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Tour Kit: Lovegame by Tracy Wolff
The
stakes are high in LOVEGAME, when a movie star with a shattered past
meets a man who can either break her or make her whole. USA Today and
New York Times bestselling author, Tracy Wolff, returns with a novel
full of seduction and desire. Fans of Tiffany Reisz’ The Siren or
Lauren Dane’s Laid Bare will fall in love with Ian and Veronica, a
true crime novelist and movie star, who steam up the pages in
LOVEGAME.
True
Crime novelist Ian Sharpe has spent his career writing about serial
killers for very personal reasons. For his latest exposé, he is
taking on the sadistic madman known as the Red Ribbon Strangler, and
when his research leads him to Hollywood’s most private and
provocative actress, he will break every rule to uncover her truth.
The
daughter of one of Hollywood’s golden couples, chased by paparazzi
and treated as a commodity her entire life, Veronica Romero wields
her sex appeal like a weapon. She expects Ian to be as easy to
control as every other man she’s ever known. But from the
beginning, he refuses to fall into line. Mysterious and cool,
challenging and just a little bit dangerous, Ian somehow makes her
feel safe—even as he digs into the deepest secrets of her life and
pushes her to the breaking point.
As
raw ecstasy gives way to agonized truths, their dark obsession
exposes secrets that have been buried for far too long. Ian wants to
tear down her walls and heal the sensual woman underneath. But if
Veronica’s learned anything, it’s that the line between pleasure
and pain is a narrow one—and when caught between them the only
thing that matters is how you play the game.
Find out more
at: Tracy’s
Website
I take picture after picture, with a vintage champagne glass in my
hand or my face buried in a huge bouquet of dahlias. Toward the end,
Marc has the stylist and his assistant wrap me up in a long string of
artificial belladonna since the real stuff can cause problems if it
touches the skin. Then they heap my gloved hands with a mountain of
the poisonous black berries and Marc has me hold my hands out to the
camera in a deadly macabre offering.
Again and again Marc shoots me like that, taking pictures from every
possible angle. On his knees in front of me, looking up. From a
ladder above me, looking down. Beside me. Behind me. Across the room.
Up close. Again and again he points and clicks. Again and again, I
smile and pout and make every other expression he asks for. I even
take his suggestion to tilt my head back with my mouth open wide and
hold one of the berries between my thumb and index finger as I
pretend to be about to drop it in. As I do, I close my eyes and
pretend not to be totally icked out.
When I open them two minutes and twenty shots later, the first person
I see is Ian. He’s leaning back against one of the mirrored walls
and for once his omnipresent notebook is nowhere to be seen. Instead
he’s staring straight at me, a half-snarl on his normally calm face
and his eyes burning with a mixture of contempt and desire.
It’s the first time I’ve seen anything but pleasant or puzzled
interest from him and it has the tiny hairs on the back of my neck
standing up. Has ice skating down my spine and a desert taking up
residence in my mouth. Because, in that moment, as our eyes lock and
his turn impossibly darker, impossibly blacker, I don’t know who he
sees. Can’t tell who he wants.
Me or her?
Actress or murderer?
Sentient being or a character he helped create?
It’s just more fuel to add to the fire of my earlier doubts and in
that one tense and electric moment, it comes to me. What the cover
shot should be.
What I need
it to be.
Marc backs off a little, has his assistant come forward with a trash
bag for me to throw away the last of the berries and the gloves I’ve
been wearing. As she pauses to tie up the bag in front of me, I ask
her for a couple wipes.
She quickly returns with a box of baby wipes and I smile my thanks
even as Marc instructs me back against the mirror for what he calls
“the last series of shots.”
I do as he instructs, but as he’s fiddling with the lighting, I
turn toward the mirror and swipe the wipe over the right half of my
face.
“What are you doing?” my makeup artist squawks as he comes racing
across the room at me.
“Trust me, Dalton,” I tell him as I continue to scrub.
“Stop doing that!” he orders as he grabs on to the end of the
wipe and actually tries to wrestle it away from me.
“Just wait,” I instruct, refusing to let go no matter how hard he
tugs.
“But—”
“What are you up to, Veronica?” Marc asks. He sounds more
intrigued than annoyed.
“I’ll show you,” I tell him, pushing gently at Dalton’s hand
until he finally lets go with a whimper.
And then, with the whole room—including Ian—watching me intently,
I wipe the entire half side of my face clean of any and all makeup. I
do it carefully, making sure that the line that runs down the center
of my face is exact so that both sides are completely symmetrical.
When I’m done, I reach up and take off my right earring and hand it
to Dalton who still looks slightly shell-shocked. Then I step back
and stare at this new reflection of myself in the mirror.
Half me at my most natural, half her at her most armored, it’s a
devastating look. Made even more so by the elaborate fifties makeup
Dalton has me in—all red lips and thick black liner and long, long
lashes.
There is a difference, I tell myself fiercely as I study myself. I am
not her. I will never be her, no matter what it felt like four months
ago.
In the background I’m aware of Marc cursing softly, of him snapping
picture after picture. I don’t turn around, instead continuing to
give him my back so that he gets both me and my reflection in each
shot.
“Turn around,” he breathes after he’s taken at least three
dozen pictures.
Reluctantly, I do as he requests, then follow his impatient gesture
for me to move away from the mirror. I step forward and then the
camera starts again, clicking away to get the shot from this angle as
well.
At that moment, Ian moves and I make the mistake of glancing his way.
Our gazes lock and heat slams through me at the look he’s giving
me, has my eyes widening and my lips parting on a gasp as I struggle
to draw air into lungs that have abruptly forgotten how to work.
“Fuck,” Marc breathes from where he’s narrowing in on my face.
“That’s it. That’s the money shot.”
I drag my eyes away from Ian, but it’s too late. For the first time
in a very, very long time, I feel vulnerable. And I hate every second
of it.
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Tracy Wolff
collects books, English degrees and lipsticks and has been known to
forget where—and sometimes who—she is when immersed in a great
novel. At six she wrote her first short story—something with a
rainbow and a prince—and at seven she forayed into the wonderful
world of girls lit with her first Judy Blume novel. By ten she’d
read everything in the young adult and classics sections of her local
bookstore, so in desperation her mom started her on romance novels.
And from the first page of the first book, Tracy knew she’d found
her life-long love. Now an English professor at her local community
college, she writes romances that run the gamut from sweet
contemporary to erotica, from paranormal to Urban Fantasy and from
young adult to new adult.
1
winner will receive a $35 Amazon Giftcard and copies of the Ethan
Frost Trilogy by Tracy Wolff
