Broken by Lisa Edward Page A

hilarious.” I threw my hands in the air, mimicking his reaction when he first read them.
    He chuckled. “I’m not surprised at all. I think you have quite a gift for crafting a story.” He pulled out the chair beside me and pivoted it around on one leg so he could straddle it backward. “I am a little disappointed, though, that the main male character is a fireman. I was hoping for a schoolteacher.”
    If that was his only complaint, then I was beyond happy.
    “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the books I’ve been readin’, it’s that the male lead has to be somethin’ that women fantasize about. Someone strong and heroic, who at first may seem unattainable or broody and broken. Women love a man in uniform, too. It’s a universal weakness we have,” I said matter-of-factly. “If I wrote ’bout the guy who stacks shelves at Walmart havin’ a blisterin’ affair with an accountant, no one would be interested.”
    “So schoolteachers aren’t sexy enough?” he challenged.
    My eyes swept over Adam. Oh, some schoolteachers were too sexy for words.
    “The teachers at my school weren’t sexy, but it seems teacher/student stories are popular. Readers eat ’em up.”
    He screwed up his face. “I’m sorry, but that would be totally unethical and just damn wrong.”
    I laughed. “I mean college-aged students fallin’ for the hot English teacher.” This was out of my mouth before I had time to remember that Adam taught English.
    He smiled playfully. “So English teachers are hot?”
    “Only if they teach students over the age of eighteen.”
    “Maybe I need to change schools,” he pondered.
    He was hot regardless of the age of his students. In any profession, at any time of day, Adam was sexy and smart and funny, and did I mention sexy? I’d seen enough of his body to know that it was flawless. His chest was defined, and his shoulders broad and muscular. He had muscles in his arms that popped and bulged with the slightest movement and his abdominals were crazy. Were schoolteachers sexy? Hell yeah, this one certainly was.
    My eyes had been sweeping over Adam’s body and eventually made their way back to his face, where a knowing grin graced his perfectly bowed lips.
    “Maybe my next book can have a schoolteacher?”
    “And an author,” he added. His strong bearded jaw clenched, and his vivid blue eyes grew dark. “Would that be sexy enough for you? A teacher and a writer getting all hot and sweaty together?” He sucked his bottom lip in while his eyes darkened.
    Heat rose in my cheeks as his intense gaze swept over my body.
    His chin rested on his forearms that were crossed on the back of the chair. “I think it would be extremely hot.”
    My lady bits clenched at the thought and I let out an involuntary whimper. I was in way over my head with this conversation and needed to back out, pronto.
    “So, are there any suggestions you can make that would improve the manuscript thus far?” That was better. Back to business and on even footing.
    “Yes, you can stop saying ‘thus far,’” he teased. “It’s good for a draft, but I’d like some sex now.”
    Oh, me too…
    “So I think we need to work on you getting into character and feeling what you need to feel as the female reporter in your story when she initially sees the fireman.”
    Okay, this was good—a bit of role-playing to picture myself in the scene as the reporter and, of course, Adam as the fireman to draw on my emotions. I could write it easily enough if I was to revert back to my old ways. Her moist clam would feel heated with desire at the sight of his fire hose. His chiseled cheekbones coated in black soot from the raging fire he had just extinguished. But how did I put that into the twenty-first century? I reached for my lists, one for acceptable words for penis, the other of substitute words for vagina. Maybe I could come up with something that wasn’t going to have Adam rolling on the floor in fits of