Blog Tour: Read an extract of Irresistible by Liz Bankes.

 Maybe you've heard of Irresistible by Liz Bankes? It's the book everybody, and I mean everybody is talking about!

Read on for an extract from this a sizzling tale of bed-hopping, bruised egos, broken hearts and a bad boy who no girl can resist. Meet Jamie Elliott Fox...if you dare...!

Irresistible by Liz Bankes

Publisher: Piccadilly Press

Release date: Ebook available NOW || Paperback available April 2013

When Mia gets a job in a posh health/country club during her gap year, she is strikes up a friendship with the laconic and funny Dan. Dan is also working in the club and keeps Mia amused. However, she soon finds herself drawn to the wealthy bad boy, Jamie. Jamie is the beautiful and privileged Cleo’s boyfriend. Mia knows that her relationship with Jamie is wrong, but there’s something so dangerously exciting about Jamie that she just can’t stop.

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Irresistible by Liz Bankes

Chapter Three

‘O. M. F. G.,’ says Gabi with a dramatic handwave between each letter. She grips my arm across the table, nearly knocking my coffee over in the process.

‘What?’

‘Jamie. Elliot. Fox.’

‘Can you speak in normal sentences?’

‘He’s, like, famous, Mia.’

‘He seems like a knob. What’s he famous for?’

‘Er, for being rich and fit? You must have heard about him! God, it’s like you live under a bridge.’

Within a second she’s whipped out her phone and is scrolling rapidly. She hands it to me triumphantly. ‘Ta da!’

A few people who are quietly murmuring over their coffees look round at our table, which is something that often happens when we’re out together. It’s like Gabi has a volume dial on her voicebox that is always turned a few 15 notches above everyone else’s.

‘That was some quick stalking, even for you,’ I tell her.

‘But you want to see him, don’t you?’

‘No. Maybe. Okay, yes, I want to see him.’

I’d like to be all unbothered and cool, but I’m a bit intrigued by him. Obviously he’s good-looking, with his stubble and dark eyes. And his muscly chest that I haven’t actually seen properly, but I imagine being muscly. Not that I’ve been imagining him walking round in just his shorts, all wet from the swimming pool.

But he blatantly knows he’s fit or he wouldn’t go around kissing people in windows. Or staring. Why would he stare at me? What does he think I’m going to do – run outside and say, ‘Now you’ve glared at me through a window, I must have you’?

Gabi sees I’ve gone into a daydream and so does her usual trick of digging her nail into my hand. ‘Oi! Okay, so his Facebook is, like, really private, but me and Han met him and his friends that night we went to York’s.’

She says the night we went to York’s. She means the night we didn’t get into York’s and so stood freezing our arses off in a nearby bus shelter, passing round a Smirnoff Ice. It seems that these days it’s all about trying to get into clubs and places, when we always used to just go to people’s houses when their parents were away. I miss getting all excited about house parties and making playlists for them and putting all our money together to give to whichever tall person was going to go and try to buy drinks at the supermarket. I have no chance of getting into any clubs – I’m only just over five foot, so bouncers spot me immediately. Gabi has the most enormous boobs ever to have grown on a person, though, so she just strolls in.

Maybe if I get this job then I’ll be able to socialise in the 16 Radleigh Castle bar, like a sophisticated . . . er, woman, and drink port with Jamie Elliot-Fox. And kiss Jamie Elliot-Fox against windows. But without getting sacked.

While she’s talking about that night, I look at the first picture. There’s him in a suit, but with the shirt collar open. He’s leaning back on a sofa, casually holding a glass of wine, while the people around him, including two girls practically on his lap, clutch vodka bottles and generally look totally wasted. He’s fixing the camera with that same critical, amused look he had at the window.

‘You buggered off with those goths,’ she continues. Gabi thinks that anyone who doesn’t like pop music is a goth. Actually Han’s sister and her friends had turned up and were on their way to see a band, so I went with them.

‘They’re not—’ I try to interrupt.

‘Whatev. So you went with the goths and then I texted you saying we’d met all those Woodbridge guys outside the club and went to their house party – remember?’

‘Yeah, they were all called Tarquin or Octavian or something.’

‘So Jamie was there and that was the night I became Facebook friends with that guy Willem.’

‘William?’

‘No, Willem.’

‘That’s not a proper name.’

Gabi takes a sip of her hot chocolate dramatically. Well, to anyone else it would be dramatic, but it’s how she does everything.

‘Anyway, Max got really jealous and they were like actually going to fight, but Fat Steve calmed everything down.’

‘Really?’ I arch my eyebrows at her. ‘Max has never been in a fight, Gabs. We’ve never even seen a fight.’

‘Whatevs. You weren’t there. There was fighting in their eyes, Mia.’

‘Just not in reality.’

‘Exactly!’

‘So you’ve met him, then?’ I scroll through some more photos. He’s not in all of them, but every so often he’ll appear. On the beach in his shorts again, and wearing shades. In another suit, sitting by a bonfire. In most of the photos he’s got a drink in his hand, but he looks in control, in stark contrast to lots of the people around him.

‘Well, he didn’t talk much. He stood there drinking and watching everyone. Oh yeah, and he was with this girl, apparently. The poshest girl I’ve ever seen. Like a horse with loads of hair. But all these other girls kept crowding round him and he was whispering to them and making them laugh, like really flirty. If Max did that, I’d go schitz. He said something to this one girl and she took her top off and swung it round her head. Next thing, she’s looking around for him, but he’d walked off!’

‘Wow, he sounds just lovely.’

‘His friends said he lives in this pool house outside Radleigh Castle. How awesome is that? He has parties all thetime. When you work there we should totes go — Babe!’

We are interrupted by Max arriving.

‘Hey, princess,’ he says, pointing both fingers at Gabi. He shuffles over in his ridiculously baggy jeans, stopping briefly when the oversized cap he wears perched on the back of his head falls off. I’d like to point out that he is both white and middle class. Considering the amount Gabi bitches about other people’s dress sense, I think that she must go temporarily blind whenever Max is around. He slides into our booth. ‘Aight, baby?’

Okay, make that temporarily blind and deaf.

Max nods at me. ‘Mia.’

‘Hi, Max.’

Then Gabi and he start kissing, which, as is usual for them, carries on for about five minutes. I keep my eyes on her phone. A girl with dark curly hair keeps appearing in the photos, who must be the one Gabi was talking about, because she does have a lot of hair and is near to Jamie in most of the pictures. Her name is Cleo Farah. She is stunning, with big brown eyes, sharp cheekbones and coffee-coloured skin.

Max and Gabi are still firmly attached to each other’s mouths, so I look at the next photo. Jamie is dressed up again, but it looks like it’s for a family thing rather than a party. Maybe a wedding. He’s wearing a waistcoat and has his arm around a girl who looks about twelve. She must be his sister. He’s smiling, but not in the frowny way he is in the other photos – it looks more real. I suddenly realise how stalkerish this is and put Gabi’s phone down. At that second, my own phone starts vibrating in the bag on my lap. I’d turned the sound off after the ringtone nearly gave me a heart attack at Radleigh Castle. It’s calling from a private number.

The receptionist at Radleigh called me from a private number to arrange the interview. Maybe they’re ringing to say I got the job. Or that I didn’t. Or that I was seen watching Jamie in the swimming pool. There aren’t laws against watching men in shorts . . . are there?

I realise I’ve just been staring at the phone and haven’t actually answered.

‘Mia, it’s Julia Elliot-Fox. We’d like to offer you a waitress

position.’

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Extract posted with permission from Piccadilly Press.

Follow @LizBankesAuthor on Twitter.

 

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