No Novelty

By Jamie Craig

Sydney Mabry has had a crush on her sexy neighbor, Steven Teller, for months, but no matter what she does, she can’t get his attention.

When Steven makes an uncharacteristic slip of the tongue and admits he writes reviews for adult toys and novelties, however, Sydney uses the information to get her foot in the door ...

With an eye toward Steven’s bed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Apr 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781646567324

Jamie Craig

Jamie Craig is the collaboration of Vivien Dean and Pepper Espinoza. Both have been in love with romance, adventure, fantasy, and the written word since childhood. Pepper lives in Utah with her dog and cats and loves to golf when she’s not working. Vivien lives in Northern California with her husband and two teenagers.

Book preview

2

Chapter 1

Son of a… The huge stuffed monkey blocked her view of the carpeted floor too effectively to make finding her keys easy, which was par for the course, considering the day she’d had at the hospital. She stepped away from her apartment door, hoping to clear her line of sight, but the side of her heel knocked against something hard and heavy, nearly making her stumble.

That’s it. Unceremoniously, she dropped the gorilla to the floor, snarling in frustration when her watchband caught on the toy’s knitted sweater. She wrenched her arm free and glared at its jet bead eyes. You are officially a menace.

Her keys rested innocently next to the gorilla’s lax paw, like it offered them as a token apology. Sydney snatched them up, but not before she got a good look at what exactly she’d almost tripped over.

A package.

She tilted her head sideways to read the label.

Addressed to a certain Steven Teller.

Just the sight of her neighbor’s name was enough to make her heart skip a couple beats. Though he had lived across the hall from her for nearly three years, all Sydney knew about him was that he was a writer, he worked a ton of hours because she rarely saw him, and he got more packages in the mail than anybody she had ever known.

Oh, and he was gorgeous. Long, elegant features, dimples the size of Montana, and the prettiest blue eyes off the silver screen. Which made the fact that he seemed so solitary even more unusual.

Curiosity won out over her bad mood, and she picked up the long box, turning it over in her hand to try and see where this one might have come from. Like all the other misdelivered boxes, there were no identifying marks, and the return label just had an address in Spokane. Someone in Spokane sure loved Steven. He got several boxes a month from there, and those were just the ones that got delivered to her door instead of his. There was no telling how many might have actually made it into his long, talented hands.

Talented because of the writing, of course. Sydney didn’t think about how flexible his fingers were, unless she was safely ensconced in her bed with her favorite vibrator. And once in the nurses’ locker room at the hospital.

She sighed as she straightened. It was truly a sad state of affairs when she was reduced to fantasies at the completely uninspiring sight of a brown box.

Unlocking her door, she grabbed the gorilla by the ear and dragged him inside, abandoning him at the end of the couch to set the package down on the coffee table. She needed to get it over to Steven as soon as possible, but not before she had a chance to clean up. Her shift had been horrendous. The sooner she got off the pediatrics rotation, the happier she would be. Not because of the kids, of course, the kids were great, wonderful even. No, her nightmares came from the parents, and their never ending whining, and their stubborn refusal to believe anybody on staff was actually