NEW :: 09.12.03 :: RECORD TIME has been selected as a finalist in the 2003 Madcap Award, sponsored by the Heart & Scroll chapter of the Romance Writers of America in Bloomington, IL. For a list of finalists, go here. Winners will be announced in early October!

10.21.02 :: Astrid Kim of Romance Reviews Today is kind enough to say, "Whatever her next novel, I will be sure to read all of Beverly Brandt's novels, past and future. She is a fine author who should rocket to success in record (ahem) time!"  Ah, a reviewer with a sense of humor!

10.01.02 :: Reviewer Harriet Klausner gives RECORD TIME five stars and calls it "an amusing romantic suspense novel that is a top ten hit for Beverly Brandt."

10.01.02 :: Another 4-star review from Romantic Times magazine.  Reviewer Jill M. Smith says, "Sparkling and filled with humor and fun, RECORD TIME announces that author Beverly Brant is here to stay!"

09.22.02 :: RECORD TIME falls below the 1,000 mark on www.barnesandnoble.com.  Of course, who knows what this means in terms of sales?  Still, it's fun to see a book's rank go from over 1,000,000 to 703!

09.19.02 :: Publishers Weekly reviews RECORD TIME!  PW says, "this fun, feel-good romance is the perfect pick-me-up for rainy days."  Getting reviewed in PW is like the holy grail for writers because you know you're a "real" author when you start seeing your books reviewed in PW.

09.01.02 :: Betty Cox of New and Used Books writes, "RECORD TIME is a very funny romantic suspense, with quirky characters and delightful dialogue. Newcomer Beverly Brandt once again gifts readers with a few hours of exceptional entertainment." 

09.01.02 :: Kathy Andrico of New and Used Books says, "With a quick wit, Beverly Brandt delivers exciting romances that captures the reader. The hero and heroine provide for a sexy emotional story, and (always to my delight) the secondary characters are well developed to where the reader begins rooting (or booing) for them."

07.24.02 :: Morgan Chilson of the Old Book Barn is the first to review RECORD TIME, saying, "Kylie makes this book! Her character is a warmhearted, caring, always-in-trouble friend you can curl up with and giggle helplessly.  David's a great hero, too, and Ms. Brandt doesn't forget to pack the sexual tension into this fun novel. A great light read!"

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Kylie's Recipe for Disaster:

Take one guy who loves to think he's in control of life, add one disaster-magnet wife, two missed birth control pills, and three overactive sperm, and what do you get?  Yes.  That's right.  You get triplets!

Kylie says: "I told you that I could get pregnant, didn't I?  I told you that I had forgotten to bring my birth control pills on our weekend trip to Hawaii to see Robyn's concert.  I just know that's when it happened."

David says: "I'm sorry, honey.  You looked so beautiful that night I just couldn't help myself.  Blame it on the moonlight.  Hmm, that would be a great title for a song..."

Kylie says: "David, pay attention.  This is serious.  I can't get up off the couch without help.  I've been banned from my favorite gift shop because my belly's so big, it keeps knocking things off the shelves.  I haven't slept for two months because the babies are taking turns playing soccer with my bladder.  And I don't even know if I'm wearing matching shoes anymore."

David looks down, then says: "Does it matter?"

Kylie says (or, rather, Kylie wails):"Yes, it matters!  I'm fat and unfashionable."

David says: "Maybe you're just a trend-setter.  Wearing mismatched shoes could be the next big thing.  And you're not fat.  You're pregnant."

Kylie says: "With triplets.  I'm three times the fat of a regular pregnancy."

David says: "Kylie..."

Kylie says: "What, David?"

David says:  "That just means there's three times more of you to love."

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She was trapped.

He had her cornered between the ten-foot high potted silk fig tree—which looked surprisingly real, she noticed, glancing to her left for a means of escape—and the wall to her right.  The only way out was through him and, considering he was at least six inches taller and sixty pounds heavier than she, that wasn't much of an option.

Defeated, Kylie Rogers pasted an interested look on her face and prepared to spend the evening listening to Bradley Nelson pour out his version of "My Life as an Up-and-Coming Country Music Star."  She supposed this was her curse for having a sister who was a famous singer.  Every rock, country, jazz, or rap music star-wannabe who couldn't get an audience with Robyn Rogers latched on to Kylie instead.

"...and when I was ten, my Dad took me on vacation to Nashville.  That's when I knew what my destiny was," Bradley expounded with all the sincerity of a televangelist preacher.

Kylie felt her left foot beginning to cramp and wiggled her toes, silently cursing the inventor of high-heeled shoes.  Taking a sip of wine, she watched a drop of condensation roll down the stem and drip onto the hardwood floor.  Someone had opened the French doors to the cool night air, but the room inside was warm from the crush of bodies.  Idly, Kylie wondered what the neighbors thought of the loud music blasting through the stillness of their exclusive Seattle suburb as she waited patiently for her chance to escape.

"...at twelve, I got my big break—the church talent contest," Bradley droned on.

Tuning out his monologue, Kylie studied the man in front of her.  Bradley Nelson could be considered handsome with his tall, lanky frame, sandy brown hair and dark eyes.  Tonight, he was wearing the standard all-black uniform of the country music crowd:  black jeans with a button-down shirt, a belt with a silver belt buckle shaped like the state of Texas, and a fascinating pair of snakeskin cowboy boots.  Kylie was beginning to think those cowboy boots were, unfortunately, the most interesting thing about Bradley Nelson.  She should have known she'd spend the entire evening at music mogul David Gamble's lakeside home fending off her sister's castoffs.  If she hadn't had her own reason for attending the party, she would have begged off.  As it was, she wasn't accomplishing much, trapped here in the corner by Bradley Nelson as she searched the crowd for Robyn's telltale platinum blonde head.

"I got a letter from Willie Nelson when I was thirteen and, shucks, that's when I really knew that music was my calling..." Bradley drawled, interrupting her perusal of the crowd.

Kylie slid a glance at her watch.  Mickey's big hand was on the nine and his little hand was on the twelve.  She figured at this rate, Bradley wouldn't get past puberty till long after midnight.  Desperate measures would need to be taken.  Surreptitiously, she slid her arm behind her back and watered the fake fig tree with her Chardonnay.

"Boy, I sure could use a drink.  Would you mind getting me another while I freshen up?" Widening her eyes innocently, Kylie held out her empty wine glass.

"Uh, sure."  Bradley glanced over his shoulder at the huge crowd at the bar.  "I'll be right back," he promised.

"Great."  Kylie smiled, waiting until his back was turned to make her move.  Her short blue skirt swirled around her legs as she bolted from her prison in the corner.

"I knew we should have taken separate cars," she muttered, once again searching the loud throng of people for her sister.  Robyn loved these overcrowded, raucous parties where she was usually at the center of attention.  Kylie herself didn't mind them as long as she had a reason to be there.  She'd thought tonight's party would give her a chance to meet some new people, maybe even talk to David Gamble himself about donating some money to her pet charity, the EmCee Foundation.  Unfortunately, the elusive Mr. Gamble had disappeared shortly after she and Robyn had arrived, just as she was being cornered by Bradley Nelson.

So, rather than spending the evening trying to solicit donations for a worthy cause, she was stuck listening to yet another wannabe-musician's life story.  It was her curse for being born into a family of entertainers, she supposed, but at times it got to a little tiring.

Taking her melancholy mood down a deserted hallway, Kylie searched out the peace of a powder room.  Trailing her fingers along the dark patterned wallpaper, she thought about the home's owner.  Even before she'd moved to Seattle two months ago, she'd known about David Gamble, founder and President of Gamble Records.  He was one of Fortune magazine's top-forty under forty; one of the nation's young, wealthy bachelors who had started his climb to success with a small, independent record company that he'd built into a multi-billion-dollar empire by leveraging the power of the Internet.

According to one of the articles she'd read, Gamble-dot-com had been one of the first successful e-tailers.  They'd started off as nothing more than an Internet record store, allowing Gamble Records to become their own distributor rather than having to rely on the national chains who took so much of the small record label's profits.  Their success would have probably ended there, making David and his employees moderately wealthy, but, in a move cited as nothing short of prophetic, he had pushed technology even further.

In a television interview Kylie had seen recently, David Gamble had asked, "Why should consumers have to wait four days, or even one day, for music to be delivered to their homes when the technology exists for them to download it right off the Internet today?  And, why should you have to buy an entire CD if all you want are two or three of your favorite songs?  Just think," he'd said, looking into the camera with his intense, midnight-blue eyes, "no longer will you be at the mercy of record company executives forcing you to buy music you don't want.  This technology is good for consumers, and it's also good for the artists, who will receive a larger cut of the profits for the songs they record."

Of course, it had also been good for David Gamble, Kylie thought as she pushed open the door to a cavernous bathroom.  He'd become an overnight billionaire with an Internet site that was now a household name.

There was no doubt in her mind that he could afford this mansion in one of the best neighborhoods in Washington State, but Kylie shuddered as she looked around the oversized room.  It was done in stark contrasts; all black except for the glaring white fixtures.  The floor was tiled in black marble and the walls were papered with some kind of textured material.  Kylie rubbed a hand across the surface and decided it felt like bamboo.  Unable to stop herself, she peered around a black-tiled wall into the shower area.  As she had suspected, it was spotlessly clean—not even a half-used bar of soap to mar the pristine perfection of the place.  She resisted the urge to open the cupboard under the sink, feeling she'd already pushed the line between innocent curiosity and outright snooping too far.

"It's so impersonal," she said, looking about the room again, trying to imagine David Gamble here.  She had yet to meet him in person, but had seen him in interviews so often, she had no trouble conjuring up his image.  Unfortunately, her active imagination conjured him stepping out of the shower, droplets of warm water falling from his naked, tanned body onto the cold marble as he reached for a towel.  All at once, the room didn't appear quite so impersonal, and the temperature seemed to have increased a few degrees.

She glanced in the mirror above the sink.  Almost involuntarily, she raised a hand, touching her cheek.  Instead of feeling the smoothness of her own skin under her fingertips, she imagined that she could feel the roughness of David's beard just before he shaved, the crisp stubble gently abrading as her fingers moved toward his firm chin.  As her fingers reached the end of her own, softer chin, she dropped her hand and laughed guiltily.

Robyn was right.  She needed to get out more if just being in David Gamble's bathroom was enough to set her pulse racing.

Kylie exhaled a deep breath and pulled a bright red lipstick out of the tiny purse draped across her shoulder.  She smoothed a fresh line of color across her lips and ran her tongue across her teeth to make sure none of her lipstick had ended up there.  Shaking off the last of her images of the elusive Mr. Gamble, Kylie flipped her head upside down, fluffing her shoulder-length brown hair.  Feeling her skirt ride up in the back, she moved her hands to the bottom of the gauzy blue material only to find that she was about two inches from showing off more than she ever wanted revealed in public. 

"Note to self:  never do that outside of closed doors," she said with a smile into the darkened room.

Flipping her head back up, she figured she'd given Bradley enough time to get tired of waiting for her.  Blowing an errant curl out of her eyes, she opened the door and headed down the darkened hall, the clicking of her high heels silenced by the richly colored rug running down the center of the hardwood floor.

"I'll just find Robyn and tell her I'm ready to go," Kylie murmured, inching closer to the high-ceilinged, cream and brown-toned living room and peering cautiously inside.  She spotted her sister across the room, holding court with two of Gamble Records' top artists and several of the city's most popular deejays.  Although she hadn't thought it possible, the immense living room seemed more crammed with partygoers than when she'd left.  Smoke hovered over the room like a rain cloud.  The music had been turned up to a tooth-rattling level and people raised their voices to be heard over the din.  By all counts, Gamble Records could chalk this party up as a huge success.

Leaning against the wall, Kylie wondered where David was.  She had spotted him briefly when they'd arrived two hours ago, but he'd disappeared with a beautiful brunette before she could extricate herself from being trapped in the corner with Bradley Nelson.  Kylie wondered if he was having a party of a more intimate nature with Lisanne O'Neill, Gamble Records' newest star and, it was rumored, David Gamble's most recent conquest.

"Lucky girl."  Kylie sighed, gazing over the crowd for a glimpse of her host's dark hair and dazzling blue eyes.  Chatting up their handsome host would sure beat hiding out in the hallway, hoping to escape further conversation with Bradley.

A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention.  It was Bradley, and he hadn't yet latched onto some other poor unsuspecting victim.  Kylie looked from Bradley to her sister.  She couldn't get Robyn's attention without attracting Bradley's too.  He turned toward the hallway just as Kylie stepped back into the shadows.

Kylie did what any desperate woman would do in the situation—she ran, weight balanced on her tiptoes to silence the tread of her heels on the hardwood floor as she hugged the wall.  The closest means of escape was a closed door on the left side of the hallway.  She opened the door just enough to slip through, quietly pushing it shut behind her.

Standing behind the closed door, Kylie listened to the tramping of Bradley's cowboy boots as he walked past the room and down the hall to the bathroom.  Looking around, she realized she must be in an office.  It was small in comparison to the other rooms she had seen in the house.  From the moonlight shining in from a large window opposite the door, Kylie could see the built-in bookshelves that flanked the wall to her right.  One bookshelf was almost completely filled with a complicated sound system. 

Just the sort of thing one would expect to find in the office of the President of a record company, Kylie thought with some amusement.  The other bookshelf was filled to overflowing with books.  It wasn't light enough to read the titles but Kylie figured, considering the occupant of the house, they were probably books about how to run a more efficient business, with a biography or two thrown in just for fun.  Her own bookshelves were stocked with all her favorite romances and mysteries.  She'd be hard pressed to find a non-fiction book among the bunch.

The only furniture in the room was a comfy-looking overstuffed leather chair and ottoman in the corner to her right, a massive desk which faced a wall of black and white pictures, and a swivel chair behind the desk which was turned toward the window.  On top of the desk were some neat piles of paper, a pen and pencil set, and an antique Tiffany lamp with stained glass flowers on the shade.

"Kylie?"  The loud whisper jolted her out of her observation of the room.

Bradley was still out in the hall.  Kylie contemplated giving herself up, but the idea of two more hours stuck listening to yet another boring musician's life story helped make her hasty decision.

She'd have to go out the window.  Right outside that window was her car, and freedom.  She could hunker down in the backseat and wait until Robyn finally decided she was partied out.  Bradley would never think to look for her out there.

Resolutely, Kylie marched over to the large ottoman in the corner and dragged it across the carpeted floor.  Pulling off her shoes, she hopped up onto the burgundy leather, opened the window and pushed out the screen. 

The air was chilly, even for an early autumn night in Seattle.  The wind raised tiny goose bumps on her arms as she peered out the window to the ground below.  It was further down than she had hoped.  On top of that, she would have to clear the row of bushes surrounding the front of the house like a moat.

"Here goes nothing," she whispered, tossing her shoes out the window and positioning both hands on the ledge for leverage.  She flung her right leg over the sill.  Teetering halfway between in and out, Kylie grimaced as the cold metal of the windowsill made contact with her warm inner thigh.

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