Title: Working For It
Series: A Cook Brothers Novel
Author: BJ Harvey
Genre: Surprise baby, friends to lovers, house flipping romantic comedy
Release Date: May 6, 2020
Sometimes a surprise baby can lead to unexpected happy endings.
***
It started one night in Vegas over a naughty cocktail and dirty banter. Eight months of bedded bliss later, Gilly Nelson says the two words Ezra Baker never saw coming: “I’m pregnant.”
Twice-divorced Ezra has always acted first, thought it through later. Except in Gilly he finds an equal; a strong-willed, independent woman who doesn’t need his money or kind heart to get ahead. She just wants him.
Career-focused Gilly never imagined she’d be thirty-five, single and pregnant. Except when Ezra suggests they date rather than just mate, she finds herself wondering whether the man she’s been looking for has been in her bed all along.
If they can survive raging hormones, house renovations, and the realities of childbirth, surely creating a family will be a walk in the park...right?
***
Working For It is a full-length house flipping romantic comedy that can be read as a complete standalone and is the fifth and final book in the Cook Brothers series. Working For It is Ezra Baker's story.
The thing about best-laid plans is they can go awry. Case in point: I’m currently stuck—more like wedged—in the bath by my hips, one leg bent in the water, the other ankle hooked on top of the faucet, and try as I might, I cannot prune my overgrown lady garden to save myself.
This isn’t a new problem. I tried to get in to see my lovely Taiwanese aesthetician last week, and she informed me that she was fully booked for the next month. It’s my own fault. I figured I’d get to be the size of a whale—like I am now—and the last thing I’d want was sex because sex was what got me into this situation in the first place. Regardless, I begged and pleaded and made an absolute fool of myself, but she couldn’t fit me in. I could’ve booked somewhere else, but there’s a special relationship between a woman and the person she trusts with hot wax and her vagina.
That doesn’t help me right now though. Horny, frustrated, and wanting to make a good impression when I jump Ezra, I thought I could just give myself a quick tidy-up down below, and all would be well.
Except I couldn’t get the right angle with a mirror in one hand and a razor in the other, and there’s no way I can see around my giant pregnant belly full of my baby whose latest trick is to bounce off my cervix like a trampoline.
But I’m too stubborn and too proud to call out to Ezra to come save me. He poured a beautiful-smelling bath for me, lit the few candles I had scattered around the room, then helped me down into the water and then left me with a kiss on the lips and a spring in his step, no doubt in the knowledge he’s going to get himself some—and soon.
It’s definitely not going to happen now though, because by the time he comes looking for me, I’ll be a wrinkled, pruney mess and my vagina will resemble a soaked hedge attacked by a swordfish.
My eyes sting with tears, but I blink them away. Then they start falling, and I try to swipe them off my cheeks until I can’t keep up. I drop the razor and my dignity, and bury my face in my hands.
The door creaks open, and I know this moment has just gone from bad to worse.
“Are you still aliv—hey, what’s wrong?” Ezra asks, crossing the room. He gently pulls my arms away and tilts my chin up, his worried eyes searching mine. Dropping to his knees beside the bath, he pulls me in for a hug.
“I’m getting you all wet,” I whimper.
“Don’t care about that. I do care that you’re sitting in the bath crying when you’re supposed to be relaxing.”
I tuck my face into his neck, my shoulders shaking with sobs. “I… I… I can’t even shave myself.”
He pulls back and frowns at me. “What? Why do you need to shave your legs?” My beautiful clueless man.
“Not my legs…” I say, my voice cracking as the tears hit again, my frustration and anger rising. “All I wanted was to make it easier for you,” I whine. Ez opens his mouth, but I’m too far gone to stop now. “And my waxing lady couldn’t fit me in, and now I’m going to give birth soon, and Dr. Cameron won’t know if it’s the baby’s head full of hair or my Sasquatch vagina,” I sob. “And then I got stuck!”
“Sweetheart,” he says, all soft and warm, and making me want to slap him in my irrational pregnant rage. “You know I don’t care about—”
My head snaps his way, and my eyes narrow to slits. “Every man cares about whether they can find their woman’s vagina or not, Ezra. You need to know where it is so you can see where to stick your big cmmph.” My words are muffled by Ezra’s hand covering my mouth, his lips twitching yet his eyes gentle—albeit apparently amused by my meltdown.
“I think I can help out if you’ll let me.”
“How?” I snap, my stupid emotions even giving me whiplash.
“Well, first,” he says, shuffling back and standing. He leans over, cups my face, and kisses me long and hard and deep until I forget my own name. Then he slides his hands down my body to my waist and locks his gaze with mine. “Brace your arms on the sides, and push up as I lift.”
“You can’t—” I gasp, and his eyes narrow.
“I can, sweetheart. Now one, two, go,” he says, bending his knees and lifting me with a quiet grunt he no doubt tried to hide.
By the time I’m back on my feet in the now knee-deep water, I’m gripping his biceps so tightly; I’m expecting to see a row of half-moon bruises there tomorrow. I let out a huge sigh of relief and sag against his soaked T-shirt. “Thank you,” I breathe.
He drapes a towel around my back. He steps away and wraps it around my front. “Why didn’t you call me to come help you?”
I avert my eyes, and my cheeks burn. “Because it’s embarrassing.”
He pushes my chin up with his index finger and dips his head. “Do you know that Faith got herself into a pile of trouble trying to paint the cornices in her baby’s nursery a week before giving birth?”
“What?” I ask.
He grins. “Yep. Bry found her on her tiptoes on top of a three-step ladder with paint spread from her nose to her toes. She had to brace herself against the wall with her spare hand because she somehow forgot that her center of gravity had shifted due to her baby belly.”
“Mine was my big ol’ child-bearing hips getting wedged on the sides of the bath when I tried to—”
“Do something you could’ve asked me to do?”
I cover my face with my hands. “I would never subject you to that.”
His lips twitch up into a devilish grin. “I’m quite attached to the place you’re so adorably disparaging.”
I roll my eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“No. What I know is that you’re going to drop that towel and sit down on the bench in the shower.” He closes the distance between us, one hand curving around the back of my neck, the other drifting down to grab my ass. “And then I’m going to shave you how you’d like, and then I’m going to turn you around and show you just what this beautifully curved body of yours does to me.”
My mouth drops open, my breaths quickening as a wave of heat washes over me, and I have to clench my thighs together to stay standing.
“Any objections?” he rasps, leaning in so his lips are moving against mine.
“Nope,” I squeak, earning a grin against my mouth.
“Good,” he says, giving my butt a quick, sharp smack before stepping back. “Now carefully go get ready for me. I have some pubic art to create. I might even shave my name down here, just so everyone knows you’re mine.”
My mouth drops open, and I stare at him, dumbfounded. “You did not just say that?”
He shrugs and shoots me a sexy smirk. “Hey, it’s only me and Dr. Cameron who will see it. Why not have a little fun with it?”
I narrow my eyes and point a finger at him. “You will not do anything fancy down there, mister.”
He quirks a brow. “And how would you know? Besides, isn’t vajazzling the thing to do these days?”
My eyes bug out of my head as I wonder who the hell I’ve procreated with. “Nope. I’ll let you trim the forest but no decorating the tree, okay?”
Working For It is the fifth and final title in the Cook Brother series, featuring honorary brother Ezrah Baker.
Ezrah has the worst luck with women, with two failed marriages to prove it, but he's incredibly sweet supportive loyal and a family man at heart. When he loves it's fiercely and with his whole heart.
Gilly is independent and self reliant, she doesn't form lasting attachments to anyone but her sister Ronnie. She's strong and resilient and hard working, and peruses her goals with a vengeance.
Ezrah and Gilly's story is sweet and sexy, the banter is witty, fun and full of innuendoes. It's an easy read with minimal drama and i was captivated from the very first chapter.
I loved catching up with the Cook brothers and it was a wonderful, if bittersweet ending to the series.
