The Roma Series continues in Turning To Stone by Gabriel Valjan and starts out with a BANG!
I am on familiar ground with Turning To Stone…The Mob. I have read a lot of organized crime novels, and Turning To Stone has everything I look for…corruption, betrayal, brutality, wholesale slaughter and assassins, female, no less. I love that twist and, for me, it doesn’t happen often enough.
But this is not the organized crime of Al Capone’s day. They are going legit and manipulating events through money, so be careful about investing in the stock market. LOL
Gabriel Valjan’s series keeps getting better and better. The writing flows smoother for me, the pacing and suspense picking up to a level that makes it hard to put the book down.
Some surprising turns at the end make me realize how strong and determined Bianca and her cohorts are. They have questions and WILL NOT stop until they have the answers, no matter the cost to themselves.
I enjoyed Turning To Stone the most…so far…and I am so glad I stuck with the series!
Action packed with OMG moments. The brutal, tragic ending left me feeling very sad and I can hardly wait to see where we go from here.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Threading The Needle from Gabriel Valjan.
4 Stars
SYNOPSIS
Alabaster Black aka Bianca Nerini returns as an investigation into a public official’s assassination pits Bianca and her friends against a backdrop of financial speculation, female assassins on motorcycles, and the Camorra—the most ruthless of Italian organized crime gangs—in Gabriel Valjan’s TURNING TO STONE, the fourth book of the highly praised Roma series (Winter Goose Publishing; June 2015; softcover $15.99; Kindle / Nook, $5.99).
En route to a secret meeting, Aldo Giurlani—the regional commissioner of Lombardy in northern Italy and a specialist on organized crime—is assassinated in the middle of a public square.
More mysterious is the package sent to Giurlani’s hand-picked team of five top investigators within the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian law enforcement agency that investigates illegal financial transactions, from money laundering to drug trafficking. Within the package are five copies of a book entitled Man of Smoke written by Aldo Palazzeschi.
Then there is Bianca’s tenuous online contact with a mysterious online contact known as Loki, who delivers a cryptic message to her, takes on a new twist with the appearance of a brilliant young obsessive-compulsive man who joins her team.
Complicating matters even further, old enemies and, more problematically, Alabaster’s former employer—Rendition, a murky covert U.S. government agency that does more than just investigate financial crimes—still have grudges to bear against her.
As new mysteries unfold, Bianca’s group quickly discovers that Naples might just be the most dangerous city in Italy.
ABOUT GABRIEL VALJAN
Gabriel Valjan lives in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of the Roma Series, available from Winter Goose Publishing. Gabriel has also written numerous short stories and essays found online and in print.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of booksandabeat.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current read. Open to a random page. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
~~~~~~
I was offered a chance to read For the Love of Grace by Andy Blackman and I am so happy I jumped on it. This suspense thriller quickly captured my attention and held it throughout.
Thanks Rachel at Authoright Marketing & Publicity and Andy Blackman for the chance to read and review this fantastic novel of love, loss and revenge.
Eventually Grace let out a sigh, and said, “Well better get it over with,”and lifted the brown envelope and ripped the top off.
Grace read the short telegram; finally, after staring at the letter what seemed like an eternity, Grace passed it to Julie.
(page 32 in paperback)
The title and cover does not convey how wonderful the story inside really is!
GOODREADS BLURB:Grace Backer had a life full of tragedy. But despite everything, she raised her son, Tom, with her secret intact. Tom is a prodigal child, destined to escape the slums of the East End of London for a better life; circumstances will make him flee his loving mother and their home much sooner than expected.
Tom starts a new life in Odessa, Russia, and with the help of new-found friends starts a business. At last, he is finally accepted into a new and loving family, but one which holds its own dark secrets. A chance meeting with the son of a duke of the realm leads to close friendship and a new business partnership. When Tom decides to move his company to London and have his regal new friend run it, the firm thrives. However, not everything is as it seems, and Tom’s business soon conceals dangerous secrets of its own.
Years later, when Tom finally decides to return to London, he is a wanted man, one hunted by the intelligence agencies. If he is finally to be reunited with his beloved mother and his best friend, he must fight to put the past behind him. But keeping secrets is never easy.
This is not your usual dragon tale of hot shifters and the maiden in love with him.
It’s a baby.
It has been waiting for a long time….waiting…waiting…waiting…for its parents.
I felt so bad for the poor guy, so lost and alone.
He imprints before he hatches, on Rose and the stranger. He speaks to them telepathically and they cannot say no.
Rose’s life quickly spins out of control and I can hardly wait to see what happens when…
Imagine all the difficulties of raising a baby dragon…what do you feed it…where will it sleep…where will it go to the bathroom? It’s funny where my thoughts went as I wondered how they would handle something they never could have foreseen coming into their life.
OH NO! All to quickly I reached the end.
Kudos to Emily Martha Sorensen for this fun story and fresh approach.
This quick story was worth every minute and left me wanting more.
Now I NEED Dragon’s Hope.
4 STARS
GOODREADS BLURB
Rose didn’t count on becoming a mother to a brand new baby dragon egg.
She’s always wanted to be a paleontologist, and is now in college studying to become one. But a chance meeting at the American Musuem of Natural History turns her world upside down. Because, millions of years after dragons have gone extinct, there’s an egg that seems to be unexpectedly . . . alive.
The egg knows what he wants. He wants Rose and a stranger, Henry, to be his new parents. But can three strangers of two different species become a family?
Emily is a prolific writer with many titles to choose from. She writes of fairies, dragons, fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, world peach in short stories and flash fiction.
Harassment…oh, it is so much more than that…and I wonder if Brutus will go all Cujo on her as the past comes back to haunt her with characters that are so far out there, entitled, mean, cruel, deadly, and the mystery of Slenderman seems to come out of the computer and walk in real life…
3 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB: An engrossing thriller from an Amazon bestselling author! Ever heard of Slender Man?
They say he is always there. They say he is always watching. A tall guy in a suit and tie, with no face, and arms like tentacles.
Some say he is an online myth; others will go very far to prove he is real, so far that they might even kill for him.
Fanoe Island is busy with the mayoral election coming up, when suddenly, the sitting mayor is found killed. Rumors tell that a faceless man dressed in a suit and tie did it.
In Emma Frost’s house that she inherited from her grandmother, a box of letters is found that tells a story from a long time ago. A terrifying story revealing a painful chapter in the life of her own family half a century ago.
– Slender Man is a spine-chilling mystery from the bestselling author Willow Rose. It is the ninth in her Emma Frost-series.
. The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 or 56% in your ereader and find any sentence or a few ( no spoilers) that grabs you and post it.
Please join Rose City Reader every Friday to share the first sentence or so of the book you are reading along with you initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.
Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.
~~~
The Cabin by Carla Neggers is a thriller that will keep you warm on those cold winter nights.
When he came home that evening and told her about Alice’s arrest and never mentioned the tape, Susanna assumed the tape was no good, completely irrelevant – and that Alice hadn’t mentioned it to him. Why should she? She was on her way to prison, her career ruined. If there’s been anything useful on the tape, she’d have turned it over, if only to nail Beau McCarrity and prove herself right.
(Page 56 in paperback)
Book Beginnings
Susann Galway sipped her margarita and watched the countdown to midnight on the television above the bar at Jim’s Place, the small, dark pub just down the street from where she lived with her grandmother and twin teenage daughters. It had been a fixture in the neighborhood for as long as Susanna could remember.
GOODREADS BLURB: Vengeance, money and murder are menacing companions when they meet in the quiet stillness of an Adirondack winter.
Texas Ranger Jack Galway knows his wife Susanna loves him, so when their marriage hits a rough patch, he supports her decision to take their teenaged daughters to Boston for a break. But now a couple of weeks has turned into several months and Jack has had enough. He wants his family back.
Ex-convict Alice Parker left a mess back in Texas, and she’ll never forgive Jack Galway for killing her dream of ever becoming a Texas Ranger herself. Now, guided by greed and vengeance, she’s got her sights set on his family.
Packing up the girls and her grandmother, Susanna heads to a cabin in the Adirondacks, trying to escape her fears, her secrets . . . and maybe even the man she loves. Little does she realize they are being followed, only this time by her husband . . . and a murderer.
I was born to die… But to defy fate is to control your own destiny.
Moving to Big Bear Lake was supposed to be a fresh start, but when Taylor Sparks is thrown into a supernatural world, her reality comes crashing down around her when she finds out she’s a KEY player in a dangerous game created 1,000 years ago that will give the witches and werewolves the upper hand against the vampires. Blood will be spilled and secrets will be revealed in this action-packed thrill ride and paranormal romance.
Will Taylor dive into a paranormal world she knows nothing about to be with the one her heart can’t live without?
Or will her life spiral out of control when she learns her blood is needed, just the serum necessary to lift an ancient curse from a group of supernatural beings and give the witches back their magic?
Werewolves will serve as her guardians and protect her until the first full moon of the new year, the night of her sacrifice…
Will she accept her destiny?
Or will she refuse to let evil swallow her up?
Excerpt
Grabbing my purse, I hurried out of the car and locked the doors. Just as I started to walk up the driveway, I felt the cold steel of a muzzle against my neck. My heart hammered against my ribs.
“One sound, and you’re dead,” a harsh, male voice said.
I froze in panic as somebody slipped a black blindfold over my eyes, then gagged me. A man duct-taped my mouth, while another tied my ankles, legs, and wrists with rope. He hoisted me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and horror ripped through me. Help! I’m being kidnapped! my brain yelled, but I dare not cry out for fear of what they would do to me. I did try to fight back, at least to some degree, but I was tied and gagged and could do little about being manhandled.
“Put her in the trunk!” a man yelled.
As I fought, I was thrown, neck-first, into the trunk of a car, and my mind began to race. This can’t be happening! I tried to call out for my parents. If only they could hear me. If only I could scream, maybe Max would bark, and Mom or Dad would come to the door. If only…
Tires screeched, and the vehicle took off down the street. The smell of gasoline made me gag. I tried to kick and scream, but it was tight quarters, and I was still all tied up. I cringed at their muffled voices, wondering what they wanted from me.
“I’m tellin’ ya,” one of the guys said, “we oughtta just kill her now.”
My skin crawled at his nonchalance.
“He’s right,” the other said. “Just do it, right here, right now. We’ve outsmarted her protectors, but for how long? We need to do it swiftly and quickly, before they return.”
“You know the rules,” a low voice hissed. “If we just kill her, they’ll have the legal right to choose another, and we’ll be right back at square one again. We’ve gotta do this by the book.”
“I agree,” a woman said. “We need to stop the Millennium ceremony from happening.”
“I don’t want to kill her,” another woman said. “She’s just…an innocent victim in all this. It isn’t right.”
“If we don’t kill her, they’ll win,” another said. “They’ll gain the upper hand when she gives them what they need.”
“Our enemy will stop at nothing to destroy us,” another said tensely. “Killing her will keep them from becoming more powerful than they already are.”
“It will bring them to their knees!” another shouted.
Great, I thought. A case of mistaken identity is the last thing I need. By their talk, I assumed that killing me was some way to get back at their rivals, though I had no idea who those rivals were. The mafia? Some kind of…street gang? I had absolutely no idea, but I desperately wanted to tell them who I really was, to let them know they obviously had me confused me with somebody else. Maybe if I explain that, they’ll let me go. After all, I hadn’t seen their faces, so I wasn’t a threat. Then it dawned on me: Jesse had just revealed his identity to me. Maybe his clan wants to kill me because I know too much. I wanted to scream at them and tell them, to assure them that I’d never reveal Jesse’s identity, that I’d take his deep, dark secret to the grave with me. Jesse meant everything to me, and I would never betray his trust like that; unfortunately, my captors didn’t give me a chance to explain that to them. I wasn’t completely sure if it was vampires that had me. But they had heard me messing with my ropes and that took Immortal hearing. No human could hear that over the sound of the engine, the radio, and voices talking.
We drove down the lonely stretch of road, and I didn’t hear one car pass by. I considered trying to pop the trunk open so I could jump for freedom. I figured the car was going about eighty, but I figured it’d be easier to heal from a broken neck than a bullet to the head. The rope bindings cut into my skin and began to sting and burn. I wiggled my numbing hands, trying to find some relief, when a man yelled back at me.
“Stop it!” he said. “Or else I’ll kill you right here.”
I shivered at his voice, then obeyed his commands. There was no way he could have seen me no way he could have heard me picking at the ropes. I contemplated how they were going to kill me. It had to be a contract hit, but I wondered why there were so many of them there just to take out a defenseless woman. I also wondered how they could be so heartless.
The vehicle stopped, and my stomach dropped when I heard the doors swing open. This is it, I thought. My time has come. When footsteps approached, I held my breath. The trunk popped open, and strong arms lifted me out and set me down on a hard surface, maybe concrete or asphalt. My legs were wobbly, but one of the men steadied me and untied my ankles. Jerk, I sarcastically seethed. The cold night air hit and my hair blew around. I tried to see through the blindfold, but all I could see was darkness.
A man shoved me forward. “Walk!”
I let out a trembling breath and stumbled to the edge of the hard surface, then felt my shoes sink in grass and damp earth. As I carefully walked forward, a towering fern brushed softly across my face. I took tiny steps because my imagination was in overdrive; I couldn’t help picturing all those pirate films I’d seen of people walking off the plank, and I knew there were a lot of cliffs around. The man behind me kept pushing and shoving, making me go faster than my hesitant feet wanted to carry me, forcing me to trip over what I assumed to be a very long log. Twigs snapped and crunched underfoot. An owl hooted, and crickets chirped. The smell of wet moss, damp dirt, and decaying leaves mingled with the scent of pines, wafting up my nostrils; any other time, the aroma would have been beautiful. My heart lurched. I was sure they were leading me to some isolated location for my execution, a place where no one would ever find me, and that thought sent droplets of nervous perspiration rolling down my face, perhaps mingled with tears.
I refused, however, to go quietly. I couldn’t do much to fight them off, but I wanted to make it harder on them. They’ll have to carry my corpse, because I’m not gonna walk out to the middle of nowhere and shovel my own grave. I’m not doing their dirty work for them! I took a huge step to the left, and then bolted.
Strong arms caught me within seconds, and I flailed and thrashed like a gazelle in a lion’s grasp.
“If we don’t keep movin’, we’re not gonna make it to the designated spot on time,” a man said.
“Maybe I oughtta just snap her like a twig, right here, right now,” said a deep-voiced man.
I screamed through my gag at the thought that the guy wanted to rush my demise.
“No!” another said. “She must be sacrificed at midnight.”
Sacrificed?
Trembling with fear, I thrashed even harder in the guy’s grasp. I suddenly realized that my abduction had nothing to do with a mafia hit, vampires, or a street gang initiation; rather, I was in the hands of some strange cult. I could barely breath, terrorized by fear.
“How much farther?” a man asked.
“We’re here,” another answered.
At that point, I was gasping for breath at the thought of being sacrificed in some weird ritual. I recalled what Fred had said about witches and realized it wasn’t so farfetched of a theory. My heart had never raced so hard. The man held me tight in his grasp, and I tried to fight, but he was so strong, and I was no match for him. My feet suddenly left the ground as he picked me up and carried me. I turned and twisted in his grasp, to no avail. He gently set me down on a cold slab of concrete and forced me to lie down, and I’d never been so terrified in my entire life.
Fingers gripped my ankles and wrists as the rope was tightened around me, securing me to a cold slab. It didn’t make sense to me that they left my blindfold on and my gag in, since they were clearly going to kill me anyway. For all I knew, maybe they thought it was more humane to kill me that way. Perhaps they want to spare me the misery of watching the dagger pierce my heart. I listened intently as they shuffled around, and then I struggled in my bindings.
Get the entire boxed set for just 99 cents this week! Ends 11/19/16
This was a fantastic box set with magic, action, mystery, twists and turns, vampires, werewolves, witches, and gargoyles. Each book gets better and better and takes you deeper into the mystery!
Book 1 is about Taylor moving to Big Bear Lake and learning it’s a supernatural place and that her crush is something more. Book 2 gets deep! And this is when all hell breaks loose! Taylor is tossed into the supernatural world. She thought she was observing it from the outside, but little does she know that she’s a major player! And she didn’t even know it!
She comes from an ancient line of witches and is supposed to be sacrificed in The Millennium Ceremony. She’s stubborn and fights her supernatural enemy with everything she has. I loved how tough she becomes. There’s a paranormal battle raging and I loved every page. This is one of my favorite paranormal romances ever!
Author Chrissy Peebles
Chrissy Peebles has always loved reading and writing fantasy from the earliest age she can remember. She lives in a busy city with her husband, two children, and one cat (Shadow) and three dogs. (Sparkles, Rosie, and Jack) Chrissy also loves to snap photos as her favorite hobby.
Open only to those who can legally enter, receive and use an Amazon.com Gift Code or Paypal Cash. Winning Entry will be verified prior to prize being awarded. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be chosen by rafflecopter and announced here as well as emailed and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook, Twitter, Rafflecopter or any other entity unless otherwise specified. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning. Giveaway was organized by Kathy from I Am A Reader and sponsored by the author. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. a Rafflecopter giveaway
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of booksandabeat.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current read. Open to a random page. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
~~~~~~
She Bites by Roger Arsht & Caitlin Hawker has such a cool cover and fantastic blurb, there is no way I could pass on this vigilante thriller novel. I would like to thank Roger, Caitlin and Archway Publishing for the opportunity to read and review She Bites.
She Bites has a bit of a twist, so keep reading to find out why.
I will be reviewing this tomorrow. Be sure and come check it out!
Does this cover talk to you as loud as it talks to me?
“Could I…um, I know the date didn’t go that well tonight. Maybe I could come in for coffee, and we could see if we could slavage it?” He smiles, his eyes leveled at her breats.
Something shifted inside her, and she grinned maliciously. “Sure. Come on in.”
(page 8 in paperback)
I’m thinking he will regret that. 👿
She Bites covers a brutal topic – dogfighting.
GOODREADS BLURB: Dr. Robyn Sparks is a veterinarian with a dark secret: she moonlights as a self-appointed vigilante, who deals her own brand of justice to animal abusers by murdering them. If you do bad things to dogs, Robyn does bad things to you.
She Bites tells the story of a talented veterinarian who dispenses brutal judgment. Her work with sick and injured animals provides Robyn with a view of life’s most tender moments as well as a view of man’s most brutal behaviors.
Robyn’s regular habit of sending bad people to the pet crematorium is interrupted when she meets Jack Williams, a damaged detective who is fighting his own demons. Their relationship is a roller coaster ride of tangled emotions and legal close calls.
Ultimately, Robyn has to make a choice: whether to continue down her destructive path and kill a twisted psychopath turned professional dog fight promoter, or to pursue a romance with a cop who believes morality is best served by the hand of the law.
By our estimate, there are tens of thousands of dog fighters in the U.S., forcing hundreds of thousands of dogs to train, fight, and suffer every year. – The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), 2016
For a change of pace, I wanted to share The Boyfriend Whisperer by Linda Bdzinsk.
Hope you enjoy and be sure and enter the giveaway at the end of the post.
The Boyfriend Whisperer Linda Budzinski
Published by: Swoon Romance
Publication date: November 15th 2016
Genres: Adult, Romance, Sports
As President and CEO of Boyfriend Whisperer Enterprises, Lexi Malloy is Grand View High School’s undercover Cupid. One problem: She’s stuck in the friend zone when it comes to her own crush, Chris Broder. She and Chris have been best friends since the third grade, and he doesn’t even seem to realize she’s is a member of the opposite sex.
When pretty and popular cheerleader Lindsay LaRouche hires Lexi to whisper Chris, she has to decide whether to place her commitment to her company—and Chris’s happiness—before herself.
Principal Cho calls my teammates out one by one at the pep rally. He announces my name last, and I dribble across the court, through a tunnel made up of the cheer squad as well as both the boys’ and girls’ teams, and stop at the top of the key to throw Chris an alley-oop.
He sails toward the basket, his muscles rippling as he reaches out, snatches the ball out of the air, transfers it from one hand to the other, and stuffs it through the rim. Magnificent.
I remember the precise moment I fell in love with Christian Broder. It was this past October when a bunch of us decided to play a pick-up game at the courts down at Claymore Park. It was a warm day, and Chris took off his shirt. I vaguely wondered when he’d developed pecs. I tried to defend against him on a drive to the basket, but it seemed he’d gained six inches on me overnight. He swerved around, up, and past me, and … wham. His first dunk shot.
It was perhaps the most beautiful move I’d ever seen on a basketball court. Or anywhere. Ever. I could barely breathe. Had to fake a cramp in my leg and take myself out of the game. Now, watching him soar through the air again, I have that same gut reaction. I struggle to pull myself together as he runs up and gives me a high-five.
“Nice toss, Malloy.”
“Nice tip in, Broder.”
He laughs. “Yeah, right. Tip in. I hear you.” He drapes his arm across my shoulder. “I have a great feeling about this weekend.”
I nod, unable to form words, and the rest of the pep rally swirls by in a whirlwind of pompoms and victory chants.
Author Bio:
My young adult novels, EM & EM (2015) and THE FUNERAL SINGER (2013), were both published by Swoon Romance YA. My upcoming novel, THE BOYFRIEND WHISPERER, scheduled for publication in fall of 2016 by Swoon, received the Romance Writers of America Young Adult Chapter’s 2015 Rosemary Award and the Virginia Chapter’s 2015 Fool for Love Award.
I live in Northern Virginia with my husband, Joe, and our feisty chihuahua, Demitria (also known as Dee Dee, The Puppy, and Killer). I’m a sucker for romance and reality TV and have been known to turn off my phone’s ringer when watching “The Bachelor.”
My favorite flower is the daisy, my favorite food is chocolate, and my favorite song is “Amazing Grace.”
When I’m not writing, I work in nonprofit management. I’m represented by the amazing Andrea Somberg of Harvey Klinger Inc.
I won a signed copy from fiktshun some time ago and even though this is Book VI of The Soul Screamers series, I don’t feel it affected my enjoyment of Before I Wake.
Kaylee struggles to find her ‘place’ in this new world of the undead…reapers, extractors, necromancers…she wonders how she will fill the minutes, hours, days…and I loved following her in her struggles to kill the demon that haunts her, following her deeper and deeper in this wonderful tale of death and ‘life’, with well written twists and turns that kept me going, though I was disappointed not to find out how it all ends.
4 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB: I died on a Thursday— killed by a monster intent on stealing my soul.
The good news? He didn’t get it.
The bad news? Turns out not even death will get you out of high school…
Covering up her own murder was one thing, but faking life is much harder than Kaylee Cavanaugh expected. After weeks spent “recovering,” she’s back in school, fighting to stay visible to the human world, struggling to fit in with her friends and planning time alone with her new reaper boyfriend.
But to earn her keep in the human world, Kaylee must reclaim stolen souls, and when her first assignment brings her face-to-face with an old foe, she knows the game has changed. Her immortal status won’t keep her safe. And this time Kaylee isn’t just gambling with her own life….
Silver-Tongued Devil Rosalind James
(Portland Devils)
Publication date: November 15th 2016
Genres: Adult, Romance, Sports
No more wild rides. No more wild side.
Blake Orbison’s pro football career may have ended with a bang, but not calling the signals anymore just gives him more time to devote to his business enterprises, including the latest and greatest: the opening of the Wild Horse Resort in scenic north Idaho. And that other one, too. Blake’s on the marriage track, and he’s got a game plan. But when he runs into a trespasser leaping from his shoreline boulders into his lake, what’s a good ol’ boy to do but strip down and join her?
Dakota Savage is nobody’s temporary diversion, least of all the man responsible for her family’s semi-desperate circumstances. Some people may think she has a piercing too many, but she’s had more than enough of being called trash in this town. She’s come home to Wild Horse to run her stepfather’s painting business, and any extra time she has goes into creating her stained glass. An overpaid, entitled, infuriating NFL quarterback is no part of her life plan, no matter how sweet he talks. No matter how slow he smiles. No matter what.
It wasn’t Jerry. That much, she could tell as he got closer. It was somebody a whole lot slimmer. Tall, check. Short dark hair, check. Black shirt, check. But no gut, and she thought there was some darkness around the jaw that wasn’t quite a beard. Another security guy. She could be cute enough for him. Maybe. What would he care, really, what she did?
“Hi,” she said as he approached. “Next time maybe don’t yell right when I’m jumping.” Taking the initiative. Projecting confidence. She was better at that than “cute.”
“Hell of a graceful landing,” he agreed, and glasses or no, she could see the flash of white teeth through the dark stubble just fine. Also that he had a pair of shoulders to die for, and some very nice arms in that T-shirt. Not to mention long legs in dusty jeans and work boots, and about six foot three of lean muscle. Nobody she knew, because she’d have noticed him. She might not be able to see him, exactly, but she could see enough.
“If you’re security,” she said, “I was just going.”
“I’m not security. And I hope that’s a lie that you were just going, because that looked real fun.”
He had a Southern drawl she’d surely never heard in Wild Horse. Slow as molasses, and just that thick and sweet. Ah hope thass a lah that you were juss goin’. “Let me guess,” she said, feeling a sneaky little surge of excitement. “You’re out here to do wrong. Sign says ‘No Trespassing,’ and you’ve been given the big lecture, but you’re not worried, because you’re a badass like that.”
Some more grin. “Could be. Is that water deep enough to be safe? We’re both too pretty to get ourselves paralyzed.”
“Oh, yeah,” she assured him. “Best spot on the lake for it. No place else has rocks like this or a pool this deep. Which means, of course, that the Man comes and fences it off and tells you that you can’t use it anymore, even if you’re working out here. Gotta love capitalism, and this is about the worst.”
He gazed into the distance and scratched thoughtfully at his cheek. “Bad place to work, you think? Huh.”
“I wouldn’t do it for a heartbeat if I didn’t need the money. You could say that I’m not in love with Mr. Blake Orbison or his company. But you know, we all need the money.”
“That we do. Arrogant guy?”
“Let’s say that I don’t like the way he treats people. On an . . . institutional scale.” Whoa, girl, she told herself. Lose the bitter and get back to reckless. More attractive, and a whole lot more fun. Trust her to meet a truly prime specimen of manflesh for once and immediately put him off. “So I’m sure I shouldn’t jump off his rocks. But hey, what’s life without a little danger?” There, that was better.
“Now, see, darlin’,” he said, his voice getting even deeper, the accent going a shade richer, “that’s what I tell myself all the time. It’s a real shame that so few people think like us.”
Author Bio:
Sign up for my newsletter and never miss a release, special, or free book! http://www.rosalindjames.com/mail-list
Yes, ALL the books are stand-alones except JUST ONCE MORE and FRACTURED.
Rosalind James, a publishing industry veteran and former marketing executive, is an author of Contemporary Romance and Romantic Suspense novels published both independently and through Montlake Romance. She was raised in North Idaho, but now lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband and a Labrador Retriever named Charlie. Rosalind attributes her surprising success to the fact that “lots of people would like to escape to New Zealand! I know I did!”
Visit www.rosalindjames.com to listen to the songs from the New Zealand books, follow characters on their travels, watch funny and fascinating New Zealand videos, and learn about what’s new.
This is my fourth book in the series, Turning To Stone by Gabriel Valjan and each book got better and better.
4 Stars
Gabriel Valjan lives in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of the Roma Series, available from Winter Goose Publishing. Gabriel has also written numerous short stories and essays found online and in print.
Look on the right sidebar and let’ talk.
The Friday 56 is hosted by 
so of the book you are reading along with you initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.
$100 Amazon Gift Card or Paypal Cash Giveaway
