Something About You Read online

  SOMETHING ABOUT YOU

  JULIE JAMES

  To the jokers in the room next to me

  at the JW Marriott San Francisco—

  As you kept me awake with your antics,

  this is the book I wrote in my head.

  Praise for

  Practice Makes Perfect

  “A tantalizing dessert—a delicious, delightful read that all hopeless romantics will enjoy.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “A fast-paced romantic comedy, packed with hilarious situations and sharp dialogue . . . A talented writer . . . Expect a lot of sparks to fly.”

  —Sacramento Book Review

  “James presents a sophisticated contemporary romance set in legal circles, and proves that she is a master at conveying both courtroom and behind-the-scenes maneuvering . . .”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A perfect 10, a light, thoroughly satisfying romance.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “A contemporary romance writer to keep your eye on!”

  —Romance Junkies

  “I laughed out loud . . . You will take this book into your hearts.”

  —All About Romance

  “A new favorite author of mine . . . The sexual tension is off the charts and as explosive as dynamite . . . This story offers it all, phenomenal characters, a titillating plot . . . It’s just not possible to fit all the good things this book has to offer in one review.”

  —The Romance Studio

  “Will make you smile and want much more of Julie James.”

  —TwoLips Reviews

  “You will definitely add Ms. James to your favorite authors list.”

  —Night Owl Romance

  “[A] perfect read!”

  —Romance Novel TV

  “James has a knack for writing those perfect-for-a-day-at-the-beach reads.”

  —Book Binge

  “Deliciously funny, easy to read, enjoyable and gripping . . . Pure, unmitigated fun . . . Smart and engaging—simply a damn good contemporary romance . . . If practice makes perfect, then I cannot wait for what Julie James comes up with next.”

  —The Book Smugglers

  “A must-read ... I have added Julie to my auto-buy list . . .”

  —What Women Read

  Just the Sexiest Man Alive

  “Fantastic, frolicking fun . . . Read Just the Sexiest Man Alive, and you will be adding Julie James to your automatic buy list!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Janet Chapman

  “Witty banter and an amazing chemistry . . . bring this delightful story to life.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Remind[s] me of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy movies: they have that funny edge.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James

  “Witty and romantic.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “James[’s] familiarity with both the law and the film industry lends credibility to this fast-moving, contemporary romantic comedy.”

  —Booklist

  “[A] wonderful debut novel . . . James had me laughing out loud . . . Fabulous.”

  —Romance Novel TV

  “She will be highly successful . . . [A] witty, romantic . . . winning debut . . . that is just an engaging delight to read.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  “Great dialogue . . . A quick and breezy read that generate [d] a lot of smiles.”

  —Dear Author

  “Ms. James tackles what happens . . . with wit [and] humor. The one-liners will keep you laughing all the way through this book.”

  —Night Owl Romance

  “I must say, I was very impressed. . . . A true romance.”

  —Queue My Review

  “Laugh-out-loud funny.”

  —Fallen Angel Reviews

  “The sparks fly . . . Engaging . . . James has done an excellent job.”

  —The Romance Studio

  “A spectacular beginning of what I hope is a stellar career . . . [An] awesome novel that rightly deserves my Perfect 10 award.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Smartly written.”

  —All About Romance

  “Witty, competent, and thoroughly charming escapist fantasy . . . Romantic comedy at its best.”

  —The Romance Reader

  Berkley Sensation Titles by Julie James

  JUST THE SEXIEST MAN ALIVE

  PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

  SOMETHING ABOUT YOU

  Acknowledgments

  To my amazing editor, Wendy McCurdy, for her input and wisdom, and for knowing what I wanted to do with this book before I fully realized it myself. Thanks also to Kathryn Tumen, Katherine Pelz, and the entire team at Berkley for all their support.

  To my agent, Susan Crawford, for her encouragement and unflagging enthusiasm, and to Christine Garcia for all her great ideas and dedication.

  A special thanks to Kati Dancy, for her fantastic insight and feedback on the manuscript. Even if she is off her rocker when it comes to Mr. Reynolds.

  Thanks to John Mehochko, for answering my questions about the daily life of an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and to my father-in-law, for his knowledge of the technical aspects of criminal investigations.

  I’ve been very blessed to have met, both in person and online, the greatest group of reviewers, bloggers, readers, and fans an author could ask for. You ladies—and you know who you are—truly rock.

  To my friends and family, for all their love and support. And to my son, who always puts a smile on my face and who is too darn cute for words.

  And lastly, thanks especially to my wonderful husband, Brian, who honestly seems to know just about everything (boy, am I going to regret putting that in writing), and for his never-ending encouragement.

  One

  THIRTY THOUSAND HOTEL rooms in the city of Chicago, and Cameron Lynde managed to find one next door to a couple having a sex marathon.

  “Yes! Oh yes! YES!”

  Cameron pulled the pillow over her head, thinking—as she had been thinking for the past hour and a half—that it had to end sometime. It was after three o’clock in the morning, and while she certainly had nothing against a good round of raucous hotel sex, this particular round had gone beyond raucous and into the ridiculous about fourteen “oh-God-oh-God-oh-Gods” ago. More important, even with the discounted rate they gave federal employees, overnights at the Peninsula weren’t typically within the monthly budget of an assistant U.S. attorney, and she was starting to get seriously POed that she couldn’t get a little peace and quiet.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! The wall behind the king-sized bed shook with enough force to rattle her headboard, and Cameron cursed the hardwood floors that had brought her to such circumstances.

  Earlier in the week, when the contractor had told her that she would need to stay off her refinished floors for twenty-four hours, she had decided to treat herself to some much-needed pampering. Just last week she had finished a grueling three-month racketeering trial against eleven defendants charged with various organized criminal activities, including seven murders and three attempted murders. The trial had been mentally exhausting for everyone involved, particularly her and the other assistant U.S. attorney who had prosecuted the case. So when she’d learned that she needed to be out of her house while the floors dried, she had seized on the opportunity to turn it into a weekend getaway.

  Maybe other people would have gone somewhere more distant or exotic than a hotel three miles from home, but all Cameron had cared about was getting an incredibly overpriced but fantastically rejuvenating massage, followed by a tranquil night of R&R, and then in the morning a brunch buffet (again incredibly overpriced) where she could stuff hers
elf to the point where she remembered why she made it a general habit to stay away from brunch buffets. And the perfect place for that was the Peninsula.

  Or so she had thought.

  “Such a big, bad man! Right there, oh yeah—right there, don’t stop!”

  The pillow over her head did nothing to drown out the woman’s voice. Cameron closed her eyes in a silent plea. Dear Mr. Big and Bad: Whatever the hell you’re doing, don’t you move from that spot until you get the job done. She hadn’t prayed so hard for an orgasm since the first—and last—time she’d slept with Jim, the corporate wine buyer/artist who wanted to “find his way” but who didn’t seem to have a clue how to find his way around the key parts of the female body.

  The moaning that had started around 1:30 A.M. was what had woken her up. In her groggy state, her first thought had been that someone in the room next door was sick. But quickly following those moans had been a second person’s moans, and then came the panting and the wall-banging and the hollering and then that part that sounded suspiciously like a butt cheek being spanked, and somewhere around that point she had clued into the true goings-on of room 1308.

  WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA-WhaMA ...

  The bed in the room next door increased its tempo against the wall, and the squeaking of the mattress reached a new, feverish pitch. Despite her annoyance, Cameron had to give the guy credit, whoever he was, for having some serious staying power. Perhaps it was one of those Viagra situations, she mused. She had heard somewhere that one little pill could get a man up and running for over four hours.

  She yanked the pillow off her head and peered through the darkness at the clock on the nightstand next to the bed: 3:17. If she had to endure another two hours and fifteen minutes of this stuff, she just might have to kill someone—starting with the front desk clerk who had put her in this room in the first place. Weren’t hotels supposed to skip the thirteenth floor, anyway? Right now she was wishing she was a more superstitious person and had asked to be assigned another room.

  In fact, right now she was wishing she’d never come up with the whole weekend getaway idea and instead had just spent the night at Collin’s or Amy’s. At least then she’d be asleep instead of listening to the cacophonous symphony of grunting and squealing—oh yes, the girl was actually squealing now—that was the current soundtrack of her life. Plus, Collin made a mean cheddar and tomato egg-white omelet that, while likely not quite the equivalent of the delicacies one might find at the Peninsula buffet, would’ve reminded her why she’d made it a general habit to let him do all the cooking when the three of them lived together their senior year of college.

  Wheewammawamma-BAM! Wheewammawamma-BAM!

  Cameron sat up in bed and looked at the phone on the nightstand. She didn’t want to be that kind of guest that complained about every little blemish in the hotel’s five-star service. But the noise from the room next door had been going on for a long time now and at a certain point, she felt as though she was entitled to some sleep in her nearly four-hundred-dollar-per-night room. The only reason the hotel hadn’t already received complaints, she guessed, was due to the fact that 1308 was a corner room with no one on the other side.

  Cameron was just about to pick up the phone to call the front desk when, suddenly, she heard the man next door call out the glorious sounds of her salvation.

  Smack! Smack!

  “Oh shit, I’m cooommmminnggg!”

  A loud groan. And then—

  Blessed silence. Finally.

  Cameron fell back onto the bed. Thank you, thank you, Peninsula hotel gods, for granting me this tiny reprieve. I shall never again call your massages incredibly overpriced. Even if we all know it doesn’t cost $195 to rub lotion on someone’s back. Just saying.

  She crawled under the covers and pulled the cream down duvet up to her chin. Her head sank into the pillows and she lay there for a few minutes as she began to drift off. Then she heard another noise next door—the sound of the door shutting.

  Cameron tensed.

  And then—

  Nothing.

  All remained blissfully still and silent, and her final thought before she fell asleep was on the significance of the sound of the door shutting.

  She had a sneaking suspicion that somebody had just received a five-star booty call.

  BAM!

  Cameron shot up in bed, the sound from next door waking her right out of her sleep. She heard muffled squealing and the bed slammed against the wall again—harder and louder than ever—as if its occupants were really going at it this time.

  She looked at the clock: 4:08. She’d been given a whopping thirty-minute reprieve.

  Not wasting another moment—frankly, she’d already given these jokers far too much of her valuable sleep time—she reached over and turned on the lamp next to the bed. She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the sudden burst of light. Then she grabbed the phone off the nightstand and dialed.

  After one ring, a man answered pleasantly on the other end. “Good evening, Ms. Lynde. Thank you for calling Guest Services—how may we be of assistance?”

  Cameron cleared her throat, her voice still hoarse as her words tumbled out. “Look, I don’t want to be a jerk about this, but you guys have got to do something about the people in room 1308. They keep banging against the wall; there’s been all sorts of moaning and shouting and spanking and it’s been going on for, like, the last two hours. I’ve barely slept this entire night and it sounds like they’re gearing up for round twenty or whatever, which is great for them but not so much for me, and I’m kind of at the point where enough is enough, you know?”

  The voice on the other end was wholly unfazed, as if Guest Services at the Peninsula handled the fallout from five-star booty calls all the time.

  “Of course, Ms. Lynde. I apologize for the inconvenience. I’ll send up security to take care of the problem right away.”

  “Thanks,” Cameron grumbled, not yet willing to be pacified that easily. She planned to speak to the manager in the morning, but for now all she wanted was a quiet room and some sleep.

  She hung up the phone and waited. A few moments passed, then she glanced at the wall behind the bed. Things had fallen strangely silent in room 1308. She wondered if the occupants had heard her calling Guest Services to complain. Sure, the walls were thin (as she definitely had discovered firsthand), but were they that thin?

  She heard the door to room 1308 open.

  The bastards were making their escape.

  Cameron flew out of bed and ran to her door, determined to at least get a look at the sex fiends. She pressed against the door and peered through the peephole just as the door to the other room shut. For a brief moment, she saw no one. Then—

  A man stepped into view.

  He moved quickly, appearing slightly distorted through the peephole. He had his back toward her as he passed by her room, so Cameron didn’t get the greatest look. She didn’t know what the typical sex fiend looked like, but this particular one was on the taller side and stylish in his jeans, black corduroy blazer, and gray hooded T-shirt. He wore the hood pulled up, which was kind of unusual. As the man crossed the hallway and pushed open the door to the stairwell, something struck her as oddly familiar. But then he disappeared into the stairwell before she could place it.

  Cameron pulled away from the door. Something very strange was going on in room 1308 . . . Maybe the man had fled the scene because he’d heard her call Guest Services and was abandoning his partner to deal with the fallout alone. A married man, perhaps? Regardless, the woman in 1308 was going to have some serious ’splaining to do once hotel security arrived. Cameron figured—since she already was awake, that is—that she might as well just sit it out right there at the peephole and catch the final act. Not that she was eavesdropping or anything, but . . . okay, she was eavesdropping.

  She didn’t have to wait long. Two men dressed in suits, presumably hotel security, arrived within the next minute and knocked on the door to 1308. Camer
on watched through the peephole as the security guards stared expectantly at the door, then shrugged at each other when there was no answer.

  “Should we try again?” the shorter security guard asked.

  The second guy nodded and knocked on the door. “Hotel security,” he called out.

  No response.

  “Are you sure this is the right room?” asked the second guy.

  The first guy checked the room number, then nodded. “Yep. The person who complained said the noise was coming from room 1308.”

  He glanced over at Cameron’s room. She took a step back as if they could see her through the door. She suddenly felt very aware of the fact that she was wearing only her University of Michigan T-shirt and underwear.

  There was a pause.

  “Well, I don’t hear a thing now,” Cameron heard the first guy say. He banged on the door a third time, louder still. “Security! Open up!”

  Still nothing.

  Cameron moved back to the door and looked out the peephole once again. She saw the security guards exchange looks of annoyance.

  “They’re probably in the shower,” said the shorter guy.

  “Probably going at it again,” the other one agreed.

  The two men pressed their ears to the door. On her side of the door, Cameron listened for any sound of a shower running in the next room but heard nothing.

  The taller security guard sighed. “You know the protocol—we have to go in.” Out of his pocket he pulled what presumably was some sort of master key card. He slid it into the lock and cracked open the door.

  “Hello? Hotel security—anyone in here?” he called into the room.