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LENGTH: Epic Novel
SENSUALITY: Sensual/Spicy

Cover art (c) Eliza Black 2006
ISBN 1-58608-869-6
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Trade Paperback ISBN 1-58608-833-5
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What started as a publicity stunt to jump start a professional wrestling company turns top wrestler, Casanova’s, life upside down. The owners hope a week-long expose article on their top wrestler will bring in new fans. Casanova is no fan of journalists, however, and he isn’t keen on the idea of opening up about his life, especially with the secrets he's trying to hide.

Unfortunately for him that’s all it takes to rivet Soledad Monroe’s interest in what was only a half hearted attempt at journalism. A rich, socialite-party girl, Soledad Monroe hates the fact that her parents have forced her to work as a journalist at one of their magazines almost as much as she resents her parents’ determination to steer her away from the altar, for Soledad, a seven-time divorcee, marries like it's a hobby. For a wrestler whose shtick is asking planted women in the audience to marry him, the world is waiting for him to propose and fill in spot number eight....

Rating: Contains graphic sexual content and adult language.

KISSING CASANOVA

By

Crystal B. Bright

© copyright March 2006, Crystal B. Bright

Cover art by Eliza Black, © copyright March 2006

ISBN 1-58608-869-6

New Concepts Publishing Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Chapter One

A kiss.

A firm, surprising set of lips slammed against Soledad Monroe’s. The jarring gesture shook her to her core, jerking the inside of her stomach like unexpected fireworks exploding nearby. It threw her mind and physical state off balance.

She struggled against the uninvited, staged display of affection as she stood among the rowdy crowd of well over thirty-thousand professional wrestling fans in the packed Washington, DC arena. What a way to end her day!

A simple hello and a handshake from her interview subject, hopefully her last subject ever, would have been more appropriate, especially with all of the cameras looming around them.

Before, all she knew about this guy was his stage name. Casanova. Now feeling the gentle vibration against her lips, she knew the man hummed when he kissed. Or maybe he did it for her.

Soledad’s shoulders unknotted and for a brief moment her eyelids lowered. A hazy feeling clouded her head. A good kiss, the kind that started off sweet and then increased in intensity, always overruled her sensibility. A great one made her forget her inhibitions. Lord knows she’d allowed herself to melt in the arms of a great kisser too many times.

When she remembered the whole world would be seeing this forced public display of affection, her eyes popped open. She didn’t need to be the subject of another gossip story.

“Get off,” Soledad tried saying while his lips smothered hers. The demand came out like “Biff puff.” The wrestler probably thought she was humming, too. Fuming was more like it.

Casanova’s goatee scratched her chin as his hand cupped the back of her head, his fingers entangled in her hair. He kept his eyes closed.

Open your eyes! Soledad flailed her arms, but he kept a tight hold.

Their bodies sandwiched the black foam-covered barricade intended to separate the crowd from the wrestling ring. She kept her eyes open, glaring at the man wearing a white, sparkly bandanna and a hoop earring. When she cut her eyes to the right, she caught the camera lens positioned at the two of them.

Great. So if her mother watched this it would give her even more ammunition to say, “Oh, Soledad. Don’t we have enough problems without you embarrassing the family again?”

Soledad tried pushing him away by putting one hand on his shoulder and bracing the other against the barricade, but his steel-beam arm clamped around her waist tight enough to keep her trapped.

The Altoid mint she’d popped in her mouth at the end of his match swirled over her tongue, stinging it, as she kept her lips fixed shut.

The crowd chanted Casanova’s name as he finally broke the kiss. His hazel eyes glittered from the camera flashes as he stared at her. His skin flushed pink in his cheeks.

Oh, no. He wasn’t going to get over on her with a puppy-dog look. She’d handled bigger and better guys than this shopping at Gucci.

With an open hand, she smacked Casanova’s face, a sight caught on large screens over the wrestling ring. Adrenaline coursed through her like flame in a torch. She wouldn’t be fodder for late-night talk show jokes. Her hand covered her mouth, wiping away the offending kiss.

When Casanova stumbled from her, security guards rushed toward him. But with a wave of his hand, he signaled he was all right. The way Casanova’s mouth had hung open after the kiss, he’d appeared surprised--or maybe shaken would have been a better way to describe him.

Had they been dating, to see a man look so awe-stricken by her kiss would have pumped Soledad’s body with electric sparks. From the millisecond she allowed herself to be sucked into the spontaneous display, she knew her toes hadn’t curled like this since, well, never. Working for nearly a year had kept her out of trouble ... and away from the altar.

He snatched a microphone off of the announcer’s table by the ring.

Oh, no. Not more humiliation to be broadcast.

Soledad bit the inside of her cheek and fought the urge to stomp her behind out of the arena and home to New York. A kiss from a pro wrestler would have tickled her former Gucci Girls, a nickname for the band of party pals she used to hang with when Soledad club hopped.

But her heart raced as she grabbed the barricade sitting in front of her front-row seat, her fingernails embedded in the smooth, black leather and her jaw set. No way was she going to appear less than dignified. And she definitely didn’t want to prove to her parents, especially to her mother, that she couldn’t make it on her own for a year. This would be her last job. She could do this.

Casanova brought the microphone to his mouth and said, “Baby, if I did it wrong, why don’t I just meet you at your hotel room so I can practice loving you the right way.” He winked.

Soledad stood still, certain if she moved, lava-like blood would spew from her mouth and melt this pompous jerk down into a pool of spandex and a hoop earring.

Did he just wink at her? How dare he do this drive-by kiss and then have the nerve to be cocky about it. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, leaving a slight, shiny trail from the remains of her gloss.

She hadn’t been this uptight about a kiss since Frankie Dunn had tried slipping her the tongue behind the pool house at her parents’ home when she was thirteen. Except, the wrestler hadn’t fumbled around and done the goofy, teenage boy giggle. He knew what he was doing. And Hoover Lips here had to be stopped.

As the wrestling fans howled even louder, a smile crept up the corner of his mouth as he touched his reddening cheek. Soledad ground her fingers in deeper into the only thing keeping her from this animal. He grabbed his championship belt he’d placed on the barricade and tossed the microphone over his shoulder, careless of where it landed.

The gods of irony must have been working overtime to have her be bussed on the job she’d considered to be her kiss-off article for Vestige. Getting disrespected, and now groped, to prove to her parents she could be responsible couldn’t be a rite of passage for normal people. She didn’t need to take this treatment.

In the noisy arena, Soledad tried blocking the chants and screams by mentally reciting literary prose in her head. Now the clamorous cheering rose to a deafening crescendo, assaulting her ears more than the overwhelming smell of beer and popcorn had sullied her nose.

A young woman patted Soledad on her shoulder. “You are so lucky!” she gushed.

“He’s an arrogant, demeaning, self-centered snake with only one thing on his tiny mind,” Soledad said. Clearly this fan recognized those traits.

The young woman smacked her gum, glanced at Casanova walking away and said to Soledad after returning her gaze, “But look at his butt. Doesn’t he have the best ass in the world?”

Clearly not one of Gloria Steinem’s disciples.

Soledad glared at Casanova as he escaped to the backstage. The crowd roared as he held the belt in the air like a gladiator bearing his shield. Her gut tightened. My God! Was sweat forming on her neck?

She didn’t mind getting involved in the story--as long it was mutually agreed upon. She’d tried skateboarding when she’d interviewed a popular skater. She’d even tried surfing in shark-infested waters off Hawaii. Now she was going to interview a wrestler whose claim to fame was kissing strange women and beating people to please a massive crowd.

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?

Forget it. She could live with the harsh words and disappointed looks from her parents. What happened to that unconditional love mumbo jumbo that had been forced down her throat from those New Age schools she’d attended? Didn’t her parents get the memo?

As she turned to retrieve her purse when the arena lights brightened, she felt a vise-like grip around her wrist. Her heart pounded in a crazy rhythm, thinking Casanova had returned for a second kiss. When she looked to see who or what had her she saw a stocky, tank-like man with a black-and-white bandanna around his head and a black tee shirt with “security” stretched across the front in white letters.

First Casanova and now this guy. What was it with bandanna-clad men grabbing women around here? Neanderthal life was alive and well at the Extreme Transnational Championship Wrestling Federation. Her heart slowed but she kept her hand balled in a fist.

“You’re the reporter, right?” he asked with a thick Brooklyn accent.

Reporter. Soledad had been called many things before. Socialite. Wild child. Marrying Monroe. But being called a reporter actually made her exhale with some relief.

“Yes, I am.” She tried wriggling her wrist from his grip, but he held onto her the way Norman Bates held onto the idea Mother was still alive.

The guard pulled her behind him. “I’m taking you backstage. You still doing the interview, right?”

Actually Soledad’s stomach jumped at the idea of going to meet Casanova. Growing up as a Monroe, she’d met world leaders, Pulitzer Prize winners, designers. No one rattled her. But this guy. She had the feeling that the infamous interview ditch king had plans to walk. Good. If he walked, then she would have a perfect out, and she wouldn’t be blamed.

Although Casanova made a living taking lumps in the ring, being pummeled by an interviewer paled in comparison. He would have ignored her heart-felt argument of how he should respect women. Thirty-something female fans fawned over him like teenage girls at a boy band concert.

She hiked her purse onto her shoulder and nodded to the security guard. Soledad would offer a quick apology to this half-dressed macho man bent on tempting fate that he would have to accept. Then she could go on to her normal life of shopping, sleeping late and traveling.

She scuttled through a hallway. She lost her footing a couple of times, slipping in the beer spilled on the floor. Fortunately the gum wads and the stickiness of the beer itself aided in maintaining her balance. The bottom of her sandals smacked with each tacky step.

The tank turned to her, but didn’t stop his trek. “You know, he doesn’t do interviews.”

“What?” She scurried to keep up and hear him over the screaming fans.

“Casanova. He’s like, private, you know. Hell, I don’t even know the cat’s real name.”

Neither did she. She’d tried finding it. Soledad researched all about the man who had made professional wrestling entertaining again ... and sexy. But he kept his personal life well-guarded. She wished she could do the same in her life.

With an interest in getting a jump on the interview, Soledad asked the guard, “And how long have you been with the company?”

“Long enough to know not ask too many questions and leave the talent alone.”

The tank must have been warned to be just as secretive. Interesting. Made her wonder what Casanova hid behind his persona.

As sweaty men tempting fate went, Casanova epitomized an awesome specimen of a man. Tall, a sleek nose and a light-brown goatee. His pictures from her research didn’t do the real thing justice. Of course, the pictures were all posed publicity shots, which made him look handsome and charming. He had a side-of-the-mouth smile that spelled trouble and bordered on arrogant. And his intense eyes could bore a hole through a battleship with their gaze.

She ran Casanova’s statistics through her head. Six foot three. Yes, he did look tall. Two-hundred-sixty pounds. Under the ruffled shirt, it was hard to tell what his body looked like. However, his black tights showed he had incredible legs. Long, powerful. She imagined his arms, chest and stomach rippled with delicious muscles. Soledad shook her head. So what if he was attractive. A model with some athletic ability best described him. He was an actor with a bad agent, and even worse, bad writers. How could her parents expect her to get a story by working with an overgrown, pampered, oversexed kid in a man’s body? What a quest. Standing between her one-year anniversary of working seriously and a trip to Fiji stood a man in Batman tights and a Pirates of Penzance shirt. She needed to take control of this interview. Now if she could only convince her jumpy heart and quaky knees, she would be perfect.