Plot Monkeys

Excerpt week continues and guess what? TODAY is the official relase date of CROSS MY HEART!

That means you can not only read the teaser, but hopefully run out and find the book in stores (or order online) TODAY!

Remember what I post here isn’t the same as what’s on my website, so you’ll get a sneak peak for Plotmonkeys Readers alone!

In this scene, my hero, Ty, has come to New York to find Lacey Kinkaid, the girl he helped fake her death so she could run away from her evil uncle who abused her and wanted her trustfund. It’s a story of first love, never forgotten love and second chances.

Chapter Three

Lacey climbed out of bed and slipped on her favorite pair of slippers, a fuzzy pair that were soft enough to feel like an old friend. She headed to the kitchen for a midnight snack, tiptoeing on the way, careful not to wake Ty. Careful not to stop and watch him sleep and risk rousing warm fuzzy feelings for a man she no longer knew, but one she wanted to know again.

She poured a glass of milk, pulled the Oreos out of the refrigerator and settled into the corner she jokingly called her kitchenette. In reality it was a small table at the end of the entry hall.

“Mind if I join you?” Ty asked, just as she dunked her first cookie into the cold milk.

Without waiting for a reply, he sat in the only other chair that fit around the table, Digger curling at his feet. Ty was shirtless, wearing only his partially zipped jeans, unsnapped at the waist. A low light glowed from the kitchen, casting them in shadows, but even in the darkness surrounding them, she could see enough to admire how broad his chest had become, how drop dead sexy he was.

She ran her tongue over her suddenly dry lips. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither. Obviously.” She gestured to her midnight snack.

“So you resorted to your old standby, cookies and milk?”

She slowly lowered the Oreo onto the table. “You remember that?” He’d often caught her snacking in his mother’s kitchen late at night. That’s how comfortable she’d been in his childhood home, she thought.

“I remember lots of things about you,” he said in a husky voice.

“Such as?” she asked, her curiosity not the only thing that he aroused.

“Such as the fact that Oreo cookies are your comfort food. You like them cold and hard from the fridge even though you’re just going to dip them into milk and make them soggy. And you keep the cookie in the milk for about five seconds so it doesn’t get too soft. Like this.” While speaking, he reached out, snagged a fresh cookie, dipped it into the cold milk, then held it out for her to taste.

She opened her mouth and bit down, the cookie partially crumbling, partially melting in her mouth exactly the way she liked it. Her lips brushed over his fingertip, the accidental touch causing an unexpected rush of physical sensations to sweep over her.

She laughed, keeping things light, and wiped her mouth with a napkin, but what she felt was anything but funny. Her breasts grew heavy and a pulse pounding awareness thudded through her veins along with a heaviness between her thighs. She managed to suppress what surely would have been an orgasmic sounding groan. Because somehow her comfort food had turned erotic and sharing memories with an old friend had become something much more sensual.

From the reciprocal yet clouded look in his eyes, she doubted that had been his intent. He was holding himself back from her now and she missed the closeness they’d shared when they were kids and they didn’t think things through all that much.

There had been something special between them, something they’d never acted on either because they’d been afraid to sever a friendship that represented the only stability in their young lives, or because neither quite knew what to do with their deep emotions. Maybe even back then they’d subconsciously realized that sex alone wouldn’t be enough.

Although Lacey had to admit, at the moment, sex sounded awfully appealing. Still, they’d never had the chance to scratch the surface of infatuation and first love, leaving them emotionally wanting more. Leaving her wanting more. She never really knew how Ty had felt, whether he’d really liked her or whether he just enjoyed being her hero.

At least now they were adults, capable of making grown up choices and dealing with the consequences, she thought. Consequences that for Lacey included Ty showing up and an unanswered marriage proposal from another man.

**************

CROSS MY HEART is available in bookstores TODAY or as always you can order on www.Amazon.com.

Yes that’s me, shamelessly begging. Authors are always afraid nobody will buy their books.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 6:00 am and is filed under Carly. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.