicopter off the hardwood floor where he’d crash-landed it, wincing at the nick the rotor blades had made. They’d probably done the same thing to her shin.

  “Uh-huh.” Jason muttered from somewhere beneath the mop of hair he called cool, but which she called a bowl cut. If she’d given him that hairstyle as a toddler, she’d never hear the end of it whenever she pulled out baby pictures, yet he’d actually wanted her to pay someone to do that to him. Teenagers.

  “Your laundry is put away and the bed made?” Yes, she knew it was silly to clean up before the cleaning service arrived, but if the woman got a look at her house now, she’d either take off or double her fee. Maybe even triple it.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Odds were Jason’s uh-huh should be nuh-uh, but Beth had too much to do down here to run up the stairs to check out his story.

  And Jason knew it, too.

  Beth sighed. It’d been two years since Mike’s death and while the kids had seemed to sprout right before her eyes, every day of those two years seemed to last longer than their allotted twenty-four hours.

  What she wouldn’t give for Prince Charming to ring her doorbell.

  • • •

  BRYAN ran his finger under the collar of the golf shirt and adjusted his hold on the bucket of cleaning products while he seriously contemplated not ringing the doorbell of Mrs. Beth Hamilton’s home.

  He was a freaking maid. A maid!

  He checked over his shoulder. No one had seen him yet, unless the tabloids had sent out a slew of covert reporters—and the likelihood of that was on par with those alien abduction stories they wrote about. No, those people were like dogs with a bone and they traveled in packs. He’d never miss them.

  Still, he tapped the rim of the baseball cap down another half inch. Not technically part of the Manley Maids mint green polyester nightmare of a uniform, but he didn’t care. His face and build were recognizable enough; he needed some protection from prying eyes—

  Like the ones staring at him from behind the sheer curtain on the sidelight beside the door.

  Snagged.

  Taking a deep breath and straightening his shoulders, Bryan bit the bullet and rang the bell.

  Instantly a chorus of barks, shrieks, and a couple of “Expelliarmus!” spells erupted, followed by a nasty crash and some muttered cursing.

  Then she opened the door.

  For a moment, Bryan just stared.

  Then his PR training kicked in and he ramped up the Charmer smile that was not only his signature look, but one that came naturally around beautiful women.

  And she was stunning. From her artfully messy, wavy brown hair, to the curves just hinted at beneath the open neckline of the misbuttoned blouse, to the yoga pants that hugged shapely legs that went on forever, the woman was almost as tall as he was and built like a woman should be, rounded in all the right places with just enough to hold on to for the ride of a lifetime.

  Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a bad gig after all.

  Then the kids hit the scene, heads popping out behind her like some dance number in a musical.

  And they didn’t stop popping. Three. Four. Five. She had her own basketball team.

  Bryan reined in the smile. He didn’t hit on married women, and he didn’t hit on moms.

  He especially didn’t hit on married moms.

  Of five.

  “Who are you?” Kid number two, or maybe three, asked.

  “Honestly, Kelsey, that’s no way to greet someone.” The woman rolled her gorgeous coffee-colored eyes as she flicked her finger under the girl’s chin, then she wiped away her annoyed look and smiled at him.

  This time his Charmer smile appeared of its own volition. Bryan couldn’t help it. When she smiled, she was beyond stunning, and it made him glad he was a man—but annoyed she was married.

  And a mom.

  Of five.

  “Can I help you?”

  Let me count the ways. Bryan caught himself before he started spouting sonnets. “I’m here to clean your toilet.”

  Way to go, idiot. Brilliant opening line.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She could beg for whatever she wanted, and he’d give her every single thing.

  Bryan cleared his throat. “I’m a Manley Maid.”

  The shaggy kid snorted before he walked away, the picture of utter teenage disinterest.

  Bryan rephrased his intro. “I mean, I’m Bryan. I work for Manley Maids. You hired us to clean for you?”

  “You�
��re the maid?” The little girl tugging on her mom’s shirttails had no idea she was in danger of popping Mom’s button and giving Bry a glimpse of something that, in any other circumstance, he’d be thrilled to see. And Bryan wasn’t about to educate the kid.

  But she was married.

  And a mom.

  Of five.

  The other teenager lost interest and the younger two—twins from the look of them—took their crooked wands back into the den, leaving him and Mrs. Beth Hamilton alone with a preschooler.

  Where was Mr. Beth Hamilton?

  Bryan put his game face on. He’d dated dozens of beautiful women. Had slept with a lot of them. Beautiful women were a dime a dozen in his world.

  But he wasn’t in his world anymore. He was in Mac’s and Mrs. Beth Hamilton’s, and he better play the part before she either cited him for sexual harassment or failure to deliver. Either one would do more damage to his public image than being caught in a maid’s outfit would.

  He’d like to see her in a maid’s outfit—

  “Yes, I am the maid.” He tapped the little girl’s nose. “Do you need something cleaned?”

  Big brown eyes blinked up at him. Solemn and serious. “Uh-huh. My castle. Mrs. Beecham made a mess.”

  Bryan looked toward Mrs. Beth Hamilton for translation.

  “Our cat likes to take naps in Maggie’s dollhouse and tends to leave enough fur to weave a rug, but we haven’t read Rapunzel yet, so that’s not happening.”

  Rapunzel. Wasn’t she the one with the hair and the tower—an image Bryan did not need as he looked at Mrs. Beth Hamilton’s shoulder-length, windblown hair.

  He liked it like that, not fake, photo-shoot windblown hair. Mrs. Hamilton had come by her messy hair naturally and there was something about that kind of unselfconsciousness and abandon that just screamed sexy to Bryan.

  To Mr. Beth Hamilton, too, if the guy had an ounce of red blood in his veins and, considering there were five little Hamiltons running around, apparently he did. And unfortunately for Bryan, that guy had every right to fantasize about everything Bryan did not.

  It was going to be a long four weeks.

  Chapter Two