It’s books like these that leave me in awe of authors who write category romance. Their stories are tight, concise, and to the point, weaving in romance and emotion. A very difficult task at times, I have a feeling.

HelenKay Dimon packs a huge punch in this romantic suspense with Deputy Sheriff Jonas Porter who knows to listen to his instincts. That gets him involved with Courtney, who’s been on her own for years after losing her family. But things are heating up when the enemy uses Jonas bring Courtney out in the open. Really dumb move on the jerk’s part, as you’ll see when you pick up your copy.

So sit back and enjoy this excerpt from When She Wasn’t Looking. Bet you’ll be hooked in no time at all.

Summary:

No woman could deny the appeal of the sexy deputy sheriff Jonas Porter. But to Courtney Allen, Jonas has one major flaw-his badge. Years ago, Courtney’s father was wrongfully convicted of a crime and she vowed to never trust a cop again. But when Jonas becomes the only man to believe in her father’s innocence, Courtney begins seeing the brooding lawman in a whole new way.

Jonas knows in his gut that the real killer is still out there and determined to finish what he started long ago. To protect Courtney and bring the criminal to justice will require all the skills he can muster. And that means focusing on the job. Not the woman who makes him forget his troublesome past and arouses in him a passion that is anything but professional.

Chapter One

Jonas Porter yawned as he marched up the front porch steps to the craftsman-style bungalow in the middle of nowhere. At ten in the morning he’d been on shift for more than sixteen straight hours thanks to the Webber kid taking his neighbor’s car for a joyride that ended with a big splash into the Siuslaw River.

When he took the law enforcement position, Jonas had been promised relative peace and quiet by the county sheriff and Jonas’ long-time mentor, Walt Roberts. Since Jonas needed a break and crime didn’t run rampant in Aberdeen, the small Oregon town where the river dumped into the Pacific Ocean, the job looked like the perfect solution. If a drunk pre-teen with a lack of common sense turned out to be the biggest problem, Jonas could live with that.

Agreeing to handle one small task on his way back to his place to pass out was probably not his brightest move. He needed sleep, but this should easy. In and out and then he could slip into bed for a few hours.

He knocked on the dark red door. The rock beat thumping inside and shaking the walls cut off. He double-checked the house number to make sure he was at the right place. He expected an older lady, a grandmother type. He guessed this one liked her music loud, which blew his older-woman stereotype apart.

In the resulting silence he waited for someone to open up. When no one did, he raised his hand to try again and nearly punched the woman who threw the door open.

“Sorry.” He mumbled as he stared into big brown eyes filled with a wariness that appeared older than the rest of her.

“Yes?” Her smile faded when her gaze traveled down his chest.

A guy could get a complex. “Ma’am, is this your house?”

“Of course.”

The high cheekbones and slim figure didn’t make any sense. Young and pretty with shoulder-length brown hair and not at all the lonely older woman he’d been told to check on. This one couldn’t be more than in her mid-to-late twenties. She wore a slim long-sleeve red t-shirt, and if his guess was right, no bra.

He pretended not to notice the last part. “I’m Lieutenant Jonas Porter, the deputy police chief.”

“I got that much from the uniform and nametag.”

“Uh, right. Sure.” She had him stuttering like the Webber kid.

“Why are you here?” She wiped her hands on her olive cargo pants but didn’t shift one inch to let him in.

Young or old, she hardly struck him as a woman who needed police assistance to make sure she took her medicine on time. This one could handle her business without any help from him. The flat line of her mouth and clenched fists suggested she wanted to kick him right off the porch.

“We had a call,” he explained. “I’m here for a wellness check.”

Something flashed in her dark eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Your husband has been trying to reach you and when he couldn’t-”

Her grip tightened on the door. “My husband?”

“Yes, ma’am. My understanding is that he’s away from home on business.” When she continued to stare at him with that you’ve-lost-your-mind expression, Jonas tried again. “He called a friend who called the police in Maryland who contacted my office. I’m here as a courtesy.”

“Maryland?”

Seemed she had a repetition problem. “Yes, ma’am. Your husband was worried you’d forgotten to take your medications.”

“You think I need drugs?”

Jonas refused to be thrown off stride. “Your husband said something about a bad fall recently.”

“Is this a joke?”

That’s what Jonas was starting to wonder. “No, ma’am.”

“You obviously have the wrong person.” She started to close the door. Right in his face.

He caught the edge with one hand as the other went to the top of his gun. “Hold up.”

The move was pure instinct. He’d once waited a second too long and vowed never to make that mistake again.

She didn’t miss the move. Her gaze zipped to his weapon. “Excuse me?”

“Let’s calm down for a second and walk through this.”

“Do I look nervous to you?”

“Actually, yes.” Something was wrong here. Very wrong.

Thank you for the opportunity to chat with you today. I always love visiting TGTBTU.

I love romantic suspense, which likely isn’t a secret. I write erotic shorts, contemporaries without suspense, and am about to try some other romance subgenres, but romantic suspense has long been a favorite.

I love when they run:

“I haven’t done anything wrong.” The tension over her shoulders eased. She switched from fighting to boneless.

But he wasn’t ready to trust her, so he held on. “From my experience, innocent people don’t run.”

“You’re kind of big to be that naïve.”

“Sounds like you have trust issues, but-” He reached for his radio. In that brief span where his fingers didn’t wrap around her arm, she took off. “You’ve got to be kidding. You’re running?”

She crossed over the gravel road separating the back of her private property from the protected forest behind. Turning to the left, she slipped along the fence running parallel to the tree line. Not once did she look back.

When things explode:

She’d barely raised her leg when the ground shook beneath her. A deafening crash thundered through the sky and rattled in her ears. Her knees buckled as the pavement bounced and shifted.

One minute she saw Jonas’ shirt. The next he flew backwards as the railing in his hand broke free and the stairs blew apart. She tried to call his name but no words came out. Smoke choked the air and glass rained from above.

Car alarms exploded in unison into chirping sounds. People screamed and a baby cried. The roar of drums sounded all around her.

She hit her knees and threw her hands over her head. Sharp pricks assaulted the bare skin as she hid her face. She didn’t know she’d held her breath until her chest burned and she started coughing.

Her eyes itched and watered as if the smoke had worked its way under her contacts, but the raging heat had her full attention. Fire danced all around her. Flames engulfed the top floor of the complex except in the black hole in the middle. Papers flew around. Pieces of furniture littered the ground. And the sedan with Walt’s provided protection burned.

And when everything goes wrong. In fact, the more that goes wrong the happier I am. I can appreciate pretty ball gowns in historicals and the incredible creativity that goes into developing new worlds in paranormals, but give me a book that plays out like an action movie and I’ll forgive almost anything you do in it – except bore me.

[Ed. A copy of HelenKay's When She Wasn't Looking is up for grabs - or winner's choice from her back list - so be sure to leave a meaningful question or comment and we'll throw your name into the hat!]

I tire of reading erotic very quickly. Mostly because it seems to be the same story over and over again. More fucking than content or emotion. I’d like some story with my sex, please. I’m very happy – happy! – to tell you Joely Sue Burkhart does that and more.

Yours to Take is a story of loving and giving unconditionally, of self-discovery, of forgiveness, and, yes, of enjoying the pleasures of the flesh with a bite of pain and roughness. But this is also a story of characters you want to know more about, you want to see them work differences out, you want them to be together and enjoy each other. The sex is an integral part of that, but it’s not the end-all be-all.

There are very few authors who do this successfully. Only two immediately come to mind when I think about that. But now there’s three. Though Ms. Burkhart may be the new kid on the block as far as my erotic reading goes, she’s a very welcome addition.

Summary:

The day one of her old clients gunned down a cop, former defense attorney Vicki Connagher lost everything—her passion for justice, and her lover, Detective Elias Reyes. The dead cop’s partner.
Even though she’s following her dream to start her own fashion line, it’s tough with heartache as her only companion. Until she brings Jesse, a wandering street artist, in from a freak Texas snowstorm. His submissive flirting brings out dominant tendencies she never knew she possessed, yet she hesitates to let him take her as far and as hard as she wants to go.

Some homeless junkie in Vicki’s house? Not on Elias’s watch. Pride kept him away, but as long as Jesse is staying in Vicki’s downstairs shop, he’s staying with Vicki. On the couch, but it’s a start.

As the days go by, the three work out an uneasy alliance. But Vicki’s joy at having Elias back in her life is tempered with a growing desire to have it all. Elias in her bed, and Jesse under her command. The only question remaining is if her tough alpha cop is willing to embrace all that she is…

Now meet some very complex and intriguing characters…

Chapter One

It didn’t snow very often in Dallas, Texas, but when it did, everything came to a halt. Vicki Connagher paused at the deserted intersection. Shivering, she drew her coat tighter with her free hand. What a stupid idea. Since the store was only three blocks away, she’d thought she could get back with a few groceries before the storm hit. In just a matter of minutes, though, the sidewalks were already coated with ice.

Just one more block, she told herself, trudging across the slushy road. Snow still fell, thick and wet, dulling the usual noises of the city. Hot cocoa was going to taste especially good tonight. She’d bundle up on the couch in her favorite quilt and stay up all night watching cheesy horror movies. Sounds like a blast, if I wasn’t alone.

But she was miserably alone. She’d end up working downstairs all night to avoid the emptiness of her apartment. Besides, she still had to come up with one more evening gown design before the gala. Since her mood was about as cheery as the Black Plague, she was going to need all the time she could get.

Her foot slid out and she fell with a curse. Getting wetter and colder by the minute, she muttered, “Not even chocolate is worth getting out in a freak Texas blizzard.”

“Are you all right?”

The male voice startled her. Her heart slammed up into her throat and she whirled around, fumbling to get her keys gripped like claws between her fingers.

Hovering a safe distance away, the man held up both his hands in a non-threatening manner. With the streetlight shining down on his face, she recognized Jesse, a street artist she’d gotten to know during her law office days at Wagner & Leeman.

Seeing him brought back all the turmoil and grief that had driven her to quit her dream job.

It’d started innocently enough. Every time she was over by the park for lunch, she’d stop by his favorite bench beneath the largest tree. Handsome despite the grime, he always managed to make her smile, and she loved his work. She’d bought several of his charcoals and dropped a few bucks in his hat. Over the next few months, they’d talked, at first casually, but then as the stress of her job started to get to her, she found herself talking to him almost every day. She couldn’t get through a day at court if she didn’t take a lunch in the park. With Jesse.

Even her friends at the office had taken note of her “sponsorship” of the handsome young artist. It shamed her to remember how their jokes had embarrassed her. She’d cut back on those trips to the park, although she’d never been able to stay away for long. When she heard the horrible news that one of her clients had gunned down a policeman, she’d run to the park. Jesse had been there for her in a way that no one else had ever been in her entire life.

Jesse was the only person who’d ever seen her completely break down. Sobbing and sick with grief, she’d gone to him for comfort, and then to her great shame, she’d never gone back to see him again. She’d been too embarrassed that she’d let him in so deeply, a man she barely knew. A homeless man.

Cut to the core by her shallowness, she met his gaze and hoped he didn’t hate her. “I’m fine. Nothing hurt but my pride. How are you, Jesse?”

“Good.” He flashed a smile—revealing killer dimples—and helped her pick up the canned beans that had escaped her bag. “Haven’t seen you around the park in a while.”

Not even his ragged clothes could detract from that wholesome, down-to-earth smile and face. It’d been impossible not to like him from the start. “I quit my job and started my own business. Corporate life got to be too much for me.”

He handed her the last can and then shyly pulled a small square out of his bag. “I made something for you.”

When he didn’t bring up that awful day in the park that had driven her to quit her job, she wanted to hug him. He didn’t question or press her for answers. No, he made me something, instead of accusing me of turning my back on him like so many other people must have.

Blinking back tears because she hated to cry more than anything else, she held the folded paper up to the streetlight. On the front, he’d used watercolors to paint dozens of butterflies, laid on top of each other in carefully detailed layers so the entire page was covered in wings. Inside, he’d written a simple message: Happy birthday, Vicki.

“Sorry, I know your birthday was months ago, but I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “Oh, Jesse, thank you. How did you know?”

Shrugging self-consciously, he shifted the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder. “One of the last few times you stopped by, I overheard you tell your friend that you were planning a special dinner with your family for your birthday. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Anyway, I’ve got a few new pieces you might like. Come over to the park when you get the chance.”

“I will.” She stared down at the card, thinking about how many weeks he’d carried it in his bag, protecting it from getting torn or dirty, hoping to see her. He’d made her a card, when some of her best friends hadn’t remembered her birthday at all. She’d lost more than her career. “Thank you, Jesse. This really means a lot to me.”

He tipped his battered, lopsided straw hat, gave her another gorgeous smile that seemed so out of place on a homeless man’s face, and turned to head down the street. Alone. His skinny shoulders hunched against the cold.

Vicki had built in her mind all sorts of reasons of why he was on the streets, but she’d never had the courage to ask him. He only had on a jean jacket, no gloves, and the knapsack tossed over his shoulder, exactly how she’d seen him countless times. Everything he owned in the world must be in that bag.

“Jesse?”

Immediately, he turned around and came back toward her, his eyes wide and hopeful. It was too dark to make out the remarkable turquoise shade of his eyes, but she remembered. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Do you have someplace to go?”

“Oh, sure.” He nodded, but she didn’t like the way he ducked his head. “Don’t worry about me. Come over to the park when you get the chance. I miss seeing you.”

She took the last few steps toward her building, her mind screaming all the reasons it would be stupid to ask him inside. She was alone. He was a man, bigger and stronger than her even if she had a few years on him. She had a damned good security system on both the shop and her apartment upstairs, but if he chose to overpower her, she wouldn’t have a chance to call for help.

She didn’t really know him at all. A few lunches in the park, a couple of hours of casual talking, and one time she’d needed a non-judgmental friend. He was homeless, for God’s sake, and had probably seen more crime and violence than she’d even dreamed of despite working all those years as a defense attorney. But there was something undeniable in his eyes, a deep, soul-piercing light that she couldn’t forget. Without saying a word, he managed to reach inside her and tug, hard, amplifying her guilt and worry.

It wasn’t her fault that he was homeless, but it would be her fault if he froze to death tonight. I refuse to turn my back on him ever again.

Putting on her best formidable, cast-iron face that had intimidated many a shady character into providing better testimony, she turned and faced him squarely. “If you promise to behave yourself, you can come home with me tonight.”

His eyes flared with horror and he recoiled a step, which instantly made her feel better about asking him. His mouth opened, but it took him several times before he could say anything. “Oh, no, ma’am. That wouldn’t be right. I just wanted to make sure you were okay—it didn’t even occur to me that you might… No, please, I couldn’t.”

“I couldn’t sleep a wink if you were freezing out here all night.” She opened the door to the shop and flipped on the light. He hovered behind her, staring at the warmth and shelter longingly. “I’m making a huge batch of chili and cornbread.”

His shoulders shook, but he didn’t move closer.

“What I really wanted was hot cocoa. That’s why I went out tonight before the weather got too horrible. Not cocoa from a mix or powder—I want the real thing. I’m going to make some first.”

“With real milk?” His voice sounded hoarse. He took a step closer, but kept his shoulders down, hunched, as though he were trying to make himself smaller and less threatening. “And marshmallows?”

“Real milk, real chocolate,” she promised. “But I don’t have marshmallows. I think they’re disgusting. Come on in, Jesse. I’m not the world’s greatest cook, but I can make a mean pot of beans.”

He hung his head, one hand gripping the strap of his bag so hard his knuckles were white. “I’ve been in trouble before, ma’am, but I haven’t been arrested in more than five years, and I’ve been clean since. Call one of your old contacts in the police department and check up on me.”

She was surprised at his willingness to share his unsavory past—and a little disconcerted that he knew so much about her. “I can do that. I should also warn you that my very mean and much bigger, older brother could be here in minutes.”

Leading the way through the long tables stacked with fabrics and trim, she flipped on another light. Now I know why my security guy insisted I have a separate system for my upstairs apartment. “I set up this place so that my seamstress could sleep over when we’re on a time crunch. There’s a bed, clean linen and a full-sized bathroom.”

Jesse risked a quick glance at the room but otherwise kept his head down, his shoulders so tight that he was as short as her, when he was actually several inches taller. Lightly, she touched his arm. He flinched, but at least his head came up. She was struck again by the intensity of his eyes, so clear and honest despite the harshness of his life.

“Are you sure?” His voice shook. “I didn’t mean—”

“I’m sure.” She smiled, gently squeezing his arm. He was so thin, just bones and tight, wiry muscle lay over the top. “Look around on the shelves in the closet—I think I stuck some of my brother’s old clothes in there. Take a shower and come upstairs when you’re done. I’ll have the cocoa ready in no time.”

“My full name is Jesse Dean Inglemarre and I’m twenty-five. Check me out. If you’re not comfortable, tell me to leave. I swear on a stack of Bibles that I’ll leave immediately, no questions asked. I won’t ever bother you again.”

He was several years older than she’d guessed, although still several years younger than her. She smiled to put him at ease. It felt right, so very, very right, to help him. “You’re not bothering me.”

Solemnly, he stared into her eyes, searching her face, even though he didn’t ask, Why me? Why are you doing this?

How could she explain it? Sometimes after a particularly bad trial, the only bright spot in her day had been walking through the park to see what new drawing he might be working on. Once he’d smiled at her, she’d found the courage to trudge back to work. On this cold, lonely night he was a welcome surprise. “There’s something about you, Jesse.”

 

Oh, there’s something about me all right, Jesse thought sadly, waiting until she shut the door before looking about the room. Simple, spartan, and the most glorious thing he’d seen in years, until he found a stack of clean clothes on the shelf. Even musty from storage, they smelled like heaven. Then he saw the shampoo and soap in the bathroom, and he found himself crying beneath the steaming hot water.

God, so incredible. People didn’t know what a luxury it could be simply to be clean. To have a spare set of clean clothes. To be in a safe enough place to risk taking off his filthy clothes and washing completely. Bliss. Pure bliss.

It all came from the most gorgeous, unforgettable woman he’d ever met. He had no pride left, or surely he’d be ashamed that he’d come to her like this and she’d taken him in like an abandoned puppy. He’d depended on seeing her every day, but then she’d quit coming to the park. She’d given him one taste of heaven and then disappeared off the face of the earth.

He hadn’t even known her full name or where she worked. One of the women he’d seen her with occasionally had dropped the fact that Vicki had left the firm to start her own business down by Oak Lawn. So he’d started hanging out in this neighborhood, hoping to find her.

Never in a million years had he thought she’d let him inside her home. All he’d wanted to do was see her again, find her place, and maybe stop by once a week or so, just to talk. Just to see her smile at his latest work.

I know where to find her now. He scrubbed his hair a second time. I can’t stay long. She’s sheltering me from the cold, that’s all.

She has no idea that I’m hopelessly in love with her.

 

Vicki dialed the number and laid the phone down on the counter in speaker mode. Chopping chocolate, she counted the rings. Mentally, she rearranged her questions in the most logical order that would lead to the best possible outcome with the least amount of suspicion.

“Reyes.”

By the sharp bark of Elias’s voice, she knew he was already frustrated. Hell, he was always frustrated. Working on a narcotics task force overwhelmed by the Mexican drug cartels tended to frustrate even the most patient of men. A lot could be said about Elias Reyes, but he wasn’t exactly patient.

She decided to be professional and not friendly. He hadn’t been by in months, and she couldn’t remember the last time they’d had sex. Okay, that was a lie; she’d never forget a moment with Elias, even though they’d fought constantly about their jobs. Then his partner had been killed by one of her old clients in a drug bust gone bad. He still hadn’t forgiven her, and she’d found herself sobbing in the arms of a homeless man in the park instead of her lover’s.

Now that she’d started her own business, she was still too busy, and he certainly hadn’t bothered to come by. “I need you to run a name through your database.”

“Vik,” he drawled out his nickname for her in that low, sexy voice that always made her want to throw her head back and moan deep in her throat. “I thought you quit defending assholes I put away.”

“I did.” She refused to allow her tone to sharpen defensively. “I need a background run on somebody and you’re the only person in the Dallas PD who’ll still take my calls.”

He let out a low grunt of agreement. “What’s the name?”

“Jesse Dean Inglemarre.”

“What exactly are you looking for?”

She heard him typing. He must be at work and already looking up the data for her. Who was she kidding—Elias was always at work. “Any warrants, recent arrests, known gang affiliation. Standard stuff.”

“Got a soc?”

“Nope, but I know he’s twenty-five years old.”

A few moments went by. She didn’t hear any voices. Usually his office was loud and rowdy at any hour. The war on drugs never slept.

“Looks like your boy last got in trouble five years ago, but nothing recent. No known address. How do you know him?”

“He’s a street artist.” She tried to keep her tone casual and strictly to the truth. Elias could sniff out a lie quicker than a bloodhound. “I used to see him when I worked at Wagner & Leeman. Thanks, Elias. I hope you’re not out in this snow tonight.”

“Not so fast, Vik.”

Mentally, she groaned. He always was too damned smart for his own good, which meant he was a fine cop who always suspected the worst in people. Unfortunately, he was almost always right.

“Why the sudden interest in a homeless street artist in the middle of a snow storm? Surely you’re not thinking about letting this punk into your home.”

“Thanks,” she said firmly. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Fuck.” In her mind, she could see him at his desk, jumping to his feet and raking his hand through his hair. “You did. You invited this asshole into your home. Are you insane? He’s a druggie. A scumbag. You know they can never come clean. Give them a ten and they’ll buy a hit instead of food.”

“He’s not like that.” She used her softest voice, trying to calm him down before he decided to get on his white horse and charge over here like a knight in shining armor. “He just needs a little help.”

“Jesus, Vik, does he have any weapons? Did he bring drugs into your house?”

“No!” Although I didn’t think to check. “I can handle this, Reyes.” Deliberately, she emphasized his cop name, the cold and formal relationship they’d used at their jobs even when they shared a bed once in a while. “I don’t want you to interfere.”

“You should have thought of that before you invited a homeless junkie to spend the night!”

“I have my phone right here and you’re on speed dial. I promise I’ll call you if I get even a hint of a weird vibe from him, but he’s barely more than a kid, Elias. He’s not going to hurt me.”

“You’re damned right he’s not.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“He’s not a kid, Vik, even if he looks helpless and innocent to you. He hasn’t been a kid in a long time. One of his raps was for prostitution when he was barely sixteen. Yeah, he must be a real pretty boy, huh? I’m surprised he came on to you. Seems like a rich queer is more up his alley.”

The thought of Jesse’s brilliant eyes scrunched up with pain or staring up at a jerk forcing him to give a blowjob made her knees quiver hard enough that she had to sit on a barstool. She’d known he must have had a hard life, but the reality made her stomach heave. “He didn’t come on to me.”

“Maybe he’ll come on to me, then.”

“He’s not like that.” Her voice quivered, betraying her. She clenched her jaws a moment, concentrating on retrieving that calm, cool exterior she’d learned as a defense attorney. “I saw him in the snow and cold—he was helping me because I fell on the ice!—and I couldn’t leave him out there.”

“If you used to see him over at the park near Wagner & Leeman, then why the hell was he way out by your place? He was staking you out, Vik. He knew exactly what he was doing when he just happened to walk by. I bet he seemed real shocked to find you, didn’t he? They’re damned good actors when they need to be.”

Torn between outrage and concern, she tried to remember if she’d ever told Jesse where she lived. Would he really come dozens of blocks in the cold to give her a birthday card? Surely, he couldn’t have pretended that much surprise when she asked him to come inside. She was a good judge of character. She’d seen more than her share of bad guys willing to sell their mamas if it would get them out of prison.

“Jesse’s not like that. He’s not one of the bad guys, Elias. I can see it in his eyes. He needs someone to give him a break.”

Wheels screeched on the street below so loudly that she jumped up and ran to the window. Elias jumped out of his truck and stormed up to the door of her building. “I’ll give him a break. I’ll break his fucking arm if he even lays a finger on you.”

She glared down at him, whether he could actually see her or not. “I told you I could handle this!”

“Let me in, Vik, or I’m going to owe you a new door.”

Elias heard her shouting at him as she ran down the stairs, but he didn’t stop. He threw open the door to the rear living quarters, grabbed the invader, and slammed him face-first against the wall with a satisfying crunch.

The kid didn’t put up a fight. Man, Elias reminded himself. Not a kid, no matter how scrawny and slender he was, not at twenty-five years of age.

Vicki screamed, a high, shrill wail like nothing he’d ever heard from her. “Jesse!”

Her terrified voice pierced through Elias’s rage. As a kid huddled in a narrow bed with his younger brothers and sisters while his crazy father beat the shit out of his mother, he’d sworn to never make a woman scream like that. He slapped cuffs on the man and forced himself to ease off. He had to be the cop in this, not the enraged, jealous, overprotective—and almost always absent—lover.

The junkie stayed against the wall, legs automatically spread. He knew the drill all too well.

“You don’t smell like a bum, so I guess you’ve already taken advantage of your hostess’s hot water. Do you have anything stashed in these nice clean pockets?”

“No, sir.”

Damn it, he even sounded like a kid, his voice breathless and shaking with fear. Elias twisted his lips into a furious snarl. The punk was afraid of being caught. Afraid of being thrown in jail instead of enjoying a nice cushy night under Vicki’s roof, stealing everything not locked down while she slept.

She stepped between them, her face white and her mouth tight with strain. “I gave him those pants. How dare you come in here and throw him around like this? He’s hurt! Look at him, Elias, he’s bleeding!”

Crying, she cradled the jerk’s face in her hands and wiped the blood from his split lip with a tissue snatched from the bedside table. “Jesse, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he’d come over like this. I didn’t know he’d hurt you.”

“It’s okay. He’s protecting you. I’ve had much worse done to me.”

The nicer he acted—pretended to be!—the worse Elias felt, which pissed him off even more. He grabbed the ratty duffel bag lying at the foot of the bed and dumped it out, using an ink pen to separate items so he didn’t get poked by a dirty needle. “Any weapons? Drugs? Paraphernalia?”

“No, sir. Just my straight-edge razor. I have used it as protection a few times, but no knives or guns. I haven’t touched drugs in five years. I’ll take a drug test right this minute if you order it.”

Elias flipped open a small wooden case, but all it contained was tiny whittled down pencils and precious little nubs of chalk, so used up that a normal person—with money—would have thrown them out and replaced them long ago. Feeling more and more like a heel, he methodically emptied the pockets of everything. Wadded up small bills littered the bed. A five in each denim pocket, a twenty in the threadbare shirt, several more bills tucked into the rolled socks, but certainly no nice wad of cash that a dealer would carry. Spreading the bills out across the meager belongings would make it more difficult to steal his precious savings.

“I have a hundred dollar bill in each boot hidden beneath the insole.” Jesse leaned against the wall as though the entire building would crumble around them without his weight propping it up. The pants sagged low on his slim hips, and he didn’t have on a shirt. Bones moved beneath his skin in sharp, painful relief. The kid was half-starved and malnourished. In despair, he hung his head, his streaked golden-brown hair falling down to hide his face. “Took me a year to save that much because the punks on the street keep stealing it. They know I don’t have a weapon.”

Elias knew the answer, but he wanted to see how many lies the kid might weave. “How do you know Vicki?”

“She used to come to Highland Park where I hang out. When she quit coming, I asked one of her friends what had happened. I missed her, and I wanted to make sure she was okay. She was always nice to me, but I never thought she’d help me like this.”

“Get these cuffs off him,” Vicki said in a deceptively pleasant voice that sent shards of ice skittering down his spine. This was the defense attorney, not a woman who’d called him to check out a friend. “He answered your questions satisfactorily and you have nothing to charge him with. He’s not trespassing and he’s not a danger to me or himself.”

When he hesitated, she narrowed those glittering dark eyes on him and lowered her chin, preparing for the charge. “I might not work for Leeman any longer, but I’ll have him crawling in every orifice you’ve got unless you release Jesse immediately.”

Like any good sub, the writer does her very best work. Then she submits.

The Editor will respond at a time of Her choosing. The writer may wait weeks — or even months — for the Editor’s attention.

Waiting is good for the submissive writer. Patience, little writer. Sweet patience.

At last, the Editor has made Her decision regarding the writer’s submission, and she writhes in spasms of delight at the acceptance. Yes, Editor, yes!

The fun has only just begun. Now the writer must learn discipline. Or be disciplined. The Editor corrects a few insignificant things in the manuscript to make it more pleasing to Her. Like changing the hero’s name. Honestly, what were you thinking, writer? Twenty lashes with the Editor’s red pen!

This ending isn’t climatic enough. The heroine changes her mind too easily. The hero hasn’t groveled enough.

Lash, lash, lash!

And what does the good little writer reply? Oh, Editor, it feels so good to learn from your mighty pen. Lash me again!

~ * ~

In all seriousness, I absolutely love my editors. They’ve helped me grow so much over the years, and I’m constantly learning new things. Writing for publication does involve a complex relationship rather like BDSM.

TRUST is key. In a safe and consensual scene, the submissive chooses to submit to a Dominant because of trust. Likewise, the Dominant trusts the submissive to use the safeword when needed. A sub shouldn’t blindly do anything the Dom says regardless of fear, pain, and limits. The power is really in the sub’s hands and the Dom relies on the sub to give the safeword when the play is going too far.

It’s the same with a writer and editor relationship. When you’re working with an editor, you trust that the editor wants the best for the manuscript — yet the writer doesn’t have to blindly accept every single change. Edits require a back-and-forth discussion. If a change causes the writer pause, it’s her duty to bring up the issue with the editor so they can discuss it in detail.

A good Dominant pushes the submissive to grow and explore her limits in a safe and secure environment. My editors have pushed me to go where I normally wouldn’t have gone on my own. It’s painful, sometimes, to explore those limits. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve backed off from something because it’s too edgy or scary, only to have my editors call me on it. They’ve helped me push through that barrier and the story’s better for it. As I’m a better writer for it.

With all the opportunities in self-publishing, it’s tempting to decide to go it alone. While I do intend to explore self-publishing (I’ve only re-released works from a prior publisher who closed its doors so far), I fully intend to continue submitting, both to my current publishers and also new opportunities as they arise. I want to continue pushing that envelope and growing — the way an editor can help me polish my craft.

There’s so much to learn…when you submit.

[Ed. Joely Sue is giving away a digital copy of Yours to Take, so leave her a meaningful question or comment to be in the running!]

A wanna-be demon who needs her last soul to finally acquire demon status and an angel cowboy whose mission is to save the demon’s soul, to give her another chance at life. What they don’t count on is the heat…the smoke…the fire when they touch, kiss, love.

Destiny and Chance are at cross purposes at this point in their lives, but the heat between them is all encompassing. They can’t fight it. Destiny doesn’t want to. And Chance finally realizes he can’t.

So is there a way out for them in the end? Is it possible for a demon and an angel to find happily ever after?

Summary:

When sexy wannabe-demon, Destiny Carter, is kicked out of Hell, she lands in Ft. Worth, Texas with one week to corrupt a soul. Or else. She slips into a slinky red dress, and heads straight for the delicious, corruptible looking cowboy at the bar.

But Chance Bellew has his own agenda-saving souls. He’s not your typical angel. He’s a nephilim, to be exact. Centuries ago, angels came down from Heaven and mated with mortal women. When the women bore children, a new race was created. Immortals with powers—demigods, nephilim.

But the children don’t live by the same rules as mortals, or that of the typical, robe-wearing, bright light-surrounding-them angels. Hell, most of the time the nephilim are breaking the rules, and making up new ones as they go. As long as they don’t cross over to the dark side, everyone pretty much stays out of their way.

But sometimes a demon-in-training, who looks like Destiny, comes along and all Hell breaks loose.

Here’s a little taste…

Chapter 1

Destiny Carter was six years old when she had the first inkling that her life wouldn’t be a fairy tale. That was the day her mother left her in a grocery store and never came back. Destiny was right, her life went downhill from there. Bad foster homes, bad boyfriends, and really, really bad choices.

Then she died and went to Hell.

Until she was kicked out.

Destiny landed on the sidewalk with a hard thump.

“Son of a bitch!” She grimaced as she came to her feet, rubbing her hands over her tender backside. She was probably the first person ever to get kicked out of Hell. Temporarily, that is.

Hysterical laughter bubbled inside her, but she quickly tamped it down. She was not going to lose what little bit of sanity she had left. She would get through this like she did everything else, by gritting her teeth and doing what she had to do.

All is not lost. Just take a deep breath.

She inhaled.

Ugh! Her nose twitched as a god-awful stench filled her space. She glanced down the deserted street. Faded army-green painted letters on a shabby storefront window proclaimed it as Ft. Worth’s finest resale shop.

Oh hell, she’d landed close to the stockyards in Ft. Worth, Texas, but this wasn’t Billy Bob’s. No, skid-row bars and vacant buildings lined both sides of the street.

Could her day get any worse?

Not that she had anything against Texas, except it was hot as hell. The dry heat was not helping her mood.

“I couldn’t manage to steal one more soul?” she grumbled.

Okay, so she wasn’t the best salesperson in the underworld. Why didn’t that lawyer just sign on the dotted line? He insisted on reading the fine print and before she knew it, poof, he was gone. One more soul and she would’ve been a full-fledged demon with all the rights and privileges of that position-like drinking, gambling, and lots of sex.

“Sex,” she breathed on a sigh as she slowly combed her fingers through her long, black hair. Naked, straining bodies. Hands touching, caressing. She bit her bottom lip and forced the vision to go far, far away before she grabbed the grungy-looking bum leaning against the vacant store front and had her way with him.

She grimaced. Maybe she wasn’t that hard up. But Destiny did really miss sex. Everything about her life might have been lousy, but never the sex. And right now she was so horny she figured she’d start sprouting a pair any time, except people at the trainee level couldn’t grow a set of horns to save their lives.

Now she was one step farther from her goal. The ones in charge were really pissed, but at least they had given her another chance, and new orders: corrupt someone and drag the unwitting person back to Hell. She had one week to do it or else. Why the fuck had they tacked on “or else”? What were they going to do? Send her to Hell?

Okay, shake it off. Getting kicked out was only a minor glitch. She could take a soul in less than a week. A moment of panic sent a shiver down her spine and her bravado drained away. Who was she kidding? Only dying souls caught between Heaven and Hell were sent to the sorting station. Her job was to convince them Hell was their best choice. She didn’t have to search them out. Nothing ever went right for her in life. Why did she think being dead would change things?

No, she could do this. She would survive.

A flashing neon sign suddenly caught her attention when one of the bulbs popped and blew out. THE STOMPIN’ GROUND. A bar. Her mouth watered. Demons-in-training weren’t allowed to drink, or do much of anything on the job, and they were always on the job. One drink wouldn’t hurt, and a bar would be a good place to start looking for a corruptible soul. In fact, it was her duty to go inside and check the place out.

A slow smile curved her lips as she slid her hands slowly over her body and the plain, butt-ugly, black wool uniform shift became a tight-fitting, low-cut, fuck-me red dress that shimmered with each slow, seductive step she took. Yeah, she was bad. Life made her that way. That’s why she went straight to Hell. You never saw a good girl in Hell.

The bum’s mouth dropped open. He looked at his wrinkled brown paper sack that obviously held a bottle of booze, then back at her. She grinned and winked. He tipped the bottle to his mouth, guzzling down more alcohol.

“See you in Hell,” she muttered.

Destiny made her way to the bar, then pushed on the door, stepping inside the cool, dimly lit interior. As soon as her eyes adjusted, she glanced around. A haze of cigarette smoke formed a gray cloud above the patrons.

Slim pickings. Only a handful of people sat at tables.

Two worn out hookers were strategically positioned close to the door. Too easy. They already had Hell stamped on their foreheads. Destiny wanted to impress the powers that be. Used-up hookers would not make an impact on them.

A couple of men sat at another table deep in conversation about a stupid football game. Not bad looking. Wedding rings glinted on their fingers. Married. Too much trouble.

Hmm… But the demons might be impressed.

Before she could take a step toward them the bathroom door opened, spilling a patch of light into the bar. Two laughing women joined the men at their table. Scratch that idea. Two was company, four was a crowd.

There was a lively group of barely legal college boys chugging pitchers of beer. Hmm, certainly corruptible. From the way they were dressed, they were definitely slumming. One guy glanced her way, eyes practically bugging out.

Oh hell, was that drool? No thanks!

Someone put money in the jukebox and a slow country song began to play. For a moment, she let the deep voice of the singer wash over her. She didn’t even mind that he was crooning about his cheating wife and losing himself in a bottle of whiskey. Damn, she missed being alive.

Her gaze languidly drifted around the rest of the room, past dark walls with posters of country singers plastered all over them. The bartender wiped a damp cloth across one end of the bar. Destiny’s eyes narrowed as she sized him up. The potential was there.

He raised his head, saw her, then smiled. The kind of smile that made her feel good all over. He wasn’t bad looking, in a good-old-boy sort of way.

Destiny drew in a deep breath as she readied herself for a full assault, but at the last minute a movement at the other end of the bar caught her eye.

A lone cowboy sat on one of the stools nursing a beer, his back to her. He wore a black T-shirt that deliciously hugged his broad shoulders. Her gaze dropped. The jeans weren’t bad, either. Nope, not bad at all. The guy had a great ass from this angle. Sweet! Cowboy had just enough muscles that he created a fantasy, but not enough that she would be in competition with his ego.

He turned and looked her way, his gaze sliding sensuously over her body. Tingles of excitement tickled her spine. She had such a fondness for cowboys. They knew how to ride ‘em long and hard, and she was all for long and hard.

She devoured him with one long lazy look. His black Stetson was pulled down low on his forehead as though he didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything. It didn’t help that, for some insane reason, black cowboy hats turned her on.

Oh baby, she was about to make his wet dreams come true. Yee-haw, ride ‘em cowboy.

The bartender was forgotten as she locked on target. Destiny slid her hands over her hips nice and slow before sauntering toward him, putting just a little bit of swing in her hips.

This time she would be the one calling the shots. The one in charge. No one would ever control her again like they had when she was alive. She would take what she wanted and to hell with the rest! Literally.

The cowboy watched her every step of the way. She was already wrapping him around her little finger and the poor guy didn’t have a clue. She stopped beside him.

“Buy a lady a beer?” she asked. Her words held enough invitation that only an idiot wouldn’t guess she wanted more than a beer, and this guy didn’t look like an idiot. She slid onto the stool next to his, propping her elbow on the scarred wooden surface of the bar.

Over the haze of smoke, over the smell of alcohol, Destiny caught another scent that weaved its way around her, making her lean in a little closer. It was spicy and held a promise of nights filled with down-and-dirty sex. She could feel the waves of heat radiating off him, curling around her body and wrapping her in a sensual cloud of sexual awareness.

“A beer for the lady,” he drawled, breaking into her fantasy and nodding toward the bartender.

His voice sent tingles down her spine. It was just a little raspy-low and sexy.

Cowboy swiveled his stool around to face her and tipped the brim of his hat with one finger so she got a better look at his face: the strong jaw, the slight stubble, and the most intense blue eyes she’d ever encountered.

Destiny had her first mini orgasm, and it felt so fucking great! This guy looked good enough to eat. She was going to enjoy corrupting him.

“What’s a cowboy like you doing in a bar all alone?” Okay, that sounded pretty cheesy, but she was a little out of practice; she’d died in 1959.

“Waiting for a woman like you,” he replied and again his words caressed her as his blue-eyed gaze drifted lazily down her body before returning to her face. Her nipples tightened.

The bartender set a beer in front of her. Cowboy dropped a few bills on the counter and the bartender left.

She grinned as she took the bottle, her tongue sliding nice and slow around the rim before she brought it the rest of the way to her lips. She tilted the bottle a little and ice-cold liquid slid down her throat. Nice. She’d missed the taste of alcohol.

“So, what’s your handle, cowboy?” she asked after she lowered the bottle.

“Chance. Chance Bellew.”

“Well, you’ve just met your destiny.” She grinned. “Destiny Carter.”

Destiny Carter was six years old when she had the first inkling that her life wouldn’t be a fairy tale. That was the day her mother left her in a grocery store and never came back. Destiny was right, her life went downhill from there. Bad foster homes, bad boyfriends, and really, really bad choices.

Then she died and went to Hell.

Until she was kicked out.

Hi Everyone! And waving to Sybil! I hope you enjoyed the opening of my current release, Where There’s Smoke.

Long ago it’s said angels came to earth and mated with humans. A new race started when children were born from this union—the nephilim.

I took that idea and ran with it. Destiny needs a soul to get readmitted into Hell and achieve demon status which will give her all the luxuries demon status can offer. But Destiny has no idea the sexy cowboy sitting at the bar is a nephilim. Chance has a very different agenda. He doesn’t plan on letting her win, but the best laid plans have a way of unraveling and he finds he’s in danger of losing his own soul.

Where There’s Smoke is an erotic romance. I write erotic romance because I want to embarrass my grown children…..no, no, no. That’s not true. I write erotic romance because I can and I enjoy writing it. I don’t want to look back on my life and say I didn’t do something because it wasn’t appropriate. I want to look back and say I lived my life and had a hell of a lot of fun!

I also make jewelry. I’m surrounded by bling-bling. I love Moscato and Merlot wine. Mexican food and frozen Margaritas. My style is farmhouse country and shabby chic. My back porch is my sanctuary where I get in touch with my inner self. Everyone should have a peaceful place, even if it’s the city park.

I’ve lost 99 pounds. Every time I get close to the 100-pound mark there’s a family function or it’s date night or something. I will reach 100 pounds lost, though. Still, I enjoy shopping for clothes.  And that’s who I am, sort of. I hope everyone enjoys Where There’s Smoke.

Best Wishes!

Like Genevieve Graham, if you’re a Diana Gabaldon and a Jamie and Claire fan, you’re going to enjoy her MacDonnell family books, Under the Same Sky and Sound of the Heart. They have that rich, historical, and Scottish feel to them. The way of life of these characters is harsh and there are more times of anguish than there are of happy, but that makes the happy moments all the sweeter.

Dougal has survived Culloden and is held prisoner by the English until a daring escape. Along with him is the young teenage boy, Aiden, who Dougal has protected during their imprisonment. They make their way to London, putting more distance between them and the soldiers searching for them. What happens next is a huge surprise and one of those very happy times.

Until the English once again tear his world apart. Dougal takes the lesser of two evils, soldering for the enemy to make his way to the colonies and where his destiny lies.

We have a chapter from the book for you today, and I guarantee after reading it,  you won’t want to miss this book.

Summary:

Dougal MacDonnell, a fierce warrior from the Highlands of Scotland, is able to hear the thoughts of other men and dream how the future will unfold.

Devastated by the loss of his family during the Battle of Culloden in 1746, he fosters a deep hatred for the English. But when Glenna, the love of his life and a Scottish outlaw, is captured and shipped overseas, Dougal is forced to join an English army made of vanquished Scots. Now fighting on the side of his sworn enemies, he embarks on a journey that will take him across the seas to the colonies.

There he will risk everything for the chance to find his true love.

CHAPTER TWO

A Different Kind of March

Dougal’s face still lay in the mud when he awoke. He was no longer sure if the dirt was cold, since his cheek had gone numb. He kept his eyes closed, wanting to cry, but lacking the strength. He was tired, always tired these days, but Dougal had never been a man to admit to that. He was frozen and half-starved, as they all were. That weakness had contributed to a lot of the killings today.

Before they’d even stepped onto the frozen marshes of Culloden Moor, Dougal had known the Scots would suffer. He hadn’t needed one of his damn dreams to tell him this battle would not go well. He and the other Highlanders had marched and practically starved for the past two months, and their plaids had been poor protection from the miserable late winter. None of the crofters they had passed on their travels had food to share. The whole of the Highlands was suffering. The men had gone down to London, up to Culloden, back and forth in the miserable winter and spring months, completely at the whim of their chiefs and Prince Charles himself.

Damn Prince Charles. Dougal had pride in his people, sure. But to throw thousands of them away just so one man could settle his well-dressed arse on a throne? Useless. Unforgivable. And if Dougal ever saw Charles, he’d tell him so to his bonny wee face.

“Hey,” he heard from his right side a few feet away. “Help me, man.”

Dougal consulted the stabbing pain in his neck before twisting to see the source of the voice. The man lay nearby and looked to be about the same age as he, with a dark complexion and straggling brown hair pasted to his face. Dougal didn’t remember having seen him before, but there had been so many of them it wasn’t too much of a surprise. What was one man out of thousands?

“Aye, sir. How do ye fare?” Dougal asked.

“Och, I’ve the most terrible itch on my nose. Ye dinna think ye could help me wi’ that, could ye?”

Dougal stared at the man, whose expression was dead serious. For a moment, Dougal was speechless, then he burst into laughter, feeling his lip split with the effort and his head pound with renewed agony. Laughter was an unexpected sound, and a few others glanced over to see what was up.

Still laughing, Dougal said, “We’re the lot of us trussed like turkeys, probably set to be hangit, an’ ye’re fashed about a wee itch on yer nose?”

“Aye, I am,” the man replied indignantly. “I canna reach it.”

“No, I dinna suppose ye can,” Dougal said, trying to stem his laughter. “An’ how am I to manage it then?”

“I’ve no idea. But ‘twould be a blessin’ if ye’d figure it out.”

Dougal snorted, then, with a flick of one black eyebrow, agreed to try. He rolled to his right side and used his heels to shove his own body, bit by bit, closer to the man. When he was a foot away, he spoke again.

“Bring yer damn neb here,” Dougal said. “I canna reach farther.” He wiggled his swollen fingers in illustration. They tingled with strangled circulation from within their rough bindings.

He heard the shuffling of a body behind his, then felt the strange pressure of the man’s nose moving against his fingers. Dougal couldn’t help himself. He started to giggle.

The man behind him moaned with relief. “Ye’re a godsend, man,” he said. “That was killin’ me.”

“That was killin’ ye? Well, if that’s all, then ye’re better than most of us. That is one of the strangest things I’ve ever been asked to do,” Dougal said, still smiling. “All done?”

“Aye, I am. Thanks very much.”

The men rolled onto their stomachs, though Dougal would have greatly preferred to lie on his back. If only their hands had been tied in front. The man beside Dougal gave him a friendly smile and what would have to suffice for a nod.

“John Wallace,” he said. “Yer servant, sir.”

Dougal returned the smile. “Dougal MacDonnell. Good to meet ye as well.”

There wasn’t much to say, so the men sank into an uncomfortable doze while they waited to find out what would happen next. It was becoming more difficult for any of them to stay awake these days, weakened as they all were. Now pain and—Dougal hated to accept the word—defeat weighed down every fibre in his body.

Dougal hadn’t realised he had slept until he was jolted awake by a solid kick of a boot connecting with his ribs. He grunted and rolled away, wide awake. But when he automatically reached for the offending boot, his bound arms permitted no such movement.

“Wake up, dog,” a soldier snarled.

Dougal smothered the words that pressed against his lips. They would do him no good here. He would wait. Bide his time. Beside him, John Wallace apparently came to the same conclusion. He snorted into consciousness, looked around, then dropped his face back down to the mud.

Someone grabbed Dougal’s feet. He kicked and tried instinctively to yank his feet away, but his legs were held fast. He twisted as far as he could so he could watch a soldier untie the ropes at his ankles. So they would be walking, would they? Fine. Anything was better than this, lying helpless as a lassie in a roomful of brawlers.

Other men’s legs were being untied as well, and there were groans and mutterings as the Highlanders stumbled to their feet. Most of their hands were still bound, so the men were limited to shrugging and squirming to release cramped muscles.

They were a sorry lot, Dougal thought, watching the others rise and stretch. Especially when compared to the English soldiers, who were clean, fed and glowing with victory. The Highlanders were filthy and bedraggled, covered head to barely covered feet by bruises and blood. He recognised a few men with whom he had walked on the road to hell, men who, like him, had left their families alone and unprotected while they went off to war. That thought brought Dougal back to images of his family. Of his mother in particular. Dougal was fairly sure he was the only man in the family to have survived. So now she was alone out there, with no means of defence other than her dirk, which she carried all the time.

Be strong, Mother. I’ll come back for ye someday.

She was smart, so she might take to the woods. Then again, she might stay in the house, waiting for her men to return. They were big men, all of them, and she wouldn’t have expected any of them to die.

No. That wasn’t true. She’d known as well as they had. She’d packed their food and seen them off, then turned and ducked through the small door to the croft. She’d never shed a tear. Or if she had, it had been secret, falling within the refuge of her empty home.

What of his brothers? He knew, of course, the fate of his father. The sound of a bayonet ripping through Duncan’s body came back to him, forcing bile up Dougal’s throat. He swallowed it down, determined to banish the sound forever, knowing it was an impossible feat. But what of Ciaran? And Andrew? He should have been with them. His back should have been against theirs, fighting as they’d been taught. But that damn fog, the cursed smoke. He’d lost them as soon as they’d started running, shrieking, onto the frozen moor.

John Wallace jostled him from one side and Dougal gave him a placid smile.

“What of it?” John asked.

“Eh?”

“I was sayin’ I think we should leave,” John suggested. “Just go. When the sons of bitches are lookin’ elsewhere.”

“Oh, that’s a fine idea, John. I reckon they’d just let a wee slip of a man like yerself take a walk off into the trees wi’out too much notice. No, ye fool. They’ve plans to work us hard. Otherwise they’d have shot us by now.”

John shrugged good naturedly. “Worth a thought.”

Dougal gestured with his chin toward a cluster of older men off by the trees, hunched and curled into themselves with resignation. “Those fellows willna fare well. Nor those.” He switched his gaze to a couple of small boys standing together, watching the activity with owlish expressions. They were probably no more than thirteen or fourteen. Drummer boys, he imagined. Frightened lads who should have been home practicing with wooden swords, not facing the menacing glares of hardened English soldiers, ripe with victory. The boys’ hands were untied, he noticed, as were those of some of the older men. The ropes were for bigger men, those who offered obvious threat to the soldiers.

“I’d think they’re no’ much use besides entertainment.”

As if he’d been overheard, a couple of soldiers strode toward the boys. Dougal saw them stiffen but set their slender shoulders in defiance, and the darker of the two stepped forward, placing himself as a shield in front of the smaller one. The soldier stood head and shoulders taller than the little Highlander, but Dougal wondered which, when faced with death, would be more brave. The soldier chuckled at whatever the boy had said and Dougal heard the cold sound from thirty feet away. The boy’s jaw was clenched, and when the soldier turned away, the boy spat at the receding red coat.

The soldier whirled and Dougal took an instinctive step toward the youngsters. “You little pig turd,” the soldier growled. “You’ll show a bit more respect, you will.”

Using his momentum, the soldier ploughed his fist into the boy’s cheek. The slender body crumpled, and though his hands were still tied behind him, Dougal stepped in as the soldier moved toward the smaller boy.

“If it’s a fight ye’re after,” Dougal said. “Might I offer my own services? Surely ye’d no’ want yer men to see ye crowin’ o’er a couple o’ wee lads. Doesna seem so gallant when they’re barely thirteen, does it?”

“Sixteen,” came a whisper, which Dougal ignored.

“You’ve fight left in you, ‘ave you?” the soldier demanded with a sneer. “Bloody Scots ‘ave no idea when to quit.” Needing no further encouragement, he smashed one fist into Dougal’s cheek, then plunged the other upward, under Dougal’s ribs. Dougal doubled over as the breath whooshed out of him, then turned to the side and spat.

He straightened and glared at the soldier. “Better?” he asked, voice still gruff from lack of wind.

The soldier gave him a wide smile, his mouth a checkerboard of missing teeth. “For now, my lad. But we’ll talk later, shall we?”

Dougal slid his jaw one way, then the other, testing the extent of the injury. Satisfied, he sniffed and started back toward John. The soldier hadn’t had much of an arm, fortunately. Good enough, but now Dougal knew what the man was made of. And at least he’d forgotten about the boys for now.

“I could have done just fine on my own, sir,” came the whispered voice.

The boy still standing was slender and gaunt, large blue eyes huge in his sunken face. His blond hair raged wildly around his head and Dougal had an urge to pat it down. To cut it off, even.

“Sure. I reckon ye could have. ‘Twas only I’ve a fondness for gettin’ hit,” he teased. “It had been a couple of hours, I reckon, since the last one.”

The boy, lips tight with pride, studied Dougal skeptically.

“Dinna fash,” Dougal said. “They’ll come back to hit ye soon enough. There’s plenty hungerin’ for a fight. An’ they dinna seem to mind if it’s a young lad, an’ old man, or a big fellow wi’ his hands tied. I’d keep well enough out o’ reach, if ‘twas me.”

The small face seemed to relax a bit. “Thank ye, sir,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

Dougal looked down at the fallen boy, just starting to push himself back to his feet. The side of his face where he had been hit was already swelling; the other side was black with fresh mud. How many times had Dougal taken part in boyhood brawls, gotten hit, then jumped back up again, eager for a rematch? He waited to see the boy’s expression, nodded approval when he recognised the glare of defiance, then turned back toward John, who had come closer to watch.

“Very gallant,” John said.

“Oh aye. I’m a real hero,” Dougal said.

“Right. Well, then I’ll stay by you. They’ll hit ye first, I reckon.”

“Ye’re a smarter fellow than ye let on, sir,” Dougal replied.

Within a half hour the crowd of men was shuffling along on the rough, drenched road to Inverness. Dougal’s shoulders ached, the joints burned from the restraints on his wrists. His worn shoes scraped along the road so that little pebbles danced ahead of him like raindrops on a still loch.

God, he was tired of walking. Always walking. Or waiting. He wasn’t sure which was worse. Either one allowed him to drift away in his mind, which could be either a good or a bad thing. Sometimes he used the time to think about easier times, to bring back memories and voices that made him smile. But more often his mind slid back to the sight of his father’s dying eyes, and the sound of his voice. “I’m proud of ye, son.”

He thought of Andrew. Two years younger than he, quiet and introspective, but with a sharp mind. Andrew was the thinker of the three brothers. No, that wasn’t right. Ciaran was the thinker, the one with promise, the one the family hoped to send to Europe to attend university someday. Andrew was the dreamer. Always sinking into places Dougal never saw. Always with that faraway look, as if he saw something beyond the sea. But when the situation demanded it, Andrew was just as quick as Dougal. Just as strong and skilled with his sword. They’d been more than brothers. Andrew was Dougal’s best friend.

It didn’t seem possible, imagining Andrew dead. Andrew was the most vibrant person he knew, filled with a deep energy that never let him rest. He was almost as big as Dougal himself: well over six feet. While Dougal’s hair was jet black, Andrew’s fell in brown waves. Dougal’s eyes flashed a clear blue while Andrew’s were a deep brown. Other than that, the two couldn’t have been mistaken for anything but brothers.

Dougal tried to picture Andrew’s body, motionless like all the rest, blood matting his hair and staining his kilt, his dark eyes forever closed. But he couldn’t hold the image. It felt wrong. The thought that Andrew’s corpse might be sprawled on that field of death was beyond Dougal’s comprehension. He looked into the forest on either side of the parade of captives, peering deep into the spring branches. The slender trees glistened with promise of new life, but any buds were barely visible. It was too early for green. Still, Dougal looked for any sign of his brother, then snorted at his own idiocy. Even if Andrew had somehow survived, even if he had run for his life, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to hang about and follow soldiers.

Go home, Dougal thought hard. If you’re out there, go home.

He could almost visualise Ciaran going down. That seemed, though the thought broke his heart, almost feasible. Their younger brother was smaller-boned and almost feminine in his looks, but fierce from necessity. The way of the youngest, always chasing the older two. He stood up to everyone, just to prove he had more than just a bookish mind, but swordplay wasn’t his strongest asset, and they all knew it. Ciaran should have been fighting with his father that day. That was how they always practiced.

Then again, Duncan was dead. He wouldn’t have been much help.

For the thousandth time, Dougal sifted through his memories, wondering if there were anything he could have done to change the day’s outcome. At least to have his brothers and father marching alongside him on this miserable road to incarceration, rather than draped over other corpses whose pock-scarred skin sizzled and spat over some English pyre. No matter how far they marched, Dougal could still smell the smoke from those fires, started randomly across the battlefield. Corpses, and some bodies close to death but not quite there, were stacked like wood, packed with anything that burned, then lit. The woollen plaids caught quickly; the fire was too hot to pay much mind to the dampness of the material. It ate through flesh and wood and wool, candling toward the sky, the smoke black as ink and stinking of meat.

Hundreds of bodies burned. Thousands more limped along this road with him, the undead marching toward the unknown. The Highlanders had set off the year before with such confidence, building their numbers and their conviction with every step. The clans had come together for their Prince, and now they had died for the man. And where was this wonderful Prince? Gone. Some of the men in the crowd actually spoke of seeing him ride away. He’d cheered them on, ridden his beautiful white horse back to a safe distance, then turned tail when the loss became horribly obvious. Dougal shook his head with disgust and winced at the resultant pounding in his head.

There was nothing he could have done to save the others. He knew that. And yet he supposed his soul would always wonder.

Today we have Genevieve Graham with us, so sit back and enjoy the fun!

Genevieve’s debut book, Under the Same Sky, a beautifully written Scottish historical story, released in January. She’s been receiving wonderful reviews and new fans are discovering what a delight it is reading her books.  Her second book, Sound of the Heart, releases today, so you’ll want to make a special trip to your local bookstore or head over to Amazon.com right now!

She’s one of only seven Canadians who have been published by Penguin. A very distinctive accomplishment. As a reader, I’m glad her editor has asked for more stories from Genevieve. These books should be on every romance reader’s keeper shelf. They’re that good.

So now let’s chat!

DUCK CHAT: Welcome Genevieve! Since the usual first question in an interview is “Tell us about yourself,” how about instead you tell our readers that one thing that most other folks don’t know about you!

GENEVIEVE GRAHAM: Hi, Sandy! Thanks for having me here today! This is a REALLY exciting day for me – I get to be on your site AND my second book is being released. So I am responding to your interview questions with champagne in hand.

One thing folks don’t know about me? I can’t stand maraschino cherries. I ate an entire jar when I was three. My grandmother had a white carpet at the time. heh heh. Well, she shouldn’t have left them out for me!

DC: I’ve heard writers often say their stories take them in surprising directions, or dialogue flows from some unknown place. Is it the same with you? Do your characters surprise you sometimes?

GG: I used to think authors made that up, the part about the characters running the show. But I can safely tell you that with me at least it’s 100% true. I’d never written anything before Under the Same Sky, so I had no idea what to expect. Being pulled into Maggie’s world was a thrill for me because she was more than willing to show me everything in great detail, telling me how she felt about it as we went. The whole story came from somewhere I’d never been, so everything was a surprise. But I particularly love it when one of them comes out with a funny comment or blurts out “no” when I expected them to say “yes.” Under the Same Sky does that less than my second book, Sound of the Heart, but there are moments like that.

DC: Do you ever argue with your characters while you’re writing? Who usually wins?

GG: At one point during the writing of Under the Same Sky, I sensed two male characters off to the side, nudging me to be allowed into the story. I had no idea who they were, and they seemed a little shabby for my taste, so I ignored them. I figured if they were important they’d come back later. Well, I couldn’t write for two days. I finally relented and let them in, and I couldn’t stop writing for two weeks after that. The crazy thing is that those two characters were eventually cut from the story. There was no need for them to be part of the finished product; however, it was apparently essential that they come into the story at that point so that something else could happen. I’ve tried arguing, trying to persuade them when I think a story should go a certain way, but for the most part they aren’t all that interested in my suggestions. That’s fine with me. It’s their story after all, not mine.

DC: I know you’re a huge Diana Gabaldon fan. (Me too!) You just have to say “Jamie and Claire,” and everyone knows who you’re talking about. While I realize there’s probably more than one from any of those seven five-inch-thick books, but what’s your favorite J&C moment?

GG: Really??? One??? The first one that jumps to mind is the scene in Dragonfly when Claire returns and Jamie’s working in the print shop. He calls out to his associate (was it Geordie?) but it’s Claire in the front, waiting for him. I LOVED his reaction. But really, there are so many scenes. Diana Gabaldon is a genius, in my humble opinion.

DC: Oh, that is a wonderful scene! And my opinion is definitely the same as yours. What is sure to distract you from sitting down and working/writing?

GG: Family movie night. We have two teenage daughters and right now we’re on a kick for adventure stories. Just finished rewatching the entire Lord of the Rings series, then Star Wars, and now we’re going through the entire Harry Potter series.

DC: Let’s talk about your MacDonnell family series. First, aside from being inspired by Diana Gabaldon, what was it that drew you to write about this family and this era?

GG: I wish I had a more brilliant answer for you, but the truth is that the story wrote itself. Maggie introduced herself to me the first day I started to write, but the second day I landed in the middle of Culloden Moor. I knew I’d be writing in that time period (yes, Gabaldon’s influence), but I didn’t know where I’d be starting. Fortunately, Andrew dragged me through the muck, showed me his determination, giving me insight into his history and family as he went. Andrew is a deep thinker, so I learned a lot. When I write, I don’t just follow my characters. Especially with Maggie and Andrew. I’m a part of them. I experience all their senses, and because I know them so well, their emotions also flow through me.

Here’s another truth for you: I never planned to write a second MacDonnell story. Under the Same Sky was the one and only thing I’d written, and when it was done I’d never really considered writing anything else. But Penguin asked for a companion novel in the contract. Who was I to say no to Penguin? So, of course, I said yes, then I panicked. For days I tried shoving ideas into my brain, but nothing stuck. Just as I was feeling desperate, I sensed Dougal. He was kind of shaking his head at me, smiling wryly, looking a little disappointed. It was like he was asking, “Why stress yourself out? I already have a story for you. All you had to do was ask.” And what a story he had!

I assumed I was done after that, but no. Maggie’s sister, Adelaide, woke me up one morning, saying she, too, had a story to tell. She is a very quiet, shy girl with a lot of emotional scars, so I’d never expected her to be keen to share. But she was. My editor will be reading that book this week and I’m looking forward to hearing what she thinks of it.

DC: Which fictional character would you like to hang out with?

GG: In my books it would be Dougal. In other fiction, well, I really like Roger Wakefield. As far as lady characters, I like the fun frankness and intelligence of Elizabeth Bennett.

DC: What advice would you give to your younger self?

GG: Not to worry so much about what other people say. Everyone has flaws and weaknesses, and those are a big part of what makes us unique. Just be confident in who you are and what you can do.

DC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever learned by Googling your name?

GG: That there are so many of me! Actually, the big list is on Twitter, but the one that jumped out at me on Google was Genevieve Graham the designer! She was on Project Runway, which is a reality designer show here in Canada. I’m not a fashion person (big fan of pyjamas), so I had no idea who she was. Now I just hope people don’t come to me asking me to write a book AND design an outfit to go with it!

DC: What book would you like to read again for the first time?

GG: Outlander.

DC: If you were a book, what would your blurb be?

GG: Genevieve already had her happily ever after. Now her dream’s come true and she didn’t even know she had that dream.

DC: What would your “voice’s” tagline be?

GG: Often mysterious and mystical, always heart wrenchingly real.

DC: Sound of the Heart, second book in the series, hits the bookstores today. Congrats! This story is turning out just as beautiful as Under the Same Sky. Would you give us a sneak peek into Dougal and Glenna’s story?

GG: I love this story. I love Dougal’s fun-loving nature, his purely masculine presence, and his complete and utter loyalty to Glenna. He would happily die for her, though he admits he’d prefer not to.

Dougal is taken as a POW after the Battle of Culloden (1746) and we learn what it was like to be a captive back then. He escapes and discovers true love with Glenna, but when the English capture her and send her to the colonies as a slave, Dougal must join the despised English Army (albeit as part of the Highlander regiment) and travel over the sea to find her. Glenna, who believes Dougal is dead, has her own adventures to survive as a slave, then suddenly discovers he is indeed alive and not too far away.

DC: What romance book would you recommend our readers pick up during their next bookstore run? (Yes, in addition to any Genevieve Graham novel!)

GG: You mean besides Outlander? There are so many. Personally, I love the epic stories of Penelope Williamson and Jennifer Roberson. If I were to go with more recent releases, I’m really enjoying the exciting western romances by Kaki Warner, the Napoleonic intrigue by Joanna Bourne, and the time travel romance of Susanna Kearsley.

DC: What an honor to be one of only seven Canadians to be contracted by Penguin to publish your books. Tell us about “the call.”

GG: Absolutely unexpected. I think the most difficult part of the entire writing process is finding an agent and finding the RIGHT agent. Jacques de Spoelberch worked with me on my book, then set it immediately on the desk of Wendy McCurdy, Executive Editor at Penguin. She bought it (and the companion novel) within the first 48 hours. I don’t think I slept for two days after that, I was so pumped on adrenaline. It’s still incredibly surreal. I am particularly proud of being a Canadian published in the U.S.

DC: If you had never become an author, what do you think you would be doing right now?

GG: Well, my university degree is in music, but I’d worked in marketing, media, and promotions for about fifteen years before I became a stay-at-home mom. Now I run my own editing business and teach piano to the local kids. So I guess I’d just be doing more of one or all of those!

DC: What else is on the horizon for Genevieve Graham?

GG: I’ve been writing non-stop and have three slightly more “modern” stories coming along. The most recent is a time travel romance, which I’m really enjoying. I like to set the stories around the area where I live, in a tiny town in Nova Scotia. This place is steeped in history, and the ghosts are only too happy to share their stories with someone who will listen.

Lightning Round:

- dark or milk chocolate?    – MILK
- smooth or chunky peanut butter?     – CHUNKY
- heels or flats?     – FLATS
- coffee or tea?      – TEA
- summer or winter?      – AUTUMN
- mountains or beach?     – BEACH
- mustard or mayonnaise?     – MAYO
- flowers or candy?     – CANDY
- pockets or purse?     – PURSE
- Pepsi or Coke?     – WINE
- ebook or print?     – PRINT

And because we still enjoy the answers we get:

1. What is your favorite word?    – LUGUBRIOUS

2. What is your least favorite word?     – PUCE

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?     – FREEDOM

4. What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally?    – PEOPLE TRYING TO PUSH THEIR BELIEFS ON OTHERS

5. What sound or noise do you love?    – BIRD SONG

6. What sound or noise do you hate?     – NAILS ON CHALKBOARD

7. What is your favorite curse word?     – F___

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?     – MAKING MOVIES

9. What profession would you not like to do?     – GARBAGE

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?   – “COME ON IN! I’LL GET YOU A LATTE.”

DC: Thank you so much for spending the day with us, Genevieve! It’s been an absolute pleasure.

I am exhausted. While it’s wonderful to meet people and talk books, I want to go home and write!

I met some lovely people and waved to a lot more. I went to the Series Romance game this morning and had a great time, and got books. I met Caitlin Crews and Lynn Raye Harris and we had fun on a quiz. I like being a reader. You get stuff.

After two publisher dinners yesterday I ended up at the bar, carousing, and when I’m in the mood, I can do a good carouse. Especially with this kind of company. Had a lovely lunch with Monica Burns and Joey Hill, but if I told you what we talked about, I’d have to kill you.

Sometimes I think people will catch me out. After all, I’m not a real writer, am I? I discovered that’s a very common feeling among authors, even the big ones. They feel they’re not really writers, that this fun they’re having won’t last. And of course, in some cases that happens.

But people like my books and I did well at the book signing today. The RT book signings are amazing. Three hundred authors and then some in the same room. All talking, all signing their books. But we’re in alphabetical order. You can find your favorite erotic romance author next to your favorite inspirational order, and the chances are that they will be getting on like a house on fire.

Authors come from all over the world to be at those signings. They’re amazing. We can sign and then meet some of our own favorites. There is nothing to compare with them. Of course, at the end of the three hours, most of us have lost our voices, but after that, we just have to party and enjoy ourselves!

I went and pitched a new book to some people. I hadn’t meant to do it, but it was fun to do and, amazing to me, the people wanted to see my stuff. See above for explanation! So keep your fingers crossed for me. I’d upload some pictures, but I didn’t take as many as I should have done and I take a lousy photo, but I do have some.

These days I don’t go to as many panels as I used to, because of other commitments, but they are awesome, offering a wide selection of craft, industry, and fun reader panels. It was a joy to see one of my favourite writers, Susan Elizabeth Phillips talking about her work process, and the series writer game was also a lot of fun. And our team won the wooden spoon prize, which was worth having!

Apparently this year’s RT was the biggest ever, with more than 2,000 attendees. And when it comes down to the wire, that’s why I attend. Airfare from the UK is expensive, and RT can, on the surface, look expensive, but I think they have it right. It’s the combination of fun and industry, and the massive number of attendees that makes it the most worthwhile convention for me. I could attend smaller cons, but I wouldn’t reach that number of people. I wouldn’t be able to chat to my editors and to potential future editors and agents and also be there for people who read and enjoy my books. And I have such a good time there.

If I hadn’t written for publication ten years ago, I’d have never seen and experienced all the fantastic things I have in this time.

Well, the first day of RT has passed and I’m still here and still standing.

There is nothing quite like RT. Enthusiastic readers treating themselves to a vacation, enthusiastic aspiring writers and jaded writers, editors and publishers all crowding together in one huge hotel.

Actually, no. Because you can’t help but get enthused and excited by such a great bunch of people. Honestly, jaded though I sometimes get with the publishing world, RT is something else.

So, what did I do? I reconnected with my lovely friend and roommate Desiree Holt, and we went to various events. The panel I was booked to appear on, about pseudonyms and should you use them, went beautifully, ably chaired by Celeste Delaney. We told our avid audience that they should think carefully before using a pseudonym and be careful to create it properly. For most writers, writing under more than one name, even if you let people know it’s really you, includes creating two identities, two websites, two sets of promotion plans, so it has to be good. Writing under a pseudonym to keep your real identity private could be because you have small children or work in a profession where they might not like your name associated with what you do. Although, saying that, my husband teaches at a school whose patron is the Queen, and he told them about it, so if the Queen is okay with me writing erotic romance, then other people maybe should be less prissy!
I was fortunate enough to be invited to a reception for the booksellers and librarians at the suite of Kathryn Falk and Kenneth Rubin. That was fun. Packed, but the food was great and the company even better.

The Ellora’s Cave ball was a blast. We had a great demo from The Geek Squad, a hip-hop troupe who intimidated me into not even trying to dance, but I did get my ten seconds of fame when I walked across the stage on the arm of a cute Caveman. I sat next to a lovely lady who turned out to be Lynn Raye Harris, so it was great to catch up with her at last.

After that I went to bed. Actually, I didn’t. I met with Susanna Kearsley in the bar, to discuss the panel we’re to be on the next day, and she, Lauren Willig, and Molly O’Keefe had a blast. Business over, we set to discussing the “trumps” game. You pick a gorgeous man, and he is your starting card. Then you pick another one, and decide if he trumps your original. Believe me, the more Cosmos you drink, the more fun it gets.

In case you’re wondering, Richard Armitage and David Gandy came up tops. If you don’t know them, look them up. You won’t be sorry. Tell you what, I didn’t take any pictures yet, so here’s a picture of David Gandy instead.

This just in…

Earth Day is April 22, and All Romance Ebooks is celebrating with a free ebook a day for the 21 days leading up to this special event.

~ Staring April 1 and running through April 21, be sure to stop by every day to get your free book.

~ Go here to begin!

~ Be sure to bookmark that page so you can go back each day. Have fun!

Consider yourself flashed.

Wow, what a terrific day we had with Lynn Viehl and her guest blog about going through her Darkyn files with readers. Thanks to Lynn and all of you for such eager and fun participation!

And now for our winner of that stupendous prize Lynn has put together:

The French-inspired tote, made by Olivia by Design on Etsy, includes:

A signed set of my seven novels in the original Darkyn Series
A signed ARC of Nightborn, the first book in my Lords of the Darkyn trilogy
A set of twelve Herman Wu bookmarks
An amethyst crystal bookmark “pen”
A font mug from Author Outfitters
A handmade brooch from Olivia by Design to match the tote

Drum roll please!

(#74) Chinyere Etufugh (ezinwanyi)

Congrats! Please send your snail mail address to lighthousetagger@gmail.com and I’ll contact Lynn for you.

Thanks to Beth Kery for joining us recently with a very intriguing guest blog. Love and romance rising out of tragedy is some of the best reading we can ask for, as Beth proves with her Home to Harbor Town series.

And now for our winners! Each winner will receive their choice of two books from the Harbor Town series: The Hometown Hero Returns, Liam’s Perfect Woman, or Claiming Colleen.

So congrats to:

Kim (#4)

and

CrystalGB (#1)

WTG, ladies! Send your book choices and snail mail addy to lighthousetagger (at) gmail (dot) com and we’ll pass it on to Beth to get your books on their way to you!

We’d like to thank Joan Swan for a fun day with her though-provoking Guest Blog recently. That point of no return for our heroes and heroines is one romance readers anxiously wait for in their books. Thanks for joining in on the discussion for the day!

And now for our winner. Sometimes it pays to be the first out of the gate –

Jen G  (#1)

Your copy of Fever will be on its way to you soon!

Congrats! Please send your snail mail addy to lighthousetagger (at) gmail (dot) com.

What a fun day we had with Deirdre Martin discussing other lives that maybe, just maybe might be easier than being an author. All in jest, of course, because there’s no way we can do without Deirdre Martin books on the shelves!

The winner of a copy of Deirdre’s current release, Breakaway, is

**drumroll please!**

Kim (#3)

Congratulations, Kim!

Please send your snail mail address to Lighthousetagger (at) gmail (dot) com and we’ll pass it on to Deirdre to get your book on its way to you.

Our thanks to Alexandra Hawkins for her guest blog giving us a look into author deadlines and the crazy lifestyle that goes with them. I sure as heck appreciate those wonderful stories I get much more now!

And now for our winners…

For a copy of Sunrise with a Notorious Lord – Lori Y (#19)

and

For a copy of the Lords of Vice book of their choice – Jeannette (#15)

Congrats, ladies! Please send your snail mail addresses to lighthousetagger (at) gmail (dot) com, and, Jeannette, be sure to visit Alexandra’s website to let me know which LoV book you’d like, and then I’ll send all info on to Alexandra.

Lynn Viehl’s Nightborn is a resumption of her Lords of the Darkyn series, but if you’re new to the series, you can start with this one, if you want to. She keeps spoilers about the other books to an absolute minimum.

There is no puppetry here, no events taking over the characters who do as they are told, rather than what the characters dictate. Everything moves organically. People make mistakes, and, in doing so, discover more about themselves. The thrills are there, too, great sex, action and excitement, but through it all, Viehl never loses sight of what is most important to readers – the characters. We suffer with them, rejoice with them and hold our breaths as they face danger that they can’t overcome without working hard and, yes, learning more about themselves. I lived the story along with Korvel and Simone, and then sighed in relief as they achieved their well-deserved happy ending.

I’ve devoured the Darkyn books as they came out and loved them all. Viehl writes about interesting, intelligent characters in a rock-solid, believable world. No TSTL or inconsistencies here. This is just about as good as it gets.

Summary:

The High Lord of the Immortal Darkyn has sent his most trusted warrior, Korvel, to retrieve a coveted scroll that’s rumored to contain maps to Templar treasures and the secrets to eternal life. Uniting with Korvel to recover the dangerous artifact is Simone Derien, the daughter of the scroll’s guardian, and a woman with many deadly secrets…

And now an exclusive, never-seen-before excerpt just for our Pond visitors:

After washing and donning the garments Sister Simone had set out for him, Korvel tested the strength of his leg on the stairs.  While the wound still throbbed, he felt none of the numbing coldness that would indicate any copper remained in his flesh.  The young nun’s blood as well as the bloodwine the abbess had brought to him had done much to restore his strength, although he would need to feed several more times before he fought again.

Not from her, Korvel decided.  He would not risk causing either of them to fall under the spell of thrall and rapture.

Outside the convent he saw Simone loading a bag and several boxes into the back of a rover.  She moved with speed and efficiency, and while she still appeared pale she demonstrated no signs of weakness.  During her tresoran training she had probably been conditioned to withstand the effects of regular blood loss.  Over the centuries mortals who were born to serve the Kyn had gradually developed tolerances and immunities that ordinary humans lacked, such as a resistance to l’attrait.

She cannot resist my ability. No mortal female ever had.  I could have had her a dozen times, and she would only have begged for more.

Her unremarkable clothing and the black cap she had used to cover her braids should have rendered her unnoticeable, but Korvel found his gaze drawn to the trousers, which emphasized the elegant length of her legs.  When she bent over to arrange something the sweet curves of her buttocks made him clench his fists, but he didn’t look away.

Lust roiled inside him, but he could withstand the longing of his body.  He knew why he wanted Simone; because he could not have her.  Tresora or not, she was a nun.  His honor would not permit him to violate the innocence of her body or the vows of chastity she had already taken.

She glanced up as he joined her.  “It is only a few hours’ drive to Marseilles.  We have friends there who will assist us in tracking the thieves.”

“Before we go I must return to my car and retrieve my belongings,” he advised her.  “I left it on the road by the turn-off into the hills.  Give me the keys.”

“I know all the roads as well as the quickest routes, Captain,” she pointed out.  “You do not.”

Centuries of commanding instant obedience from the most vicious warriors among the Kyn had not prepared Korvel to be questioned by a mortal female.  That she was right only further annoyed him.  As he ducked into the passenger side of the rover, he asked, “Can you drive faster than a cabbage farmer?”

“I don’t know.”  Now she sounded irritated.  “I’ve never raced one.”

As soon as Korvel shut the door she started the engine and made a three-point turn, driving around the convent to a gravel-and-dirt road that divided two fields.  He saw several men with large canvas bags slung across their torsos; each stood crouched over the short, leafy rows of vegetables.  All the dead mortals he had seen at the château had been elderly, and all the women at the convent were blind.  “Sister, why did the council not send men to protect the scroll and its guardian?”

“Until yesterday, no one knew it was here.”  The rover bounced as she turned onto a narrow dirt road.  “Helada has no need of protection.”

“You know the guardian personally?”

Her lips twisted.  “All my life.”

He saw a wispy column of smoke rising in the distance.  “Among the Kyn, Helada’s reputation is legend.  In more than six centuries no one has ever laid eyes upon him.  It has been said that he kills anyone who does.  Now you tell me that you have known him for years.”  When she didn’t reply, he added, “Why did he spare your life?”

“That is a very long story, Captain,” she said as she braked to a stop.  “One that will have to wait for another time.”

“Why?”

She nodded at the windshield.  “Your car is on fire.”

Korvel turned his head and swore as he saw the flames and smoke pouring out of the Audi.  One of the rear windows had been smashed in, and the smoke carried with it the stink of grain alcohol.

Simone walked to the back of the rover, where she retrieved a small fire extinguisher and walked down to the Audi.  By the time he reached her she had begun spraying foam through the broken window.

“Sister.”  He caught her arm.  “The petrol tank.”

“It hasn’t spread that far yet.”  She continued using the extinguisher until the flames disappeared and all that was left was a smoldering ruin.  She lowered the nozzle, peered inside at the sooty foam coating the interior, and then glanced down each side of the road.  “Were you followed here?”

“No.”  Korvel wrenched open the driver’s side door to see what could be salvaged.  The heat had melted his mobile phone into a blob of plastic, and the nylon bag containing the rest of his belongings had been reduced to a pile of ash.  As the foam dissipated he saw the glitter of glass spread across the back seat.  The soot-blackened shards were too curved to have come from the smashing of the window.  “They used a bottle of alcohol for the fire bomb.”

He went to open the trunk, and found it filled with smoke.  The flames, however, had not reached his sword.

Korvel removed his coat to strap on his blade harness.  As soon as the sheathed sword pressed against his shoulder blades the damnable sense of feeling naked disappeared.  “What sort of field training did the council give you, Sister?”

“Field training?”  She frowned.  “None.”

He eyed her.  “But you are tresora. You must have had some instruction.”

“I know what my duties are, Captain, and I am capable of attending to them.”  Her expression turned bleak.  “We should go.”

“I need a satellite phone.”  When she didn’t produce one, he made an impatient sound.  “Take me to a secure phone line, then.  I must contact the high lord and relate what has happened to the scroll.”

“This is a farming village, Captain, not Paris.  Your call will have to wait until we reach the city.”  She started walking back to the rover.

Korvel followed her to the vehicle.  “What was the council thinking?  You are completely unprepared for this.”

She stopped in her tracks and slowly turned around.  “How is it that you were prepared?”  Her eyes shifted past him.  “You came here alone, with no one to have your back.  You tried to fight mortals armed with copper blades, and you’re still limping from a wound that should have killed you.  You don’t know where they are or how to find them.  Oh, and now you have no phone.”

He clenched his jaw.  “I did not try to fight those mortals,” he told her.  “I killed them.  All of them.”

“Did you?  Then tell me, Captain, where is the scroll?  And who burned your car?”  She tossed the fire extinguisher into the back of the rover and got in, waiting only until Korvel was inside before taking off.

When I had a chance to pitch to my publisher some new books set in the Darkyn universe, I didn’t just jump at the opportunity; I flung myself at it, knocked it down and sat on it until I had a contract.  I was pretty sure this would make my readers, who have been asking for more Darkyn ever since my publisher ended the original series, very happy.  I was also delighted, as I’d never had the time to write all the stories I’d wanted.

Once I’d signed the contract, I took out all my old Darkyn files.  While I’d never stopped thinking about the Darkyn, it had been a few years since I’d featured them as main characters.  I wanted to look over things and chat with my immortals so I could explain the new venture.  Of course, I expected them to be as excited as I was.

All authors who talk to their characters are not crazy.  At least, I’m pretty sure we’re not.  My conversations are strictly mental meetings that take place at an imagination conference table in my mind’s novel library.  The shelves are packed with my books, a box of zero-calorie jelly donuts is parked in front of my chair, and my favorite classical music plays in the background.  But when I go in to give them the good news, the library is empty and the invisible stereo is playing Take This Job and Shove It.  Worse, there aren’t any jelly donuts.

I walk down past the archive rooms of Unfinished Stories, Finished/Unsold Stories and Finished/Unsold/To be Burned stories to the character vault area.  I don’t like opening the vault because I know who’s in there, and they don’t appreciate me keeping them locked up.  Only I find the vault door standing open and black and red confetti all over the carpet.  I can also hear Gloria Estefan singing The Conga from inside.

An immortal Darkyn warrior stops me just inside the threshold.  He’s big, handsome, muscular, and has a two-handed sword in one hand.  “Have you an invitation, my lady?”

“You’re kidding, right?”  I can see he isn’t.  “Who do you think your writer is, you blockhead?”

“I cannot say.  We’ve had no writer since the black-hearted, evil, conniving, merciless Satan of a wench ended our lord Locksley’s tale by changing him into . . .” his voice trails off as he bends down to peer at me.  “God in Heaven.”  He shuffles back a step.  “You are the very image of her.”

“That would be because I am Satan.”  I pat his pale cheek.  “Where are Alex and Michael?”

He points a trembling finger toward the interior of the vault.  “They may be found within, oh powerful, all-knowing beauteous one—“

“Too late to suck up now, Red Shirt.”  I go in to enter what looks like a rocked-out medieval banquet room/tavern.  Banners from all the Darkyn jardins flutter overhead as racks of upside-down wine glasses do the conga over the bar.  The place is wall-to-wall immortals, but instead of dancing they’re watching a mini-melee between a bunch of scowling Italians I recognize from the last book.

“A genuine mortal.  How enchanting.”  An iron hand in a black velvet glove settles on my shoulder.  “Has someone ordered delivery?”

I glance up at Lucan, once the most lethal assassin among the Kyn.  “You turned my vault into a vampire nightclub?”

“I was bored.”  He rubs his forehead.  “What is it now?  Another free story?  Haven’t I appeared in enough of them?”

“I created you,” I remind him.  “I also got you on the New York Times bestseller list and on shelves in seventy countries.  I found a woman who not only loves you but puts up with everything that makes you an eternal pain in the ass.  You can spare me five minutes.”

He sighs, lifts two fingers to his mouth and produces a piercing whistle.  Gloria Estefan falls silent, the mini-melee comes to a halt and dozens of gorgeous faces go white as they see me.

“Oh, no.  No. We just got back here,” Alexandra Keller gripes from her bar stool.  “We did your cameos.  We were nice to the genetically-enhanced humans.  Go write something else.”

“Your gratitude is overwhelming,”  I tell her.  “I’m here because I sold three more books.”

“Congratulations.”  Michael Cyprien comes over and kisses the back of my hand.  “As always, we hope you enjoy much success.  You must return to your world now, oui?”

“Three more Darkyn books.”

Wine glasses start cracking as groans sweep around the room.  Alex props her forehead against her fist.  Some of the Italians begin to pray.  From the back someone mutters “Can’t we just kill her?” and someone else says, “We’re fictitious, you dolt.”

I have to raise my voice to be heard.  “It’s a quest for treasure trilogy.”  No one says anything.  “No one’s DNA will be stolen.”  A faint cheer from the left makes me smile.  “And you get more women.”

A suspicious-looking warrior emerges from the crowd.  “How many more, Evil One, and what are they?”

“They’re allies and good guys.  Mostly.  By the end of the trilogy, you’ll have . . .“ I do the math.  “Sixty new immortals.”

“Not even you could manage so many females in but three novels.”  The warrior gives me an uncertain look.  “Could you?”

I show him some teeth.  “Fifty-eight of them show up in one book.”

“Well, I have some time on my hands,” Lucan murmurs, and winces as I smack him in the back of the head.  “I cannot help myself.  You made me this way.”

“You’re taken, pal.”  I turn to Alex, who has walked over from the bar.  “I ended your story arc.  You’ll be guest appearing only.  I promise.”

She holds up a hand.  “No Brethren, no torture, no burning down strongholds, and absolutely no more emergency marathon rebuild-a-face surgeries.”

“Deal.”  I finally notice that the vault isn’t as crowded as I left it when I retired my last series.  “So what did you guys do with all the other characters I had stowed in here?”

Suddenly everyone is looking at anything but me, and Alex sighs.  “Remember back when you put us in here, and I asked you to install a blood bank?  Well, you kind of forgot, and . . . “

[Ed. Lynn has put together a terrific prize basket for one of our lucky commeters today. Here's a list of what's included, along with a pic:

The French-inspired tote, made by Olivia by Design on Etsy, includes:

A signed set of my seven novels in the original Darkyn Series
A signed ARC of Nightborn, the first book in my Lords of the Darkyn trilogy
A set of twelve Herman Wu bookmarks
An amethyst crystal bookmark "pen"
A font mug from Author Outfitters
A handmade brooch from Olivia by Design to match the tote

So be sure to ask a question or leave a meaningful comment for Lynn today, because you really don't want to miss out on any of this!]

I first read Beth Kery when I discovered one of her erotic romances, Exorcising Sean’s Ghost, a few years ago. She was a new author for me, and that book hooked me. I’ve been reading her ever since. Beth writes a variety of romance, from the heated, sizzling erotic to those lovely, heartwarming stories that make you smile. Her latest series, Home to Harbor Town, is full of heart and warmth while steeped in misfortune and catastrophe.

Claiming Colleen is the third book of a five-book series, and, while the tragedy that has hit these families is still the underlying base of the story, the tone is a bit more lighthearted than the previous books, but the emotion and the romance, those very important heartwarming elements that have been there from the beginning, are still front and center.

Eric and Colleen are both passionate and bull-headed. And perfect for each other, though they don’t acknowledge that any time soon. But that’s where a lot of the fun comes from in this book. Watching them waltz around each other with hurt and anger turns into a lovely dance of fire and admiration as they and their love grow through the course of the story. You don’t want to miss this book. You don’t want to miss this series. Trust me.

Summary:

In high school, small-town princess Colleen Kavanaugh had had it all, and Eric Reyes was the outsider with his nose pressed against the glass. Then a sudden change in circumstance led to a reversal of fortune. Now Eric was a wealthy, successful, arrogant surgeon who rubbed the onetime golden girl the wrong way.

When an ironic twist of fate forced Eric and Colleen back together, the single mom found herself drawn to the irresistible doctor despite their dark history. Sure, she’d felt something for Eric when they were teenagers, but those memories were long forgotten—or so she thought. It wasn’t long before he wooed her into his arms…and his bed. But could their newfound passion lead to the happily-ever-after of their dreams?

It’s time to meet Eric and Colleen. So here’s a little teaser to give you a taste of what’s in store for you when you pick up this book.

“It’s just a reality check,” Eric reminded her, his voice low and compelling.

She glanced up into his eyes and wished she hadn’t. She couldn’t seem to look away.

“You know…to remind our siblings that passion can cloud the brain.”

“Oh, yes. Because we all should be as rational and clearheaded as
you,” Colleen replied under her breath.

“What’s that?” he asked, dipping his head toward her as though to
hear her better.

“Nothing,” she muttered, because much to her shock his face was now only inches away from hers, and those eyes she’d formerly designated as
the bedroom variety were latched on to her mouth.

“Mind if I ask you a question?” She watched his firm, shapely lips moving as if in a trance.

“Okay,” she murmured.

“Sixteen months ago I kissed you, and a few months later, you slugged me in the jaw in the parking lot at Jake’s Place.”

Her mouth fell open, but she didn’t utter a word. She didn’t know what shocked her more: the fact that Eric had brought up that kiss on Sunset Beach again or his reference to her impassioned, impulsive slug to his jaw last summer…or possibly the fact that said sexy jaw was now hovering mere inches away from her upturned face.

“I…I’ve never apologized for that. I’m really sorry,” she whispered. Just thinking about it mortified her. It’d been a hot, sultry night, and Eric had got into a confrontation with her brothers, Liam and Marc. Old emotions regarding the crash had boiled to the surface. Colleen had made a fool of herself by stopping the fight by jumping in front of her brothers and punching Eric herself.

Not one of her finer moments.

Eric and she were the only two people on the entire planet who knew that impulsive act, in large part, related to what had occurred on Sunset Beach months before. That physical action was an admission, in a sense, that Eric had gotten to her, and he must know that. Colleen hadn’t realized until that moment how much a secret tied you to another person. She struggled to think up an excuse for her volatile behavior that summer night.

“We Kavanaughs are rather…protective of one another. You know how
family can be,” she said apologetically.

“I do,” he said in a hushed tone. “But I didn’t bring it up because I was looking for an apology.”

“No?”

He shook his head slowly. She couldn’t pull her gaze off the firm, shapely lips centered above the indentation of that cleft on his chin.

“I brought it up because I wanted to ask you something…something I’ve
wondered about.”

She stood frozen t o the spot, even though she knew she should back
away. His dark head dipped slightly. His breath, warm and fragrant, brushed against her nose and lips. The subtle scent of his spicy aftershave filtered into her nose. She inhaled, greedy for it.

“Do you regret that kiss?” he asked.

For a stretched few seconds, neither spoke. The silence was absolute. Colleen wondered if they both held their breath.

“I keep trying to regret it but—”

She never finished her sentence, because he leaned down and closed the distance between them, seizing her mouth with his. One second she’d been Eric-less, and the next she was submerged in him, overwhelmed by the feeling of his demanding lips and singular taste. She stumbled in her boots. In fact, she later wondered with rising horror if she hadn’t
swooned. He caught her, holding her firmly in his arms. But what woman wouldn’t be caught off balance—and thrilled by her dizziness—while being consumed by Eric Reyes?

As I write this blog for The Good, The Bad and the Unread, I’m looking forward to the release of Claiming Colleen, the third book in the Home to Harbor Town series, while at the same time, doing edits for One in a Billion—Deidre’s story and book four in the series—and writing the fifth book—Ryan’s story. It’s one of those strange experiences that an author has, that by the time a book is ready to make its debut, the writer’s mind is months or years later in the character’s journey. But it’s a wonderful perspective, too, sort of like sharing familiar photographs with a friend or family member who hasn’t yet seen them and experiencing them fresh through another’s eyes.

Claiming Colleen is Eric Reyes’ and Colleen Kavanaugh’s love story—one I’ve been looking forward to telling since book one. The heat, conflict, and attraction between the two has been simmering just below the surface for two books, so it was so much fun for me to finally give these two special characters the full spotlight and their own unique romance.

One of the fun things about Eric and Colleen’s story is that the two have knowledge of things going on behind the scenes that other characters in the books (and thus, the reader) haven’t had thus far. Perhaps there’s a reason Colleen acted so uncharacteristically and slugged Eric in book one, and maybe there’s a thread of common history beyond their family tragedy that makes Eric always remember her with warmth and a touch of regret, despite their apparent coolness toward one another? These are the little elements that get to be brought to the surface as these two take the stage for their own passionate romance. One of the things that’s nice about this is that old readers can peek into formerly obscured events going on in the background of former books, while new readers can experience it new, fresh, and complete.

I noticed that as I wrote Claiming Colleen that the tone of the story was different than the two former books—a little lighter, less somber, and a bit more tongue in cheek. Eric’s and Colleen’s dialogue flowed in a quick, familiar rhythm, highlighting these two individuals’ inherent confidence, intelligence…and, of course, stubborn streaks that go miles deep. Their chemistry provided a nice alteration in the flow of the series. Yes, this couple has also been touched by past tragedy and their lives today show undeniable marks of it. But they are also both intensely vibrant and present individuals, and thus their romance has an active, vigorous feel to it.

I suppose some people might think it was strange that I came up with a romance series that was at least partially inspired by news articles of the Taconic Parkway crash. For whatever reason, I was deeply moved by this heart-rending story about senseless death, multiple families’ losses, and the inevitable grinding pain of the survivors. Romance novels are, at their essence, books about love, though; the power of love to transform, grow, and eventually heal our flawed human selves. What’s more, Harlequin Special Edition is an imprint that focuses on families. I thought it was a perfect home for this story about three very different families, their journey to forgiveness and acceptance, and, finally, happiness within the arms of the one they love.

For the giveaway today: Thank you to The Good, The Bad and the Unread for hosting me here today! I’ll give two randomly chosen commenters their choice of two books from the Home to Harbor Town series, The Hometown Hero Returns, Liam’s Perfect Woman, or Claiming Colleen.

~Beth

You’re in for a treat with this excerpt from Fever by Joan Swan. You will be hooked. You will want more of this fast-paced new book from a new author, who is going to be a favorite of romance readers in record time. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ms. Swan is already a master at stirring the emotions of a reader, no matter what that emotion is. From fear to joy to anger to love to revulsion and a myriad other feelings, this book will lay claim to every response you go through while reading it. Teague and Alyssa are real, multi-layered characters who will flay your heart and soul with their journey together.

So I’m not going to keep you any longer. You have to read this excerpt!

Summary:

Dr. Alyssa Foster will admit to a bad boy fetish…

But when she finds herself face to face with a convicted murderer with a ripped body, a determination for freedom and an eye on her as his get out of jail free card, Alyssa knows she’s in deep trouble…. Not just because Teague Creek is a prisoner desperate for freedom, but because his every touch makes her desperate for more.

A man with a life sentence has nothing to lose…

Teague Creek has one shot at freedom, but his plan to escape with a hostage develops a fatal flaw: Alyssa. On the run from both the law and deadly undercover operatives who know of his strange abilities, he needs to avoid trouble, but every heated kiss tells him the fire between them could be just as devastating as the flames that changed him forever.

Good thing you can pre-order nowadays. Go for it! You won’t be sorry, as you will quickly see once you start reading…

Chapter One

The clank-clank-clank of shackles echoed off the hospital’s linoleum floors, rippling across Doctor Alyssa Foster’s shoulders.

She headed toward the source, her muscles tense despite her fatigue. Normally, she didn’t mind taking on additional duties when the department was short staffed like this. She didn’t even mind carrying the everyday load for her attending physicians. And sure as hell didn’t complain about it like her sorry-assed excuse of a rival, Greg Dyne, but this… This was the worst of the mundane chores. She’d rather perform the toughest procedure on the nastiest patient than be forced to interact with prisoners.

Before facing the hardened, violent psychopaths waiting at the end of the hall, Alyssa ducked into the restroom and took a minute to splash water on her face. Then she made the mistake of looking in the mirror.

Pale skin, bruise-colored shadows beneath her eyes, frown lines marring her forehead. She almost didn’t recognize the person staring back. Her twelfth day in a row of twenty-fours didn’t look so good in this light, and the unsavory chore awaiting didn’t help.

“Fourteen more days,” she murmured to her reflection. Her year-long fellowship would end in just two weeks. Had it really only been a year? She felt like she’d been at St. Jude’s for a decade already. “And if you want to stay here, you’d better learn to live with the jailbirds.”

The hospital had contracts with five neighboring prisons and the forensic patients had prompted the budget increase, which in turn opened this new attending radiologist’s position, one either she or Dyne would fill.

No. The one she would fill.

Alyssa yanked at the elastic band in her hair and smoothed the messy strands back into a ponytail with a damp hand. After stretching her back and popping her neck, she dragged herself through the closed double doors hiding the forensic wing from the general public.

She’d be the first to admit to a bit of a badboy fetish. Certainly had made her share of mistakes choosing men in the past. But her definition of badboys encompassed independent men who pushed the limits and lived by their own rules, not murderers, rapists and drug pushers.

The angle of sunlight spilling through the glass on the single exterior door at the end of the hall told her it was getting late. She still had patients in the intensive care units in need of procedures, the day’s studies to read out and…oh, yeah, food. She hadn’t stopped to eat anything all day.

Her teeth met and her jaw muscle flexed. She didn’t have time to be doing other people’s work, but if she didn’t, Dyne would. And she damn well wasn’t going to lose this position to that cocky, substandard excuse for a rival.

Alyssa paused at the doorway to the already darkened exam room and nodded to the officer standing in the hallway. The one with a weapon. The one who kept a safe distance from the inmate so the prisoner wouldn’t have an opportunity to steal a gun. One sweep of his twenty-something, clean-shaven, open, eager, sweet Midwestern face, and Alyssa knew this was the perfect place for him—well out of the felon’s reach.

“Ma’am.” Farmboy shifted to allow her past the partially curtained opening. “Sorry we’re so late. The transportation sergeant screwed up.”

She couldn’t quite muster the words, that’s okay, because it was really messing with her day and her mood. But it also wasn’t his fault. She nodded acknowledgement. “What facility are you from?”

“San Quentin, ma’am.”

Alyssa resisted the urge to close her eyes and slump her shoulders. Quentin: death row capital of the California state prison system. Home to the most notorious serial killers and mass murderers of the decade. Definitely an apropos ending to this two-week hellacious shift.

With a slow breath directed deep into her chest, Alyssa prepared her emotional shields then passed the guard and scanned the prisoner’s paperwork: Teague Creek, thirty-four, right upper quadrant pain. Abdomen ultrasound. Piece of cake. It would take her ten minutes, tops.

She surveyed the prisoner from shoulders to toes. He was tall, but little else stood out. His periwinkle blue prison uniform was too similar to hospital scrubs for Alyssa’s taste. Probably because they made her wonder if she was a prisoner of sorts as well. Especially on days like this.

The second officer—this one inside the room and without the weapon—was older, maybe fifty, also Caucasian.

She nodded a greeting. “Officer. I’ll need his shirt off and his hands uncuffed from the waist chain.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Alyssa pulled the curtain halfway closed and set the papers on a fold-out desk. Her gaze paused on the box labeled release date where the word life had been scribbled. Her lips pursed with a slight involuntary shake of her head. So young. What a waste.

She slipped on a glove, picked up a bottle of warm gel and turned to find the prisoner leaning on the edge of the gurney. Something dark caught her eye and her gaze passed over his face without seeing it, honing in on the coal black tattoos covering a wide muscled chest.

A swastika the size of a basketball stamped the left side of his torso. The right side of his abdomen flaunted an eagle holding a shield engraved with the letters A B and two swords crossed in the background. Barbed wire spiraled his biceps. All classic insignia of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Apprehension clutched her belly in a tight, hot fist. Her eyes darted to his face, looking for something—disgust, venom, condescension—some reaction to her ethnicity. Anyone with two eyes could tell she wasn’t a hundred percent lily white. But he’d tilted his chin down, his gaze now cast to the floor, and Alyssa found herself looking at the top of his head, shaved nearly to the skin. And—surprise, surprise—another swastika centered on the dome of his cranium.

In a last ditch effort to quell her growing anxiety, she cast a quick look at his hands. They’d been released from the waist chain and another set of regular cuffs secured around his wrists, standard procedure for high-risk prisoners. Suspicion confirmed. This guy had trouble written all over him. Capital T. And Alyssa already had all the trouble she could handle. She already felt brittle enough to shatter. This would be the fastest scan she’d ever performed. The typical ten minute exam just dropped to three.

She gestured to the gurney, keeping her focus on the crisp white sheet. She didn’t want to meet his eyes, didn’t want to see whatever was there—or not there. “Lay on your back, please.”

He obeyed without even attempting a side-glance her way. Seemed he wanted to avoid eye contact as much as she did. Something was finally going right with her day.

Alyssa tapped information into the machine with tense fingers and grabbed a chair. “Can you lift your arms over your head, please?”

As he moved, so did the bulk beneath his tan skin and black tattoos. Alyssa could have used him as an anatomy model to delineate each muscle. Inmates were often physically fit, after all they had all the time in the world to work out, but this man was extreme. As a physician, the sheer beauty of his body intrigued her to distraction. As a woman half his size, it scared the hell out of her.

The officer in the room edged toward the partially open curtain, meeting up with the other guard. “Did you buy that golf pass yet?”

“No,” Farmboy replied. “I have to wait until my next paycheck.”

“You’re gonna miss the deadline, man. Can’t beat those prices. Thirty bucks for eighteen holes on a course like that? Includes a cart, too.”

Alyssa angled the transducer between Creek’s ribs to get a good shot of his liver, half listening to the idle conversation. She darted a glance at his face. His gaze was locked on the ceiling, his jaw ticking. The darkened room shadowed his features, but his looks still caused a double-take. Just as striking as his body, his face was all handsome angles and perfect proportions. Too bad the good looks had gone to waste on a racist, criminal pig.

“Do you have AIDS?” she asked as she clicked pictures of his right kidney.

His eyes flicked toward her, held. Light eyes. Sharp eyes. “No, ma’am.”

The low, smooth timber of his voice gave her belly an uncomfortable twist.

“Hepatitis? A, B, C?”

“No, ma’am.”

Her arm brushed his ribs and heat stung her skin. Alyssa startled, attention refocused. She tipped the transducer so she could lay the back of her hand against his belly. “You’re burning up. How long have you had this fever?”

He shifted away from her touch and turned his eyes to the ceiling. “No fever, ma’am. I’m fine.”

“I can feel it through my glove.”

“Normal for me.”

Alyssa squinted at him in disbelief. That level of heat wasn’t normal for anyone. He had to be near a hundred and five degrees. As she continued to scan, she searched for a source of infection to explain the fever, but ultimately found none.

In an effort to get him talking in hopes of gaining more information, she said, “I haven’t found anything that would cause the abdomen pain you’re having.”

Creek said nothing. His jaw resumed ticking.

With a mental shrug, Alyssa used a washcloth to clean the gel off his skin, his body heat burning through the cloth. Weird kept repeating in her head. But if he wanted to let his blood boil, so be it.

“Turn onto your right side, toward me,” she said. “You’re almost done.”

When he rolled, he was only six inches away. His intense body heat closed around her like an embrace, creating an unexpected intimacy that left her squirming in her chair.

Alyssa’s eyes lifted to his face again, expecting to find him staring at her, but again, he was looking down and away, his gaze fixed on the officers’ boots, all that was visible of the men now situated just outside the curtain.

With one last image of yet another perfect kidney, Alyssa dropped the transducer into its holder and laid a towel on the table beside him. This man’s cut physique would linger in her mind for a long time.

Which meant this place must have finally pushed her over the edge, because fantasizing about prisoners was not what lingered on a normal woman’s mind.

“Done. You can clean up.” She turned away and pushed to her feet. “You need to mention that fever to your —“

The hair on her neck barely had time to lift before heat washed her back. Creek’s hard body closed around her. A cool chain cut across her throat. No. She sucked air. No. Her fingers clawed at the metal. No!

“Don’t make a sound.” He spoke soft and slow, his chin on her shoulder as he bent over her and pressed his cheek against hers from behind.

Her brain finally came back online. Air wisped into her lungs and fed the new baseline of fear. When Creek straightened, he rose ten inches above her. And she now registered not only his size, but the sheer strength in all that corded muscle she’d been admiring. His movements controlled, purposeful, almost zen-like in confidence.

“You idiot…” She barely breathed the words, the metal and pressure restricting her vocal chords. “Let go—“

The chain jerked once, cutting into her trachea. “Shut. Up.”

Pain cut off all thoughts but sheer survival. Air. Breath. Air.

She wedged her skull against his collarbone to allow a fraction of relief on her airway. Oxygen wisped through the stricture. In. Out. In. Out. Her gray matter slugged back to work, edged with hot, sharp panic that threatened to invade every crevice and drive her insane.

The officers’ boots were still visible beneath the curtain where they stood in the hall, but she couldn’t draw enough air to speak let alone scream. And the links of metal weren’t cool anymore. They burned, as if Creek’s body heat streamed through the metal.

The older guard chuckled. “You have to stay away from those sand traps, man.”

“Water holes are my problem,” Farmboy replied. “I could pay for the damn pass with the cost of the balls I lose in those lagoons.”

Creek leaned sideways, reaching for something on the desk. With his chest pressed against the width of her shoulders, his hips fitted to the low curve of her spine, he dragged her along. Alyssa strained her peripheral vision toward his reach. Toward the coffee cup holding pens and pencils and… He plucked up a pair of scissors.

Jesus. “Put…those down.” A spurt of terror gushed up her chest. Her fingers searched for a millimeter of leverage between the chain and her skin. “You’re…burning…me.”

Creek’s head tilted down, his whisker-roughened chin scraping her cheek. “Fuck.”

The pressure eased and Alyssa ran her cool fingers over raw skin, choking in blessed air. Her relief was short-lived as the rasp of metal on metal sounded in her ear. A hard blade pressed against her neck. Her eyes squeezed shut.

“Not another sound,” Creek whispered, “or I’ll cut your throat.”

“All right.” The older guard sounded relaxed and jovial as he swooshed the curtain aside. “Are we all done in—?”

The room went completely still. The extended, shocked moment expanded, taking on weight and mass and volume like one of the cancers Alyssa fought so hard to find and fight in her patients.

“Creek, what the fuck are you doing?” The older guard’s voice snapped the aggressive silence. Fear wobbled on the edge of disbelief. “You’re not thinkin’, man. This stunt will get you thrown in the hole for a month.”

“Not if I don’t go back.” His forearms locked over her shoulders, keeping her tight against him. “Give me the gun.”

Oh, no. God, no. Alyssa’s eyes popped open. In front of her, the older man had both hands held out in a now-just-wait-a-second gesture. He’d also lost two shades of color in his face.

This really couldn’t be happening. She could almost convince herself of that if Creek’s body heat weren’t wearing on her as if she’d been hiking in the sun.

“Listen, Creek,” the guard said, “I heard about your appeal, but you’re not out of options, man. You know how this works. Just have to keep bucking the system. You’ll get another chance. This kind of shit will only get you—“

“Out of that living hell,” Creek finished. “Now, give me the damn gun before I cut her open.”

Something pinched Alyssa’s neck. She gasped. Or at least she tried. Only a thread of air got through. Warm liquid trickled down her neck. “Do…something.”

“You heard her, boys.” His voice dipped to a dangerously desperate tone. “Do what I say or she’ll be dead before she hits the floor. And you know where I’ll be? No worse off than I was when I woke up this morning. Give me the gun, right fucking now.”

To Alyssa’s utter disbelief, the older guard pursed his lips, dug his hands into his hips and nodded at the younger officer. “Do it.”

“What?” Alyssa squeaked. If that gun reached Creek’s hand, every chance she had evaporated. “No!”

The younger guard stepped forward, the weapon held out, butt first. After one more glance at the older officer, he slapped the gun into Creek’s palm. Her vision blackened at the edges.

“Give me your gear,” Creek ordered. “Both of you. Now.”

They obeyed, setting their radios, sticks and whistles on the fold-out desk. Creek pointed the gun at the base of Alyssa’s skull. The scissors rasped closed and disappeared. She took one luscious, deep, shaky breath. Air never tasted so good.

“Keys,” Creek said. “Uncuff me.”

The older guard unhooked his keys from a belt loop and dropped them on the desk, his expression angry but resolute. “Make your new girlfriend do it for you.”

“You bastard.” If Alyssa could have reached that guard, she’d have decked him. “How dare you—“

“Dump your keys, kid,” Teague said to the younger man.

Once Farmboy’s keys joined the others, Creek lifted his chin toward the half bath tucked into the corner of the room for patient use. “Both of you, in.”

He pushed Alyssa forward as the men crowded into the tiny space. Within sixty seconds she’d be alone with Creek. No one came down this hallway but prisoners and guards, and look how well that worked out.

Creek shifted his grip. The chain loosened, offering instant relief. But her skin simmered as if she’d been fried in oil. “Oh, my God. What’s on that chain? You burned me.”

His arm came up and across her throat. “One twist, and I’ll break your neck. Then you’ll forget all about the burn. You’re no safer now than you were a second ago, so don’t get cocky.”

Fear and betrayal mingled with confusion and exhaustion, resulting in white-hot anger. “I’m not cocky, I’m pissed off. If you want to screw up your own life, go right ahead, but I can screw up my own just fine.”

His chin scraped her temple when he looked down at her. He remained silent an extended moment as if he didn’t know how to respond.

“You won’t make it past the others,” Farmboy said.

“Others?” Creek’s voice lightened with sarcasm and victory, yet still sounded starkly mature and powerful and authoritative in comparison to the guard’s. “I happen to know there’s only one other. And I’d tell you to watch me, but the first one who sticks his head out that door will get a bullet to the brain.”

“Close the door,” he ordered in Alyssa’s ear, “and put that chair under the knob.”

She did as she was told, trying to do the lousiest job possible. Not hard considering she had a two hundred pound—burning—proverbial monkey on her back.

“Do it right,” Creek said. “Or you’ll be responsible for getting their heads blown off.”

Just what she needed—a guilt trip. She wedged the chair’s metal bar beneath the knob. With the cabinets securing the chair’s feet, those guards wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

“Good girl. Stay that way and you’ll be fine.” Creek walked her backwards, pausing at the desk. “Pick them up.”

Gladly. Alyssa wedged the individual keys between her fingers like claws.

“And put them in your pocket,” he said.

Dammit. “I don’t have pockets.”

Creek tightened his arm on her throat. “You have pockets.”

She couldn’t swallow. Could barely breathe. And, damn, her neck hurt. Alyssa shoved the keys into the breast pocket of her scrubs.

“Good girl.” Creek loosened his hold and dragged her toward the door. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. Got me?”

“You’ve already hurt me.” Alyssa took deep, quick breaths, savoring the oxygen. “It would be smarter to let me go and get the hell out of here as fast as you can. I’ll only slow you down.”

He didn’t respond. He was busy searching the length of the hallway, empty now at nearly six o’clock. The side doors, where all prisoners entered and exited the hospital, was just twenty feet away. Twenty feet. Surely, he’d release her when he hit the exit. She couldn’t consider any other conclusion.

And just to push her own desired conclusion forward, she kept talking. What man in his right mind would want a pissy, chattering female along for the ride? “Look, I really don’t have time for this. I’ve got critical patients in ICU who could die if I don’t get PICC lines in them ASAP.”

It was true they could die, just not from lack of a PICC line. But he didn’t know that.

“Not my problem. And stop talking in acronyms. It’s annoying as hell.”

“I’d be a lot less annoying if you let me go.”

“I can see you’re going to have to learn to keep your mouth shut. That’s not what I expected from you.”

“From me? What does that mean?”

He didn’t answer as they approached the exit where late fall sunlight filtered through the glass. Screw whatever he may have meant. Freedom inched closer with every step. That’s what she had to focus on: reaching that door.

But Creek stopped too soon.

At a doorway leading into a holding area, he tapped the fake paneling with the muzzle of the guard’s gun in some cryptic Morse code-type pattern. The door burst open with such force, Creek jerked Alyssa back and twisted, putting his body between her and whoever or whatever was in that room. In that moment, his massive body engulfed hers giving her a flickering sense of complete protection.

“Hey, man.” A rough voice, filled with almost boyish glee, sounded on the other side of Creek. “You gotta see this.”

He straightened and turned them both back around. Another prisoner stood at the door, no cuffs, no leg irons. He had a gun stuffed in the waistband of his navy prison sweatpants, and the grin on his unshaven face matched the mischief in his tone. But his eyes… There was definitely something wrong in the brain behind those eyes. Alyssa had worked with too many mentally deficient patients to miss it.

She caught a whimper in her throat before it escaped. Reflexively, she pressed back against Creek as Psycho Prisoner eyed her up and down, too thoroughly, too slowly.

His lips lifted in more of a sneer than a smile. “Would have preferred a purebred, but she’ll do.” He squinted at her throat. “What’d you do to her neck? That’s wicked cool, man.”

Creek took a step and nudged her forward. Alyssa pushed back. He shoved again, harder. A frantic edge cut at her belly. Bile lunged up her chest, burning the back of her throat.

“Look at him.” Psycho tossed a hand toward the back of the holding area, filled with empty gurneys and chairs. Another officer sat in the corner, his hands, feet and mouth bound with compression tape. “Stupid sonofabitch. He was so easy it wasn’t even fun.” He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his sweats. “Got some toys, too.”

“Great.” Creek’s gaze darted toward the hall, the door, then back. “Let’s get out of here.”

Yes! Alyssa almost yelled the word. Relief and hope broke through the fear. She was almost free. This time, when Creek pushed her, she moved. Five more steps…four…three…

They stopped just inside the doorway. This was it. As soon as these jerks were gone, she’d hit the bathroom, clean herself up, grab some burn gel from the E.R. and call one of the radiologists from their partner clinic across the street to cover for the night. Then, she’d head to the nearest bar and drink this whole nightmare away.

“Get these off of me.” Creek’s voice interrupted Alyssa’s fantasy. He extended his hands in front of her face. “Keys are in her pocket.”

Psycho scanned Alyssa’s shirt, a lewd grin on his face. “My pleasure.”

He pushed his hand into her pocket and grabbed her breast. Disgust twisted Alyssa’s throat closed. She knocked his arm up and away with her own. The knit of keys flew out of his hand and across the room.

The pupil’s of Psycho’s eyes expanded, turning his muddy hazel irises nearly black with rage. Alyssa identified. She’d been attacked by someone she’d been trying to help. She’d been abandoned by someone who should have helped her. Now, she’d been molested by scum living off her tax dollars. Rage? Yeah. She identified.

“Don’t touch me, you—“

Creek turned, pulling Alyssa with him and cutting her off. “Stop fucking around Taz.”

Psycho whipped another key from his own front chest pocket, but his cold, cutting eyes stayed on Alyssa. He slipped the key into the cuffs, and with a click, Creek was free.

An instant later, Creek had his big hand around her wrist. The cuffs were so warm she didn’t feel them close. By the time her reflexes kicked in, she was trapped. She stared at the contrast of her fine fingers and slender wrists against the thick metal cuffs. Hands her mother forever insisted were made for dishes and diapers. Hands Alyssa eternally argued were destined for helping and healing.

Surreal. Absurd. Fallacious.

This isn’t happening.

Creek put one hand in the middle of her back, pushed her into the hall and turned her toward the exit door.

This is happening.

Her stomach lifted then dropped then went queasy, like it did when she rode a roller coaster.

Alyssa planted her feet and leaned back. “I’m not going out there.”

He fisted the back of her scrub top and used the bulk of his body to force her through the doorway.

Alyssa twisted, grabbed the metal frame with both hands. “I’m not going.”

“Oh, yes, you are.”

“No!” Alyssa held on with every last muscle fiber in her fingers. “You got what you wanted. Leave me here.”

Psycho elbowed his way out the door. “There’s the car. I told you it’d be here. Let’s go.”

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be.” Creek’s tense voice ground in her ear. “Let go of the door before I break your arm.”

“No.” Her feet skidded forward as he pushed harder. Her wrists ached from the bite of the cuffs. Her fingers burned from grasping the metal. “No! I’m not go—”

Psycho’s hand blurred in front of her face a split second before her head snapped sideways. Fire erupted in her cheek, spread through her face. Blood seeped onto her tongue. The stark metallic bitterness added another realistic edge to the nightmare.

Taz gripped her chin and cheeks in one meaty hand and jerked her face toward his. “Shut the fuck up, you goddamned gook.” He smacked a piece of tape over her mouth. “You fuck this up for us and I’ll gut you.”

Creek yanked her out of Psycho’s reach. “Chill, Taz. The only person who’s going to fuck this up for us is you. Get the car.”

Alyssa let her eyes close. Pain buzzed across her face. Shock numbed her brain. At some point, she’d started to shake, and couldn’t control it. She’d never been hit before. Not by any man she’d ever dated, even in the most heated argument. Not by any one of her four older brothers, even during a tussle. Not even so much as a spanking as a child, even though she’d given her parents plenty of cause. She’d spent the entire twenty-eight years of her life abuse-free. Until now.

She’d also never been taunted with racial slurs, probably because she looked more Caucasian than Asian. The combination of violence and racism shook her solid foundation.

“Don’t fuck with him.” Creek’s hold loosened. “The quieter you are, the less trouble you cause, the better this will go.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. His gaze darted to her cheek, then away, scanning the parking lot, as if her suffering meant absolutely nothing to him.

Primal anger sank deep in her gut and overlaid the fear. She’d be quiet all right. And in the silence, she’d watch. And wait. And plan.

I’m revising a manuscript right now, and I’m at that point in the story where my hero and heroine are approaching the point of no return.  That place where one or both make the decision to do something that changes everything in the existing relationship.  From that point on, there is no going back to the way things were.

I love this place.  In fact, it might be my very favorite spot in a story.  At least it is in the stories I write.  The action—or inaction, as the situation calls for—is a conscious investment in their new future; a commitment—to themselves and to the other person.  And I love the emotion involved in making that choice.

In Fever, Alyssa makes that choice in a pet store.

A what?

I know.  It happens in the damnedest places!

Teague and Alyssa have been on the run for a couple of days now.  Alyssa has been injured in a gang fight and developed an infection.  Teague takes her to a pet store to get antibiotics.  Interestingly enough, the same type used to treat aquarium fish are those humans take.

It’s there that Alyssa has her epiphany, a surprise, on-the-spot reaction that changes everything between her and Teague.

“How long ‘til we stop for longer than ten minutes?”

“About an hour.”

“And when will this all be over?” she asked as they approached the entrance.  “When will you let me go?”

He didn’t answer.

A young woman with her dark hair in a ponytail greeted them.  “Can I help you find something?”

“Fish,” Creek said.

“Along the back wall,” she gestured.  “Fresh water on the right and salt water on the left.”

“Thanks.”

Teague led Alyssa past the cash register where a young man sat talking on the phone, a newspaper spread out on the counter in front of him.  He glanced up as they passed and returned his gaze to the paper, hardly more than an uninterested blink.  Just as Alyssa looked away, the man’s eyes jumped up again.  She continued to watch him from the corner of her eye as the conversation on his end of the phone ceased, and he slowly pushed to his feet.

They turned down an aisle and Alyssa lost sight of him, but by the way his eyes grew wide as they’d disappeared, she was sure he’d recognized them.  Instead of excitement, the sighting brought apprehension.

Creek turned and looked down at her, his steps slowing.  “What?”

“Wh-what do you mean, what?”

“You squeezed my hand.”

“I didn’t…  I mean, I didn’t mean to…”  She was torn between pulling him from the store and stalling to keep them there as long as possible.  This was exactly what she’d been silently begging for at Wal-mart and here it had been handed to her without even trying.  “Never mind.  Nothing.”

She turned her attention to the shelves where he’d stopped and stared at the contents in disbelief.  “You brought me in here to buy fish food?”

“Little trivia for you, doc.”  He crouched and picked up a bottle.  “Fish ailments are treated with human medications.  Antibiotics.”

Her mouth dropped open and her mind temporarily veered from her turmoil.  “You expect me to take off-the-shelf medication for fish?  Okay, this nails it, Cr—“  She stopped herself and forced his first name out of her mouth.  “Teague.  You are officially certifiable.”

A grin tilted his mouth as he looked up at her and something strange and uncomfortable twisted in her chest.  His teeth were straight and white, his eyes a sparkling blue beneath the hat’s dark brim.  A glimpse of someone else shone out at her.  Maybe the man he was beneath the fear and desperation.  Maybe the man he’d been before he’d gone to prison.  She didn’t know, but whoever it was touched her in a way she hadn’t been touched in a long, long time.  Maybe ever.

“Here’s the thing,” he said.  “The emergency room would have asked too many questions and then called the cops to report a knife wound.  Internet sources would take too long, and I’m not in the mood to knock off a vet’s office.  So.”  He pointed at two more bottles on the shelf.  “You have your choice of Amoxicillin, Erythromycin or a sulfa-combo.  What’ll it be?”

Curiosity won out and Alyssa took one of the bottles from him.  Sure enough, as far as she could tell, it was the same stuff she’d given out prescriptions for in the past.  “How is this legal?”

“Let’s not worry about that right now.  Just tell me which one you can take and we’ll get back on the road.”

That comment had her looking up and toward the front of the store.  The two young clerks loitered there talking, their heads together, body language hunched and tight.

“Well?”  Teague prodded.

He’d truly made this stop to help her.  He’d risked being seen just to find antibiotics for her infection.  So many thoughts zoomed through her head at the same time she couldn’t prioritize or sift.  She looked back at him. “Do you have that gun on you or is it in the car?”

His face tensed, eyes sharpened.  He glanced the direction she’d been looking and watched the clerks.   “I have it on me.  Why?”

Let me make one thing very clear:  I am not going back to prison.  Ever.  I’ll die first.

“I think we should go.” Alyssa pulled him toward the opposite end of the aisle.

He resisted.  “Why the rush?”

“Come on.”

He pulled on her hand until she was forced to turn back around and face him. “Talk to me first.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper.  “I think they recognized us.”

Teague’s mouth went stone hard.  His bright eyes scoured the store and he urged Alyssa toward the rear corner of the building.

“Where are you going?  The front doors are that way.”

“Which is exactly where the cops will come in if they’ve been called.”

They reached a single rear door with a banner reading, No exit.  Fire alarm will sound. Teague tinkered with a lever on the big red bell over the door then pressed the metal bar.  Alyssa cringed, expecting an ear piercing alarm, but it never came.  Teague poked his head out the door, took a quick look around then pulled her out behind him.

**Skipping over unrelated occurrence in the scene…**

He remained silent as he drove, his hands busy in a familiar wringing of the steering wheel, his brow heavy in thought.

As Alyssa’s mind turned back to the fiasco they’d just fled, nausea rolled in her belly.  She’d just walked away from her chance to escape, and she wasn’t sure if the queasiness stemmed from missing the opportunity or from nearly getting the opportunity.

At the first exit, Teague veered off the freeway and drove half a block to a gas station-slash-mini mart.  Her muscles tensed, jutting another round of pain through her torso.

“Can we stop somewhere else?” Alyssa asked.  “Anywhere else?  I think I’m suffering PTSD.”

He parked around the corner from the front door, jammed the car in park and got out without a word.  The slam of the door made Alyssa flinch.  Instead of coming to her side of the car, he walked directly into the store without looking back.

A fresh sense of uncertainty tightened her chest.  He’d left her in the car unattended and uncuffed.  She looked out the window at a vacant office building with a ‘for rent’ sign out front, then to a darkened church next door, the parking lot empty.  There was no immediate shelter within running distance, but she should still run.  She should.  So what kept her sitting there?

He wasn’t gone long enough for Alyssa’s heart to slow to a regular rhythm let alone give her time to form an answer to the question.  He approached her side of the car carrying a bottle of water and a newspaper.  Popping the door open, he pulled the antibiotics from his pocket and twisted the top off then held both out to her.   When she took them, he closed the door without saying a word and walked around to the driver’s side.

He slid into his seat and sat there staring straight ahead without turning the car on.  His fingers fiddled with the edge of the newspaper in his lap.

Alyssa downed a healthy dose of the fish meds, hoping they didn’t kill her, then looked at him again.  “You’re kind of freaking me out.”

“What the hell is PTSD?”

“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

He rolled his eyes then turned to look at her with a quick snap of his head.  “Why’d you do that?  At the pet store?”

“I just…  I don’t know.  You made it clear you’d die before you went back to prison.  I…  I…”  Didn’t want to watch you die.  “I didn’t want to see anyone get hurt.”

Even though the dynamics between them had started shifting before this, Alyssa’s decision to save Teague from capture and sacrificing her own freedom in the process changes everything between them.  The conscious decision can’t be taken back, can’t be reasoned away, and they both know it.

You can read how Alyssa and Teague started out in the first chapter of Fever, here.

What is your favorite point in a story?

[Ed. Joan is giving away a copy of Fever to one of our commenters today, so be sure to leave a meaningful comment or question for her. AND! All comments will be entered to win either a Nook Color or a Kindle Fire during Joan's Blog Tour. How's that for a terrific contest! Thanks, Joan!]

Deirdre Martin is back with her wildly popular New York Blades series, this time taking readers on a journey away from hockey and all the way to Ireland. Breakaway pulls you into the story of the NHL’s only Irish player, Rory Brady, and the one and only woman for him, Erin O’Brien – but he has a lot of groveling to do now that he’s home again.

Since Rory left her behind after making it big in the states, Erin has finally come into her own, determined to make her dream of leaving the small town of Ballycraig at the earliest opportunity. But when Rory unexpectedly returns, plans have a way of changing, no matter how hard she fights against it. Will he work his magic on her again, claiming the forgiveness he needs and the love he knows is still there? Or will Erin stick to her path and make it without the big lug?

Summary:

Erin O’Brien was everyone’s favorite in Ballycraig, while Rory Brady was the town’s golden boy: the local lad who moved to America and became a professional hockey player. Rory promised to return to sweep Erin away to the life of her dreams in New York. But the bright lights and late nights turned his head and he never came back.

Two years later, Rory realizes he’s made the worst mistake of his life. Heading back to Ballycraig, he’s confident that all he needs to do is flash his winning smile and Erin will fall back into his arms. But Erin’s moved on.

Racing the clock, Rory needs to prove to her that the man she fell in love with is still there. But can happy-go-lucky Erin risk it all and give another chance to the man who broke her heart?

Chapter One

Lord, please don’t let there be any truth to the saying, “This is the first day of the rest of my life,” thought Erin O’Brien, as she shoved guests’ dirty sheets into the massive washer in the basement. Ever since her parents had purchased Ballycraig’s sole B & B, she’d come to feel like an indentured servant. Helping her mother run the place was supposed to be temporary until they found “the right kind of help.” Apparently, no one in the village was right for catering to the PJ Leary fanatics who made up the bulk of the visitors. Months had crawled by, and Erin was still here, relegated to the less glamorous tasks: laundry, housecleaning, dishes. The worst part was, she did it all for free, out of what mother liked to term, “family unity.”

Unity? I guess da and Brian are exempt.

She envied her brother: Brian had left town as soon as he got married, an IT job waiting for him Liverpool. It was a great career opportunity, except it left their father all alone to run Ballycraig’s sole auto shop. For years they’d worked side by side. Now her poor father was working with a very green assistant mechanic, who’d already come close to crushing himself under a number of cars.

“How’s it going down there?” her mother called from the top of the basement steps.

“Fine,” Erin called back, peering up at her mother’s creased, anxious face. “Dad did a great job fixing the washer. Could be a second career for him.”

“No need to be cheeky.”

“I’m not!”

“Nevertheless, watch yourself.” Her mother checked her watch. “The first of the weekend guests will be here in three hours. Would you be a love and go to the supermarket in Moneygall for me?”

Erin’s shoulders slumped. “Mam—“

“Asking too much, am I?”

Erin felt guilty. “No, it’s just you’ve more than enough time to go to the market yourself. You’ll be back here and baking before they’ve even arrived.”

“Assuming the buses are running on time.” She looked fretful. “Normally, I wouldn’t ask you to shop on such short notice, love. You know that. It’s just that I’ve got so much to do…. ”

Lord help me, Erin thought. I really need to get my license. If I don’t, I’ll always be hostage to a bus timetable, or worse.

“Relax, all right. You know I’ll do it.”

“You’re a good girl, Erin.”

“A patsy, more like,” Erin grumbled to herself. Her mother was still peering down at her with a distressed expression. “Mum, calm down. I just said I’d do it, so why do you still look so upset? All you achieve by fretting and wringing your hands is driving yourself—and everyone around you—mad. You’re going to give yourself a stroke, and for what?”

“I know, I know,” her mother agreed distractedly. “It’s just that I want it all to be perfect, you know?”

“Perfection doesn’t exist.”

Her mother snorted. “Oh, so now you’re a philosopher, I see. You should be down at the pub with that Holy Trinity of Dimwits, sitting at the bar, each one thinking they’re the next Stephen Fry.”

Erin felt the sting of criticism but refrained from saying what she was thinking: I can never win with you. She didn’t want things to escalate, especially since her mother could go from zero to fifty in the rage department in seconds. Still, she did have a right to defend herself.

“I’m not being philosophical,” she replied calmly. “I’m just trying to point out that you drive yourself mad unnecessarily.”

Her mother didn’t respond. Erin could see this conversation was going in one ear and out the other.

“I’ll leave the list for you on the kitchen counter, all right?”

“Sure.”

“You’re a good girl,” her mother repeated.

Too good, Erin thought. She took comfort in knowing her escape plan was firmly in place and that she would, sooner or later, be free. She double checked behind her to make sure the washer was still tumbling properly, and headed up the stairs.

***

“Chores” done, Erin headed up to her room, locking the door behind her. She and her parents now occupied the top floor of the guest house, the sale of their family home and some land having provided the bulk of the money to buy the B & B.

She caught her reflection in the mirror atop the scratched bureau from her childhood, and paused. You’re no great shakes, she told herself. Nothing special to look at. But in the career she’d be pursuing, looks didn’t matter.

She glanced around the tiny attic room, her eyes caressing the reproductions of some of her favorite artwork that she’d pinned to the walls to help fend off dreariness: Frida Kahlo, the bright reds of Henri Matisse, fields of mood lifting bright yellow sunflowers by van Gogh, Irish landscape artist Henry McGrane’s gentle impressions of spring. Erin was pursuing an art history degree online with the Open University. Most people would think it impractical, even odd. Erin didn’t care: she loved art, and it was something she’d pursued off and on while Rory was away at college. Now that Rory was out of her life, she could do as she wanted, no more putting her dreams on hold for that selfish bastard. No one knew she was almost done with her degree but her best friend, Sandra.

Rory Brady. Just thinking about him made her feel like a twit. Ballycraig’s local idiot, that’s who she was, too stupid to tell when she was being played. How many times had she replayed their years long relationship in her mind? Why did she insist on torturing herself? The story always ended the same way: her life in tatters and his looking brighter and brighter, the first Irish born man playing in the NHL, for the New York Blades.

Rory’s face swam up in her mind’s eye. Her mam had always said he looked like David Beckham, and it was true. If he were a pop star, girls would be breaking into his house just to catch a glimpse of that dirty blond hair and blue eyes. It was a sin that a man should have eyes that beautiful and be such an SOB.

They’d started dating when they were just babies, fifteen years old. Casual, then serious. Very serious, then committed, even when his family moved to America. Six years of trying to find a place to be alone together when he’d come back in the summer, of arguing with her parents about visiting him, of the two of them planning their wedding. One memory in particular dashed back at her: it was early evening, the sky all grey dusk and pink, and she and Rory were lounging beneath the big oak tree in Old Man Mc Donagh’s field, the sun filtering through the lattice work of the leaves. “The Lover’s Tree,” it was called, because the old man never minded couples loafing beneath it. Rory was leaning back against the tree; she was stretched out with her head in his lap. It felt like they were in a poem.

Rory looked down at her, smiling. “I was thinking it might be nice if our wedding ceremony was just you and me, and some old padre saying the words in an ancient church, the only light coming from a blaze of candles surrounding us.”

Erin settled into his lap dreamily. “That’s very romantic.”

“And it saves us worrying about a guest list.”

Erin clucked her tongue and looked up at him with affection. “I knew you had an ulterior motive.”

“Me? Never.” His expression was tender as his large, strong hand brushed against her cheek. “I know it sounds mad, but sometimes I feel like we’re already married, we’ve been together so long.”

“Is that your way of telling me you’re getting tired of me, Rory Brady?” Erin teased.

His expression turned tender. “I could never get tired of you.”

“Promise?”

He put his hand over his heart. “On my life.” His voice, a deep sexy rumble, was charged with emotion as he continued, “You’re the only one for me, Erin, and you always have been. Nothing can change that, not even geography. You’re going to be my wife.”

She believed him. Their love was immutable, fixed as law. There was no telling where one left off and the other began. It had always been that way, and always would be.

The memory faded, straight on narrative returning as if she needed once again to recount the facts of what happened to make sure it was real.

They decided they’d wait to tie the knot until Rory graduated from Cornell and got picked up by a minor hockey team, and then hopefully, the NHL. Which is exactly how it happened.

Except part of it didn’t. The wedding. Erin loved him so blindly and with such faith that even after he hadn’t come back to Ballycraig for two summers running, she clung to her belief they’d always be together. swallowing all that rubbish he fed her about the NHL and training camp and not having any time to get back home. Deep down, she knew. So when she gave him the ultimatum—either marry me like you promised or walk—she shouldn’t have been surprised when he grabbed Option B.

Even so, when the crash came, it was no less devastating. She was dragged under by their history together, tormented by every loving thing he’d ever said and done over the years. She’d have donned widow’s weeds if she could. It was a lucky thing that she was surrounded by loving family and friends, like Sandra and Rory’s former best friend, Jake Fry. Were it not for all of them, especially Jake and Sandra, she’d have spent her life curled up in bed, not caring about anything. She certainly stopped caring about her job in the jewelry store in Crosshaven, quitting a month after Rory dumped her. She couldn’t handle dealing with people, especially happy couples who came in looking for wedding rings.

It took her two years her to pull herself together, but when she did, she made a promise to herself: never, ever again would she give her hopes and dreams over to a man like Rory Gallagher.

Writing is hard work for me. Really, really hard work, since I can be somewhat insecure. What if I think the hero and heroine have chemistry, but they don’t? What if the sex scene I’m working on is about as steamy as a boiling pot of spaghetti?

On days when Madam Muse refuses to appear, or when I feel that writing is the equivalent of working on a chain gang, I daydream about doing something else for a living. My top escape fantasies are:

* Become a mailman. Woman. Person. Whatever the politically correct term is. The big attraction to this job is that I’d get to walk around all day, so I’d get really thin. Plus, I’d get to wear a uniform, so I wouldn’t have to worry about what to wear. This is of crucial importance to someone who once opened her front door wearing lemon colored harem pants and a Ringo Rocks! t shirt from 1975. On the negative side, I haven’t figured out yet how to handle the heat of summer, and the US Postal System is on the rocks. Note to self: see if mail people can do their job in the nude, as long as their mail satchels are strategically placed.

* Join the Merchant Marines. There’s no age limit to this profession, as long as you pass the physical. How hard could it be? I’m sure all you have to do is be able to climb a mast and properly wield a telescope. Plus I love to travel, I love the ocean, and sleeping in a mesh hammock is Number Four on my Bucket List.

* Work on a cruise ship. I’d be a really good entertainer: I can juggle, and I can also sing Bonnie Taylor’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” perfectly. I could easily brush up on my kazoo skills as well. Seriously: who doesn’t love kazoo music? Have you ever heard “Memory” from the Cats done on a kazoo? Haunting. I’m not kidding.

* Visit elementary schools as a Mary Todd Lincoln impersonator. This one is actu-ally the most viable: I’m plump, I’m moody, and I have a very tall husband with a beard who puts up with me. I’ve been trying to talk him into playing Abe to my Mary, but so far it’s a no go.

Alternate: visit nursery schools as Dora the Explorer. She’s little, plus we have the same haircut right now.

* Get a job as Bono’s personal secretary. I know, I know, I know: he’s the size of Rumpelstilskin and he never shuts up about aid to Africa. But I’ve had a mad crush on the man since 1981, when U2 released their first CD, Boy. Think about what a cool job it would be to be his PA: “Could you please call Edge and ask if he got his check for three hundred million dollars from the last tour? Because I haven’t gotten mine yet. Also, you know that luncheon I’m holding tomorrow at the Plaza to raise money for impoverished romance writers? Find out if Obama has any food allergies. I’m sure I can talk him into making a huge donation for these poor, struggling souls.”

Of course, if I ditched my profession, I wouldn’t have been able to write books like Breakaway, the latest in my New York Blades series. It combined two of my favorite subjects: hockey and Ireland. Here’s the back cover blurb:

They had it all planned out: college, marriage, happily ever after.

But it didn’t quite work out that way…

Erin O’Brien was everyone’s favorite in Ballycraig, while Rory Brady was the town’s golden boy: the local lad who moved to America and became a professional hockey player. Rory promised to return to sweep Erin away to the life of her dreams in New York. But the bright lights and late nights turned his head and he never came back.

Two years later, Rory realizes he’s made the worst mistake of his life. Heading back to Ballycraig, he’s confident that all he needs to do is flash his winning smile and Erin will fall back into his arms. But Erin’s moved on.

Racing the clock, Rory needs to prove to her that the man she fell in love with is still there. But can happy-go-lucky Erin risk it all and give another chance to the man who broke her heart?

Intrigued? Breakaway hits the shelves today, February 7th. I’m also working on the next book in the Blades series. The writing seems to be going pretty well right now, but that’s all I’ll say. I don’t want to jinx things…

To find out more about my New York Blades series as well as The Wild Hart Saga, check out my website.

[Ed. Deirdre is kindly offering up a copy of Breakaway to one very lucky commenter, so be sure to leave a meaningful comment or question for her and we'll toss your name into the hat!]

We’ve got two copies of Sins of the Highlander, thanks to Sourcebooks, to give away today to two lucky commenters out there in romanceland!

And how easy it is to win – just tell us your favorite sin committed by romance heroes or your favorite sinful hero and you’ll be entered. Just like that!

See, told you it was easy.

U.S. and Canada only, please.

*Deep quivering sigh* I love Highlanders. Always have. Lately I’ve been disappointed once or twice in books that just didn’t live up to my expectations when reading about these alpha, sexy heroes. So I’m very happy to tell you that this book definitely gives a reader everything they want in a Highlander, sins and all.

Mad Rob MacLaren has reason to live up to the nickname given to him. He now lives dangerously on the edge, and with his current plan under way, folks are going to talk that much more when all is said and done and if he still lives. But his innocent abductee is going to change everything in his life. Elspeth at first wants only to return to her family, but when she learns more about Rob and sees him in action, her wants take a decidedly sharp left turn, and with Rob is where she wants and needs to be.

Summary:

Elspeth Stewart’s gift of Sight hadn’t warned her of the dark-haired madman who charged into her wedding and bore her away into the wild Scottish highlands. Pressed against his hard chest and nestled between his strong thighs, she ought to fear for her life. But her captor silenced all protest with a soul-searing kiss, giving Elspeth a glimpse of the pain behind his passion—pain only she could ease.

“Mad Rob” MacLaren thought stealing his enemy’s bride would be the perfect revenge. But Rob never reckoned that this beautiful, innocent lass would awaken the part of him he thought dead and buried with his wife. Against all reason, he longs to introduce the luscious Elspeth to the pleasures of the flesh, to make her his, and only his forever.

With two clans against them burning for battle, they must find a way to join—body, breath and soul. Or both will be made to pay for the … Sins of the Highlander.

Chapter One

The peat fire had burned out and the ash gone gray, but Rob MacLaren didn’t feel the least bit cold. Not while his hot-blooded woman writhed under him. Their breaths mingled in the frosty air of the bedchamber. Fiona tilted her hips, welcoming him deeper, and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from emptying himself into her.

It was too soon. He never wanted it to end, this joining, this loss of himself in the woman he adored.

Rob raised himself up on his arms and gazed down at her. The candles had burned down to nubs but still flickered enough to cast her in soft light. He could see his wife clearly and loved looking at her.

“What are ye doing, daftie man? ’Tis too cold!” Fiona raised herself up and clung to him for warmth.

“That’s what ye get when ye marry a man on Christmas Day—a cold bridal night.” He gently pushed her back down, and she sank into the feather tick.

“It doesna have to be cold.” Her skin rippled with goose­flesh. “Come back under the covers, love.”

“I canna. I need to see the lass I wed,” he said. “I want to watch ye melt for me, to see your face when ye make that wee kitten noise just afore ye come.”

“Wee kitten noise, is it?” She shook with laughter. “Have a care, husband, lest I bare my claws.”She raked her nails across his chest, and the sensation made his balls clench.

He lowered himself and kissed her, devouring her lips and chasing her tongue. He withdrew for a heartbeat for the sheer joy of sliding slowly back into her slick wetness. Then he raised himself again and reached between them to stroke her over the edge.

“Oh, Rob.” Her inner walls clenched around him, and he felt the soft tremor that signaled the start of her release. “When ye do that, I don’t care a fig if it’s so cold I catch my death…my death…my death…”

Her voice echoed round the chamber and faded into the distant thatch overhead.

Rob jerked awake.

He wasn’t in his bridal bedchamber. He was lying on stone-hard ground with a stone-hard cock still primed to make love to the woman in his dream. Stars wheeled above him in a frigid sky. His band of men snored nearby.

And the fact that Fiona was dead slammed into him afresh.

He’d married her two years ago at Christmas, and she’d been gone by Epiphany. Twelve days, he’d been a husband. Only twelve.

And now a night didn’t pass without his wife visiting him as some phantom, sometimes tender, sometimes terrifying. She lived in his dreams, but always he was powerless to hold her to earth. She was so vibrant, so real by night, he suffered all the more in the waking world with the knowledge that he’d not find her there.

One of the men in the clearing let out a loud snore and mumbled in his sleep. It was hours till dawn, and even more till Rob could accomplish what he intended in the coming day. But he would not seek sleep.

He couldn’t bear to lose Fiona again so soon.

 

Rob narrowed his gaze at the stone kirk across the glen. The bagpipes’ celebratory tune ended with an off-key wheeze. He and his men, concealed on the edge of the forest, had watched the bridal procession and the arrival of the groom’s party. Now he heard nothing from the kirk. The only sound was the harsh cry of a jay from the branches above him.

The ceremony must have been beginning in earnest. Rob snorted, his breath like a curl of dragon smoke in the chilly air.

“’Tis time, Hamish.”

“I wish ye’d reconsider.” His friend shook his head, his scruff of red beard making him look like an alarmed hedgehog. Hamish never let his beard grow beyond the stubble stage. A metal worker couldn’t chance much facial hair. Even his eyebrows were habitually singed off. “If ye go through with this, folk will say ye’re…that ye’re—”

“Mad? They say that already.” Rob mounted his black stallion. The beast sensed his agitation and pawed the dirt, restive and spoiling for action. “I see no other path before me. Now will ye help me or no?”

“Aye, Rob, ye’ve no need to ask, but—”

“Then get the men ready to ride. I hope to be in a wee bit of a hurry when next ye see me.” He shot his friend a mirthless grin and spurred his mount into a gallop across the glen. It was possible the next time Hamish saw him, Rob might be in no hurry at all.

He might very well be dead.

 

The smell of incense was so cloying, Elspeth Stewart feared she might faint dead away. But a bride must stand before the altar. She drew a shallow breath and swallowed hard. That was better. As the priest droned on, she sneaked a glance from under her lashes at the man who would be her husband.

Lachlan Drummond.

Tall and commanding in his dress plaid, he wasn’t altogether unpleasing. His face was tanned, and the lines at the corners of his eyes suggested he’d squinted into countless northern suns. Those lines didn’t trouble her. They proved the laird was a man of action, not like the dainty fops who visited from the English court from time to time.

No, it was the deep grooves between his brows and the hard set of his mouth that gave her pause.

Dinna fret yerself,” her mother had assured her when she complained that she didn’t know her betrothed well enough to even speak to him if she met him in Queen Mary’s court. “An arranged match is a safe match. Yer father has chosen the Drummond for ye, and ye’ll do well to bide by his wishes.”

The queen had approved too. She’d angered so many of the nobles with her other policies, she didn’t dare gainsay two of them on something as inconse­quential as the marriage of one of her ladies-in-waiting.

Inconsequential to everyone but me, Elspeth fumed. An exchange of breeding cattle, a grant of grazing rights, a promise of fealty between their clans; that was really all that was being solemnized now. It was certainly no marriage as she’d ever imagined it.

Or Seen it. Elspeth was gifted with a bit of the Sight, and never in all her prescient dreams had she seen this match on her horizon. This loveless ceremony was as far removed from the tales of courtly devotion in her precious little book of sonnets as the distant moon.

Yet when the priest asked Lachlan Drummond to pledge his faith to her, his voice was strong, the tone pleasing. He even sent her a quick private smile.

Elspeth jerked her gaze back to her folded hands. Her cheeks burned as if she had a fever. She wondered if her mother was right.

“Passion,” Morag Stewart had said, “is a dish that flares hot, but then goes cold as a tomb often as not. An arranged match is like a cauldron set to simmer over a low fire. A nourishing broth heated evenly warms a body from the inside out.”

Elspeth wasn’t sure how she could do the things her mother said her husband would expect of her. Bizarrely intimate things. Of course, she’d seen horses mate, and dogs too, but she never suspected people did something as…primitive as the mere beasts.

And now she’d have to do it with a man she barely knew.

Silence jerked her back from her musings. The priest had asked her a question and was waiting for a reply. She blinked stupidly at him. What had he said?

Suddenly the double doors of the nave shattered. A man on a large black horse was silhouetted in the opening for a heartbeat. Then he urged the stallion into the kirk and charged up the center aisle.

“Mad Rob!” she heard someone call out. Half the horseman’s face was painted with woad, and his cobalt eyes burned as brightly blue. With his dark hair flying and the fierce expression of a berserker on his features, he certainly looked mad.

“The MacLaren,” shouted another. Her bridegroom was silent, but a muscle worked furiously in his cheek.

Her father reached for the horse’s bridle, but the MacLaren shouted a command, and the stallion reared, pawing the air. Then it lashed out with its hind hooves, and everyone scrambled out of reach of the slashing kicks.

Elspeth watched in disbelief as the man drew a long claymore from the shoulder baldric strapped to his back and laid the flat of the blade across Lachlan Drummond’s chest. Riding a horse into the kirk was bad enough. Mad Rob had broken the sanctity of holy ground by drawing his weapon. All the other men had laid their swords and dirks outside the doors, which now hung drunkenly from the hinges. Elspeth half expected the Almighty to strike the blasphemer down with thunderbolts from the altar.

“Twitch so much as an eyelash, wee Lachlan, and I’ll take yer head,” Mad Rob said as pleasantly if he’d offered Drummond a plate of warm scones.

Then he leaned down and scooped Elspeth up with his other arm and dropped her belly-first across his kilted lap.

She was too astonished to be afraid. All the air fled from her lungs with a whoosh. Her head and arms dangled on one side of the restive stallion, and her legs kicked on the other. She couldn’t rail at the man, since she was busy fighting for breath, but she struggled to free herself from such an undignified position.

“Hold still, lass, lest my hand slips and I lop off a bit of your groom.”

Now fear sliced into her. She froze and looked at Lachlan. The madman’s blade had slid up to his chin. Her bridegroom hadn’t taken his black-eyed gaze from Mad Rob’s face.

“I’ll be going now, Drummond,” Rob said in the same reasonable tone a man might use to discuss cattle or the weather. “If ye’ve the stones for a fight, ye may collect yer bride at Caisteal Dubh. But dinna show your face till month’s end. Come for her sooner or try to follow us now, and I might have to kill her.”

Elspeth couldn’t look up at her captor’s face, but she heard a wicked smile in his voice. Kill her reverberated in her mind.

And all she’d thought she’d lose when she woke this day was her maidenhead.

Thanks for having me here today.

As you know, Sins of the Highlander, my first collaborative novel with NY Times Bestseller Connie Mason, is on bookstore shelves now. I’m a firm believer in letting readers “try before they buy” but instead of the usual excerpt, I’m offering a “box of chocolates” sampler of the end of chapters in this story. (Warning: I’m known as a “happy hooker.” Writing hooks, of course. What were you thinking?)

SINS OF THE HIGHLANDER Sampler:

Chapter One ~ When he tried to kiss her again, she delivered a ringing slap to his cheek. Reason flooded her mind again. Perhaps he was called “Mad Rob” because he could entice others to insanity.

“Now get away from me,” Elspeth ordered.

He chuckled mirthlessly. “Lass, I’ve killed dozens of men. Do ye really think ye can stop me from whatever I may decide to do with you?”

He took a step toward her, his eyes glittering fiercely in the dark.

Chapter Two ~ She’d forgotten to breathe as he spoke. Now she sucked in a quick breath.

“Shall I pleasure ye, Elspeth?”

Chapter 3 ~ If Rob could seduce Elspeth Stewart into giving herself to him willingly, his enemy would be thoroughly shamed. The name of Lachlan Drummond would become a byword, held up for ridicule by all as the cuckolded bridegroom. Bards would compose songs about it and folk would laugh at him over many a winter fire.

Drummond would be so furious, he’d respond to Rob’s challenge of single combat at last.

And then Rob would send him straight to hell. Even if he had to go through the flaming gate with him.

Chapter 4 ~ “Trust me, lass. By and bye, ye’ll thank me for keeping from becoming Lachlan Drummond’s wife.”

Elspeth curled her toes inside her slipper and managed to wiggle the left one off without his knowledge. It fell under the stallion’s hooves and was pressed into the path, marking their way as clearly as if she’d stopped and drawn an arrow.

Chapter 5 ~ The numbers in the pack dwindled. As the eastern sky lightened to pearl gray, hope rose in Elspeth’s heart.

Then the largest wolf charged and leaped. His flying lunge knocked Rob from Falin’s back. They rolled together, tooth and claw, man and blade, off the path and into the thick underbrush, disappearing in a growling, swearing mass.

Chapter 6 ~ Wolf song reached their ears, distant, but close enough to be worrisome.

“Come, lass. And step lively.”

This time he didn’t have to tell her twice.

Chapter 7 ~ “Unfortunately, of the two of us, it seems only ye have the honor of always being right. There’s no tree big enough to bear your weight nearby,” Rob said as he put her down. He stooped and pulled out his boot knife, handing it to her haft first. “If they get past me, dinna let yourself be taken.”

Chapter 8 ~ Elspeth stood with her back to him, next to the table. She poured water from a kettle into the ewer. Steam rose before she added cold water from the pitcher. She dipped a cloth into a basin, unaware that Rob was watching her.

He prayed that happy state would continue.

She was naked as Eve in glory.

Hope you enjoyed the Sins of the Highlander sampler. If you’d like a traditional excerpt, most of the first chapter is posted on my website. While you’re there, be sure to enter my website contest where the Grand Prize is a NEW KINDLE! The drawing will be held Jan. 30^th.  I love to connect with readers. You can also find me at my Twitter fan page and my Twitter author page. Hope to see you around the web.

I’ll be around checking the comments all day! Leave a question for me or share your favorite snippet from Sins of the Highlander from the sampler above.

If you have teenagers, you might want to read this book. Then give it to him or her to read. It covers a lot of ground from the perspective of a depressed, post-suicidal teen. From family to school to his own inner thoughts, Try Not to Breathe doesn’t dwell on the negative. The story follows Ryan as he tries to move on, which he does with remorse, a good sense of humor, and more insight into himself and those around him than he had before.

Even if you don’t have teenagers, this is a book worth reading. Young adults today go through so much, and Jennifer Hubbard takes a look deep into that world with emotion and humor. Even a little romance. Yeah, remember those days? And maybe for some you, you might remember a few of the same issues Ryan is living today.

Summary:

Learning to live is more than just choosing not to die, as sixteen-year-old Ryan discovers in the year following his suicide attempt. Despite his mother’s anxious hovering and the rumors at school, he’s trying to forget the darkness from which he has escaped. But it doesn’t help that he’s still hiding guilty secrets, or that he longs for a girl who may not return his feelings. Then he befriends Nicki, who is using psychics to seek contact with her dead father. This unlikely friendship thaws Ryan to the point where he can face the worst in himself. He and Nicki confide in one another the things they never thought they’d tell anyone—but their confessions are trickier than they seem, and the fallout tests the bound of friendship and forgiveness.

It was dangerous to stand under the waterfall, but some kids did it anyway, and I was one of them. The water pounded my mind blank, stung my skin. It hit my naked back, chest, and shoulders so hard I couldn’t think. That water could knock me over, pound me into hypothermia, force the breath out of me, pin me to the rock, and I knew it.

But I kept doing it.

My parents’ heads would’ve shot through the roof if they’d known. They’d done their best to wrap me in cotton since I’d gotten out of Patterson Hospital a few months before. My mother panicked if I missed a dose of my meds, so I sure wasn’t going to tell her about the waterfall. How could I explain it anyway?

Because I needed it. The roaring water shot over the ledge and beat down on my shoulders and head, a thunder I felt even through the slick stones under my feet. My nerves crackled and buzzed. It was all I could do to stand still against the water.

Whatever else I had messed up in my life, I could do that much: stand still. Okay, so I wasn’t setting the bar too high.

There were rumors that a guy had drowned here once, or that he’d fallen from the cliff and smashed his head on the rocks, his brains spilling into the pool below. Each version of the story was bloodier and less believable than the last.

There were rumors about me, about what I’d done back in the spring. Everyone snuck looks at me in the school halls after I got out of Patterson. Sometimes I was tempted to foam at the mouth and babble to invisible people, because the other kids seemed so disappointed that I didn’t. But I couldn’t be sure they would realize it was a joke. The few times I’d tried to make anyone laugh, all I got were nervous glances and squirming. Nobody expected me to have a sense of humor, and it was safer for me to let them think I might be crazy than to give them proof.

So I knew about rumors, how they were 95 percent bullshit with maybe one kernel of truth. I wasn’t sure where the kernel was in the story about the dead guy at the waterfall.

I first went under the waterfall in May, and I kept it up all summer. July was so hot, I imagined steam pouring off me whenever the icy rush hit my skin.

Early in August, we got rain. I watched the waterfall from the stream bank, waiting for the cool stormy weather to pass, for the heat to return.

I was sitting there one day when Kent Thornton’s sister came by. Kent was going into eleventh grade like me, and I knew his sister was a year younger, but I’d never talked to her much. Last year she’d been at the junior high, since Seaton High didn’t start until tenth grade.

“Hey.” I tried to remember her name, but couldn’t.

She stood watching the water charge over the cliff. Ferns waved in the breeze. “Are you going in?” she asked.

“No, not today.” All that rain had swelled the creek and the waterfall. I was tempted to see if I could stand up under the cold weight of that water, but I wasn’t completely insane, no matter what kids at school might whisper about me.

“I do it all the time.” She grinned. “My friend Angie won’t even stick her foot in the water. She says the rocks are too slippery.”

“They are slippery.” Not that it had ever stopped me.

Kent’s sister wiped sweat off the back of her neck. “You live up at the glass house, don’t you?”

“It’s not glass.” I hated when people called it that. It sounded like we were expecting some TV show to feature us in our architectural wonder of a home. Lifestyles of People Who Have Way More Money Than You. “It just has a lot of windows.”

“Whatever. That’s your house, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Her face flushed pink. “Just wondered.” She waved at the waterfall. “Dare me to go under there?”

“Nah, it’s too cold today. And strong. It’s kind of dangerous.”

She stepped into the water. Ripples spread out from her foot. She wore a tank top and shorts, which she didn’t take off. She walked toward the waterfall, slipping once on the mossy rocks.

I followed her with my eyes. Dread squeezed my stomach and wedged a lump at the back of my throat. I didn’t even know this girl, but I had no desire to see her crushed, drowned. She disappeared under the silver curtain of water.

I stood up because I couldn’t see her anymore. I squinted at the foaming water, trying to see into it, through it.

My fingers tapped the sides of my thighs as if counting the seconds she’d been under. How long should I wait before going in after her? If I should go in at all—there being a narrow line between heroes and idiots.

Kent’s sister ducked out, spitting, hair glued flat to her head. I exhaled. She lifted a handful of wet hair off her face, shook herself like a dog, and laughed. She splashed toward me.

“You all right?” I said.

Her lips were purple; her skin prickled with goose bumps. Her teeth hammered against each other.

“I should’ve brought a towel,” she said.

I’d done that before—remembered the towel only after I was wet. “I can get you one.”

“Okay.” She rubbed her arms. “That sounds fantastic.”

My second novel, Try Not to Breathe, was a story that grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go.

I’d been working on something else—a book that I’d been writing for quite a while—and I was planning to take a writing break. But Try Not to Breathe had other plans; it refused to wait. It grew out of a verse-writing exercise that I was playing with one day. The main character, Ryan, did not confine himself to a few poems. He just kept on speaking.

I started with the image of a boy standing under a waterfall, and as I wrote, I learned more and more about him: his suicidal past, his secrets, the crush he had. Then a girl burst onto the scene, with goals and secrets of her own, pushing against the walls Ryan had built around himself. She revealed more about herself with every scene, but I didn’t learn her biggest secret until the second or third draft. Her secret shocked me at first, but it fit. It all made sense, and it brought the story back to where it began—the waterfall.

Sometimes it happens that way. The first time I write a scene, it may surprise me, and I get to have the same sense of discovery with it that a first-time reader will have.

If you like sinful heroes who fall hard for that perfect woman who pushes all his buttons, you should be reading Alexandra Hawkins‘ Lords of Vice series. The Notorious Lord is Vane, Earl of Vanewright, and he’s as sinful as they come, as Isabel is about find out once she engages him in a game she soon discovers can’t be won.

Vane has never been quite this fascinated with a woman before, he doesn’t know what hits him until it’s too late. Isabel finally acknowledges feelings for the man, even though he’s supposed to be someone else’s.

But fire and passion keep flaring between them, and they become lost in each other  – until secrets begin to unravel the dream that almost comes true.

Summary:

Christopher Courtland, Earl of Vanewright—known around London as “Vane”—is the very picture of a rich, handsome ladies’ man. Why shackle himself to just one lady when he’s free to sample them all? In spite of his own mother’s attempts at matchmaking, Vane has sworn to stay single. Until he has a chance run-in with Miss Isabel Thorne…

A modest and refined beauty, Isabel is a lot more brazen than she appears. When a pickpocket tries to make away with Vane’s bejeweled snuffbox, Isabel attempts to thwart his escape…and manages to steal Vane’s heart. But the harder he tries to seduce the sharp-tongued, strong-willed Isabel, the more she resists. Now it’s up to this tried-and-true bachelor to find a new way to play the game…or risk losing the one woman who’s ever captured his heart.

Enjoy the teaser of their banter, just to whet your appetite for more sin….

“Merciful heavens, what happened to you?”

Isabel smiled wanly at their housekeeper as Lord Vanewright carried her over the threshold and into the small front hall.  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Allen.  It appears you were correct when you warned us that shopping on Bond Street was fraught with peril and unsavory characters.”

Delia focused on what mattered most to her.  “Oh, Mrs. Allen, you should have seen the lovely evening dress we found!  I vow I shall perish if it is sold before we have the opportunity to return to the shop.”  She gave her sister a side glance, disgusted that Isabel had ruined the afternoon by tangling with a pickpocket.

Isabel sighed.  There was no point in reminding Delia that they could not really afford the expensive dress.  Such details mattered little to her sister.  Isabel started when the earl murmured in her ear, “Shall I carry you to your bedchamber?”

A wordless exclamation was uttered by the housekeeper.  Surprised by the brazen suggestion, Isabel turned her face toward Lord Vanewright’s, resulting in her nose brushing against his chin.  “No you shall not!  The drawing room will suffice, my lord.”

Trailing after the trio, the housekeeper said, “Miss Thorne, forgive my impudence, but who is this gentleman?  And why is he carrying you about town as if he has the right to put his hands on you.”

“Not a word from you,” she warned him sternly.  With her arms wrapped about his shoulders, she could feel his body quaking with laughter.  “Mrs. Allen, allow me to present Lord Vanewright.  My lord, this is our housekeeper, Mrs. Allen.  She is looking after us during our brief stay in London.”

“Mrs. Allen, would you mind opening the door to the drawing room?  Miss Thorne had a terrible fright with a pickpocket and I want to see her settled comfortably before the surgeon arrives.”

“The surgeon?” Isabel echoed, struggling in the earl’s arms to be released.

Mrs. Allen stepped around the couple and opened the door.  “A pickpocket?  In a dressmaker’s shop you say?  Is no place safe, I ask you?”

“Isabel stumbled into the thief and rescued Lord Vanewright’s snuffbox,” Delia explained as she retrieved a pillow from a chair and placed it on the sofa.

Isabel marveled that the earl was not winded by his efforts.  He carried her to the sofa with an ease that suggested he appreciated the outdoors and had a casual familiarity with manual labor.  She was almost disappointed when he lowered her onto the sofa.

“When did you have time to summon a surgeon?” she demanded, annoyed by the unexpected expense.

“I ordered my coachman to fetch him.”  His look was inscrutable as it rested on her grim features.  “Are you in pain?”

“As I have told you over and over again, I am fine,” she said through clenched teeth.  “Ow!  Stop that.”  She slapped his hand away when he deliberately probed her wrapped ankle to prove that she was lying to him—again.

“Uh-huh,” he said, his tone suspiciously flat.  He glanced at the housekeeper.  “Mrs. Allen, would be so kind as to fetch a shallow basin of warm water for Miss Thorne’s ankle and a pot of tea to settle her nerves.”

Eyes blazing, Isabel glared at the presumptuous man.  “See here, Lord Vanewright.  You have no right to bully me or my staff!”  Before she said something that she would come to regret, Isabel cleared her throat.  “Yes, Mrs. Allen, I believe a cup of strong tea would benefit us all.”

Rudeness was clearly not the way to get rid of the man.  From the sparkling glint in his eyes, the earl was having too much fun baiting her.

“Nothing else to say, Miss Thorne?” he asked, sitting down in the chair to her left even though no one had invited the arrogant man to remain.

“Not at this time,” Isabel said haughtily.  “I am saving my strength for the surgeon.”