Object of My Desire Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Blurb

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Epilogue

  Also by R.L. Kenderson

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Object of My Desire

  by

  R.L. Kenderson

  PUBLISHED BY:

  R.L. Kenderson

  Object of My Desire

  Copyright © 2019 by Renae Au and Lara Kennedy

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-7327368-4-9

  Editor: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  Cover image:

  Photographer: FuriousFotog/GoldenCzermak, www.onefuriousfotog.com

  Model: Chase Ketron

  Designer: R.L. Kenderson, www.rlkenderson.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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

  A romance author, a cover model, a book signing … a crush.

  Ordinary women like me know we shouldn’t fall for beautiful men like Travis Zehler, one of the hottest cover models in romance fiction. But, sometimes, we can’t help ourselves.

  When I meet him at a book signing, my attraction to him is instant. I’m infatuated, and I can’t stop thinking about him.

  Even though I have doubts he’d ever be interested, I invite Travis to attend a book signing with me. And he says yes.

  My fantasy comes true when he takes me to his bed, and the more time we spend together, the more I see that Travis isn’t some object to be desired.

  He’s a man with a past. A man who’s been burned. A man who’s learned to keep his guard up.

  I want to show him he can trust again, but when our confidence in each other is shaken, I begin to wonder if happily ever afters are only for my romance novels.

  I checked my to-do list to see what was next.

  As an author, I was my own boss, and I often kept a list of things I needed to get done. Writing was at the top, but there were so many more things I had to do. I had to keep up my social media; I had to work on images and teasers, advertising, doing takeovers in reader groups; and the list went on. I often felt like I had several plates all spinning in the air, and I constantly had to keep them twirling around.

  I had a book signing coming up in a month, and I needed to get the word out that I was attending. I had been on the waitlist, so none of my readers knew to look for me there.

  But I always scanned the list of other attending authors to tell my readers and to make it more enticing for them to show up. It was basically free advertisement.

  A year ago, I had started making enough money to quit my day job, but I was far from rich. I was a long way off from making the New York Times best-seller list.

  Those authors, along with USA Today best-sellers, were the ones I always searched for when making a book signing announcement on social media.

  Come and meet [fill in the blank] along with me.

  Also, I was an avid reader myself—or I had been before I started writing so much—so I was always excited to see if I would get to have a fangirl moment.

  As I scanned the list of authors and did a few Google searches on them, I noticed that there was also a male model attending.

  “Ooh,” I said out loud to my empty office.

  It was great, being my own boss, but I did sometimes miss a few of my old coworkers. I found myself talking to either my cat or just myself a lot.

  The model’s name was Travis Zehler, and I did a quick Google search on him, too. If I found some good photos, it would be a great thing to tell my readers. Women liked eye candy just as much as men. However, I would like to think that most of us women were a bit more respectful of the opposite sex.

  The first image that came up looked like it was from his Instagram. He had a nice enough face, but I wasn’t awestruck by him. He had dark blond hair and green eyes. I liked men with dark hair and dark eyes. Or at least, blue. I had green eyes, so I kind of thought of them as boring.

  I’d been told more than once in my life that I was too picky. I didn’t mean to be, but you couldn’t force attraction.

  I was kind of a hypocrite though because I was no supermodel. I was cute, and there were times I got dressed up and thought, Damn, I am sexy. But I had the apple body shape, and I had no illusions about it being the female shape of choice. I had large breasts but no hips or ass. So, while I was attractive, I would never be anyone’s trophy wife. And I would never be a model’s girlfriend.

  Especially now that I worked from home where any professional look had been thrown out the door.

  I pushed my glasses up on my nose and bounced my messy bun with my hand. Perhaps I should give ole Travis a break about not being the hottest guy I’d ever seen. I couldn’t support myself by posing for photographs. I knew from watching television that it was harder than it looked. Plus, I hated getting my picture taken. I couldn’t imagine doing it for the whole world to see.

  I shuddered at the thought.

  Next, I found an article on him where a book blog had done an interview. They asked him some hard-hitting questions, but he answered them very well. He talked about wanting to inspire people to better themselves, and even though he worked out, he never mentioned weight or food. Even better, he never talked about weight or food by disguising it as health.

  He was an Army veteran, which I really admired. And there were a couple of other photos in interviews, mostly close-ups, but I paid the most attention to his answers.

  He sounded like a really nice guy.
The only downside I saw was that he was younger than my thirty-four years.

  I laughed loudly at my absurdity. Yeah, because he’s just waiting to hook up with you, Sydney.

  Maleficent, my cat, jumped onto my desk and meowed at me. Her tone suggested she agreed with my assessment.

  I petted her on the head, and she lay down next to my computer.

  “Thank you for your vote of confidence.”

  She began to purr, and I took that as, You’re welcome.

  I turned back to my computer.

  I supposed an ordinary, older bookworm of a woman could dream about a model falling in love with her. Actually, this ordinary, older bookworm of a woman could write a novel about it. But, in real life, things like that just didn’t happen.

  I wasn’t going to waste the idea though. I flipped to a different page in my notebook where I had a list of potential book plots and wrote down model/author before flipping back to my to-do list.

  I copied the article and posted it to my Facebook reader group, telling all my fans they should try to make it to the book signing event I was attending. I listed the three popular authors I’d discovered were attending and posted the link to the blog that had interviewed Travis Zehler.

  Check it out, ladies! Not only would you get to meet me, but you’d also get to meet model Travis Zehler. ;-)

  It was a long shot that I would see many, if any, of my readers. This was only the third author event I was attending, and I had yet to meet a hard-core fan. It was hard when I lived in the Midwest, which was where all the events had been located, while I had readers all over the country and the world. But I still dreamed of meeting at least one of them someday.

  And I was going to do everything I could to entice them.

  ONE MONTH LATER

  I pulled into the driveway of one of my closest friends, Harper Stone, and honked the horn. I felt rude, not going in and saying hi to her husband and son, but she had given me explicit instructions to get her out of there right away.

  She came running out of the house like her spiked pink hair was on fire. She threw her bag in the back of my SUV and climbed into the seat beside me.

  “Let’s go.”

  I put the vehicle in reverse and backed out. “What’s going on? Is everything okay with you and Ian?”

  Just as I put the car in drive, her front door opened, and Ian stepped into the doorway. He had a grin on his face, his oversize glasses halfway down his nose, as he eagerly waved his hand back and forth.

  Harper rolled down her window and yelled, “I’ll miss you, you big goof.” She blew him a kiss.

  “Miss you, too, honey. Have fun. Hi and bye, Sydney.”

  I leaned down and waved. “Bye, Ian. Give baby Wyatt kisses for me.”

  “Will do,” he shouted back.

  Harper pushed the up button on the window and pointed forward. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We drove away with one last wave to Ian, and Harper dropped her head back against the seat and sighed.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked again.

  She opened an eyelid. “Yeah. I just need a break.”

  “Being a wife and mother is exhausting, huh?”

  She sprang up in her seat. “Yes. A few years ago, I thought I was going to be single forever. Happily single, I might add. But then I had to meet Ian, and that dork convinced me to marry him and have his baby.”

  Harper was a bit of a free spirit. She bleached her dark hair white blonde and dyed the ends pink or whatever other color she felt like that month. She was a massage therapist who set her own hours and worked out of people’s homes. She refused to be employed by anyone but herself.

  She’d met her husband at his job where he worked with computers and electronics—I still didn’t know exactly what he did—when his company brought her in to give massages to the employees for Employee Appreciation Day.

  Ian had convinced Harper to go out with him. I thought she’d agreed because she felt bad about turning him down. Instead, she’d fallen in love.

  I laughed. “Does this mean you want a divorce?”

  “Not on your life. He’s a dork, but he’s my dork. And I wouldn’t give up Wyatt for the world. I just need a break.”

  “I think you’re very lucky to have him, but I get it. You need time away, and we needed some girl time anyway.”

  Harper turned her head toward me. “Hey, what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You and men. I thought something was going to happen between you and that guy from your gym?”

  “Alan? Yeah, he texted me about a dozen times, and then—poof—he was gone.”

  “No way. What was the last thing you two talked about?”

  “Nothing big. Very benign. I think it was something about the latest Marvel movie. And that was it.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s probably better anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve seen him work out. He’s kind of a fanatic. I work out the bare minimum. I only do it because it’s healthy for me. He’s the kind of guy who loves to work out. I do not. In the end, it wouldn’t have worked.”

  “You don’t know that,” Harper said with a disappointed voice.

  I shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know since he ghosted me.”

  “I’m sorry, hon.”

  I laughed. “Don’t be. It’s fine. I wasn’t in love with him. I wasn’t even in lust with him.”

  “He didn’t deserve you anyway.”

  “You’re just saying that because you’re my friend.”

  “And because it’s true.”

  The book signing event was about four hours away in Iowa from our home in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, so by the time we arrived, it was after eight at night. We checked into our hotel and put our stuff in the room.

  “I’m sorry we got here so late,” Harper said.

  “Don’t sweat it.”

  “I know you wanted to check in and go to the dinner tonight.”

  I shrugged, not wanting her to feel bad. “I did. But it will be okay. We’re supposed to have breakfast tomorrow. Hopefully, we’ll meet some people there.”

  “We could always go look and see if anyone is still wandering around.”

  “Might as well.”

  “Why don’t you message the ringleader? Maybe we can still check in tonight.”

  “Good idea.” I pulled my phone from my purse and sent Nicki, the person running the event, a message.

  My phone dinged.

  “Great news. They’re just getting ready to put their stuff away, so if we hurry, we’ll make it.”

  We rushed down to a small room just off the main lobby. Inside were some people milling around and a table with a woman sitting at it.

  The first woman, a redhead with shoulder-length hair, smiled at us. “Hey, are you Sydney Hart?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m Nicki,” she said as she handed me a purple-and-white name tag attached to a purple lanyard.

  “I love your author name,” Harper said to me.

  I laughed. “All I did was shorten my last name.”

  When I’d first started writing, a lot of authors had talked about using a pen name. I hadn’t really felt like I needed one, but I had decided that Sydney Hart sounded better than Sydney Harting.

  “Yeah, but Hart and heart. It’s perfect for a romance author.”

  “Thanks, Harper. That’s why I did it.” I looked at Nicki. “This is my assistant, Harper.”

  “Hi, Harper,” Nicki said. “Give me one sec.” She moved to a different pile and looked through them. She pulled out a red-and-white name tag attached to a red lanyard and handed it to Harper.

  This was only my third author event, but so far, they were always color-coded. It looked like authors were purple, and assistants were red. There were also a few green-and-white name tags.

  “What are the green ones?” Harper asked.
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br />   “Oh, those are the VIP ticket holders. They get to come to all the events that you two will attend.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “And then we have one blue name tag.” Nicki pointed to the end. “That’s for our one and only model this year.”

  Harper looked at me and wiggled her eyebrows. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  I’d honestly kind of forgotten about him. It wasn’t that I wasn’t curious or that I didn’t like men. As a woman in her mid-thirties, I was completely aware that my biological clock was ticking, and unlike Harper’s previous happily single status, I wanted to get married someday, so there was a part of me that was always on the lookout for single men. But this model was so far out of my league that I hadn’t really given him a second thought.

  “Didn’t you tell me you were happily married as we drove down here?” I jokingly asked her after we said good-bye and walked away.

  “I can still look,” she said. “I’m not dead.”

  “That you can.”

  She looked at me. “Aren’t you excited?”

  I shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe a little. It is kind of cool to meet someone who’s on book covers. But I’m sure he won’t give us the time of day. Besides, he’s just one guy.”

  Harper smiled. “Whatever. I’m still going to gawk. A lot.”

  The combined noise of two phone alarms with completely different songs woke us up at six fifteen the next morning.

  I quickly shut mine off, as did Harper.

  “That was a horrible noise,” I commented from my bed.

  “Yep, I’m up,” Harper said. “Although I’m wondering now why we stayed up late, watching movies.”

  “I’m wondering whose idea it was to schedule a seven a.m. breakfast on a Saturday.”

  Harper sat up. “No kidding. It’s my day to sleep in. What the hell, people?”

  I pushed my covers off me and sat up as well. “We could always skip it?”

  Harper’s eyes widened. “And miss free food?”

  “You’re right. I don’t think they have coffee though. We’ll have to go and get one before.”

  Harper stood. “I’d better get ready then.”

  “Are you showering before you go?” I called out to her.

  “No, I’m just going to get dressed and go. I’d rather shower after, so I can look pretty for the book signing.”