Featured Attraction

Mills & Boon
May 3, 2006 (Paperback)

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Winner of a 2006 Cataromance Reviewers’ Choice Award!

Dream lover...or nightmare boss?

Jack Taylor's new investment needs a special touch, and he's decided Kitty Giroux is just the woman to provide it! Now a talented designer, she's also blossomed into an irresistibly sexy woman--and Jack's never been one to resist temptation...

Kitty has worked hard to get Jack out of her system, but she's not about to turn down a lucrative contract just because he's offering it. If Jack's dangerously sexy charm still has the power to set her pace racing, the obvious solution is to avoid him...

If only it were that easy!

More About Featured Attraction

I got the idea for FEATURED ATTRACTION from a song called “Undercover Angel” by Alan O’Day. It’s about a guy who has a dream that he’s got a beautiful girl in bed with him, and it contains the immortal lines:

I said, “Whaat?”
She said, “Ooooh-eee.”
I said, “All right!”
She said, “Love me, love me, love me!”

You can see how I couldn’t resist that. I tried to get that bit of dialogue into the book, but it didn’t quite work out. Mr. O'Day, if you're reading this...thank you.

FEATURED ATTRACTION is set in Portland, Maine, which is one of my favourite places. A lot of the action takes place in the Delphi theater, which is an art-deco cinema. I love art-deco cinemas and did some very enjoyable research to write this book. I found some great resources on www.cinematreasures.org

State Theatre Portland

The Delphi is based, very loosely, on the State theater on Congress Street in Portland. I’ve never been inside the State; it’s a music venue now. I had to make a bunch of changes to the building–mostly so that Jack and Kitty couldn’t escape once they were locked in there. And I made up a fictional history for the building, too. Freakily enough, when I actually looked up the State’s history, it was a near-exact parallel to the history I’d given the Delphi. I named my cinema the “Delphi” because of the oracle at Delphi in Greek mythology, who told the future, just like Jack’s dream does.

And Jack, who’s a movie buff, was great fun to write. I love all the movies he talks about in the book, and I watched every single one of them while I wrote and revised FEATURED ATTRACTION.

I always make soundtracks for my books, which help me with the mood and the characters. Here's my soundtrack for FEATURED ATTRACTION, and what some of the songs are about:

Undercover Angel by Alan O'Day
This Charming Man by The Smiths (Jack)
I Need Direction by Teenage Fanclub (Jack)
Sparky's Dream by Teenage Fanclub (Jack's dream)
No Scrubs by TLC (Kitty)
I Say A Little Prayer by Aretha Franklin (Kitty's crush)
Cherish by Madonna (Kitty)
Elements/Space Walk by Lemon Jelly (the cinema)
Wishin' and Hopin' by Dusty Springfield (Kitty)
Clear Blue Air by Turin Brakes
Like a Prayer by Madonna (Kitty)
The Dark of the Matinee by Franz Ferdinand
Stone Thrown by Turin Brakes (the black moment)
Mellow Doubt by Teenage Fanclub
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want by The Smiths
Pain Killer by Turin Brakes

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"Julie Cohen kicks off the new line from Mills and Boon – Modern Romance Extra – with a sparkling debut novel which makes her a name to watch out for!…Featured Attraction is a page-turning romance that is smart, sassy and sizzling!" -Cataromance, 4 1/2 stars

"Smart, fresh, funny and sweet." -Romance Divas, 5 kisses-

Excerpt

Kitty awoke to the scent of coffee and the sight of Jack, dressed in a blue t-shirt and white boxer shorts, sitting cross-legged on the velvet curtain a few feet from her and holding a small flashlight and an aluminum insulated mug.

“What time is it?”

At the sound of her voice Jack looked up and smiled. “About six in the morning. How did you sleep?”

“Not too bad.” What a lie. She’d been hyperaware of Jack all night; the fact that she could feel as well as hear every movement he made didn’t help any. She’d had a restless night, uncertain in the dark of the boundaries between sleep and awareness.

She’d awakened from dreams of Jack beside her, inside her, panting into her ear, to hear his real breathing, so close. She’d sucked in air trying to steady herself and tasted and smelled nothing but Jack. She’d been too hot, and had slipped off her jeans and used them as a pillow.

At one point, she’d heard him groaning aloud, and she’d come awake, lying listening in the curtain and whispering “Jack?” He’d answered her with another groan, and then had fallen back into silence as she listened, heart pounding.

Then she’d lapsed back into half-sleep, a fantasy of his hands on her, exploring everywhere, rough and soft as velvet.

Her eyes felt prickly and her muscles ached. And her entire body was a throbbing mass of need.

“How did you sleep?” she asked.

“Lousy. I fell asleep once, but my dreams…” Jack seemed to shake himself. “Want some coffee? I have a kettle up in the office, but I’ve only got one mug, and no milk or sugar.”

“That would be great.”

“Good.” Jack brought the mug and the flashlight over to her. Kitty sat up with the curtain still covering her bare legs. He sat down next to her and propped the flashlight up beside them, making a circle of light slant across them.

He’d been at least three yards from her all night and she hadn’t been able to sleep because he’d been far too close. Now he was less than twelve inches away from her, and Kitty felt such a bizarre sense of cosiness and tension, mixed, that she wasn’t sure where to put her hands.

Kitty took the mug from him and drank the hot, strong coffee. Maybe the caffeine would calm her nerves.

“I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking of you,” Jack said.

She nearly spat out the coffee. Instead, she swallowed, with difficulty. “Really?” she said, in the lack of anything sensible to say whatsoever.

Jack took the mug from her. “Yes. I’ve been thinking about your mouth.” The flashlight cast half his face into brightness and half into shadow and outlined the contours of his lips.

“I want to kiss you so much that even touching my lips to the same place on the mug that you drank from is something,” he said, and turned the mug around in his hands.

In the second before his lips met the mug, she could see the moist outline of her own lips on the metal. And then his mouth closed around the edge of the cup where she had touched it, that teasing upper lip dipping inside it, and he drank.

From the book FEATURED ATTRACTION, by Julie Cohen
Mills & Boon Modern Extra, March 2006
ISBN: 0-263-84984-8
Copyright 2006 by Julie Cohen
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A. For more romance information surf to www.eHarlequin.com

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