|
Genres: Contemporary
Heat Level: 2
Length: Extended Amber Kiss (12k words)
For young Nona Hartley, sophisticated businessman Jude Danzig seems the perfect choice for her first lover. What begins as mutual attraction rapidly spirals into an intensely physical affair, yet when Nona confesses her growing emotional attachment, she is devastated to learn Jude could care less. Nona flees Miami, determined to forget him.
Two years later, Nona is stunned to see a man walking down her street, and even more dismayed when he stands on her front lawn in a thunderstorm, staring at her house. Is it really Jude, and if so, why is he here?
And does she still care?
When she learns Jude has bought a local competitor's citrus grove, all bets are off. What's worse is realizing her feelings for Jude are unchanged even after so long apart. Memories of his rejection sting, but this time there's a difference: Jude reveals the dark secret tainting his life. Can they set aside painful memories and reach a place where neither is unloved?
~ Purchase ~
Read a short excerpt...
...Deep gray clouds swelled behind the jasmine vines. The contrast caught her eye, so she turned back to her room for her easel and the tin of watercolors she kept for quick sketches. After returning to the veranda, she quickly captured the ominous bulging outlines of the clouds before becoming distracted by a dark-haired man far down the street. He stood for a while in front of the Brinkley place, hands on his hips in a way that plucked a strand of memory in Nona. She frowned and set down the brush, gripping the railing and leaning out to look at the man in his blue shirt. He began to walk down the street, and only two houses away he crossed at the corner and turned toward the Hartley house, set back from the street among its trees.
A few fat drops of rain struck her. She listened to the thunder, wondering what sensible man would be out with such a storm coming, then he was close enough for her to see his face.
That face—the same one she still found herself sketching from memory.
Nona flinched back behind the thick screen of the jasmine and closed her eyes against a storm of memories. Touches. Kisses. Rooms with tall open windows and blowing green sheers. A bed with crisp brown sheets. Dark eyes above her, dark hair across a damp brow. A mouth taut with passion. Long-fingered hands.
Jude.
Jude Danzig.
Here, in Brookton. On her very street.
Nona gave a convulsive shiver and felt all the downy hairs on her body rise. She told herself it had been an experiment, nothing more. She had decided at twenty-three it was past time to get rid of her troublesome virginity, to discover for herself whether what she’d heard about men and sex was true.
It hadn’t been a lie. Jude’s passion was like the storm surge accompanying a hurricane, a tide that made her frighteningly aware of the hugeness of the ocean behind it, and Nona found herself unable to fight it...
|
