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.
Harder Than Steel by Jane Galaxy
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: June 4, 2018
Publisher: Eventide Press
Series: Super Stars #1
Format: Digital eBook
Digital ISBN: B07DJ42L7S
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!!!!
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.
In celebration of the
sale for Jane Galaxy’s Harder Than Steel Eventide
Press is offering one lucky winner a $50 Amazon Gift Card! To enter, simply fill
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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.
Releasing January 15, 2019!
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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