I’m running TWO contests.
1) One offering a $25 gift certificate from Amazon to celebrate the release of PLEASING SIR. This contest ends today! See details here!
2) The second is my usual thing. You post a comment here today and you’re eligible for a free download of any of my backlisted books.
Yesterday’s winner is posted at the end of this entry.
I went to bed last night with sniffles, and today I have a full-blown cold (hacking cough, runny nose, general aches and pains, aching back from cough). It’s looking iffy for my trip to West Viriginia on Thursday. I hope this is a really fast-moving bug, but if I’m not better, I won’t inflict myself on two hundred other people.
So back to tomorrow’s release. You know the story’s going to be hot as hell. And the reason has to do with the Kinzie brothers, who don’t get the girl at the end of Four Sworn.
Keep in mind this book is unedited because I’m still writing it, but I thought you might like a sneak peek.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Chrissi Page raised her cell phone in the air, staring at the screen. No bars. Not even a hint of one skinny, green nub. “Oh, come on,” she moaned as her radiator hissed behind her. “Damn, damn, damn.”
She’d been tempted to ignore the check engine light when it first appeared, wanting to take the chance she could limp back into Two Mule. However, the steam seeping from under the hood had pretty much killed that hope.
Today was not the day for her car to break down. Not so far from town. Not so close to their ranch. Any minute now one of the Kinzie brothers might happen by.
They’d stop because they’d never leave a woman stranded.
They might not let her go because of their shared past.
And she didn’t know if she had the strength anymore to fight fate or her own inexplicable needs.
Macy Pettigrew, her best friend and boss, had sent her to the Dunstan house to make sure the owners had followed her suggestions to increase the house’s curb appeal. Never mind that there wasn’t a curb. Not really even a road—more of a caliche-covered goat trail that meandered up a steep hillside, rutted from runoff during recent summer storms.
Something must have happened to her car on the run up that hill. She’d heard the rocks pinging against her undercarriage but had been too busy with her mind filled with Ms. Dunstan’s handsome neighbors. She’d been afraid she’d pass them or that they might stop in to see old Lettie Dunstan, the widow selling off her roughhewn home.
Chrissi had forced a smile on her face, looked at the potted plants the old woman had placed in pretty window boxes and admired the paint she’d used to spruce up the weathered door and window frames. The junk the old woman’s husband had accumulated, and that she hadn’t had the heart to part with after his passing, was gone from the front lawn. And lo and behold, grass was beginning to grow to fill in the brown patches where car engines and tires had lain.
Macy would be pleased. They had a potential buyer. One who’d relayed an offer via email, and which had checked out with the mortgage lender.
Chrissi heard a powerful engine rev behind her, and she slowly lowered her arms and glanced nervously over her shoulder. A sage metallic pick-up truck pulled off the road behind her, and her stomach dropped to her toes. She’d known the moment her engine light had shone that this was going to happen.
And good Lord, it had to be Ezra Kinzie. His dark gaze narrowed on her through the windshield, the intensity of it feeling like the hissing heat of a brand against her skin.
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