COVER REVEALEXCERPTBLURB for LOVE, IN ENGLISH

LIE full cover final jpgLove, in English

This is not sus­pense or hor­ror or a series. It is 100% stand­alone, pure NA con­tem­po­rary romance! Pub date: April 22, 2014

Syn­op­sis:

He’s thirty-eight. I’m twenty-three.

He speaks Span­ish. I speak English.

He lives in Spain. I live in Canada.

He dresses in thousand-dollar suits. I’m cov­ered in tattoos.

He’s mar­ried and has a five-year old daughter.

I’m sin­gle and can’t com­mit to any­one or anything.

Until now.Because when they say you can’t choose who you fall in love with, boy ain’t that the f*#king truth.

***

To a rest­less dreamer like Vera Miles, it sounded like the expe­ri­ence of a life­time. Instead of spend­ing her sum­mer intern­ing for her astron­omy major, she would fly to Spain where she’d spend a few weeks teach­ing con­ver­sa­tional Eng­lish to busi­ness­men and women, all while enjoy­ing free room and board at an iso­lated resort. But while Vera expected to get a tan, meet new peo­ple and stuff her­self with wine and paella, she never expected to fall in love.

Mateo is unlike any­one Vera has ever known, let alone any­one she’s usu­ally attracted to. While Vera is a pierced and tat­ted free spirit with a love for music and free­dom, Mateo Casales is a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man from Madrid, all sharp suits and cocky Latino charm. Yet, as the weeks go on, the two grow increas­ingly close and their rela­tion­ship changes from purely pla­tonic to something…more.

Some­thing that makes Vera feel alive for the first time.

Some­thing that can never, ever be.

Or so she thinks.

 

*unedited* EXCERPT!

The silence crack­led above our heads like a live wire. I could feel Jorge’s eyes on us as he reluc­tantly placed Mateo’s drink on the table and walked away. Part of me wished for him to come back, to break up the ten­sion and the star­tling inten­sity in Mateo’s eyes. The other part was self­ishly glad Jorge was leav­ing us in peace. When he dis­ap­peared back into the restau­rant, Mateo and I were the only ones on the patio.

I broke away from his eyes, focus­ing instead on his bot­tle of Aguila and the con­den­sa­tion that ran down the sides, look­ing bliss­fully cool in the sticky night air. Through all the weeks of jok­ing, talk­ing, the inno­cent phys­i­cal con­tact, now I was astutely ner­vous about being alone with him. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of him – I was afraid of me. Ever since that remark at din­ner, I’d been afraid of what I’d do to him, how I’d break that moral code I promised for myself.

He’s mar­ried, he’s mar­ried, he’s mar­ried, I told myself, watch­ing a drop of water race from the beer to the table. His wife is beau­ti­ful and lovely, his daugh­ter is sweet and you aren’t either of those things.

But I could only tell myself that so many times.

Vera,” he said thickly. “Vera, look at me.” His voice was com­mand­ing, reach­ing a depth I hadn’t heard before.

My eyes slowly slid over to him. I tried to speak but could only suck in my lip, prob­a­bly tak­ing all my lip­stick off.

Show me the stars again,” he said. His eyes speared me like noth­ing else, his face becom­ing dan­ger­ously handsome.

I looked up to the clear sky, to see the stars, but he reached out and grabbed my hand. His touch was hot, like his fin­gers were sear­ing into my skin, that feel­ing of enter­ing a hot tub on a cold night. I couldn’t help the shiver that ran gen­tly down my spine.

Not those stars,” he said huskily, lean­ing for­ward. His lips were wet and slightly open. “Your stars. Why I call you Estrella.”

I swal­lowed hard, my pulse burn­ing along. I turned around in my chair so my back was to him and lifted up my hair, gath­er­ing it on the top of my head.

His chair scraped loudly on the ground as he got up, a sound that struck a new kind of fear in me.

No. Not fear.

Antic­i­pa­tion.

I heard him stop right behind me. I held my breath, won­der­ing what he was going to do.

One rough fin­ger pressed down against the back of my neck, right on the spine where the tat­too began. I closed my eyes to the feel­ing, the cur­rents it caused, trav­el­ing all the way down, mak­ing me wet. Jesus, I needed to get a hold of myself.

What star is this?” he asked, sound­ing like silk. I could wrap myself in his voice.

Alpharatz,” I whis­pered, as if I was let­ting him in on a secret. Maybe I was.

His fin­ger slid diag­o­nally down, a trail of fire across the Pega­sus line. “And this one?”

Markab.”

Why Pega­sus?”

I paused, the truth on my lips. Fuck it. We’d been noth­ing but hon­est with each other. “Because I want to fly free. And there’s no place higher than the stars.”

He didn’t say any­thing for a few beats. I was tempted to turn around, to look at him, but I didn’t want him to take his fin­ger off my neck. I was leav­ing in three days. He was going back to his fam­ily. This was all I had, his skin on my stars.

He leaned in, his hot breath at my neck. “Are you afraid that love will clip your wings?”

His words sank into me, mak­ing my blood buzz. Love. This was too haz­ardous a sub­ject to dis­cuss with him, not now. Not ever. With my breath shak­ing, I inched my neck away from his mouth and turned to face him.

No,” I said, look­ing him straight in the eye. “I’m afraid that los­ing love will.”

His expres­sion soft­ened. He looked at my lips, his beau­ti­fully long eye­lashes cast­ing shad­ows on his tawny skin.

Then that makes two of us,” he whis­pered softly and for a long sec­ond I thought he was going to get it over with and finally kiss me, put an end to this strain between us, the yearn­ing that made me ache inside. But he straight­ened up, his gaze avoid­ing mine, and went to retrieve his beer from the table.