Try Me

By Diane Alberts

A sexy category romance novella from Entangled's Brazen imprint...

She was off-limits...until now.

Vegas was a bad idea. There's no real good reason for a Marine to be stranded in the desert...and yet here I am. Hungover as hell, bruised, and bloodied. The tequila was just another mistake in a long line of mistakes. So naturally she had to be the one to come and save my sorry ass. The girl who broke my heart. My ex-best pal's little sister...

And dammit, I still want Erica Jones as much as I did all those years ago. Tried to tell her I loved her then, and she ran. Now I just need to touch that smooth-as-silk skin, worshipping the curves of her body. But she and I? We always see through each other, and something's changed. And despite how screwed up we are, this time I'm going to prove myself to her...to hell with the consequences.

Previously released on the Ever After imprint in May 2012.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781622669288

Book preview

She was off-limits...until now.

Vegas was a bad idea. There’s no real good reason for a Marine to be stranded in the desert...and yet here I am. Hungover as hell, bruised, and bloodied. The tequila was just another mistake in a long line of mistakes. So naturally she had to be the one to come and save my sorry ass. The girl who broke my heart. My ex-best pal’s little sister...

And dammit, I still want Erica Jones as much as I did all those years ago. Tried to tell her I loved her then, and she ran. Now I just need to touch that smooth-as-silk skin, worshipping the curves of her body. But she and I? We always see through each other, and something’s changed. And despite how screwed up we are, this time I’m going to prove myself to her...to hell with the consequences.

Previously released on the Ever After imprint in May 2012.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Don’t miss the rest of the Take a Chance series!

Love Me

Play Me

Take Me

Shillings Agency series

Temporarily Yours

Stealing His Heart

Seducing the Princess

Faking It

Falling for the Groomsman

Kiss Me at Midnight

Divinely Ruined

On One Condition

If you love sexy romance, one-click these steamy Brazen releases…

Take Me if You Dare

Lovers Restored

Tempted by the Soldier

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

Copyright © 2012 by Diane Alberts. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

Brazen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC. For more information on our titles, visit www.brazenbooks.com.

Edited by Adrien-Luc Sanders

Cover design by Heather Howland

Photography by iStock

ISBN 978-1-62266-928-8

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition May 2012

This one goes to the men and women in our armed forces.

Jeremy is modeled, piece by piece, after a good number of you I’ve had the pleasure of knowing in my life. Some of him even comes from my own husband…

Chapter One

Jeremy stumbled along a deserted road just outside Vegas. At least…he thought he was outside Vegas. The heatwave-shimmer of darkness on the horizon could be Pittsburgh. Reno. Aliens. It depended on whether this was dehydration or a really bad hangover. With the April sun beating down on his head, Jeremy was leaning toward dehydration. He felt like an egg in a frying pan, sizzled and broken.

Though he was pretty sure the sunlight wasn’t to blame for how he’d gotten here.

He’d come to Vegas for a little fun. That was what leave was about, right? Fast times, cheap booze, plenty of gambling. He was pretty sure people only ended up bruised and stranded in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere, in the movies. He blamed the damned squid for his own personal reenactment of The Hangover. Jeremy had kept his cool until the sailor had called him a coward and a jarhead.

Then he’d lost it.

He wished he could blame the alcohol, but he’d been sober at that point. It wasn’t until after the fight, his eye black and his lip swollen, that he’d nursed his wounded pride with a visit from Johnny Walker. His own temper, built up over the months of a high-tension deployment, had gotten him into this mess. The liquor had just made his bruises hurt a little less.

Though he’d sure as hell like to know what happened between the bottom of the bottle and the side of the road.

He fingered the split in his lower lip and let out a bitter laugh. Idiot. At twenty-seven, he should know better than to drink until he dropped. He never lost control like that. Never let himself. Not after what his father had done to his mother. His father had blamed the bottle, too.

Yeah. Right. Even sober, his father was an asshole.

Jeremy wouldn’t let himself follow in his father’s footsteps: a loser behind bars, with no hope for a future and no one who loved him enough to bother visiting. Jeremy was a Marine. He made his own life, did his best to look after people.

And if he roughed up one squid on leave, well…Jeremy hadn’t thrown the first punch. Sure, he’d lost the fight and ended up as desert road kill—but at least he could claim self-defense.

With a snort, he ducked his head against the sunlight and trudged along the road. At least he’d get to work on his tan.

That tan was turning into the beginning of a sunburn before he finally heard a car engine rumbling behind him. It was the first sign of life he’d seen since he stumbled out of the desert. Finally. He’d started to think he’d slept through the end of the world. Zombies optional.

He turned to walk backward, facing the wavering silver gleam that sped toward him. His mouth was too dry to even try shouting, his tongue swollen. He waved his arms over his head like a madman and stepped into the road. The late afternoon sun reflected off the hood, blinding him.

Please don’t run me over.

Not that it wouldn’t be a fitting end to this hellish day.

Brakes screeched. Jeremy stumbled off the road and landed on his ass in the sand. Grit stung his reddened skin. A cactus decided to fuck with him just a little more and poked into his back. Son of a bitch. He rubbed at his eyes; negative-image floaters swam against the insides of his eyelids.

A car door opened with a k-chnk. Footsteps pounded the pavement, their noise drawing closer. Jeremy cracked his eyelids open enough to squint at the driver. Short. Female. That was all he could make out.

She dropped to her knees at his side. Are you all right?

Her voice was soft. Sweet. Melodious. Familiar. He thought of warm summer nights by the pool, watching the stars.

With his best friend’s sister at his side.

Oh, hell.

…Erica? Please, God, no. Anyone but Erica. He rubbed at his eyes and blinked at her. Same brown hair. Same brown eyes. Same soft, sweet face. It was Erica, all right.

Shit.

Do I know you…? She eyed him warily, her eyes empty of recognition.

Any moment now she’d remember him. Jeremy Addison. The fool who’d confessed his love to her. The idiot

Reviews for Try Me

[drez-3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A little anti-climactic, but otherwise good story.

[tanat-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Try Me (Take a Chance, #1) by Diane Albert’s

Reading Try Me by Diane Albert’s has lead me to go find out if she has written more books, I enjoyed this story it is a fast read and quite enjoyable. Oh and did I mention a sexy looking Marine.

Diane’s writing is good, words flowed well, I thought both characters had great chemistry together, plus the cover wow, I probably shouldn’t admit half the reason I signed up to read and review this was because of the cover…but it was worth it.

We meet Jeremy who is off on leave, drinking and fighting he wakes up in the desert bruised and bloody. Knowing he needs to get moving before he dies for dehydration he sticks his thumb out for a ride.
Erica driving down the highway stops to help someone out and cannot believe her eyes when she sees its Jeremy the man she loved and rejected.

This story is fantastic, sexy Sergeant Jeremy Addison still loves Erica, Erica still loves Jeremy ….but can they put the past behind them and start over? Does true love conquer all?

All you can do is go purchase Try Me to find out! I would recommend Try Me to anyone who loves romance a bit of heartbreak and finding lost love and starting over. Diane Albert’s is one fantastic author and I cannot wait to read more of her books.

[lisa.hines · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Try Me by Diane AlbertsMy rating: 4 of 5 starsTry Me by Diane Alberts is the first book in her Take a Chance series. This book starts with Jeremy, our hunky Marine stranded in the Las Vegas desert, beat up, thirsty and hungover. His savior is none other than the one that got ran away seven years ago, Erica. This is a story full of life's strange coincidences, people's misunderstandings of situations, and how they make what turns about to be the wrong decision based on that misunderstanding. It's about second chances, and lasting love for who the person is and not just how the person looks on the outside.Once again a book from Entangled publishing has been a thoroughly enjoyable read.This book has a Happily Ever After and no cliffhanger.Up next...Love Me (Take a Chance #2)

[bookwhisperer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Try Me was an wonderful and captivating love story. Young and in love Erica and Jeremy both made mistakes. Confident that their futures will never be together; they have lived the past eight years trying to move forward. Even though this is proving harder than anticipated; neither of them though. It they would find one another on a lonely desolate road in the desert. Erica is a wounded and fragile woman after what life has unfolded for her in the past few years. Determined that Jeremy will be like every other man she has known; she is determined to keep herself at a distance. This proves harder than planned when Jeremy begins pressing her boundaries, and searching for a way into her future. This story was very short, and over in a blink of the eye, but not without securing me as a new fan. I am anxious to see what else the Take a Chance series has to offer.