BLURB:
Two
brothers, one a player, one a playboy, are on a collision course with destiny
and a woman who thought she won a prize when she was allowed a look inside the
Sons of Sanctuary MC.
Brigid
Roan is a graduate student at the University of Texas. She had no trouble
getting her thesis approved, but finding a Hill Country motorcycle club willing
to give her access to their lifestyle was looking impossible. Then she got a lead.
A friend of a friend had a cousin with family ties to The Sons of Sanctuary.
What
Brigid wanted was information to prove a proposition. The last thing she had in
mind was falling for one of the members of the club. Especially since she was a
feminist academic out to prove that motorcycle clubs are organized according to
the same structure as primitive tribal society.
Brash
Fornight was standing in line at the H.E.B. Market when his world tipped on its
axis. While waiting his turn to check out, his gaze had wandered to the
magazine display and settled on the new issue of “NOW”. The image on the cover,
although GQ’d up in an insanely urbane way, was… him.
After
reading the article, Brash threw some stuff in a duffle and left his only home,
a room at The Sons of Sanctuary clubhouse, with a vague explanation about
needing a couple of days away. He left his truck at the Austin airport and
caught a plane for New York, on a mission to find a mysterious guy walking
around with his face.
EXCERPT:
“Sir?”
Brash Fornight gradually became aware that someone behind him in the grocery
checkout line was trying to get his attention. “Sir?” He refocused and glanced
behind him. The woman leaning on a cart overflowing with chip bags and cookie
boxes nodded toward the cashier indicating that it was his turn to move
forward. Brash looked her in the eye and had to give her props. Most people
wouldn’t have the balls to try to herd a guy wearing Sons of Sanctuary MC
leather.
The
club employed a woman who cooked and did grocery shopping several times a week
as part of her job description, but Brash didn’t like to explain his relentless
craving for peanuts and he liked being teased about it even less. He didn’t
know whether it was the Vitamin B or the fat or just because he liked the
taste, but he couldn’t imagine going a day without them.
That’s
how he came to be standing statue still In the grocery checkout line, being
prompted by some woman with more nerve than sense. While he was waiting, his
eyes drifted over the magazine display and settled on the cover of “NOW”, on
the Most Eligible Bachelor edition no less. The debonair figure staring back
was wearing Brash’s own face and body. He looked different with short hair and
a four thousand dollar suit with the shirt fashionably open at the neckline,
but the similarity was inescapable.
On
impulse he grabbed the magazine and tossed it onto the conveyor belt with his
week’s stash of peanuts.
He
stuffed the bags into the saddlebags of his bike and roared toward home,
nervously tapping his fingers on handlebars at red lights, riding on shoulders
to keep from slowing down. He was anxious to get to the privacy of his own room
and read about Branach St. Germaine.
Two
beers, one jar of peanuts, and one “NOW” article later, Brash was sitting on
the edge of his bed looking at the wall, seeing nothing but his own heavy
thoughts. He pulled out his phone, looked up a website, and waited on hold for
ten minutes to hear the time of the next flight from Austin to New York.
There
was a flight to Newark in a little over three hours. He looked at his watch and
calculated the time it would take to drive from Dripping Springs at that time
of day. As he booked the flight, he stood up, walked to the small closet,
grabbed a duffel bag, and began shoving stuff into it. Ten minutes later, he
closed his door and locked it, threw the duffel over his shoulder, and headed
straight for the office downstairs. He dropped the duffel on the hallway floor
beside the closed door and knocked.
“Yeah?”
Brash looked inside, glad that his dad was by himself, and stepped in. “What’s
up?”
“I’m
takin’ personal time, Pop. Gonna be gone for a couple of days.”
“What
the hell is ‘personal time’?”
The
gruffness made Brash smile. “It means I’m not gonna be here if you call and I’m
not tellin’ you why.”
The
Sons of Sanctuary President looked up at Brash, over the top of his readers,
and narrowed his eyes. “You got a secret?”
“Everybody’s
got secrets.”
Brandon
Fornight studied his son for a minute. “True enough. Is it the kind of secret
that could affect this club?”
Brash
shook his head. “Don’t see how.”
“Well,
then. See you… When did you say you’d be back?”
“I
didn’t.”
“Bein’
purposefully vague, are you?”
Brash
grinned. “That’s why they call it personal time. But I expect to be back
Friday.”
“You
gonna have your phone with you?” When Brash nodded, Bran looked back down at
his ledger in a deliberately dismissive gesture. “Well, get outta here then.”
Brash
parked his bike in the airplane hangar. The structure had already been on the
property when the club had bought it and turned it into a compound twenty years
earlier. They used part of it for vehicle maintenance and repair and part for
parking.
Some
of the guys who were working looked over and shot curious glances his way when
Brash threw his duffel into his pickup and started it up, but it wasn’t their
way to ask questions. The Sons figured that if somebody wanted you to know
something, they’d tell you.
Brash
took a cab to a midtown hotel, wondering all the way why human beings would
choose to live in such a place. As he slid his credit card across the hotel
counter to the agent on duty, he glanced at the name, Brandon Fornight. It seemed
unlikely that it was a coincidence that that the mysterious look-alike’s first
name began with the same four letters. He ordered room service and pulled out
his laptop.
Getting
intel on the guy didn’t take advanced ops. Within an hour Brash knew where
Brannach St. Germaine worked, what kind of car he drove, what kind of women he
dated, who his tailor was, and where he liked to dine. There was no shortage of
photos online, but the one that grabbed his attention wasn’t one of the many
with starlets or debutantes on his arm. It was the one taken with his arm
around his mother as they were arriving together for some red carpet
fundraiser. Brash had an almost irresistible compulsion to reach up and touch
her face on the screen in front of him.
The
knock on the door signaled that room service had arrived. It cost a fortune,
but looked and tasted like shit. So he closed the computer and went out for a
walk to clear his head and find something edible.
AUTHOR Bio and
Links:
USA
TODAY Bestselling Author.
The
Order of the Black Swan has won BEST PARANORMAL ROMANCE SERIES TWO YEARS IN A
ROW (2013, 2014). Reviewers Choice Awards, The Paranormal Romance Guild.
Victoria
writes cross-genre with uniquely fresh perspectives on paranormal creatures, characters,
and themes. She is making her debut into contemporary romance with publication
of the SUMMER FIRE ultimate romance collection anthology with the intro to the
Sons of Sanctuary MC series. The first novel of that will be released June 16,
2015
WEBSITE/BLOG:
www.VictoriaDanann.com
AMAZON
AUTHOR PAGE: http://www.amazon.com/Victoria-Danann/e/B007VCOJES/
AUTHOR
FAN GROUP:
BLACK
SWAN FAN PAGE: www.facebook.com/vdanann
AUTHOR
PAGE: www.facebook.com/authorvictoriadanann
GOODREADS
FAN GROUP: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/108735-victoria-danann-order-of-the-black-swan
TWITTER:
http://www.twitter.com@vdanann
PINTEREST:
www.pinterest.com/vdanann
GIVEAWAY:
Victoria will be awarding
a copy of the memoirs of Ash Armand, the celebrity who appears on the cover of
Two Princes to 3 randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour, and a
$25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn host.
The more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteAny tips on how to get through the dreaded writer’s block?
ReplyDelete