Breaking All Her Rules. Maisey Yates

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      Buttoned-up financial consultant Grace Song lives life by her own strict rules. Spontaneity leads to chaos. Always play it safe. So when she shares a Manhattan cab with a handsome stranger and they accidentally swap cell phones, her first instinct is to track him down and put things right. Stay on track. Stick with the plan.

      But when beyond-gorgeous Zach Camden opens the door wearing only a pair of jeans, Grace is suddenly inspired to ditch her rules for a day…and a night. Indulging in one delicious encounter with a perfect stranger is just the break she needs. But one turns into two, then three mind-blowing nights—and soon Grace is in danger of breaking the biggest rule of them all—never fall in love….

      To my parents, who taught me that being myself was the most important thing. Thank you for always supporting me.

      Dear Reader,

      Sometimes the expectations of other people can become more important than what we want. It’s the thing that makes us hide our reading material on the train or order a garden salad when what we really, really want is French fries. (If you really wanted the garden salad, it’s cool. I don’t judge you.)

      The heroine of Breaking All Her Rules, Grace, is paralyzed by the expectations of others. Now, Grace has a secret inner Cosmo girl, but she would definitely rather hide it in her bedside drawer—where she keeps all secret, intimate things—than let anyone know that she has a bit of a wild side waiting to be explored.

      Then she meets Zack. He’s all wrong for her. A rough, unsophisticated cowboy has no place in her urban New York lifestyle. But the attraction burns hot and fast between them, and Grace decides to give in. He’s a stranger, and no one will ever know. Once can’t hurt, can it?

      Of course once isn’t enough, and in the end, Grace is going to have to decide if she’s brave enough to live life on her own terms, or if she’ll spend the rest of her life making herself unhappy to please the people around her.

      I hope you enjoy Grace and Zack’s journey.

      Maisey

      Breaking All Her Rules

      Maisey Yates

       Contemporary, sexy stories for sassy women

      Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon

       www.millsandboon.co.uk/Cosmo

      Contents

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Epilogue

      Chapter One

      Grace Song tightened her hold on her bag and swore internally as another cab passed her, a passenger in the back.

      The bag was heavy, and she was running late after her disastrous lunch meeting. She did not need this right now. Not with her boss breathing down her neck like he had been. Not with the client from hell leering at her boobs and making comments about what she could do with his financials ifyouknowwhatImean.

      And then had come the wholly unsubtle: If you want the account, you might want to make this lunch date end in dessert.

      If he wasn’t such a valuable potential account she would have kneed him so hard his balls would have gone back up inside his body. Okay, she wouldn’t have done that. Because her default position was to freeze up. Because in her mind, inaction was often better than making the wrong move.

      Somehow, she’d managed a curt, cold response and extricated herself.

      And now she was going to be late for her next appointment because apparently, there were no cabs. She leaned toward the road and signaled again, a little more vigorously. She was just getting irritated now. And she knew if she let herself get too irritated she would get blotchy. And she didn’t want to meet a client while blotchy.

      Her bag was heavy. It had her laptop, her tablet, her phone and a legal pad, because even though she had about a million electronic devices to help her organize things, she still needed to write things down physically most of the time.

      She liked notebooks and shiny electronics. Everyone had their quirks. And she no longer had anyone in her life, taking up space in the apartment, telling her she had too many pens and things. So there was that.

      She could have as many pens as she wanted. And framed pen-and-ink drawings of flowers and other frilly things. Independence was hers.

      A cab, sadly, was not.

      Another bright yellow car whizzed by and she resisted the urge to flip them her middle finger. She was flipping the world the bird on the inside, it was something she would never do on the outside. All vulgarities would be kept to herself.

      Apparently, there was still someone who told her what to do. The calm, steady voice of her father, still in her head guiding her actions even though she hadn’t lived at home in twelve years.

      She lifted her hand again when she saw another cab approach, and groaned when she saw the silhouette of someone in the back. Then the cab crossed a lane, cutting through traffic like a demolition-derby driver, before stopping at the sidewalk in front of her.

      The driver lowered the window on the passenger side. “Where are you going?”

      “The Stanton Building.”

      He looked over his shoulder at the man in the back. “That’s out of your way.”

      “I don’t care.”

      The voice from the backseat was deep and masculine, kind of rough. And if Grace was in to that sort of thing she might have been intrigued. But she didn’t have time to be in to that kind of thing. She was in to career advancement.

      So exciting.

      And getting a cab. She was seriously in to getting a cab even if she had to share it.

      She opened the passenger door and got inside, dragging her giant bag with her and closing the door, running her hand over her hair to make sure it was still in place.

      “Thank you,” she said, barely looking over at her companion. She leaned forward and started digging through the aforementioned giant bag. Her phone was in the top inner pocket, where she always put it. She hadn’t checked her email for ten minutes and she was feeling a little twitchy.

      It felt all weird in her hand. Too hard and square. Plus, it was just plain black. Not at all to her taste. Since her pretty Kate Spade case had bit the dust in a freak trip-and-fling-the-phone-across-the-room incident a couple of days ago, she hadn’t had the time to go and replace it.

      She unlocked the phone and punched the email icon, then waited while it connected to the server...and waited...and oh, gosh.