A
sexy movie star, a desperate photographer, and the secrets that could
destroy them both. Contemporary Romance author Jane Galaxy shines in
this steamy debut title which fans of Sariah Wilson's #Starstruck
will swoon over.
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About
Harder Than
Steel:
Title:
Harder
Than Steel
Author:
Jane Galaxy
Genre:
Contemporary Romance
Release
Date: June
4, 2018
Publisher:
Eventide
Press
Series:
Super Stars #1
Format:
Digital eBook
Digital
ISBN:
B07DJ42L7S
Synopsis:
A
SEXY MOVIE STAR, A DESPERATE PHOTOGRAPHER, AND THE SECRETS THAT COULD
DESTROY THEM BOTH...
Henry
Jackson (Jax) Butler is Hollywood's hottest bad boy. Ever since the
release of STEEL KNIGHT, his first movie in the world-famous Defender
superhero film franchise, he's been able to land any girl he wants,
even his co-star's sexy model girlfriend. But this dream job comes
with downsides—like feeling completely typecast and unable to move
on artistically. That and the paparazzi. The evil, privacy-invading
scum who tail his every step, smearing his name and reputation just
for having some innocent fun. And one pap in particular has become
his worst enemy...
Vanessa
Reyes would give anything to be a real photographer, shooting for
investigative journalism pieces that could make a difference in the
world. But with her sister's medical bills to pay, she's stuck
tailing Hollywood's latest bad boy Jax Butler through New York,
cashing in on every one of his plentiful hookups. She might not love
her job, but she feels no remorse about exposing Jax for the
heartless heartbreaker he is. Why shouldn't she cash in on his dirty
dealing?
But
when Jax is ordered to clean up his public image, he can think of no
better media contact to approach for help than his rival. Keep your
friends close and your enemies... Well, you know the rest. As for
Vanessa, her boss has ordered her to find him newer, dirtier dirt on
Jax. What better way to worm her way into his good graces than by
accepting his offer to write some fluff pieces about him?
Yet
the more time the two enemies spend in one another's company, the
more they begin to see different sides to one another. Is Jax really
the ruthless hookup artist he seems? Is Vanessa just another shady
pap out for his blood? Or do they both have another, deeper self? One
that only shines when they're together...
Add
to your TBR list: Goodreads
!!!!NOW
ON SALE FOR $0.99 thru January 2, 2019!!!!
Available:
Amazon
Excerpt:
Copyright
© 2018 Harder
Than Steel
Jane
Galaxy
Jax stayed
where he was at the foot of the bed. There was still time, but maybe
not as much as he’d counted on. Wardrobe tended to show up early.
He brushed his fingertips together lightly.
“They are
going to be here soon,” he enunciated clearly. “And I am afraid,
my dear,” he leaned over to grasp her foot and playfully pull her
toward him to soften the blow, “That you have to make yourself
scarce.”
“You said
we’d spend an afternoon together!” She pulled herself up to run
her hands over his biceps. “You promised me, Jax.”
“Yes, but
you were naked at the time, and it doesn’t really seem fair to hold
me to a promise in circumstances like that,” he pointed out. She
swatted him lightly across the arm, then caressed him. “Besides, I
have interviews, and there’s that dual press junket next week.
Maybe I’ll see you there.”
Georgina
was looking at him more acutely now. When she dropped the sex kitten
act, there was a resilience to her that he found encouraging, like
hearing about someone small and strong winning against all odds. He
leaned in and pressed his lips against her forehead.
“It’s
not the same in public,” she said with a sigh, and went to get
fully dressed. Jax wandered over to the windows to notice that his
view had changed yet again. New York was in real flux these
days—going up next door were either luxury condos or an office
complex. The sun glinted off glass on the street below. When he’d
left for Los Angeles, there had been the rubble of a warehouse that
had probably once made pickle jar lids; now there were sidewalk sheds
and signs with fantasy graphics of completed structures. Light
flickered at him again, and Jax squinted carefully down to the
street.
Someone
with a very large camera was photographing him from the sidewalk.
“Oh
shitting fuck Christ,” he whispered, and looked around to see if
Georgina had heard him. She was smiling down into her phone, one
index finger playing across her lips in an aesthetically-pleasing
pose. “You need to leave,” he said, and gathered up her purse.
“Wha—”
“Now,
preferably. We need to get moving.”
“What the
hell,
Jax?!”
“Listen
to me,” he said. Georgina curled her lip and looked down her nose
at where he’d set his palms on her shoulders. “There’s
paparazzi downstairs.”
Her face
twitched into eager surprise, disgust forgotten. “How many?”
“Just
one. But they give off a pheromone, and soon it’ll attract others,”
he said. She made to move over to the windows, but he held her wrist.
“They’ve already seen me.” He felt his hand tug. “Georgina.”
That seemed to bring her around to slightly-disappointed sanity.
“Ugh,
fine. I can call a car if you tell me where the back door to this
place is.”
“There
isn’t one. And don’t call a car,” he said, pushing her phone
out of her face to look at her. “That’s like a pap magnet.”
“Which is
why you take a back way. There’s always a celebrity exit—loading
dock, alley entrance, anything?”
“I’d
bet good money on the alley door being blocked because of the
construction.” The landlords on places like these were more
concerned about getting the right color light from Edison bulbs than
basic safety regulations. He shook his head in disbelief. “But you
need to go now, before there’s a crowd. Walk just a block, or take
a taxi.”
“God,
you’re no fun when you’re jetlagged, you know that? I know
how papping works.” She rolled her eyes.
“I’d
like to go light with the tabloids this week.” Jax looked at her
significantly.
“You
know, there’s no such thing as bad press,” Georgina told him on
the service elevator, once they were dressed and had managed to get
down the hallway to the service elevator without meeting anyone.
“You’re lucky
you get this kind of attention, people wanting to know what you’re
doing every minute. As if you couldn’t just take a picture of
yourself. It’s gotta be this huge production—someone has to
actually get in a car or ride the subway to go to your location and
report back on what you’re doing. It’s almost vintage,
isn’t it?”
He pushed
open the metal doors onto the stretch of asphalt between buildings.
No one was passing on the distant sidewalk except the usual dog
walkers and flocks of tourists in screen-printed t-shirt uniforms,
and for a moment Jax felt foolish for an abundance of paranoia. They
came up nearly to the street and stood in the shade of a sidewalk
shed.
“Maybe
it’ll be—”
Through the
jolt of pneumatic screw guns and a low grinding hum of heavy
equipment, Jax distinctly heard with a chill the horrifying sound of
a shutter clicking on a digital SLR.
“Hey,
Henry!”
Fuuuuuuck.
Fuck.
Henry
Jackson “Jax” Butler closed his eyes for just a moment, hoping
Georgina had dosed him with LSD. Or peyote. But not ayahuasca, he
hoped. Worst Comic-Con ever. The cloying sing-song voice sounded like
a delighted friend seeing him for the first time in a while, and
Georgina turned to face it.
“Do you
know her?”
Jax turned
and raised both fists out in front of him, middle fingers jutting up
nonchalantly. The woman with the camera bent her knee slightly to get
a better shot of him flipping her off.
“Aww,
it’s you!” he said in a mock-enthusiastic voice as he recognized
her face—olive skin, dark eyes, hair pulled back into a ponytail.
The one girl who could find him anywhere and always create a shitty
way to get him into the tabloids. “My least favorite pap of them
all! Having a good summer? How’s the life-ruining business going?
You know, maybe it’s just me—I feel like our connection is so
one-sided, we never talk, does that ever worry you?”
The
paparazz—well, it was probably paparazza,
now that he thought about it, not that anyone would ever use that
word, but there were very few women paparazzi out there, it was one
of those markets men seemed to dominate—she
lowered the camera to her side and cocked her hip, scrunching up her
mouth and looking wickedly thoughtful.
“Nah, my
conscience is pretty clean. Mostly because I’m not an accomplice
to... whatever this is.” The girl waggled her finger at them and
cocked her head to one side, gazing at Georgina’s face intently to
try to place her.
Ah, shit.
“Go,”
said Jax, and gave Georgina a light push. The camera whipped back up
to capture his hand on her shoulder blade.
“Isn’t
that your co-star’s girlfriend?”
Only then
did Georgina seem to remember that she was Jax’s co-star’s
girlfriend, and disappeared along the building.
“Still
the worst, Reyes, you know that?” he called out to her. She focused
the camera again, and caught him looking overhead suddenly, squinting
at something near the fire escapes. “Is that—?” He pointed to
it, floating upward on a breeze like a lost balloon. “Is that your
clean little conscience?”
His hand reached out to grasp empty air. “Oh, it’s getting away,
there it goes. Say goodbye, Reyes, better make it a full break. No
regrets.”
She was
ignoring him, briskly clicking through the images on her viewscreen,
just casually scrolling through her power over the situation, over
him, over the money to be made off other people’s lives. He started
toward her, not entirely sure of what he was about to do, when a
screeching thud turned end over end on itself, sounding like a semi
jackknifing through traffic. Jax saw it before he heard construction
workers hollering at each other.
One of the
steel beams had come loose and was coming down.
He took a
running start off of nothing and threw himself headlong, tackling
Reyes in a dive. The girder slammed onto a flatbed trailer parked
next to where she’d been standing, crumpling the cab.
Jax’s
head rang. He’d rolled at the last second to avoid throwing his
whole weight onto her, and now Reyes was twisting around underneath
him to get loose. She had more muscles than her loose, nondescript
clothing suggested, hard and compact, but still curving where she
ought to. Jax wished she’d give him just a minute, for the dust to
clear, and finally stood, breathing hard. Reyes came up to her feet,
and he saw why she’d been squirming—she wanted to make sure her
camera had survived being pressed between the two of them.
The
Butler Did It—Jax Assaults Photographer After Alley Affair Shocker,
the headline would read, and the Steel
Knight
toy marketing executives would haul him into their offices for
another lecture.
“Jesus
Christ,”
he said to her. She was inspecting the lens and hadn’t even
bothered to check herself for damage. Or him. “Really? Now?”
Reyes
frowned down at her camera, but instead of lining up another shot,
she gingerly twisted the focus to feel for damage.
“I can’t
believe you managed to do that without breaking it,” she said. “Or
me.” He could hear construction workers shouting to one another,
footsteps in the distance.
They stared
at each other for several moments, and she let the camera drop to the
strap on her neck.
“Um,”
said Reyes. “Should I—How can I—Thanks? You?”
“How can
you thanks me?” said Jax. Reyes’ mouth opened and closed several
times, and her eyes shut for a moment, only to open on Jax holding
out his palm.
“By
deleting those photos.” When she didn’t move, he flexed his hand.
“Come on, lemme see it.”
Reyes drew
the strap from around her neck carefully, as if it were heavy.
“I’m
only interested in the ones of me,” he said, quiet, but her strange
expression didn’t change. Jax went into the image review and
removed every shot involving him, even the one of his apartment
building rising up to loom over the street. He paused and moved his
thumb off the delete button on the picture before that: a plump older
woman striding through a zebra crossing with one arm flung out as if
to welcome or guide, looking directly into the lens. Jax flicked the
power off and handed the device back to Reyes.
She stood
for a moment as distant sirens echoed off the buildings, and they
looked at one another.
“You
okay?”
“Yeah.”
Her dark eyes flicked back and forth across the pavement in front of
him, and her throat moved when she swallowed. “You okay?”
“Uh…
yeah. Sure.”
Reyes
nodded.
“Okay,”
said Jax. “I have to go be on TV now.” He turned and went back
into the apartment building through the metal doors.
Other
Books in the Super Stars series:
Colder
Than Ice (Super Stars #2)
SOPHIE
MARKES just landed the ultimate writing gig--turning her
award-winning superhero comic 'Shadows of the Imperium' into a
screenplay for Card One Studios.
TRISTAN
ECCLESTON just landed the ultimate acting role--playing the icy,
brooding Lucius in Card One Studios' newest blockbuster.
Sophie's
dream job quickly becomes a nightmare. Card One has completely
changed her story, rendering it unrecognizable. Salvaging the script
means plenty of on-set time... particularly with one unbearably
gorgeous British actor.
Tristan's
dream role is more precarious than ever. His father, British acting
royalty, and his scheming ex-girlfriend are determined to sabotage
his "frivolous" gig. Avoiding them and their snobbish
expectations means spending more and more time with the quiet, nerdy,
and irresistible Sophie.
But
when Sophie learns the truth behind her butchered script--when
Tristan learns the truth behind Sophie's icy facade--it'll take more
than the might of the Imperium to thaw their hearts.
About
Jane Galaxy:
Jane
Galaxy has the heart of a romantic and a brain full of pop culture
knowledge. She loves to escape into the world of super-powered heroes
and heroines with awesome abs who punch stuff, but putting them
through their paces when it comes to the hard work of emotions and
true love is even better.
You can
usually find her pining over gifs from ComicCon and coming up with
the perfect song for a hot guy to play in the background of his
latest angst-riddled workout session.
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