Seduced by Stratton
The
English Brothers
Book
4
Katy
Regnery
Genre: Mid-Length Contemporary Romance
Date of Publication: 11/4/14
ISBN: 978-0-9912045-6-4
ASIN: B00MUW6TF6
Number of pages: 200
Word Count: 62,000
Cover Artist: Kim Killion, Hot Damn
Designs
Book
Description:
Seduced by
Stratton
is the fourth of six books about the Philadelphia-based, wildly-handsome
English brothers who are all on the look-out for love.
(Except for Barrett, Fitz and Alex, because they're taken. And Weston, who is still
riding the ugly-love roller coaster with one of the Atwell sisters....)
Stratton English, the hottest, youngest, most devastatingly handsome CFO in
Philadelphia, has a problem: women make him nervous. Really nervous.
Catastrophically nervous. Socially awkward to an extreme, he's apt to blurt out
the first thing that comes to mind, and it's rarely something a woman wants to
hear. Quietly in love with his neighbor, Amy, he has no idea how to make his
move, but he is committed to figuring out a way to seduce her.
Valeria Campanile, who Stratton knows through one of his four brothers, is a
PhD candidate who moonlights as a dance instructor on the side. Ironically,
even though Val studies Courtship Rituals, she can't seem to find herself
courted. Pursued by boys from the "old neighborhood" who promise to
overlook the fact that she's so smart, she longs to meet someone who romances
her mind as well as her heart.
When Stratton helps Valeria with a financial problem, she is anxious to return
the favor. But will Stratton, who needs Val's expertise to win Amy, find
himself seducing Val instead?
Excerpt
from Seduced by Stratton
Stratton
had finished most of his work for the day and instead of starting a new project
at four-thirty, he took out his Kindle and spent a little time reviewing the
ten rules for seduction in his latest book:
Make
a Connection
Get
Close to Her
A
Little Quarrelling Can Be Good
Say
No Once in a While
Build the Sexual Tension
Be Direct
Channel Your Inner Romantic
Have an Intimate Conversation
Ask Her Out
Make Your Move
Stratton sighed heavily, taking out a
sheet of paper and writing them down. In college, at Columbia University in
Manhattan, he’d found this an excellent technique for storing knowledge. But as
he wrote the words, he reviewed the actions, and his heart felt progressively
heavier and more defeated.
He’d already
bombed out on rules one and two last night by hitting Amy in the hip with a
smelly garbage bag. What about the rest…?
A
Little Quarrelling Can Be Good. Really? That made no
sense to Stratton. Was the advice that he should pick a fight with her? Why?
How could fighting with someone lead to anything good? Sheer nonsense.
Say
No Once in a While. Why would he say no to the woman he
loved? What if she called feeling sad, needing him, and he said no to her? It
would hurt her feelings. Maybe she’d even turn to someone else. That sounded
like terrible advice.
Build
the Sexual Tension. He couldn’t count the times he’d thought
about putting his arm around Amy as she sat beside him on the couch eating ice
cream, but since she was always in such a fragile state over Étienne, it seemed
underhanded. They didn’t get together when she was feeling flirty and
receptive. They got together when she was red-nosed and weepy. It simply wasn’t
the optimal time to build sexual tension—if Stratton had the first idea of how
to do so in the first place.
Be
Direct. No problem. He grinned. Finally one that he could
handle.
But then he
stopped grinning, because while his modus
operandi was being direct, around Amy, he wasn’t. Last night when she told
him she suspected that Étienne was cheating on her, he tried to be direct, but
she’d looked so hurt, he’d changed tactics immediately and lied. Being direct
was a lot harder than it seemed.
Channel
Your Inner Romantic. This one actually had quite a lot of
appeal to Stratton. He’d had a lot of time to figure out the ways he’d romance
Amy once she was free of Étienne. He moved on to the next rule.
Have
an Intimate Conversation.
What the—Intimate? Like about deep and important
things? Or with dirty words? His mind short-circuited. He didn’t know how to
“talk dirty” to a woman. Did that mean to say the sorts of things they said in
porn movies? Like, maybe he should rent some porn movies and memorize some dirty
sentences? He wished the author had defined “intimate” to mean “deep thoughts”
because he felt very annoyed and uncertain about the advice.
He wrote down the
words Ask Her Out and Make Your Move, but he was feeling so
deflated, he stared at the list like a fat alpaca would stare at Everest. If
this is what it took, than seducing Amy away from Étienne would be impossible.
Unless…
Unless he had a
coach. Like Alex, but not Alex
because Stratton couldn’t stand the teasing. Plus Alex was too far away and wouldn’t
take it seriously. Hmm. Barrett? No. Barrett wasn’t especially smooth himself,
and while Fitz seemed pretty smooth, he was about to get married. He couldn’t
be Stratton’s wingman. That left Weston, who was studying furiously for the bar
exam, which he’d be taking the week after Fitz’s wedding. As far as brothers
went, Stratton was shit out of luck.
Not to mention, he
wasn’t sure that—aside from Alex—his brothers were all that adept at seduction.
He wondered if their success actually had more to do with luck and fate than
skill. He suspected that it did. Heck, they’d all ended up with women who’d
been important to them in their childhoods or adolescence. Stratton was
breaking new ground altogether. What he needed was a professional. A master of
seduction. Someone well-versed on courting rituals with heaps of knowledge.
Étienne was a formidable rival and since Amy hadn’t shown any concrete interest
in Stratton on a romantic level, it was going to take a full-scale attack to
get her to see him in a new light and leave her piece-of-shit boyfriend.
He looked back at
the book, skimming the chapter after “Make Your Move” entitled “Seeking Help,”
and his eyes latched onto the sentence: “Practice with a female friend.” Huh.
Not a coach to guide him, but a friend on whom to test and perfect his moves,
and maybe get some feedback about his technique. He nodded at his Kindle,
appreciating the simple logic of the advice, but then he grimaced. While it was
a good idea that had merit, Stratton didn’t have any female friends aside from
Emily, Daisy, and Jessica, and he couldn’t imagine Barrett, Fitz, or Alex
taking kindly to him practicing his seduction techniques on their women. He
could call his cousin Kate, but she lived in New York, and anyway, she was his cousin. He sat back in his chair,
tenting his fingers under his chin in thought and frustration when his phone
buzzed.
Review:
I loved this book. I devoured it page after page. Regnery has a way with words. The steps of seductions were perfect. I loved that this wasn't your typical meet and fall head over heels read. I loved even more that Stratton fought so hard against himself. It was wonderful reading both of their povs.
I think my favorite part of this book is the advice Stratton gets from family and friends. The reactions of Barrett and Emily are priceless. I loved every minute of this read. The "awe" moments that have you wanting to squeeze something and the "are you serious" moments when you want to shake a character or two. Very few authors can pull me into stories the way Regnery does.
Rating:
About
the Author:
Katy Regnery, Amazon bestselling
author, has always loved telling a good story and credits her mother with
making funny, heartwarming tales come alive throughout her childhood. A
lifelong devotee of all romance writing, from Edwardian to present-day, it was
just a matter of time before Katy tried her hand at writing a love story of her
own.
As it turned out, one love story turned
into a series of six Heart of Montana romances, following the love lives of the
Yellowstone-based Lindstrom siblings. When Katy’s fans asked her to turn up the
heat, she wrote the New Adult/Adult Contemporary hybrid romance, Playing for
Love at Deep Haven, which offered steamier romance to her readers. Katy is also
proud to offer The Vixen and the Vet, a standalone romance that benefitted
Operation Mend, an organization that helps heal the returning wounded of our
armed services. The English Brothers is Katy’s second series and first indie
series.
Katy lives in the relative wilds of
northern Fairfield County, Connecticut, where her writing room looks out at the
woods, and her husband, two young children, and two dogs create just enough
cheerful chaos to remind her that the very best love stories of all are the
messy and unexpected ones.
Twitter: @KatyRegnery
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