Corkscrewed by M.J. O’Shea

Release Date: December 1, 2014

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Buy links:

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon

Amazon.UK

Blurb:

Cary Talbot has found the perfect mark. Marigold Shelley is filthy rich, and her newly found grandson, Isaac Shelley, is poised to inherit her huge estate, complete with a priceless wine collection. Cary concocts a plan to con both of them into selling the crown jewel of that collection to him at a bargain price. Since Isaac is young, single, and gay, part of Cary’s scheme to get close to the Shelleys includes seduction.  But Isaac isn’t the sheep he appears to be. He isn’t even the grandson he appears to be. Isaac is, in fact, running quite the con of his own.  These two masters of the confidence game are pitted against each other, and both are after the ultimate prize—a chunk of the huge Shelley fortune. It’s only when a third cunning player comes in and is ready to outwit them both that they must band together and beat their opponent or see all they’ve worked for slip from their grasp one ruby-red drop at a time.

 

Hi Everyone, it’s MJ here!

 

I wanted to give you the chance to read a couple of my favorite parts of my newest book Corkscrewed. It’s the story of two con artists, after different parts of the same woman’s estate. Cary is trying to work Isaac, Isaac is trying to keep Cary from distracting him from his own game but they can’t keep their hands off of each other. Until they each figure out what the other is up to. Than it’s a whole lot of lust-hate fun:)

 

This first scene is from early in the book. Cary is posing as an insurance auditor and has decided one of the best ways for him to gain his mark, Marigold’s trust is to make sure he’s gained the trust of her adorable newly-found grandson Isaac..and since Isaac likes men, well, Cary sees no problem with using what he knows he’s got to, um, gain Isaac’s trust. In other words, seduce him.

 

“What  are you doing with each of these again?”

They’d been in the wine cellar for about ten minutes. Mostly in that time, Cary had wandered around and just looked. He couldn’t help it. Wine buff or not, the place was fantastic. It had been built around the arched foundations of the house above. The floor was smooth stone, the stones in the arches worn with time and covered in places with a thin layer of aging stucco. Somebody must’ve spent a fortune on the wine racks. They were custom-built and nestled against the walls between low-burning light fixtures. In the middle of the room was a big old banquet table, polished to a high shine and surrounded by low stools. It had taken him a few minutes to get over his awe, but get over it he did. He had to get to work. At least he had to look like he was.

Cary put the bottle down on the table. He wasn’t doing much, honestly, but it had to look authentic. “I’m scanning each bottle’s label and comparing it to the list and photographs we have on file. I’m not an appraiser , but I’m here to look for any discrepancies. If it’s necessary, we will call an expert in to verify authenticity of a bottle. I’ve had to do it lots of times.”

Isaac seemed to buy that explanation. Cary liked the idea of having Isaac with him more and more, despite Jules’s misgivings. He didn’t know enough to question Cary’s methods further, and he’d lend a bit of authenticity. Also, he was really fun to look at. Cary had noticed Isaac staring at him, and he didn’t object to looking back. The kid had a gorgeous smile, and his dark hair, pale skin, and huge sea-blue eyes were hard to miss. Plus those lips. It was really hard not to stare at them. Cary wouldn’t mind spending a while kissing Isaac and his pretty, soft, puffy lips. He was fairly sure Isaac wouldn’t object to that either.

“Here, look at this.” Cary handed Isaac a bottle of Chateau Lafite  and made sure to drag his fingers lightly over the backs of Isaac’s fingers as he pulled away.

Isaac shivered lightly. “It’s chilly down here, isn’t it?” he asked nervously.

Cary knew that wasn’t it at all. He wasn’t going to lie and say the touch didn’t affect him too. He bit his lip. “The bottle you have is really gorgeous. Chateau Lafite from 1945.”

“How much is it worth?” Isaac stroked the label and the glass like he was looking for hints of something special. Cary didn’t know much about wines at all, other than when Jules had shoved down his throat during their mini crash course, but even he could tell there was something different about the bottles in Marigold’s collection. They felt important.

“Two thousand is what we have on file, although I think they’ve appreciated a bit since this last audit.”

Cary checked the paperwork Jules had been able to get for him. Marigold Shelley’s inventory, and the appraised value of each bottle, had been itemized in neat numeric order according to its place in the cellar. It was almost like a library. Cary checked off the bottle on his list, did a few checks, and scanned the label.

“Jesus. Really?”

Cary nodded and watched Isaac, who felt the label and handed it back. “You know, I think wine is nice and all, but I don’t really get it. I mean, it’s just grape juice, isn’t it?”

“It’s a very special old bottle of grape juice.” Cary winked at him.

“Are all these bottles worth this much?”

Cary chuckled. “No. actually, they’re not. We have a long way to go before we get to the top. The crowing jewel of the collection is worth… well, quite a bit more. Let’s just put it that way. I can barely believe it exists. I’ve been hearing about it for years, but I thought the thing was a myth.”

There, drop the first hint. Get him thinking about it even if it’s at the back of his mind. Isaac’s eyes grew wide. “What is it?”

Cary chuckled. “I thought you didn’t know anything about wine. Even I know what your grandmother supposedly has, and I’m clueless when it comes to these.”

“I can appreciate something if it’s worth that much money. I don’t need to be an expert.”

“I didn’t even tell you how much.”

“You don’t have to. Quite a bit more than two thousand for a bottle of alcohol is enough to impress me any day.”

Cary reached for another bottle, one he knew a bit about from his research. “Look at this one. It was produced right here at Falling River during prohibition.” He sighed appreciatively. He’d always had a healthy respect for the rule breakers. “They produced and sold them right under the government’s nose. There was hardly anything here then, I bet. Just some grapes and a dusty shack in the middle of nowhere. It shouldn’t be worth more than the glass it comes in, but it’s a piece of history.”

Isaac looked at the bottle, with its old hand-printed label and wavy glass. “So my great grandfather made this? If he even is my great grandfather, that is.”

“Sure did. Great family story, isn’t it? I wish my great grandpa had made hooch during prohibition.” Cary turned his best smile on Isaac. Most people couldn’t resist it. Isaac smiled shyly back. Either he was the most unassuming kid in the whole world, or he was really laying it on thicker than thick with the shy act.

“What did he do?”

“My great grandfather? Stocks I think. Nothing important. Or very interesting.”

Isaac handed the bottle back. Cary brushed his thumb along Isaac’s wrist to test the waters. Isaac smiled at him again and touched the spot with his own questioning hand. Cary was in. He handed him another.

“A bottle of Moët from the late 1800s. It has one of the original labels drawn by Mucha . Beautiful, isn’t it? I wish they still used them.” Cary handed Isaac yet another bottle. Isaac inspected it before he handed it back slowly. Their fingers brushed again, slow and shivery in the cool, temperature-regulated darkness of the wine cellar. They leaned closer, their breath lingering and blending over the old bottle. Isaac’s lips fell open, soft and surprised. Cary wanted it. Isaac obviously wanted it too. Kiss him. Do it now.

 

Don’t kiss him, you moron. Don’t do it….

Isaac hadn’t ever wanted to kiss someone so badly in his entire twenty-four years. The need had been building since the first moment he’d seen Cary stretching by the pool, and it had only gotten stronger. Hotter. More intense.

To be fair, he’d spent a lot of his past trying to survive. Scrounging for food didn’t exactly leave time for romance. And once Roman found him, he was busy learning everything he could. He’d bounced from mark to mark and never relaxing long enough to do anything but finish the job. Roman had been proud. Isaac had slowly been building  up a pretty substantial store of cash. Things were going well. He didn’t need Mister Suave Hot Insurance Guy to mess up what could potentially be the job to set him up for life.

“Are we done with this bottle?” he asked. Isaac was annoyed by how husky his voice sounded. Jesus. Maybe if he just said “throw me down on the wine cellar floor and take me now,” it would be easier. He looked at his hands. Empty. Yes, he’d already given the bottle back to Cary. Even better.

“I’d say so.” Cary’s voice was husky too. He reached up and cupped Isaac’s face. “Can I?”

Against his better judgment, and Roman’s voice playing in his mind, Isaac nodded. He leaned forward and brushed his lips against Cary’s. Cary threaded his hand into Isaac’s hair and kissed him again, and then again, little sucking kisses that made Isaac’s blood race and his body want more. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been kissed, but it sure as hell couldn’t have been so delicious. Maybe it was the dark and the cool air. Something was going to his head.

Cary tugged lightly at his hair, and Isaac opened his mouth. He felt Cary pushing gently and walked backward  until he bumped up against one of the sloping arches that framed the room. Cary plastered Isaac’s body gently with his own and deepened the kiss. He rubbed Isaac’s sides. Isaac heard a moan and realized it was his own. He held on to Cary’s hips and simply let it happen. Kissing the insurance guy—no, the super-hot, charming older  insurance guy was probably a horrible choice when it came to doing what he was there to do, but Isaac didn’t care. He wanted to keep kissing forever.

Cary leaned into him, trapping him against the wall. He deepened the kiss further and further until they pulled apart, breathing hard.

“I probably shouldn’t be doing this,” Isaac murmured.

“I probably shouldn’t either. I’m the one who would get fired over it.”

“So… we’re stopping?” he asked. He wished he didn’t sound quite so pathetic. Yes. You’re stopping.

 

Look’s like Cary’s plan is working to me… lol.

 

One of my other favorite relationships in the book is between Cary and his associate Jules. Their partnership is like a brother and sister who both adore each other and can’t keep from giving each other jabs at a pretty much constant rate. They bicker and poke, but they pretty much couldn’t live without each other. This scene is from a littler earlier than the last, when Cary and Jules first get to the area and are about to set the job up from a hotel room close to the mark Marigold Shelley’s vineyard. It explains a little bit about the origin of their partnership:

 

True to form, Jules looked like she was about to stage a military coup right from the comfort of their hotel suite. Cary bitched and teased her about all her techy crap, but he didn’t know how the hell he’d operated without her for as long as he had. She’d set up her computers and her phone station in the corner of the room, and had gotten comfortable in a pair of sweats, flip-flops, and a T-shirt. She’d tied her riot of inky black curls into a knot on the top of her head and was busily painting her toenails a bright pink. She glanced up when the door clicked shut.

“Hey, boss. You look like hell.” Tactful as usual. Jules was brilliant at what she did, but smooth-talking was never going to be her strong suit. Good thing they had him for that.

“Thanks a million, Delgadillo. How are we looking?”

Jules chuckled at him. Typical. “I just got the system all set up. Give me a minute to breathe. You need a drink.”

“And a nap. I think I have sun poisoning.”

She smirked. “Hopefully it’ll be raining when we get home.”

Cary thought of his big, drafty loft in Portland, and smiled. He wasn’t sure if you could call a place home if you were gone more than you were there, but there was something about the old building’s weathered bricks, soaring metal-beamed ceilings, and scarred wood floors that felt like a refuge.

Jules went to the counter and opened a new bottle of scotch and pulled a fresh liter of soda out of the mini-fridge. She mixed Cary a drink without comment and handed it to him. He took a swallow and sank down onto the room’s armchair gratefully.

“Thank you so much. This is literally going to save my life.”

“That’s why you pay me the big bucks.” Jules rolled her eyes a little and gave Cary a fond smile. “You know. Bring you drinks and stuff. Answer the phone.”

It was a running joke between them. That had nothing to do with why Cary had hired her. Jules was special. She’d been a sophomore at OSU and had a very promising future at some prestigious grad schools when she’d been caught doing a few very naughty things with her computer in the dorms. Like looking-for-backdoors-into-the-NSA’s-internal-system kind of naughty. Cary would’ve thought that was impossible to do from a remote location. Apparently Jules had found a way to make it possible enough that some friendly government agents paid a visit to her dorm room the next day. Luckily she’d been out and saw them from down the hall. Jules had taken off, and Cary found her shivering and scared in a coffee shop, no family, no more scholarship, and newly homeless. He’d offered her a job, and she’d been with him ever since. She was like a kid sister, if by kid sister he meant an outrageous brat with an IQ of 180, limited social skills, and technology chops that made his head spin.

“So are we going to talk about the job?”

Cary sighed. “Now? Does it have to be now?” What was that he’d been thinking about her being a brat?

“Now would be good. Unless you’d like a nice stay off highway twelve for nothing. We need to get this job set up or we’re wasting our time.”

“Someday you’re gonna kill me.”

Jules snorted. No respect.

“So the plan is twofold, correct? Well, three actually. Get the mark to believe you work for the insurance company, but you’re a little dirty. Introduce the idea that the Nine Sisters is just a myth. Falsify the tests to prove they’re fakes. Oh, and then of course get them to sell the bottles to you at a low price to get them off their hands so they don’t get charged with insurance fraud.”

“That sounds about right.”

It was a complicated game, and it relied on Jules’s technical skills as much as his talking, but Cary thought they might be able to pull it off. He could barely fathom the payoff if they were successful. The Nine Sisters. Even one would be an incredible get. Nine of the world’s most sought-after bottles of wine all in the same collection? Nearly priceless. Marigold Shelley was supposed to have them. Cary was banking on the fact that the rumors and Jules’s techno sleuthing were, in fact, correct.

The story of the Nine Sisters was legend. It started back when George Washington had first taken office. He’d been a well-known fan of Portuguese Madeira wines. So much so that Pedro and Maria, king and queen of Portugal, had sent him a case of ten bottles of their private reserve Madeira. One had disappeared into time. Maybe it had been drunk by Washington himself, maybe broken or sold—that part of the story was never told. But the others had formed a collection. Priceless. Famed. Nearly mythical.

The bottles still had their royal seal from the Portuguese court on them, and the stamp showing they’d belonged to Washington’s private collection. How a single vineyard owner got their hands on all nine of them was beyond Cary’s imagination. Their worth was staggering. He had his work cut out for him if he wanted them to be his.

“I still don’t like this, boss.” Jules had never been one to hold back her opinion. She’d been making her opinion on the sisters known ever since Cary decided to go for it. “It’s not fair.”

“Jules. Marigold Shelley is reported to have one of the best private collections in the entire country. The Nine Sisters is the crown of that collection, but she has others. You know how I operate.”

Cary might have been a con artist, but he had morals. He never took from people who couldn’t afford to lose, and he never took everything. Not even close.

“But you’re using the fact that she’s distracted by her grandson to get to her.”

“Of course I am. It’s the perfect time. She’s in love with the romance of getting her family back. She’s not going to want to take time out of whatever years she has left to deal with me.”

“And the kid? Hasn’t he gone through enough after all these years?”

Cary shrugged. “He’s twenty-four. That’s not a kid. Plus, this isn’t gonna hurt him. He doesn’t even have to get involved.”

He knew Jules had her reasons for wanting to protect Isaac, and they had a lot to do with her past. Cary didn’t feel like playing cheap hotel room shrink.

“I’ve made you a cheat sheet.” Jules handed it to him reluctantly. “I still don’t like this though.”

“No kidding.” She’d made her stance on the newest mark quite clear before she’d left Oregon a day and a half before Cary. “Do you want to go back to Portland and leave this to me?”

“No. You’ll get arrested, and then what would I do? I’d be bored.”

Cary sighed. “Contrary to your very strong beliefs, I did survive  for thirty years before I found you at that coffee shop. Successfully.”

Jules rolled her eyes. “How you managed that is a mystery I’m still trying to solve .”

 

 

So that’s it for now!! If you’d like to read all of chapter one, it’s on Dreamspinner’s page for the book:

Dreamspinner press

I always post updates on my blog and website:  http://mjoshea.com/

And I’m easy to find on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mj.oshea.5

Also twitter: https://twitter.com/

Thanks for having me stop by!

xoxo

MJ

 

I’m Mj O’Shea:) I grew up, and still live, in sunny Washington state in a little old house. While I love to visit other places, I can’t imagine calling anywhere else home.

 

I spent my childhood writing stories. Sometime in my early teens, the stories turned to romance. Most of those were about me, my friends, and our favorite movie and pop stars. Hopefully, I’ve come a long way since then!!

 

When I’m not writing, I love to go to concerts, hang out with my friends, play the  piano (and my other instruments), dance, cook, paint pictures, and of course read! I really, really like coffee and tea, nail polish and glittery sparkly things, headbands, hats, scarves and sunglasses!

 

I have two little dogs who sit with me when I write. Sometimes they come up with ideas for me too…when they’re not busy napping of course.

Website http://mjoshea.com/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/mj.oshea.5

Twitter https://twitter.com/mjosheaseattle

Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3512511.M_J_O_Shea

 

 

M.J is graciously giving away a copy of Corkscrewed to one Lucky commentor

Good Luck!