Wednesday 26 July 2017

Excerpt Reveal: Ready To Run by Lauren Layne



Ready to Run
I Do, I Don't #1
By: Lauren Layne
Releasing August 22, 2017
Loveswept
Ready to Run

I Do, I Don't series


The Bachelor meets The Runaway Bride in this addictive romance novel about a reality TV producer falling for her would-be star: a Montana heartthrob who wants nothing to do with the show.

Jordan Carpenter thinks she’s finally found the perfect candidate for Jilted, a new dating show about runaway grooms: Luke Elliott, a playboy firefighter who’s left not one but three brides at the altar. The only problem? Luke refuses to answer Jordan’s emails or return her calls. Which is how she ends up on a flight to Montana to recruit him in person. It’s not Manhattan but at least the locals in Lucky Hollow seem friendly . . . except for Luke, who’s more intense—and way hotter—than the slick womanizer Jordan expected.

Eager to put the past behind him, Luke has zero intention of following this gorgeous, fast-talking city girl back to New York. But before he can send her packing, Jordan’s everywhere: at his favorite bar, the county fair, even his exes’ book club. Annoyingly, everyone in Lucky Hollow seems to like her—and deep down, she’s starting to grow on him too. But the more he fights her constant pestering, the more Luke finds himself wishing that Jordan would kick off her high heels and make herself comfortable in his arms.
Damn. Charlie hadn’t been lying about the hot blonde.
The woman walking straight toward him was all tight jeans, high heels, and confi-dence. And hot. Very, very hot.
Charlie muttered something admiring under his breath, and Luke’s gaze flicked to the man beside the woman. Tried to place him. Couldn’t.
Not too many guys around here who wore light-purple shirts and white pants with the same easy comfort that Lucky Hollow residents wore jeans and flannel.
No doubt about it—neither was from around here. Not by a long shot.
The man was a half step behind the woman, and Luke assessed that the woman was calling the shots.
His eyes narrowed as he realized that she hadn’t once wavered in her approach.
She knew what she was after:
Him.
She got closer and Luke saw that the face matched the body. Wide blue eyes, full lips, sassy shoulder-length blond hair that was just tousled enough to make a man wonder how it had gotten that way—to want to be the one to muss it.
Her gaze flicked over him, and Charlie whistled and muttered under his breath. “She just checked you out, man.”
She had indeed, but Luke was far from flattered. It hadn’t been the assessment of a woman checking out a man so much as a predator evaluating its prey.
As though she was evaluating him for . . . something.
Blondie stopped in front of him, and the second her blue eyes locked on his, Luke felt a little jolt of awareness and was irrationally annoyed. It had been a long time since he’d been quite so aware of a woman.
Once, he’d enjoyed the feeling—sexual chemistry was almost the perfect combination of pain and pleasure. A subtle punch in the gut that you wanted to experience again and again.
These days, though, he was having a hard time getting past the pain part. The shitty parts had outweighed the good parts just one time too many. Now he mostly settled for casual hookups with a divorcée a few towns over who was even less interested in com-mitment than Luke was.
He had zero use for attraction to a pretty, bold woman in high heels.
Luke noticed that for a sheer moment she had a slightly off-balance look, as though she too had felt the annoying zip of arousal when their eyes met, but she recovered quick-ly.
Pasting a sunny, generic smile on her face, she stuck out her right hand. “Luke Elliott. I’m Jordan Carpenter. This is my colleague, Simon Nash.”
Good manners had him setting down his equipment and extending his own right hand toward hers even as his brain caught on her name. Familiar, and . . .
Shit. Shit!
He managed to stop from jerking his hand back, but just barely. Instead, he gritted his teeth, gave her hand a perfunctory shake, and then fixed her with a glare. “You’re wasting your time, Ms. Carpenter. And mine.”
Blue eyes narrowed. “Aha. So you did get my emails.”
Those. The voicemails. The letters.
Sure,” he said with a nod, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Just like I suspect you got the message that I didn’t want to be a part of your show.”
Charlie looked from the woman to Luke and back again. “Show?”
Ryan ambled over, his shit-eating grin telling Luke that this damn woman had already spilled the beans on why she was here. “Luke’s gonna be a national heartthrob.”
International,” said the blond guy in the purple shirt.
Jordan Carpenter didn’t look at her companion, but all three firefighters did.
The other man gave the sort of easy smile that probably had him making friends easily. Luke didn’t want a new friend.

Especially not one who wanted to use his shitty romantic past for the sake of TV ratings.


     AMAZON | B & N | GOOGLE | ITUNES | KOBO
RUNAWAY GROOM (Book 2)

JUST RUN WITH IT (Book 3)
Lauren Layne is the New York Times bestselling author of romantic comedies. She lives in New York City with her husband.
A former e-commerce and web marketing manager from Seattle, Lauren relocated to New York City in 2011 to pursue a full-time writing career. She signed with her agent in 2012, and her first book was published in summer of 2013. Since then, she's written over two dozen books, hitting the USA TODAYNew York Times, iBooks, and Amazon bestseller lists.
WEBSITE   |   FACEBOOK  |   TWITTER  |   GOODREADS
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New Release Spotlight: Lucky Charmed by Sharla Lovelace

Click on the above image to follow the blog tour.


Lucky Charmed
Charmed in Texas #2
By: Sharla Lovelace
Releasing July 18, 2017
Lyrical Shine
Lucky Charmed

Charmed in Texas series


Carmen Frost hates honey. And bees. And in her hometown of Charmed, Texas, which practically invented the stuff, that’s a problem. The good news is that the summer Honey Festival is finally over. Even better, so is the annual Lucky Hart carnival, a road show that made off with her dreams years ago—including the boy she loved. Now she’s got a divorce behind her, and a successful law career in front of her, but in a tiny town, big memories die hard. Or they don’t die at all—as Carmen discovers when she runs into an all too familiar pair of eyes—older, wiser, and just as heart-melting as ever . . .
Sully Hart has had enough of the nomad lifestyle. Travelling with his father’s carnival gave him adventures, but it cost him much more. Now he’s home to stay, contracted to create an entertainment complex in Charmed. He wants roots, a house with a yard and all the mundane pleasures that go with it. But the girl he loved has become a woman who still wants freedom. Can she still want him? It seems he and Carmen are at each other’s throats one minute—and on each other’s lips the next. Someone’s gotta give . . .


  AMAZON | B & N | GOOGLE | ITUNES | KOBO

Lanie and Nick were coming home from their honeymoon and I was thankful in about a billion ways. Namely, that a relatively sane person I trusted could look me in the eye and remind me with all the prior knowledge needed that I was a grown independent woman with no logical reason to need anything from Sully Hart. Answers, mouth-to-mouth, monkey sex in a cave…Answers.
None of it.
Not that any of those things were on my mind the last two days since crawling in the dirt (I hadn’t been back yet) and the day before that’s one-on-one outside City Hall. At all. Or that I’d been obsessing over every word, every look, every inch he’d closed between us, or the way his hand had automatically closed over mine one day and had to touch me the next. Or that I was thinking of him or Kia—or him and Kia—or any of it while I drove home from the last minute trip to the vet’s office for Ralph’s food (I promise, he didn’t starve), fully aware that Maple Street was just four measly little blocks off of Main.
Because I was an adult. A responsible, un-flaky adult. Turning her blinker on. Driving down 8th Avenue. To Maple.
I shook my head all the way down the road, unable to believe what I was doing. This was the kind of thing I fussed at clients for doing. Obsessing over their ex’es. I wasn’t obsessing. I was just curious. Curious over what could make someone so untethered and beautifully free want to fence themselves in. Yep, that was all.
I didn’t have long to find out. I turned left on Maple toward the five-hundred block and felt my palms start to sweat. My pulse start to race. And somehow I knew it was the one with the big black Chevy before I even saw the number. The Chevy I’d parked next to at City Hall the other day. Of course I had.
The house itself was ordinary. Brick and wood, one story, kind of non-descript with no real landscaping. Looked like some flower beds might be marked off for the future with stakes, but that was about it. I rolled past it slowly, my mouth going dry like a teenager on a stalking mission.
This is crazy,” I muttered.
And then he walked around the side of his house and I hunched over and gunned it at the same time, parking around the corner but still in view.
How pathetic am I?” I whispered.
My phone screamed through the speakers and I yelped and then clapped a hand over my mouth as I hit the button.
Hello?” I whispered.
There he was. In a tight ratty tank top with holes and old jeans, a baseball cap turned backward on his head, the muscles in his arms rippling as he drove a shovel into the ground. Now that was how to sink a shovel. Sweet Jesus.
Hey, we’re at the airport,” Lanie said. I could hear Nick muttering something in the background. “So we should be home in a couple of hours. Well, after they find our other suitcase, anyway.”
Awesome,” I hissed, watching Sully turn over dirt, one shovelful after another. “Drive safe.”
Awesome?” she said. “They lost our suitcase.”
Oh, sorry,” I said. “Hope they find it quickly.”
Why are you whispering?” Lanie whispered.
And breathing fast. Whispering and breathing fast. Because I’m hiding around the corner from Sully Hart’s house, of all things, watching him play in the dirt and get sweaty.
Completely logical.
Um, I’m in a building,” I said, just as a truck pulling a squeaky trailer drove around me.
You sound like you’re outside.”
Okay, we have things to talk about when you get home,” I said. “So plan on some ice cream on the couch girl time tonight after you get unpacked. Nick and Ralph can go bond somewhere.”
Lanie laughed. “I’ll let him know. See you soon. And Carmen?”
Yeah?”
No Sully.”
See? That’s what I needed. But in person, with a leash or a stun gun. Or a box of imported chocolate. I dropped the phone in my lap and watched as my tattoo—his tattoo—moved with him. He had more of them now, but the one on his left bicep that matched the tiny one inside my left breast tugged at me. An infinity sign.
I love you, Carmen. Forever.
It was supposed to signify that. Something we’d done together the day before he left me—forever. Well, I guess it was significant after all.
The old pain stabbed through me like it was coming straight from that fifteen-year-old ink, and I welcomed it. Yes, remember that.
Sharla Lovelace is the bestselling, award-winning author of sexy small-town love stories. Being a Texas girl through and through, she’s proud to say she lives in Southeast Texas with her retired husband, a tricked-out golf cart, and two crazy dogs. She is the author of five stand-alone novels including the bestselling Don’t Let Go, the exciting Heart Of The Storm series, and the fun and sexy new Charmed in Texas series. For more about Sharla's books, visit her website, and keep up with all her new book releases easily by subscribing to her newsletter. She loves keeping up with her readers, and you can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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