Readers were captivated by Stephanie Evanovich’s highly-anticipated New York Times bestselling debut novel, Big Girl Panties. THE SWEET SPOT (William Morrow Paperbacks, on-sale 3/24/2015), finally tells the sizzling story of two readers’ favorite characters from Big Girl Panties: Chase Walker, the hunky professional baseball player, and his beautiful, curvy, and exceptionally sassy wife Amanda.
Amanda is a successful, levelheaded woman who built her restaurant from scratch. She’s certainly not looking for a prince charming to sweep her off her feet. So when Chase, baseball’s golden boy,
begins to pursue her, she barely gives him the time of day. Despite his playboy image, Chase is a monogamist who likes strong women. Amanda is exactly the type he’s been looking to settle down with, but she won’t say yes easily.
For Amanda their romance is all too good to be true, can Chase really be this perfect? And then she discovers that squeaky-clean Chase Walker has a spicy little kink. Chase’s fans have no idea
that off the field, he likes to indulge in a little passionate spanking from time to time. To her surprise, Amanda discovers a naughty side she never knew she had. Thanks to a tabloid, their secret comes to light and becomes the nation’s favorite water-cooler
gossip. Will Amanda give up a little bit of her single-girl freedom for true love with a twist? Or will the pressure of Chase’s stardom spell doom for this sexy couple?
The Story Behind
The Sweet Spot
Dorothea Benton Frank,
bestselling author of The Hurricane Sisters, interviews Stephanie
Evanovich.
Dottie: I
just want to congratulate you on the success of your debut, Big Girl
Panties. And you’re following that up a year later with a new novel that I’m
sure will keep people talking.
Stephanie: Thanks, Dottie!
It’s been a really fun year. I’m looking forward to the July eighth release of The
Sweet Spot. I can’t wait to get back out there and talk to readers about
it. And congrats on your new release—The Hurricane Sisters. It’s the
book I think I’ll be taking with me when I travel, if I can wait that long to
read it.
Dottie: The
romantic duo in The Sweet Spot, Chase and Amanda Walker, were sidekicks
in Big Girl Panties—did fans specifically ask for you to bring them back
for a star turn?
Stephanie: After Big
Girl Panties hit the streets and I started getting feedback, it was pretty
clear that some readers really took to them. They nearly stole the show! And
I’m positively thrilled by that. They may be my favorite couple.
Dottie: Chase
Walker is a superstar baseball player and a lot of the tension in the novel
comes from Amanda trying to decide if she wants to be a superstar’s girlfriend.
I know you’re a sports fan. Were you excited to have a pro athlete as your
hero?
Stephanie: Excited is a bit
of an understatement. It was more like crazy-over-the-moon psyched. There’s
just something about athletes . . . yum.
Dottie: There’s
some genuinely fun, spicy scenes in this book. How do readers react when you
turn up the heat?
Stephanie: When I went out
on the road with Big Girl Panties and met readers, fun seemed to be the
order of the day. Throw some spice in there and it’s a recipe for delicious
hotness—at least I’m hoping that’s the case.
Chapter One
It was a top down kind of day. The sky was blue, with a few passing clouds
and just a hint of breeze indicating that winter was waving its final
good-bye. It hinted at summer just
around the corner. The sun was bright
and warm, encouraging buds to blossom into fragrant glorious flowers. The very atmosphere spoke of all the things
possible as the earth renewed itself after a cold east coast hibernation. It was just too tempting. Amanda never put the top down anymore, not
since the first summer she had the Chrysler Sebring anyway. She’d always wanted a convertible. At least fate had been kind enough to wait
until August two years ago to sport around before a wasp tangled itself in her
hair at 40 miles an hour on her way to opening day at the Cold Creek. It ended up stinging her hand, her neck and
inadvertently, her front bumper and an unsuspecting fire hydrant. She spent the night she had meticulously been
planning for months moping in an ER room with a slight concussion and a burn
from the airbag. It had been air
conditioning whenever she was in the car from then on. But when she walked out the front door that
late April afternoon and was greeted with that first
you-know-you-don’t-need-a-jacket day, she was willing to take the risk. Today felt different. And wasps would still be drowsy. Amanda watched ducks and geese and squirrels
roaming in pairs as she drove past Maxwell Place Park, looking actually love
struck, ready to extend their respective species. People on the streets were smiling as they
hustled about their day, others were acting flirty. It was nothing short of spring fever, and she
couldn’t help but catch it. At a stop
light, she titled her face up towards the sun to let it shine on her for a
moment as she offered up a quick prayer of thankfulness for this beautiful day,
her wonderful life and all the possibilities that came with it. Maybe she’d do some flirting herself. She turned up the radio and began to bounce
to the music. Yeah, it was a top down
kind of day.
And then there was the seagull that
flew overhead.
Amanda watched it all go down from
the rearview mirror as she checked her make-up after pulling into The Cold
Creek Grill’s small parking lot. The
white and green gloppy goo fell perfectly onto the right side of her head, a
stark contrast to her long black waves.
She stared at it for a few moments as the reality and the poop sunk in.
“That didn’t just happen.”
But it did happen, and once again,
Amanda Cole had been reminded. Never get
too cocky. Avoid using words like
perfect or wonderful. Never attach your
own name. They were invitations to
comeuppance. She wouldn’t go as far as to say she considered herself
particularly unlucky, she just knew her boundaries. She couldn’t pinpoint when she’d learned it
for sure, but it was probably somewhere in between not making cheerleading and
being as her mother called it, “twenty pounds away from prom queen.”
Her mother wasn’t cruel, but she was
blunt. Sometimes it was hard to tell the
difference and every now and then, someone you love says something thoughtless,
and it sticks.
Catherine Cole didn’t really want her
to be a prom queen, anyway. As Essex
County DA, Amanda’s mother wanted her to be smart and shrewd and strong.
Amanda was beautiful and sensitive in
spite of herself, her retired family court judge father never failed to remind
her.
Amanda stomped in through the Cold
Creek’s front door and slammed her purse on the bar with a loud thud. Eric and Nicole were going through the beer
cooler’s inventory in preparation to stock up from the basement whatever they
would need for the evening. Eric was a
lanky blonde blue eyed surfer boy who had been accepted to Harvard, but opted
for Bartending School instead when he realized how late he liked to sleep. All his savings and vacation time were spent
in search of the perfect curl. In
between budgeting, he felt New Jersey waves were as good as anyplace else, and
he could be close to his family. Nicki
was a free spirited Seaton Hall drop that Amanda had known since high school
out who was trying to break into acting.
She was a petite, vivacious brunette who had a great horror movie victim
scream, but her booking to audition ratio was often disappointing. She did her best to stay optimistic, paying
her dues, as they all called it. Eric
was a few years younger but that didn’t prevent him and Nicki from becoming
fast friends as well as roommates. Although nobody got involved, it was common
knowledge that the two were known to hook up now and again, usually the result
of her not getting the call and his ability to make the best commiserating
cocktail. Amanda didn’t care if they
shined the bar with their butts, as long as they could work together, did it
after closing and cleaned up afterwards.
Eric looked up briefly from his
clipboard and then took a double take as Amanda approached their end of the
bar.
“Yikes,” he said, his face scrunching
up in distaste, “Hope that’s not a fashion statement.”
“Bird,” was Amanda’s one word reply
as she proceeded past them.
“Geez, what was that thing eating?”
He said, casting a quick look to his counter-part.
“It’s supposed to be good luck!”
Nicki called out while Amanda began disappearing within the ladies room.
“Not feeling it,” Amanda could be
heard snapping as the door closed behind her.
She walked up to the mirror over the sink to best assess how to clean
the mess up. It had begun to drip
further down, appeared to be soaking into the thick black hair she spent a half
hour blowing dry. She took a deep
breath. This was nothing more than a
problem that needed solving. She had
this. First she took some toilet paper
and tried to scoop as much as she could with one grab. It got the bulk of it, but the parts left
behind were now successfully smeared deeper into her hair and beginning to
clump together. She wet some more tissue
and tried to wash the remainder out, but it started to decompose in her hand
and her hair, leaving bits of it behind and adding to the mix. She took one more handful of tissue and wet
it again but this time left it too soaked.
When she tried to gently squeeze it over the affected hair, the overflow
dripped down her hand and onto the front of her blue silk Jones of New York
blouse, leaving a wet spot directly over the center of her ample right breast.
“Really?” she shook her head in
disgust at her reflection in the mirror.
Not only did she have bird shit and toilet paper remnants in her hair,
now she looked like she was lactating.
She had only managed to make things
worse. Giving the shirt priority, she
tried the hand dryer for it. After a
minute, it dried up the moisture but left a rather large off color stain where
the water had been. It no longer looked
like she was lactating, but merely that she had lactated. The right side of her head was now crunchy.
Strike two.
Amanda stormed out of the bathroom,
back to the bar where Eric and Nicki were now waiting.
“You can barely notice it,” Nicki
said after staring for a minute.
“Are you kidding?” Eric took the more
direct approach. “It looks like a pterodactyl
flew over her after a chili cook-off.”
Amanda closed her eyes, bit her lip
and began counting. When she reached
eight the phone rang. She quickly fired
off nine and ten out loud and went back near the front door.
“Cold Creek Grill. How may I help you?” She answered the phone as if her day was
right as rain. She was a business woman,
first and foremost.
“I need a reservation for tonight,” a
gravelly voice barked into the phone.
The caller was either on a cell phone with a bad connection or had a
mouth full of marbles.
“Of course sir, what time are you
looking for?”
“Seven,” he said impatiently and Amanda
pictured him running to catch a subway.
“Let me make sure I have that
available,” she told him, trying to buy time while she booted up the computer
at the podium a few feet away. She moved
the phone to the other side of her head, forgetting it was a war zone and her
hair crackled near her ear.
“Trust me, sweetheart, you have a
table available.”
“Sir?” She didn’t know what to be
more offended by, his use of the word sweetheart or the underlying threat that
she better be able to seat him. And she
determined he was just some arrogant blowhard who was sitting with his feet up
on his desk overlooking the water and a fat stogy in his mouth.
“A superstar is having dinner at your
restaurant; you don’t want to make him wait.”
“All of our guests at the Cold Creek
are VIPs Mr…?”
“Maybe I should speak to the owner?” he cut
her off and she thought she heard more spit squish out of the end of his cigar.
“I am the owner. My name is
Amanda Cole. To whom do I have the
pleasure of speaking?”
“Don’t seat us someplace high traffic
like near the front. He’s not there to
be an advertisement. You’ll get your
photo op.”
It sounded so scathing, like she was
some sort of a bistro whore looking to make a buck, as if she would be
interested in taking a picture with him in the first place. Supreme Court justices and past presidents
dined at the Cold Creek without incident.
“Mr. What-ever-your-name-is, I’m not only concerned for the comfort of
our guests, but the safety of my staff.
And we have had some high profile guests in the past. Several are regulars.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard that. That’s why I’m calling. But lady, you never had anyone this big,” he
said with an air of superiority that was nothing short of skin crawling. At least he had upgraded her to lady.
If he wasn’t being such a total
jack-ass, she might have taken him more seriously. “Would you like to tell me who he is, so that
I might inform security?” she said with overt sarcasm. He could either take being spoken to in kind,
or he would start to ream her out and she would hang up on him and he could
dine elsewhere, bad business or not.
There was a pause and she thought he
may have hung up on her first. But then
he said, “No. Better you don’t know till
he gets there. Someone tips off TMZ and
the night’s a bust. And he brings his
own security”
“Will they be joining you for
dinner?”
His laugh was particularly
smarmy. “They’re not paid to eat.”
So he wasn’t only rude, he was also a
tyrant. “That’s fine, sir, they can
stand guard with mine.” Only hers were
imaginary. She no longer cared if the computer was ready. It was a Weds, they were rarely fully booked,
and this man and his famous guest seemed intent on dining there. He was probably going to be more aggravation
than anything else, even if he was only half as self-important as his
representative. “You’re all set, dinner for two at seven. Would you like to leave me a name or is there
a code word or what?”
There was another pause, and once
again Amanda was given the false hope that he may have hung up and saved her
from a night of inconvenient distractions at the very least. But then she heard him on the other end, it
sounded like a snort.
“You’re spunky, kid,” he told
her. “Name under Alan Shaw. I’ll be there at 6:50. I don’t like to wait either. And make sure there are good steaks on hand,
he’s a meat-eater.”
There was no mistaking the
disconnection this time. A security
conscious carnivore with pope-like status was joining her for dinner
tonight. One who had an obnoxious toady.
She pulled the phone away from her ear, turned it off and wiped the watered
down bird residue off it with the sleeve of her shirt before setting it down on
the bar. She noted the time on the now
fully booted up computer, which opened to the day’s reservation page. They were completely booked for seven. She had forgotten about the art house theatre
opening a few blocks away. Strike three.
Her day officially went bust at 2:02 pm.
That was fast, and on a day that started off so well. When would she learn to keep thoughts on
perfection out of her head?
Amanda took a look over at Eric and
Nicole. When the exchange started taking
a turn for the testy, they stopped what they were doing to watch, waiting to
see if their usually competent boss was about to unravel. Amanda picked her purse up off the bar.
“Can you two hold down the fort for a
couple hours?” she asked, more out of courtesy than concern while fishing out
her keys.
“Sure,” they said in unison. Then
Nicki added, “Where you going?”
“I’m using a mulligan and starting
the day over,” Amanda said over her shoulder as she headed for the door. She wasn’t sure it was going to help.
ABOUT STEPHANIE EVANOVICH:
Stephanie Evanovich is a full-fledged Jersey girl from Asbury Park who began writing fiction while waiting for her cues during countless community theater projects. She attended New York’s School of Film and Television and acted in several improvisational troupes and a few small-budget movies, all in preparation for the greatest job she ever had, raising her two sons. Now a full-time writer, she’s an avid sports fan who holds a black belt in tae kwon do.
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