Cover

Praise for

JUST ONE NIGHT

“Filled with the salacious, saucy content you’d expect in Fifty Shades of Grey . . . . However, beyond the titillating words and visual sexual images, the underlying story is about the choices women make every day.”

—Miss Wordy

“I enjoyed every second I was with this book. It’s intensely sensual, and the sex scenes are incredibly HOT.”

—Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews

“A quick, fun, and sensual read that left me wanting much more!”

—Romance Book Junkies

“Tempting, seductive, and purely romantic.”

—Lovey Dovey Books

“A refreshing, seductive, and highly enjoyable erotic romance.”

—TotallyBookedBlog

“So compelling. I could not stop reading.”

—Up All Night Novels

“I couldn’t envision a better ending if I tried!”

—Jessy’s Book Club

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part one

prologue

The correctional officer hands me the box without ceremony, here in this dingy room with overhead lights that give everything an unnatural yellow glow. I wait for a moment for the officer, a woman with a soft face and hard eyes, to offer condolences or prayers for the woman I’m mourning, but the words don’t come. There is no reverence here, only efficiency.

So I turn my eyes to the box . . . It’s so light I can balance it on one hand without hurting my wrist. It’s not right. This package is just too small for what it represents.

Under the watchful eyes of the officer, I tentatively open it, mindful of the shiny gold star that proudly announces this other person’s authority over this place, over me, and over the woman whose last years of life have been casually tossed into a box.

On top of the contents is a picture of me when I was five, maybe six . . . lifetimes ago. The picture shows me at Disney World dressed like Cinderella, a plastic tiara balanced atop my mass of black wavy hair. My mother is by my side, curtsying to me as if I actually had the power to rule a kingdom.

Back then, I thought any little girl could grow up to be Cinderella. I thought someone—maybe a prince, maybe an employer, maybe just a friend—someone would look beyond the trappings of my humble beginnings and realize that I was really a princess. That they would give me the opportunity to live a beautiful life. In a way, that’s what my mother was grooming me for. Back then we both believed in dreams. We both thought hope had value. We both believed that mixed up within the dust and discarded crumbs my mother was perpetually laboring to remove, that amid all that dirt . . . there was always a little pixie dust.