meet wynnie devereaux

I love this girl. From the tip of her favourite sparkly butterfly hairclip, to the edges of her shiny new handcuffs.

Yep handcuffs. 'Cause that's what she's wearing when she and her hero first meet. Handcuffs strapping her to the shiny silver zig zag sculpture outside the mammoth Kelly Tower office building in down town Brisbane.

Wynnie Devereaux is the heroine in my latest release GETTING RED-HOT WITH THE ROGUE. And when I went looking for a gal who represented what I saw of her in my mind, Natalie Portman was so IT. Divinely petite, kind of mysterious, with honest environmental tendancies.

Here's a little bit of getting to know you...

‘You’ve got yourself quite a crowd here,’ Dylan said, loud enough everyone could here.
The cameras and the desperate hush of a dozen journalists reminded her why that was. Wynnie gathered her straying wits, tilted her chin downward, batted her eyelashes for all she was worth, and with a cheery smile said, ‘Haven’t I just?’
The crowd murmured appreciatively. But that wasn’t the thing that made her cheeks feel warm, her belly feel tumbly, and her knees as weak as if she’d been standing there for days. That was purely due to the fresh, devilish glint in Dylan Kelly’s baby blues.
She stood straighter, jerking her arms, twinging her shoulder, and creating enough friction at her itchy wrists she sucked in a breath to stop from wincing. She kept it all together admirably, promising herself an extra twenty minutes meditation on the yoga mat when she got home, as she said, ‘The handcuffs brought them out. But it’s what I have to say that’s keeping them here.’
‘And what’s that?’
Research and appearances backed up the notion that he wasn’t a silly man, but he’d just made a silly move. The first rule in shaping public opinion was never to ask a question you don’t know the answer to.
Buoyed anew, she said, ‘Since you asked, not a moment before you graced us with your presence, we all agreed that you have been acting terribly irresponsibly, and that it’s time you pull up your socks.’
Before she had the chance to provide some beautiful sound bites dripping with the kinds of statistics newspapers loved, Dylan Kelly grabbed a hunk of suit leg, lifted it high to show off a jet black sock and enough tanned, muscular, manly calf to create a tidal wave of trembling through the predominantly female crowd.
Okay, so he wasn’t at all silly. He was very very good. Who knew naked male calf could trump handcuffs?
Dylan took the attention and ran with it, on the face of it focussing back on her but she knew his words were for everyone else. ‘You oughtn’t to believe all you read in the glossy pages. I’m not all bad. My mother taught me to always wear clean socks, and the hideous memory of my father trying to teach me about the birds and the bees when I was twelve years old scared the bejeezers out of me so much it made me the most...responsible man on the planet.’
He may as well have pulled a concertina row of condoms from his pocket as he said it for the feminine trembling turned to almost feverish laughter as the lot of them got lost in thoughts of Dylan’s underwear and what it might be like to be the one for whom he might one day act altogether irresponsibly.
The men in the crowd were no better. She could read them as easily as if they wore flashing signs on their foreheads. They wanted to buy him a beer, and live vicariously through him for as long as he’d let them near.
Unless she pulled a shoe sale sign and a Playboy bunny from somewhere her hands could still reach she might lose them all for good. It was time her press conference was brought to a close.

Okay, so I lied. That was far more about Wynnie's hero than Wynnie herself. But come on, you can't blame me right? If you want to know more about Dylan Kelly, watch this space over the next couple of days. If you can't wait then...

GETTING RED-HOT WITH THE ROGUE is out now in Australia & NZ and come November through Harlequin Presents across North America. Have you checked out their new Browse the Book feature? Well here 'tis?

Better yet, why wait? Grab a copy today from the Book Depository - free postage worldwide!!!