First off, a NOTE TO KATIE! Not sure if you saw it in the comments section of my post last week on words I like, but I picked you as my little “write your own sentence” contest. Drop me a line, author@lesliekelly.com, and give me your snail mail addy and I’ll send you a book. Okay?
Now…my next book, a Harlequin Blaze titled ASKING FOR TROUBLE, will be showing up in stores this week. I cannot tell you how proud I am of this book. I know, I know…we’re all supposed to love our own books and tout them as being worthy of your time and money. And I usually think my books are worth reading, even if I personally am not crazy about a few of them. (Bad, bad author! It’s like saying I don’t like one of my kids…lol!)
No worries about this one, though. ASKING FOR TROUBLE has taken a spot within my personal top 3. And I am so anxious to see if readers agree. (Reviewers seem to–this is the best reviewed book I’ve had in a long time.) I think the joy I experienced while writing it came across in the final product, just as it did in my other two top favorite books, Killing Time and Two To Tangle.
This is an unusual story for me–a gothic–and is my personal homage to the books of Victoria Holt or Phyllis Whitney, both of whom I loved as teenager. But obviously, I can’t write a book without throwing in some humor, a smartass heroine, a to-die-for hero, and some majorly hot sex. So I took the standard gothic conventions and twisted them according to my own Blaze’ing vision.
The writing style itself is also a bit of a departure for me. The heroine’s chapters are told in first person, in her voice, while the hero’s are in third. For those of you who don’t like first person, I hope the alternating 1st/3rd will make it more appealing to you, and that the below excerpt will help you decide to give it a shot.
Hope you all enjoy–and as always, I truly appreciate your support!
A strong, frigid gust of wind burst into the room, sending the curtains straight back. My hair, too. Shivering, I leaned out the window, my keychain in my hand, and prayed I wasn’t too far away. The nifty little system my brothers had installed didn’t merely lock and unlock my car remotely. It also had a safety system to prevent theft. The engine could be disabled with the flick of a switch.
So I sent up a silent apology for being so dishonest. I prayed it would work. And I flicked.
Nothing happened. Not a damn thing. I was too far away.
Muttering a couple of really inappropriate words that would make my mother reach for the Ivory soap to wash out my mouth, I fumed a minute, thinking about what to do. This could be a sign from above that I was just not meant to do something so dishonest. Someone up there was telling me so.
Someone down here, however, was saying I just needed to get closer to the car. I guess it was the little fishnet-wearing devil Lottie sitting on my shoulder. She had, throughout my life, been able to tie, blindfold and gag any haloed angel who ever tried to take up residence on the other one.
Not thinking about it for a second longer, in case I lost my nerve, I hurried to the door and opened it, cursing the squeak. The outside hallway was dark, so I turned on the portable lantern Simon had left for me, keeping it on the lowest possible setting.
Fortunately, I was just a few steps away from the stairs, and I quickly made my way down the first flight. Pausing on the landing, I peered over the railing to the foyer below, to ensure the coast was clear.
I saw nothing. Just shadows and shapes in the ink black night, which were almost enough to send me scurrying back to my room. But I resisted the urge. I simply had to make it down the second flight and out the front door, push a button, then race back up here and leap into my bed before I froze to death.
Speaking of freezing–I really should have put my clothes back on before setting out on this midnight jaunt. I was still wearing just the silky white nightgown with thin spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline.
Hey, I went to bed hoping Simon would suddenly decide he had to tell me something, remember? Had to be prepared. I just hadn’t been prepared to have a maniacal impulse to disable my own car just so I could get the chance to stay here for a while.
If I went back upstairs, I might lose my nerve. So I proceeded forward, creeping down one silent step at a time. The door to the office was firmly shut. Only the tiniest hint of a glow was visible beneath it, probably from the last burning embers of the fire. It was after one a.m., he had to be in bed.
Beneath my bare feet, the marble tiles were like blocks of ice and I hissed with every step. Tiptoeing, I finally reached the door and unlocked it. I said a quick prayer that it wouldn’t squeak, then slowly tugged it open.
No squeak. Thank heaven.
“And they say Chicago’s cold,” I whispered as a gust of damp, frigid air blew in and assaulted me. The windy city had nothing on this mountain. I needed to perform my act of sabotage and hightail it back upstairs before I froze to death.
Shivering, I stepped right outside the door, whimpering at the icy cold wood floor of the verandah. When I quickly pressed the button on the keychain device, a single flash of the headlights on my car told me it had worked. I was just thankful the horn hadn’t beeped the way it did whenever the car was remotely locked.
Not that it probably would have mattered. The storm had certainly eased, but low rolls of thunder continued to churn in the sky and silent bolts of lightning appeared here and there to brighten up the night. The rain no longer came down in sheets, it merely sluiced a steady drizzle of icy moisture onto the already soaked ground.
I liked storms. Oh, not driving in them, obviously, but I liked looking at them. Smelling that electric scent of power and feeling the moisture in the air before the first drop of rain fell. When safely under shelter, I often liked to watch lightning dance across the sky in the distance, knowing I was safe and it couldn’t reach me. Getting a bit of a thrill by pretending maybe it could.
But it was late, I was freezing and I needed sleep. Tomorrow would be a big day, the make-or-break time when I had to put all my skills to work to get my host allow me to stay. The car trick would buy me some time. The rest was up to me.
Turning to head back inside, I bit back a scream when I saw a door opening further down the verandah, a few rooms past what I knew was the office. The white curtains hanging on the French door blew wildly in the night, dancing in the wind, creating a strange misty fog of fabric. And through that fog of fabric stepped a dark figure.
I couldn’t move. Not one inch. I stayed there just outside the front door, watching the figure emerge about fifteen feet away. It wasn’t until after he’d disentangled himself from the sheers that I knew for sure it was my host.
He was dressed as he’d been earlier, but his white long-sleeved shirt wasn’t buttoned at all and it blew out behind him just as the curtains did. He didn’t flinch, didn’t make any concession whatsoever to the frigid air, he simply walked to the railing and looked up at the sky.
I’d thought at first that he’d heard me, or seen the flash of headlights, but he never even looked my way. I remained frozen still, not moving for fear I’d attract his attention and have to explain what on earth I was doing out here. In my nightgown. My very sexy, filmy nightgown that was pressed against every inch of my body because of the wind.
Hmm.
Not even really deciding to do it, I cleared my throat. He jerked his head, saw me standing there, and just stared. Hopefully the wind and my slinky nightgown were doing nice things for my butt and hips.
He was silent for so long, I began to wonder if he’d been sleepwalking. Finally, unable to take the tension, I came up with a quick explanation for my presence.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my own voice cracking. Clearing my throat and scrambling to come up with an explanation, “I hope I didn’t wake you. I, just…remembered I hadn’t locked my car.”
“Lottie?” he said, coming closer.
The hesitation in his tone told me he was confused, as if he’d thought I was someone else. Who that someone else could be at this hour in this desolate, abandoned place, I had no idea. “Yes. It’s me. I am so sorry if I woke you up.”
He continued moving toward me, his bare feet making no sound on the wet planked floor. Still he made no concession to the weather, his shirt continuing to blow around him, as did his thick hair.
The man looked dangerous. It’s-the-middle-of-the-night-and-he’s-a-stranger dangerous. But somehow, I didn’t care. I made no effort to leave and had no virginal, self-protective instinct to cross my arms over my chest. How could I when the glorious man was staring at me like a seductive wolf at a plate of lamb chops?
Reaching my side, he finally murmured, “You shouldn’t be out here.”
“Neither should you.”
He raked a slow–thorough–glance down my body, obviously able to see my breasts almost to the nipples in the low cut gown. The thing fit well, with a supportive bodice that pushed my already more than generous curves up to Penthouse quality heights and I could probably hold up a flagpole with my tight, overflowing cleavage.
I’d often thought how silly men were about women’s breasts. More often than not, I had considered mine a nuisance whose sole purpose was in getting out of speeding tickets or picking up a fellow college student. Those guys usually looked like they were going to chortle like ten year olds as they did their usual rub-squeeze-twist-see-what-I-get-to-play-with thing that they all considered foreplay.
Now, however, I was feeling different. Lebeaux wouldn’t be like that, I knew it. He would know exactly how to touch me to elicit only feelings of blissful pleasure and pure eroticism.
I wanted that. I wanted this dark, sultry stranger to stroke me, to run his fingertips down my cleavage, then catch my nipples between his fingers and lightly squeeze them. I shivered, feeling the tips of my breasts get hard and tight against the silk and could think of nothing else but how amazing it would feel if he licked me there, sucked hard while dropping a hand between my legs.
“What are you really doing out here?” he asked, his voice low, almost a growl.
“I told you.”
“You came down here, dressed like that, just so you could do something to your car?”
At last, a question I could answer honestly. “Yes, I swear to you, I did. I didn’t intend to stay out here and was heading right back to my warm–to my bed. But then you came out.”
“And you decided to…stay?” Not waiting for an answer, he lifted his hand and brushed the back of his fingers on my shoulder. “You’re freezing, you have goosebumps.”
Freezing? Oh, no. I felt very, very hot.
I could have made some lame well you could keep me warm comment, but we were already way beyond that level of silly, light flirtation. Instead, I inched closer to him, using his body to block the wind, smelling the warm, masculine scent arising from his skin. His shirt continued to whip around and now I could see more of the scar just below his collarbone. Not to mention the ripples of muscle and taut, wiry hair.
I couldn’t resist. Lifting a hand, I laid it flat on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart. And his heat.
He didn’t say anything. He merely acted. Without a word of warning, he slid both his hands into my hair, cupping my head and tugging me forward. Any gasp of surprise I might have made was drowned out by my own heart which thudded like crazy as he lowered his mouth to mine.
Then our lips met. Opened. Tasted.
Thunder pounded…or maybe it was just the low roar of pleasure rolling through me.
The rain picked up again and lightning flashed somewhere nearby. I wasn’t aware of any of it. I couldn’t focus on a thing except the warm lips and smooth tongue practically making love to me.
I’ve been kissed. A lot.
This wasn’t kissing. It was sex of the mouth.
Groaning, I rose on tiptoe, loving the strong, steady way he cupped my head, fingering my hair as his tongue plunged deep. I savored it, licking and sucking, sharing each breath with him, certain I’d never experienced anything more exciting in my entire life.
And then it was over. He ended the kiss, yanked his hands back and put them on my shoulders. Spinning me around, he literally pushed me toward the front door. Muttering, “Go to bed before you freeze,” he turned and stalked toward his open door, where the white curtains still whipped furiously in the night wind.
With one final, heated glance in my direction, he disappeared inside.
Click to buy ASKING FOR TROUBLE
When I asked why she was so hesitant and reluctant to get behind the wheel and drive, she admitted she was scared. Ahhh, that I can understand. Over the years, she’s seen just how aggressive and impatient California driver’s can be. They are always in a hurry to get wherever they are going – and some are just plain rude about getting there. 
Cutting people off, tailgating, and rude gestures are a daily occurrence on the freeways, and it’s unnerving to have to navigate your way through that kind of reckless driving. 
The whole idea came up because I was thinking about my book, MAKING WAVES, which I affectionately call “the book nobody read.” Now, if you read it, I’m not inferring that you’re “nobody.” You’re just one of very, very few. I don’t think the book is available anymore, as it was released last year in July by Harlequin Signature, a line that is no more. The distribution was puny. My readers, so accustomed to buying my books in the Blaze section, never knew it was out. I’d burned myself to the ground doing promotion for DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS, the book that came out the month before, so that I didn’t have energy to do anthing big for MAKING WAVES except for an advertisement in the Romance Writer’s Report. 
Heck, I’ll consider other foreign nations, too. I’m in a generous mood.
JODI (Comment #43) 
Unlike most people who live back east, we won’t have the pleasure of watching the leaves on the trees turn pretty autumn shades. No, for us, everything is super-duper dry and crisp after a scorching summer – perfect tinder for brush fires, which we usually get our share of every fall. Hopefully, by December, we’ll get a glimpse of winter – with lots of rain and long sleeved t-shirts! :P
