Happy Independence Day! Okay, so the actual holiday is
tomorrow and you, reader, may not be American. But it is a huge holiday here.
We celebrate with bar-b-ques, swimming, and fireworks. I hope I'll be
celebrating tomorrow with family.
In my Decadent book, Liar,
Liar, the American couple doesn’t have time to celebrate holidays. Bounty
hunter Grady Cooper and victims’ advocate Devin McQueen are too busy making the
streets safe so everyone else can enjoy food from a grill and fancy color designs
in the sky. But don’t worry about them. They create enough sparks with each
other. Why? In addition to the sizzling sexual tension between them from the
moment they meet, they are both after the same person and neither of them wants
to give in to the other.
Blurb:
Unable to protect her
mother from her father as a child, Devin McQueen has made it her mission as an
adult to protect as many abused women and children as she can. The rare moments
she’s not consumed with work as a victims’ advocate, she limits her
involvements to safe, predictable men….until she meets bounty hunter Grady
Cooper. He is big, bold, brash, and has no problem speaking his mind.
Growing up in a broken home, Grady realized early on that good
deeds had a price. To survive, he learned to weigh every decision by what
he could gain. Unfortunately, the
successful, solitary life he’s worked so hard to create spins out of control
when demons from his past shake his confidence. His boss has given him one
last chance—bring in Devin’s latest client quickly, and quietly and maybe he’ll
still have a job. It didn’t sound unreasonable until he met Devin.
Suddenly, Grady must make a decision: save his
career or follow his heart?
Excerpt:
If Grady Cooper had any hope of
salvaging his professional reputation, he needed to charm Devin McQueen into
giving him what she’d never given any other man.
He tucked his keys into his
cargo shorts, stared up at the five-story office building and cursed the
humidity.
And his dilemma.
Needing anyone was bad enough.
Being forced to rely on a complete stranger to help prove he wasn’t a menace to
society was as appealing as the Red Sox using his head for batting practice.
If she refused to help him, he’d lose his job for sure.
“That’s not going to happen,” he
whispered. He’d do whatever he had to, promise her the world even, to get
himself out of this mess and restore his reputation. By the time she realized
he had no intention of honoring his pledge, he’d be a free man and he could get
back to chasing the bad guys instead of being labeled one.
Whatever it took.
He pushed the glass door open
and flew up the stairs two at a time to the third floor. As he walked down the
hallway, he glanced at the business names on the doors: law offices, non-profit
offices, save the bleeding heart offices. Rooms of people he’d probably chased
a bail jumper for at one time or another.
Loud thumps filtered into the
hallway from somewhere up ahead.
The hairs on the back of his
neck stood up. Trade rule number one: Always expect the worst. Still, the
noises could have been any number of things: a fallen chair, a muffled
voicemail message, boxes of printer paper being dropped. It could have been
nothing connected to this woman.
As he got closer to the door
with Soul Survivors carved on it, the name of McQueen’s business, the noises
got louder. Glass shattered. A series of thumps passed from behind the door. A
woman’s voice flew through the walls like a high-pitched war cry.
What if someone wanted Devin
McQueen even more than Grady did?
Too bad. He had to put his own
needs first.
Adrenaline pushed him. He turned
the doorknob.
Damn it. Locked.
He shoved his shoulder against
the wooden door. It budged. Barely. Inside, more glass broke. A male voice
growled through a string of swear words.
Whoever stood on the other side
of this door could not have her.
Grady gritted his teeth and
jammed his shoulder against the door again. This time, it flew open and hurled
him into the office.
Silence reigned across the room. With
his shoulder throbbing, he scanned the scene. One upended chair, one thug
cradling his nuts, the other, older one, bleeding from his nose and one
wild-eyed woman in the center of it all. The bleeding man had his arms wrapped
around the woman’s chest, crushing her…assets under his forearms.
Grady bit back a grin. If this was Devin McQueen, then some
of the rumors were true. She could hold her own. But now she didn’t need
to. “What’s the matter, guys? Couldn’t find anyone your own size to pick on?”
Bio:
Alexa Bourne
is a teacher by day and a romance writer by nights, weekends, and all school
holidays. She also teaches online classes for writers throughout the year. She
writes romantic suspense and contemporary romance and is thrilled to have the
chance to share her stories with readers everywhere.
When she’s
not concocting sinister plots and steamy love scenes or traveling and exploring
new cultures, Alexa spends her time reading, watching brainless TV, and
thinking about exercising. Okay, she also spends way too much time interacting
with readers and writers on social media sites. But don’t tell her editors!
Find out more about her and her books on her website, www.alexabourne.com.
Website: www.alexabourne.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlexaBourne
#alexabourne, #decadentpub
2 comments:
Awesome post!
Thanks, Teri!
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