Just Sacked

By Elise Sax

“Elise Sax will win your heart.”—NYT bestelling author Jill Shalvis
“Fans of laugh-out-loud romantic suspense will enjoy this new author as she joins the ranks of Janet Evanovich, Katie MacAllister, and Jennifer Crusie.”—Booklist

“A fun read sure to entertain.”—RT Book Reviews

Layla has been working at her family’s bar since she was five years old. But it’s more than a bar. It’s home. Now with her family gone and debts piling up, her bar is repossessed and taken over by local businessman Hank Taylor. Hank offers Layla a deal: If she can win a drinking contest, she can have the bar back. Layla’s never lost a drinking contest in her life, but after an evening swigging back whiskey, she and Hank wake up together, naked and handcuffed in Mexico. Getting home offers dangerous adventure, and it’s a toss up whether Hank and Layla will get back before they kill each other or fall in love.

The Five Wishes Series: Five hot and hilarious novellas about wishes that go terribly wrong...fortunately. Five Wishes...A happy ending is just a coin toss away. Each novella is approximately 100 pages with NO cliffhanger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elise Sax
• Release date: Oct 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370178988

Elise Sax

USA Today bestselling author Elise Sax writes hilarious happy endings. She worked as a journalist, mostly in Paris, France for many years but always wanted to write fiction. Finally, she decided to go for her dream and write a novel. She was thrilled when An Affair to Dismember, the first in the Matchmaker Series, was sold at auction to Ballantine.Elise is an overwhelmed single mother of two boys in Southern California. She's an avid traveler, a beginner dancer, an occasional piano player, and an online shopping junkie.Like her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theelisesax?ref=hlFriend her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ei.sax.9Or just send her an email: [e-mail] can also visit her website and get a free novella: elisesax.com

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

Copyright © 2014 by Elise Sax

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Elise Sax

Cover design: Elizabeth Mackey

Formatted by: Jesse Kimmel-Freeman

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Also by Elise Sax:

Five Wishes Series

Going Down

Man Candy

Hot Wired

Just Sacked

Wicked Ride

Five Wishes Series

Three More Wishes Series

Blown Away

Inn & Out

Quick Bang

Three More Wishes Series

The Matchmaker Series

An Affair to Dismember

Matchpoint

Love Game

Playing the Field

Forever Series

Forever Now

Bounty

Switched

Moving Violations

Just SACKED

Five Wishes Series – Book 4

elise sax

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

Wicked RIDE EXCERPT

SWITCHED EXCERPT

Also by Elise Sax

About the Author

CHAPTER 1

I shut the door behind me and let my eyes acclimate to the dark. Damn. He’s still here. I try to avoid looking at him as I pass his table on my way to the back of the bar.

But he doesn’t let me sneak past him. In fact, he grabs my arm.

I look down at his strong hand on my arm and then straight at him. Right into his emerald green eyes. Isn’t it typical that the worst bastard on the planet is drop dead gorgeous? I wish he would do the drop dead part instead of just the gorgeous part. The fact that he looks exactly like Ryan Gosling goes to prove that there’s no justice in this world.

I’ve got a bat behind the bar, I tell him. And I’ll triple play your ass with it if you don’t take your hand off me, immediately.

It takes him three seconds before he releases my arm. I’m going to need to sanitize my arm, now, I complain. Hey! Eyes up here, fink!

He’s staring at my chest. I’m used to this. Everyone does it, because I’m cursed with huge boobs. My bras cost more than my car payment. I have to get fitted by a bra guru down in Los Angeles. Not only do my breasts make my back hurt, but they’ve distracted every person I’ve spoken to since I was twelve years old.

My name’s not Fink. You know that. His eyes flick to my face but go right back to my chest. It’s Hank.

Fink fits you better.

I turn on my four-inch heel and head back behind bar. My bar. My family’s bar. But now my family is dead, and our bar is being foreclosed on, taken over by Mr. Hank Taylor, businessman and shark. And fink.

I serve my patrons two beers and a dirty martini. You don’t have to do that, Hank says, walking up to the bar.

I have two more hours before you steal my business, and I plan on doing my job right up until you kick me out on my ass.

He leans over and puts his hands on the smooth mahogany. I didn’t steal it, Layla. I bought it fair and square from the bank.

I pick up my baseball bat and hold it high above my head. Get your hands off my bar, or I’ll knock your head into the next room.

His hands fly off, and he takes a step back. Just trying to be nice, he says.

You always were a giant ass-wipe, I mutter. Hank is a local. We went to school together until he dropped out in eighth grade. One year, he drilled holes in the girls’ locker room wall and charged boys who wanted to take a peek.

What was that? The vein in his neck is pulsating, making his tattoo move.

You heard me.

Listen, you couldn’t make the lease. It’s business. Don’t take it personal.

"Hey, it’s only business for you, pal! It’s personal for me!" I shout.

Exactly, he says. That’s why you lost the bar, and I have it.

I literally see red. Hank Taylor’s Ryan Gosling face is covered by a red film. So, is everything else. Obviously, I’m having an aneurysm. My brain has blown up, and it’s coming out of my eyes.

You probably should back up even further, I say. You’re still within an arm-swinging length, and I have a bat.

I don’t know why I’m being charitable, why I’m warning him. There’s nothing more that I want to do than to beat him into a pulp.  But even though I’m seeing red, even though my brain has blown up, I still have a tiny bit of common sense left, and it’s screaming at me not to wind up in prison. I mean, they don’t have good bras in prison.

What can I do so you don’t hate me? he asks.

Go outside, look very carefully both ways up and down the street, and when a truck is driving by, jump in front of it.

Hank flinches, as if I’ve wounded him. His sensitivity surprises me. He resembles the boy next door up to a point. His longish hair and his neck tattoo are more representative of his true character… Shark. Fink.

I could give you your job back, he suggests.

I don’t care that you fired me. I would never work for you.

Where are you going to live? he asks. I’ve lived over the bar my entire life. Now, he owns that as well. I’m homeless.

In a shoe, I say. I don’t want to have this conversation anymore. It’s none of his business what I do with my life. He can’t come in here and take everything I care about away from me and then pretend he gives a damn.

How about this? he says, slapping his hands together. Let’s make a wager. If you win, you get the bar back. If I win, you work for me and live over the bar.

I like the truck idea better.

I’m serious, he says.

So am I. You don’t see me laughing, do you?

How about a poker game? he asks, ignoring my hostility. How does he do it? I’m giving him my very best hostility. You win, you get the bar back. Doesn’t that sound tempting to you, Layla?

I don’t play poker.

Scrabble?

Nope.

Horseshoes?

You’ve got to be kidding.

I give up, he says, throwing up his hands. You have no talent.

Actually, come to think of it, there is something I’m pretty good at, I say.

*

The bar is filled with bikers, wearing leather jackets, chains, and way too much facial hair. They’re shouting nonstop, drowning out the sound system.

Go! Go! Go! they shout in unison, standing around the bar’s center table where Hank and I are sitting.

There are two shot glasses and two bottles of whiskey on the table. One of the bottles is empty. Hank fills his shot glass from the other whiskey bottle. Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women, he says and throws back the shot. He closes his eyes for a moment, and I’m pretty sure he stops breathing. Then, just as I’m certain he’s gone to meet his maker, he inhales sharply and opens his eyes. The bikers roar in approval.

Not bad, I say.