Showing results by narrator "Amanda Ronconi" in All Categories

Publicist EJ Lasher is not thrilled to hear that her ex-boyfriend, celebrity chef Morgan Jeffries, is visiting Facile, the latest restaurant she's promoting. She and Morgan did not leave things on a good note - well, technically, she left the note is his knife case, and he didn't notice it for weeks. And she doesn't look forward to facing Morgan's famous profanity-driven temper when he realizes she works for Facile.

Lee Broussard is just a nice guy doing a favor for a friend - delivering a gift to an anniversary dinner at Facile - and ends up seeing his girlfriend sucking chocolate mousse off some strange guy's finger. Shocked speechless and on the verge of dismantling the classy dining room with his bare hands, Lee is distracted by lovely seating hostess Abby DuLane, who yanks him into the nearest closet.

The final story in the Facile Restaurant series! Served, by Jacey Conrad and Gia Corona, gives you a look at each of the couples as they wrap up their steamy night's work.

Facile's manager, Xavier Blackwell, has reputation for being ruthless, smart, and savvy with the ladies. While the first two descriptors are correct, the third portion of his reputation is not exactly accurate. While the posh London accent and prowling persona have garnered him many a lady's attention, for Xavier, there's been only one woman - one woman who seeped into his soul and left her mark on his heart. And she chose tonight, one of the most hectic, disastrous nights in Facile's history, to visit his restaurant.

Facile's chief pastry chef, Lydia Conner, has watched the jerk at table seventeen run her fellow kitchen staffers ragged all night with his special requests and substitutions. But she knows she can sweeten his sour mood with one of her legendary desserts. No man alive can resist her special flourless chocolate cake...except for the jerk at table seventeen.

Tessa thought her day had hit rock bottom when she came home to find her best friend riding her boyfriend like a bronco in the skank rodeo. And then she arrived for her shift at Facile to find that she would be waiting tables in the same section as gorgeous, conceited Colt. Colt, who considered himself God's gift to the sighted. Colt, who honestly seemed to think that diners came to Facile for him and not the delicious food.

On a lake in northernmost Minnesota, you might find Naledi Lodge - only two cabins still standing, its pathways now trodden mostly by memories. And there you might meet Meg, or the ghost of the girl she was, growing up under her grandfather’s care in a world apart and a lifetime ago. Now an artist, Meg paints images "reflected across the mirrors of memory and water", much as the linked stories of Vacationland cast shimmering spells across distance and time.

A must-read for anyone who cares why so many celebs are sporting "bumps", or whether they are really "just like us", this guide - nay, rulebook - lays down the law on what you need to know to play Hollywood in a simple and concise manner.

It’s summertime on the North Carolina coast and the livin’ is easy. Unless, that is, you’ve just lost your mother to cancer, your sister to her extremist husband, and your husband to his executive assistant. Meet Gray Howard. Right when Gray could use a serious infusion of good karma in her life, she inadvertently gets a stranger, Diana Harrington, fired from her job at the local pharmacy. Diana Harrington’s summer isn’t off to the greatest start either: Hours before losing her job, she broke up with her boyfriend and moved out of their shared house.

Emily Glass knows she’s neurotic. But she’s got it under control. Sort of. She dons compression socks when she flies (because, you know, deep vein thrombosis) and responds to people routinely overestimating her age with more Lifespin classes and less gluten. Thankfully, she also has David, the wonderful man she’ll soon call husband - assuming they can survive wedding week with her wildly dysfunctional family. Emily’s therapist mother, Marla, who’s been diagnosing her children since they were in diapers, sees their homecoming as the perfect opportunity for long-overdue family therapy sessions. Less enthused are Emily and her two siblings.

Thanks to some experimental wizardry, Matt is out of Maggie's head. He's in a golem body, to be precise. It's not his body, but it's an improvement on his previous situation. Kind of. It's going to take some time for his soul to acclimatize to an unfamiliar home. Until that happens, Matt will have to hope the awkwardness that comes with learning to operate his new body isn't too much for everyone to handle. An unsolicited case means there's no time to worry about Matt's temporary weirdness.

Just when Maggie thinks it's safe to relax, her life takes another turn down crazy avenue. The biggest surprise should be that Cole turned out to be a baddie, but the possibility she might sorta have something going on with Liam eclipses everything else. Might. Maggie isn't exactly comfortable trusting her instincts right now. Does she decide to handle this in a totally mature way? If "totally mature" means running away, sure.

When Anna Benoit wishes she’s married to the enigmatic owner of the chateau she cleans, she wakes up in a topsy-turvy world where she’s Max Barone’s wife. Anna is a romantic who believes in The One and Love at First Sight. Why? Because it happened to her. The second she saw Max Barone she fell desperately, hopelessly in love. It didn’t matter that they were from completely different worlds—he owned a jewelry empire, she cleaned houses—love had no barriers. Except one.

In southern Virginia coal-mining town in 1942, Bone Phillips has just reached the age when most members of her family discover their Gift. Bone has a Gift that disturbs her; she can sense stories when she touches an object that was important to someone. She sees both sad and happy—the death of a deer in an arrowhead, the pain of a beating in a baseball cap, and the sense of joy in a fiddle. There are also stories woven into her dead mama's butter-yellow sweater—stories Bone yearns for and fears.

In a southern Virginia coal-mining town in December 1942, Bone Phillips is learning to control her Gift: seeing the history of a significant object when she touches it. But one object is off limits: Uncle Ash's World War I dog tags, which hold memories of terror. When a body identified as Uncle Ash turns up inside the mines, Bone will need every ounce of courage she can summon to not only find her beloved uncle through the dog tags but prove that he isn't the thief the mine supervisor claims he is.

In a southern Virginia coal-mining town in October 1942, Bone Phillips is learning to control her Gift: Bone can see the history of a significant object when she touches it. When her best friend, Will Kincaid, asks Bone to "read" the history of his daddy's jelly jar—the jelly jar that was buried alongside his father during the mine cave-in that killed him—Bone is afraid. Even before Bone touches it, she can feel that the jar has its own strange power. With her mother dead, her father gone to war, and Aunt Mattie's assault looming over Bone, she can't bear the idea of losing Will too.

Eliza has always had a plan…until her seamlessly plotted life implodes, and her engagement falls apart. At thirty-two, she suddenly finds herself second-guessing the picture-perfect future she had always envisioned—one that included raising 2.5 children nearby her tight-knit Italian family in San Francisco. Then Eliza is offered the chance to start over: in Juneberry Lake, a small Midwestern town eager to lure remote workers to their picturesque community. Shocking her family and friends (and herself), Eliza packs up her apartment and buys a lake house sight unseen.