Showing posts with label Mills and Swoon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mills and Swoon. Show all posts

Thursday, June 26, 2025

The Olive Grove by Mills & Swoon™ Daily Romance Short Audiobook and Text #mill&swoon

 

sexy man book cover illustration

📘 The Olive Grove Agreement: A Hot and Hilarious French Villa Romance – A Mills and Swoon Short

Subtitle (optional):
One reluctant heiress. One infuriatingly hot ex-chef. And one very firm agreement made over figs and fornication.


Title: The Olive Grove Agreement
A Mills and Swoon Short
Where inheritance meets innuendo and everything smells faintly of rosemary and bad decisions.

Cass Winter was not in the mood for a French villa.

She had deadlines, a dodgy knee, and the last time she tried to drive on the right side of the road she’d accidentally parked in a fountain. But apparently, her great-aunt Iris had passed away and left her La Maison du Hérisson, a once-grand property in the hills of Provence. And so, armed with nothing but SPF 50 and mild resentment, Cass arrived.

It was hotter than she expected. And louder. Especially in the garden, where someone was swearing in French and violently attacking an olive tree.

She squinted.

He was shirtless. Tanned. And wielding garden shears like they owed him money.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he barked, in the polished English of someone who’d once dated a model named Saskia.

Cass raised a brow. “And you are?”

“I live here,” he snapped. “Who the hell are you?”

Meet Luc Brousseau, disgruntled former chef, current squatter, and all-round beautifully difficult man.

It turned out Iris had taken him in after he “quit” (read: was fired from) a Michelin-starred kitchen in Lyon for seducing a critic and flambéing her handbag. She let him stay in the guesthouse in exchange for cooking and grumpiness.

And now? Now the guesthouse had no formal deed. And Luc had no intention of leaving.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said over dinner that night, ladling cassoulet into bowls like a man who knew exactly what he was worth. “Unless you drag me out in handcuffs.”

Cass smiled sweetly. “Don’t tempt me.”

The first week was war. Passive-aggressive Post-it notes on the fridge. Loud music at strategic times. He cooked at midnight. She reorganised the pantry just to upset him.

But then… something shifted.

It began with wine. Then a storm. Then her power went out and he “reluctantly” invited her to sleep on his sofa. One glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape became two. Then his hand was on her thigh. Then her dress was on the floor.

He kissed like he argued—deliberately, intensely, and with far too much tongue.

“Still want me gone?” he growled, half-naked, pinning her against the ancient stone wall.

“Ask me again tomorrow,” she gasped.

In the morning, she found a croissant, a perfectly brewed coffee, and a note:

Keep the villa.
I’ll keep the guesthouse.
We’ll share the rest.

—L

She sipped the coffee, watching him prune a fig tree shirtless. Again.

Cass smiled.

The inheritance wasn’t the only thing that needed handling delicately.

The End.

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Monday, June 23, 2025

Beneath the Amber Moon: A Droll and Steamy Seaside Love Triangle – A Mills and Swoon Short by Sarnia de la Maré FRSA



woman men wine flowers moon


 Beneath the Amber Moon: A Droll and Steamy Seaside Love Triangle – A Mills and Swoon Short

(A modern romantic short with heat, humour, and one woman caught deliciously between her past and a pair of very persuasive arms)



 Beneath the Amber Moon


Marina Vale had precisely three rules for her new seaside life:

  1. No high heels before noon.

  2. No men named anything.

  3. And absolutely no falling in love with anyone who owns a boat.

By Tuesday, she’d broken two of them. By Wednesday, the third was looking dangerously shaky.

Marina had returned to her family’s crumbling clifftop manor in Dorset with grand intentions of solitude and home-grown tomatoes. After a spectacularly public London divorce involving a hedge fund, a Hungarian model, and a poorly aimed breadstick, she was determined to become the kind of woman who wore linen without creasing and talked to plants. Instead, she found herself staring far too long at the new dockhand's biceps.

Aeron Maddox. With a name like that, he was contractually obliged to be hot. And he was. The kind of hot that made you reconsider feminism, underwear, and your grocery list all at once.

She spotted him on her morning walk to the bay—shirt clinging, jeans low, working a coil of rope like he was in a very niche exercise video titled Knots and Thighs.

“New?” she asked, casually clutching her water bottle like it might burst into flames.

He glanced up. Dark hair. Sharp jaw. Smile like he knew what she dreamt about.

“Temporary,” he replied, eyes dragging slowly from her sandals to her sunhat. “You?”

“Divorced,” she said brightly. “And drying out.”

Aeron laughed. A deep, quiet kind of laugh that suggested he didn’t take much seriously—except maybe the way he was currently not taking his eyes off her.

Enter: Theo Ellison.

Theo was her past dressed in corduroy and good decisions. He’d been her almost-fiancé back when she still thought brunch was a personality. Tall, charming, and entirely too nice, Theo turned up at her door three days later, holding a bouquet of ethically sourced wildflowers and the sort of hopeful expression that made her deeply suspicious.

“I heard you were back,” he said, rain dripping from his hair. “I thought… I might come and ruin your peace.”

“Oh, thank God,” Marina said. “I was starting to make sourdough.”

He kissed her cheek and smelled of bergamot and poor timing.

Things escalated, as they tend to do, over a dinner party.

Marina had invited them both without thinking. Or rather, without admitting she was thinking. Theo brought wine. Aeron brought a crab. There was jazz. There was risotto. There was tension so thick it could be spooned into ramekins and served with a sprig of regret.

When Theo leaned in to whisper something undoubtedly poetic, Aeron raised a brow and cracked a claw.

“Everything all right, Marina?” he asked, voice low and infuriatingly amused.

She cleared her throat and tried not to explode. “Peachy. Just two old flames and one highly flammable woman.”

After dessert, Theo offered to help with the dishes. Aeron stayed behind to dry. Marina, foolishly, stood in the middle like a Regency heroine on a hen night.

“I remember the sound you made when I touched your neck,” Aeron murmured, not looking at her. “Wonder if you still do.”

She dropped a spoon.

From the kitchen, Theo called, “Still like chamomile, Rina? I made a pot.”

And that’s when she knew she was absolutely, completely, and spectacularly doomed.

Later that week, Marina stood on the cliff path, barefoot and wine-glossed, watching the moon spill amber across the water.

Two men. One heart. Zero bloody clue.

But for now? She was exactly where she wanted to be. Between chapters. Between kisses. Between one delicious mistake and another.

She grinned, tilted her face to the wind, and whispered to no one in particular:

“Tomorrow, I’m buying a boat.”

The End.



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