Welcome to Mystic, Texas, where the past stays alive in more ways than one.
Vanessa Power, a budding Indie Romance author, believes the town is calling her name, being the new life and fresh start she’s craving. She’s met an amazing group of women who have a regular book club, reading only Indie Authors. Unfortunately, her new house is in worse shape than she thought and holds more mysteries than she’s prepared for. And then there’s the handyman.
Linc Patterson holds more mysteries than her house and the town combined, with a past he won’t reveal in a package which is built for nothing short of sin.
Linc is captivated by his new boss, the only person in town who will give him a job, but only because she doesn’t know he’s an ex-con. Can he keep his past locked away, while at the same time indulging in his fantasies with the pleasantly curvy and deliciously sexy Vanessa? Probably not.
They are both looking for a new start in life. Will they be able to find it together? Or will something sinister keep them apart?
Excerpt:
Later, Vanessa was downstairs painting, when Linc called out to her. She hadn’t been imagining him upstairs, sweaty, at all. His grunts as he moved heavy pieces around hadn’t affected her in the least. So when he yelled her name, she didn’t totally run to do his bidding.
Lies.
She tried not to look too eager as she stuck her head around the door where he worked. Linc was standing there in a pair of low-slung jeans, showing off a beautiful torso that made her mouth dry. She still couldn’t get used to it.
“Can you hold this sheetrock up there while I screw it in?” He’d apparently finished the floors in this room and was moving on to the ceilings.
Unable to squeak out an answer, she nodded and went to the ladder he had set up.
“Be really still. This scaffolding isn’t real sturdy,” he cautioned as he held it while Vanessa not-so-elegantly climbed up. The sheetrock was propped up with wood pieces, so she wouldn’t have to bear the entire weight of it herself, which was probably a good thing. Vanessa got into place and reached up to hold the sheetrock flush against the ceiling, and Linc climbed up and stood behind her.
Oh. God.
His body heat against her back was intense and warmed her all over. It was like suddenly being inside of an oven as Linc was surrounding her. He put his hands over hers and adjusted the sheetrock a bit, aligning it to the corner while sparks of energy flowed from his hands up her arm, like a shock. As he reached around her with the electric screwdriver, she could smell him—his clean sweat—musky and sweet—laced with the scent of leather and aftershave. It made her lightheaded. She couldn’t stop watching his arms as the muscles undulated under the skin with effortless power. His breaths in her ear sent tingles throughout her body, and Vanessa had a hard time being still, wanting to rub her thighs together to stop the pooling moisture in her panties from running down her thighs.
Yeah. She thought she had repressed all this wanting to rub on him like a cat in heat business, but now it was back in full force. But he had been mostly professional and she wasn’t going to be the one to break the professionalism between them. So she didn’t act on her impulses.
Besides, he’d been so frustrated about the book earlier. And his bi-polar mood swings were ridiculous. Sometimes, he didn’t even look at her, and others, like now, he was all over her. And he was her employee, so she couldn’t beg him to screw her like she wanted to. It would ruin everything, right?
Even if she longed to turn around on the ladder and lick him all over.
“Good… That’s real good,” he murmured in her ear as he fastened the sheetrock to the ceiling, sending all sorts of erotic thoughts through her head before inhaling deeply behind her. Goose bumps erupted across her skin, and it took everything inside her to not whimper. The ease with which he’d screwed the panel of material to the ceiling suggested she might not be necessary in this whole process, but she wasn’t going to say so.
Resting his hand at her hip, he maneuvered her across the scaffolding, as if she were a dainty little thing. “Other end?”
“Sure,” she managed to squeak. And they did it all over again, seven more times. Vanessa was a weak puddle of goo by the time they had finished. And the look Linc gave her when they’d climbed off the scaffolding was loaded. Heated. Anything but professional.
She had no fucking idea what to do with it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anne has written her entire life and has the boxes of angst-filled journals and poetry to prove it. She’s been writing for public consumption for the last four years. Currently, shehas four romance series. In Stories of Serendipity, she explores real people living real lives in small town Texas in a contemporary romance setting. In The Four Winds, she chronicles God’s four closest archangels, Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael, falling in love and becoming human. In Pierce Securities, she gives us Ryan, Evan, Miriam, Zack, Quinten, and Simon. Her newest series, Book B!tches, is all about a group of women in Mystic, Texas who get into all sorts of shenanigans. She lives in rural East Texas with her husband and children in her own private oasis, where she prides herself in her complete lack of social skills, choosing instead to live with the people inside her head.
