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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Teaser chapter

  About the Author

  Acclaim for Janice Maynard

  “Spicy-sweet success.”—Romantic Times

  “Sizzling heat and a creative story line.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Readers will be caught up in the story from page one.”

  —Loveromances.com

  “The plot is carefully crafted, characters fully developed, and the level of writing is superb.”—A Romance Review

  The Perfect Ten

  “If you . . . like your romance lovin’ hot, emotion-driven, and often, Maynard delivers in spades. Her novels are great choices when you’re looking for a read to sweeten up your day—or spice up your nights.”—LifetimeTV.com

  “Treat yourself to a great read as the three cousins each find their own Perfect Ten.”—A Romance Review

  “Janice Maynard has written three sexy and overall great stories . . . a Perfect 10 all the way!”—RRTErotic

  “Witty and provocative.”—Affaire de Coeur

  Play with Me

  “By the end . . . readers will be left wanting another provocative tale.”—Erin McCarthy

  “For the reader looking for hot, explicit sensuality, with tons of happy endings, and good character development, Play with Me delivers.”—TwoLips Reviews

  Suite Fantasy

  “[Maynard] develops her characters and plotlines to the extent that the reader cares about what happens outside of the bedroom as well as within it.”—Romantic Times

  “Heated and passionate.”—The Best Reviews

  ALSO BY JANICE MAYNARD

  By Appointment Only

  The Perfect Ten

  Improper Etiquette

  Play with Me

  Suite Fantasy

  SIGNET ECLIPSE

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, January 2009

  Copyright © Janice Maynard, 2009

  All rights reserved

  SIGNET ECLIPSE and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Maynard, Janice.

  Hot mail/Janice Maynard

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-65601-9

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

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

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  For my wonderful husband, Charles, who wrote me love letters every single day during our freshman year in college when we were three hundred miles apart and missing each other like crazy. Sweetheart, those notes might not have been erotic valentines, but your words made me fall in love with you time and again.

  One

  Jane Norman appreciated men even though she didn’t have a clue what made them tick.

  She was thirty-two, and her feminist sensibilities were as well developed as the next gal’s, but she was willing to ask for help when it came to carpentry projects, plumbing emergencies, auto repair, spider extermination—you name it. Fortunately, at the moment she had no crises, mechanical or otherwise, that needed male intervention.

  And though she freely admitted that men were vital to the process of conception, her biological clock wasn’t ticking any louder than normal. Motherhood was still a delightful “maybe” somewhere way out on the horizon.

  But despite the fact that her life was under control in most areas, she couldn’t ignore the truth. She needed a man . . .

  For sex. And cuddling. And long walks on the beach. Well, scratch that one. Tennessee was a landlocked state. She deleted the last entry on her mental checklist and continued. . . . She needed a man for sharing meals with. And sex. And laughter. And sex. And playing footsies under the covers. And sex.

  Definitely a pattern developing. The trouble was, not any man would do. Jane had a lamentable tendency toward wanting what she couldn’t have. Or didn’t have. Namely, Ethan Oldham, the tall, self-assured assistant chief of police. He made her heartbeat skitter and her forehead break out in a sweat whenever she saw him in his khaki uniform, his muscular thighs and broad shoulders straining the seams of the standard-issue clothing.

  Never mind that she and Ethan had lived in the same community since they were in grade school. Or that they’d shared an on-again, off-again friendship for a decade and a half. Mostly off for the past four years. But hey, that wasn’t her fault. Ethan had done the unforgivable. He’d gotten engaged to another woman. And even though he’d had the good sense to rectify his mistake really quickly, she’d told herself it was a sign she needed to eradicate this silly crush.

  They were never going to be a couple.

  But time heals all wounds, or so she had been told, and when a girl sits alone on New Year’s Eve one too many times, she gets desperate. In this instance, really, really desperate. Desperate enough to come up with a plan that was completely beyond her skill set. She was going to become a poet and win the man she loved.

  She had never at any previous point in h
er life aspired to write erotic verse, but in a moment of blinding revelation while standing in line at the supermarket, she’d read a snatch of an article from the latest Cosmo, and realized that she needed something original. Something inspired. Something that Ethan Oldham would be unable to ignore.

  In a moment of insanity, she’d decided to use bottled ink and a fancy quill . . . as if that would somehow afford her an edge in this dirty-poetry endeavor. Instead, all it had given her was an indelible spot on her favorite robe and a trash can full of crumpled efforts.

  She scanned her most recent attempt.

  Roses are red

  Violets are blue.

  I’d like to get naked,

  With you and me, too.

  Not only did her poetry suck—it didn’t even make grammatical sense. She sighed and tossed the latest version with all the rest.

  It was all Ethan’s fault. If he’d reciprocated her adolescent devotion in the ninth grade, things would have been different. But when a girl was almost six feet tall at the tender age of fourteen, it was a cold, cruel world. Sadly, Ethan had been the only boy in the junior high school taller than Jane, and she’d fallen madly in love with him for no other reason than his stature. Of course, his single dimple hadn’t hurt. Despite the fact that he barely knew her name way back then, she had yearned for him to notice her.

  She pushed the memories aside and looked at the clock in the bottom corner of the TV. Fifteen minutes left in the old year. And good riddance was all she had to say.

  She ignored the messy quill and reached for a ballpoint pen and a piece of scrap paper for her next draft.

  There lives near you a lady fair

  Who wants to play with your hair.

  She yearns for your touch.

  She would like it so much,

  So please take me home to your lair.

  She burst out laughing and moaned, scooting from the sofa to the floor. She crossed her arms on the coffee table and buried her face, wishing she had the confidence to simply walk up to Ethan Oldham and ask him out.

  As a healthy, virile young man at the peak of his physical power, he was enough to make any woman’s knees weak, but Jane had no clue about how to reveal her not so platonic feelings. She’d tried time and again to move on . . . to develop a crush on someone else. Anyone else. In fact, she had sworn to herself that she was over Ethan . . . for good.

  Yet here she was, alone in her apartment on another sad, lonely New Year’s Eve, doing her best to compose a sexy, wicked valentine that would bring him to his knees. She knew that one card wasn’t going to do it. She’d need patience, and perseverance, and a bunch of valentines.

  Maybe six or seven. One for each Friday from now until February fourteenth. Could she do it? Could she court a man using nothing more than creative, erotic verse?

  She picked up the quill one last time and retrieved her final sheet of neatly trimmed parchment paper. Her brow furrowed. Her fingers tensed. This was do-or-die time. Delicately, she moved the nib across the paper and watched openmouthed as the pen composed words and phrases with all the confidence and aplomb of a Ouija board.

  A man such as you,

  A man strong and true,

  Makes my woman’s heart break;

  Makes my woman parts ache.

  I’m writing you now,

  As a sign of my vow.

  I’m tired of denying

  This love I’ve been hiding.

  So I’ll woo you with words

  And arouse your suspicions

  Until that fine day

  When we lose inhibitions.

  Tonight when you sleep

  In dreams hot and deep,

  See me come to your bed and

  Then dwell in your head.

  This note’s but the first

  Of a string of my verse,

  So read this with care

  And wait for me there. . . .

  Jane’s hand was shaking when she laid down the pen. Did she dare send this? Would Ethan be intrigued? And if he was, would she ever work up the courage to reveal her identity?

  She thought of his smoke-colored eyes, his flashing smile, the wonderful little rumble of masculine laughter that made her nipples ache to have him nestled at her breast.

  She was tired of being a coward. She was tired of wishing for the moon. Most of all, she was tired of watching other people live the life she wanted. Ethan Oldham was on the endangered-species list, and it was time to kick Cupid’s fat pink butt cheeks and do some matchmaking of her own.

  Soon her oh so yummy, hard-bodied police officer love interest was going to have a bunch of really good reasons to use his handcuffs.

  She hoped. . . .

  Ethan Oldham hunched his shoulders in his fleece-lined coat and turned the car heater up a notch. Late December in Statlerville, Tennessee, was mild as a rule. Most of the big snows—when they occasionally occurred—came in February and even the end of March. Case in point: Last year on New Year’s Eve, folks were out shooting fireworks in their shirtsleeves, the temps in the balmy midfifties.

  But this particular January was coming in on a wave of bitter cold that made the thin sliver of moon overhead seem like a pale, icy light against the pitch-black sky.

  He didn’t have to be out at all tonight. With his seniority, he could be back at the station tucked up in his warm office going over paperwork. But he had no party to go to, and the young pups on the force all had hot dates with their wives and girlfriends.

  God. When did thirty-two get to be old? He sighed and turned down the street that ran in front of the high school. He was praying for a quiet night—with no underage drinking—or better yet, no drunks of any age wrapping their cars around telephone poles.

  Maybe the weather would keep people inside. Then all Ethan would have to worry about, at least in an official capacity, was domestic squabbles that ended in bloodshed. Something about holidays brought out the best and worst in people. Tonight, on his watch, he was hoping for the former.

  Nothing looked out of place on the campus, so he turned his vehicle around in the cul-de-sac by the flagpole and headed toward the middle of town. The courthouse square was a ghost town, the small businesses shut up tight for the long holiday weekend. He glanced at the second story of the brick building on the far corner. In the faint glow of a streetlight he read the familiar name on the sign: PAPER PLEASURES.

  Jane’s surprisingly successful business. Who knew you could earn a living selling fancy pens and single sheets of paper? She lived upstairs in a small apartment, and judging by the light in the second-story windows, she had elected not to go out tonight. For a brief moment he thought about parking the cruiser and knocking on her door, but then he squashed the impulse. The days were long gone when Jane would have welcomed an impromptu visit from him.

  The thought made him sad, and he stepped on the accelerator, eager to get away from the depressing memories. At one time he and Jane had been good friends. But it had been at least four years since she’d given him a genuine smile. They ran into each other from time to time, mostly in social settings, but he had the distinct impression that she avoided him whenever she could.

  A sudden burst of staccato conversation emanated from the radio, jerking his thoughts from the past. He called in and then headed toward the interstate, where a semi had flipped over while coming off an exit ramp.

  By the time the mess was cleaned up, thankfully without injury, it was after one a.m., which was a damn good sign. That meant that most of the New Year’s Eve revelry was over without incident. Statlerville wasn’t New York City. At midnight, most people watched the ball drop, shot off a few bottle rockets, and called it a night.

  Ethan drove back toward the station, ready to turn over the night shift to someone else and head home to bed. But when he rounded the corner of Grove and Vine, he frowned. His sister’s lights, at least the ones in the back of the house, were still on.

  Damn. That couldn’t be good. Sherry was an early riser and
liked going to bed by ten most nights. And he knew she wasn’t entertaining this year, because Debra was spending the holidays with her dad in Florida.

  Ethan called in his location and pulled into the driveway. His knock might startle Sherry, but she could see his car in the driveway easily enough and not be scared to open the door.

  His instincts usually served him well, and tonight was no exception. When his older sibling opened the door and ushered him inside, he could tell she had been crying. Shit. He was no better than the average male at dealing with tears, but he and Sherry were close.

  He followed her to the den, where a pile of glowing embers, the real thing, smoldered in the fireplace, still pouring out heat. A lamp burned on one end table, and a book and afghan tossed aside testified to how his sister had spent the evening.

  He settled opposite her on the comfy leather sofa. After a moment or two of small talk, he pinned her with a direct gaze. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Sherry winced and closed her eyes, her chin trembling as her head fell against the back of the seat. “Debra’s not coming back.”

  The sheer anguish in her blunt words made his heart break. He admired his sister more than anyone he knew. She’d gotten pregnant at seventeen—he was eleven at the time—and she had decided to keep her baby, despite the small-town gossip. She and Barry had married, and both of them managed to graduate from high school.

  But the relationship had been a struggle from the beginning, and ten years ago, after a fairly amicable divorce, Barry moved to Florida. Since he and Sherry had joint custody, Debra spent a big chunk of the summer and parts of the holidays in Tampa.