Despite the jet-lag (fly­ing from Seat­tle to Boston ain’t no quick hop), the sleep-deprivation (per­haps I shouldn’t have had all that wine at the hotel bar the night before the book sign­ing) and being totally out my league (watch­ing the big authors like Colleen Hoover and SC Stephens, I was kind of freak­ing out), the Boston Author Event was a com­plete success.

Yes, I was loopy and exhausted. Yes, over a thou­sand peo­ple had to wait in the frick­ing freez­ing cold for hours just to meet the authors. Yes, I ran out of books pretty much right away (I hon­estly didn’t think any­one would want to buy Sins & Nee­dles!). But man, was it fun.

Nat­u­rally it was great to meet fel­low authors I like and admire, such as Made­line Shee­han, E.L. Montes, Amber Lynn Natusch, Kendall Grey. It was just as good to meet the blog­gers I love such as Autumn from the Autumn Review, Aes­tas, Chris­tine from Cocaine and Cup­cakes, Megan from the Book Asy­lum (who helped put on the fab event), Kait from YA Vix­ens, Taryn from My Secret Romance, Sherre from Beck­oned by Books and more. But the BEST part was meet­ing fans, many who trav­eled just to see me, many whom I’d talked to before but never got a chance to meet, peo­ple like the EIT street team (Robin, Megan, Brenna and now Stephanie), Paula, San­dra, Jamie, Tressa, Nicole and count­less oth­ers. I also got to meet new fans, which was really cool. REALLY REALLY COOL.

The event was well-organized (albeit slightly chaotic) thanks to the vol­un­teers like Becky and Sarah, Mari­bel, Katie, Heather and more who were firm and tire­less with the bur­geon­ing crowd. Hell, they did a bet­ter job than some of the secu­rity team!

And I had the best table part­ner in the world, my fiance Scott, who fed me, gave me water, snuck me in Jack Daniels, han­dled the cash and man­aged to take a pic­tures of many of the peo­ple who came to see me. He even signed a book or two haha (for the Dex lovers).

So, with­out fur­ther ado, here are the photos…you’ll grow tired of see­ing my face after the third pic­ture lol (and watch for the awe­some Red Rum neck­lace Robin gave me!)

How AWESOME is this beau­ti­ful Sins & Nee­dles card she made me??

On Every Street is now live on Ama­zon and Smash­words - just 99 cents for release week

Two things to make this Fri­day more awesome:

The win­ner of the Dex Prize pack (which included a whole bunch of awe­some Dex merch…hopefully the win­ner can give us a pic­ture of her and all the merch when she gets it)…is.…

Holly, who left this com­ment on why Dex should be her book BF:

Dex is hands down my book boyfriend of the year. Because I haven’t felt this drawn to a char­ac­ter in…well a damn long time, if ever. He is a snarky son of a bitch, acts like he’s a badass, but most of the time he is far more vul­ner­a­ble than he wants any­one to know he is. I love the fact that he now embraces his feel­ings for Perry and strives to be a good enough man to deserve her. And hell…I love how truly per­verted and twisted he is. Just when I think I have him all fig­ured out, he throws another curve ball in the mix. And I love that.

So.…to sum up. Dex is my ulti­mate book boyfriend. He might be a saras­tic ass­hat at times, but I love him just the same.

CONGRATS HOLLY! I’ll be email­ing you!

OH and you wanted a lengthy ON EVERY STREET TEASER? Check out Maryse’s book blog NOW.

So the peo­ple have spoken…you want this first chap­ter. And I must deliver.

Keep in mind that this takes place six years before Sins & Nee­dles. As such, it doesn’t con­tain any spoil­ers for those who haven’t read Sins & Needles…I’ve engi­neered On Every Street so that it could act like a standalone.

Enjoy!

On Every Street — An Artists Tril­ogy Pre­quel Novella #0.5 — com­ing March 12

(unpub­lished ver­sion, sub­ject to change)

CHAPTER ONE

I’d been watch­ing the man for almost a month now, the exotic man with the peridot-colored eyes. From a dis­tance they’d always sparkled like the gem­stones, but now that I was in the same room with him, I could see they had an amber tinge to them, ren­der­ing them almost reptilian.

That should have been my first warn­ing, that this was all a hor­ri­ble idea. It was too risky and I was too emo­tion­ally involved. But I felt I didn’t have a choice. The man with the yellow-green eyes was just feet away from me, rep­re­sent­ing the first step toward free­dom. Vengeance was a ter­ri­ble prison.

“Can I help you, miss sun­shine?” the bald­ing clerk at the counter asked, cut­ting into my thoughts. I tore my eyes away from the man, who was now sit­ting with a cup of tea in the cor­ner, and looked at the clerk with an awk­ward smile. I felt a flush heat my cheeks, know­ing I’d been caught star­ing. What had Gus taught me again? Never let your thoughts drift. Guess at the time I hadn’t known I’d be stalk­ing a Latino heartthrob.

“Yes, sorry,” I replied dumbly. “Can I get a medium latte? Please?”

He nod­ded, flash­ing me a warm smile as I handed over the exact change. I stuffed a dol­lar into the tip jar, mak­ing sure he saw it before he started on my cof­fee. Peo­ple in Mis­sis­sippi were as friendly as they ever were, way friend­lier than back in Cal­i­for­nia. It felt like I was vis­it­ing the state for the first time, despite hav­ing lived here for a few years when I was a child. But I sup­pose life col­ors how you see the world, and the Mis­sis­sippi I knew back then was com­pletely black and white. Now there was a hue, that dan­ger­ous cit­ron I could feel on my back.

I took in a deep breath and resisted the urge to turn around. Instead, I pulled up my long blonde hair that was stick­ing to my sweaty neck and glanced out the door of the cof­fee shop. My rusted Chevy truck was sit­ting just out of view. I won­dered if I was get­ting too ahead of myself. I’d been fol­low­ing the man from his house to his, well, work, nearly every day, and there was a huge chance that he’d rec­og­nize me or my truck. I had been care­ful, remem­ber­ing every­thing that Gus had drilled into my head, even remem­ber­ing what my par­ents had once taught me, that there was no room for error in a con. But this was unlike any con I’d done in the last few months. This was the big one. This was the one that meant some­thing. This meant hav­ing my life back.

I could still feel his eyes though, burn­ing into me, like my back was as flam­ma­ble as parch­ment paper. I had to remind myself it didn’t mean he knew. I was wear­ing my most ass-supporting jeans and a tissue-thin tank top that showed off my tan. My hair was nat­u­rally blonde, but I’d got­ten a few lay­ers cut in and cham­pagne high­lights added just the other day. My makeup was as nat­ural as I could muster with­out being bor­ing. I’d pre­pared for today because I wanted the man to stare at me. I wanted his atten­tion because he sure as hell had mine.

The clerk handed over my cof­fee, and I took a quick sip before gath­er­ing my courage. This would go down a hell of a lot bet­ter with whisky in it. I slowly turned around and let my gaze do a sweep of the room, as if I was look­ing for some­where to sit. The man was no longer star­ing at me—perhaps he never was—and was relax­ing in the wicker chair, flip­ping through a mag­a­zine. He held his cup of tea in such a way that it exposed his large watch. Even from where I was stand­ing, I knew the thing had prob­a­bly cost a for­tune. When I was younger my par­ents taught me how to spot the real ones from the fake ones. They’d also taught me how to steal them.

The man was the epit­ome of the word debonair. The watch, com­bined with his smooth linen shirt and clean, dark jeans, sug­gested under­stated ele­gance, a man from money. But his pose, the way he held him­self, reminded me of a lion on his down time, rel­ish­ing his relax­ation, know­ing he still ruled the land. I’d had such thoughts about him before, but now, up close, I could just feel the power vibrat­ing off of him, fill­ing the room.

I wasn’t the only one to notice this either. Men in the café shot him curi­ous glances, as if they should know who he was, while the women timidly tucked their hair behind their ears, eyes dart­ing to him and back again. I couldn’t blame them. The man wasn’t stereo­typ­i­cally hand­some and yet you couldn’t stop star­ing at him. At least I couldn’t. And that was going to be a problem.

I spied a cou­ple get­ting up from the couch near­est to him and took the oppor­tu­nity. I walked slowly over, and gen­tly, ever so casu­ally, took my seat on the couch. I placed my cof­fee on the table that sat between us, tak­ing a moment to let my eyes feast on him. He was so close now, just a cou­ple of feet between us. I felt like I was at the zoo, the glass between me and the beast sud­denly removed.

He was even more strik­ing from this dis­tance. His eyes moved back and forth as they scanned the page, spark­ing with intel­li­gence, the color of bud­ding leaves. His mouth was wide, twisted in a smirk, and his nose looked slightly too wide for his face and had obvi­ously been bro­ken a few times. His skin was golden and so smooth that I had to recal­cu­late how old he was. Per­haps he was closer to my age than I had orig­i­nally thought. Still, he didn’t look like any twenty-year-old. He didn’t look like any­one I’d ever seen before.

He brushed his shaggy dark hair behind his ears, his palm graz­ing his cheek­bones, and I had the chance to look away. To not get caught gawk­ing at him. To save myself. But I couldn’t help it. I was naïve and young and caught in the spark that would cre­ate the flames.

He looked up from his mag­a­zine and our eyes met. I’ve never believed in love at first sight. I barely believed in lust at first sight. I didn’t believe in any­thing except right­ing all the wrongs in my life. But at that moment, this man saw me. The real me under­neath the bomb­shell mask. I felt like he must have seen everything.

And that’s who his smile was for. It reached through me and did some­thing to my heart, to my lungs, to my nerves. It pulled at me, tugged some­where deep inside, like a win­dow shade being drawn open. It was dan­ger­ous to love that feel­ing, but I did.

“Hello,” he said, his Mex­i­can accent light and melodic. His teeth were white, his smile cap­ti­vat­ing, and it took every brain cell to remem­ber why I was there and what I was doing. And that my name was no longer Ellie Watt. It was Eden White. And I had a job to do.

I gave him a pretty smile and knew that damn flush was com­ing back on my cheeks. I had inex­pe­ri­ence writ­ten all over my face.

“Hi,” I replied, lean­ing for­ward to pick up my cof­fee, hop­ing that he’d get a good look at my chest. I didn’t have the biggest breasts, but they looked down­right perky in this top, and I was cer­tain that I could poke his eyes out with my nip­ples. Thank god for air conditioning.

But his eyes never strayed from mine. Either this man had man­ners or he wasn’t into women. I’d never con­sid­ered that sce­nario in the last cou­ple of weeks. Per­haps my attempt to get to know him would back­fire. What use was hav­ing wom­anly charms if he pre­ferred them the cock variety?

“I’m Javier,” he said, extend­ing his hand with the watch on it, the rich brown leather gleam­ing under the lights.

Javier. He now had a name. And from the way his eyes were still cut­ting into mine, how his grin lit up his face like he’d just won the lot­tery, I knew Javier wasn’t immune to women after all.

I ignored the but­ter­flies in my core and placed my hand in his. His shake was strong and warm with confidence.

“I’m Eden,” I said, try­ing to feed off his self-assurance. I was Eden now. It had taken me a while to get used to my fake name, but now it was slip­ping on like fine silk. Maybe pre­tend­ing to be some­one else would be eas­ier than I thought.

His thumb rubbed against my knuckle, softly and sweetly, before he let go of my hand. I fought the urge to bite my lip. The young school­girl shit prob­a­bly wouldn’t jibe with him, even though that’s really all I was. I wasn’t in school, but around men I was as green as a young filly. And this man’s touch was ignit­ing some­thing in me that I’d never felt before.

“Nice to meet you, Eden,” he said smoothly. I watched his mouth as he talked, feel­ing a blan­ket of warmth coat me as he pro­nounced my new name. Shit. I was sup­posed to be seduc­ing him, wasn’t I? Not the other way around.

“So what brings you here?” he asked, lean­ing for­ward on his knees, his hands clasped together.

I swal­lowed hard and raised my cup at him. “Cof­fee?” My heart began to beat louder, whoosh­ing in my ears.

He smirked. “I can see that. It’s just that I’ve never seen you here before. I come here every day and I think I’d remem­ber some­one as beau­ti­ful as you.”

Oh, this Javier—he was good. It didn’t sur­prise me, con­sid­er­ing the way I’d seen him act­ing at his “job.” Or, to put it bet­ter, the way his col­leagues acted around him. I should have known he’d be a smooth oper­a­tor with the ladies.

I quickly recalled my story. “I just moved to Ocean Springs and thought I’d check this place out. Seems to be one of the more pop­u­lar cof­fee shops.”

The cor­ner of his mouth twitched and his eyes nar­rowed devi­ously as he appraised what I said. I swear, my heart could have replaced the drum­mer for Slayer at that moment.

“Inter­est­ing,” he commented.

Inter­est­ing, I think I’ve seen you in your truck, sit­ting out­side my boss’s house all day? Inter­est­ing, I think you’ve used a fake name? Inter­est­ing, I think you’re lying through your teeth? I was pre­pared for him to elab­o­rate by say­ing any of those.

But he tilted his head, a small gold chain neck­lace nes­tled in his shirt col­lar catch­ing my eye, and said with a low­ered voice, “Do you believe in fate, Eden?”

Well that caught me off guard. Maybe that was his inten­tion. I frowned and straight­ened up, unsure how to pla­cate this strange animal.

“Some­times I do,” I man­aged to say, try­ing to keep the breezi­ness in my voice.

“I think it was fate that brought you to me today,” he said. The hairs at the back of my neck stood straight up and I knew I couldn’t blame the air con­di­tion­ing on that.

“You do?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

He nod­ded, cool and con­fi­dent. He sat back in his chair and drummed his fin­gers on his leg, watch­ing me so closely, too closely.

“I think you’ll look back at this in a few years and you’ll know what I know.”

“And what’s that?” I asked, for­get­ting every­thing I’d been plan­ning to do, just so com­pletely and utterly enthralled.

“You’ll have to find out for your­self. Bet­ter yet, I can get you started. This Friday.”

My face must have looked blank because he went on with a wry smile, “I’m going to take you out on a date.”

Shit. That was fast.  That was easy. And extremely cocky of him.

“How do you know I don’t have a boyfriend?” I asked him, won­der­ing if my sin­gle­dom and vir­gin­hood was stamped all over me.

“Because I don’t believe in acci­dents,” he said, lick­ing his lips. “But I do believe you’ll say yes.”

I had half a nerve to make my lie worse, to tell him I had a boyfriend and that I didn’t want to go out with him, a total stranger. But that would defeat the whole pur­pose of the long con, the rea­son I had sought him out. Besides, those lips and those eyes, that swag­ger in his lilt­ing voice, was ignit­ing a fire in me where I’d never been burn­ing before.

I was doomed.

“Okay,” I said shyly. He gave me that prize-winning grin again and pulled out a busi­ness card from his full wal­let, hand­ing it to me.

I turned it over in my hands, feel­ing the grooved paper.

“Javier Bernal,” I read out loud. “Consultant.”

And that was it. Just his phone number.

“Who do you con­sult?” I asked, look­ing up at him.

I could have sworn his face went rigid for a sec­ond, but maybe because I was look­ing for it. Maybe because I knew he wasn’t a con­sul­tant. Maybe because I knew who he really was, part of a drug car­tel, work­ing as a hench­man for one of the most pow­er­ful drug lords on the Gulf Coast. Maybe because I knew he had more secrets to hide than I did.

But he just shrugged and said, “Peo­ple who need it.”

He got out of his chair with all the ease of a pan­ther and tapped the card with a well-manicured fin­ger. “Call me. Soon.”

Then he left the store, toss­ing his tea in the waste­bas­ket with­out looking.

It took a good few min­utes for me to calm down and get my heart­beat back to an accept­able level. Ever since I left Cal­i­for­nia and came here, I knew what I had set out to do. I had pre­pared for it as much as I could. I was going to find Travis, the man who scarred me as a child when my parent’s scam went wrong. I was going to get to him by seduc­ing some­one close to him, some­one who could get me in close. Then I was going to have my revenge, the only thing that had kept me going over the years.

It’s just when I choose Javier as my mark, I never thought my mark would choose me. Because that’s what Javier had just done. I wanted to win over his heart so I could get what I wanted. But I had a feel­ing he was about to get to my heart first.