Thank you to Mary Quast for hosting me on your blog today. Mary writes 1Night Stand erotic romances for Decadent Publishing.
It's the fifth stop of my tour today. Don't forget there are still great prizes to be won. Enter by clicking the rafflecopter link below.
Seven years earlier, a young and serious Tessa Calitz wrote a letter to free spirit Ryan le Roux promising her undying love. As time passed she forgot about that letter...but Ryan did not.
When he walks back into her life, Tessa is in a relationship and busy setting up her art gallery in Johannesburg. She has plans to start a family, and the arrival of Ryan throws her for a spin. He is the worst thing that could happen to her dream of stability...or is he?
When everything she clung to starts to crumble, Ryan is right beside her to inspire her to greater things. But her compulsion for having marriage and children on her terms alone pushes Ryan away--until she falls in love with an orphaned baby.
What can Ryan do to make Tessa realize that being with him is what her heart has longed for all along?
Excerpt:
The swish of the door opening wider and the squeak of rubber-soled shoes on the polished floor caught her attention. A customer. Precious gold—so rare and so needed. Turning to face her potential sale, she put on a bright smile…that turned to jelly. The breath froze in her lungs.
“Ryan. Is that you?” she said with a whisper.
The man who had filled her dreams and inspired her whole art career years ago stood before her, taller, broader, tanned, and smiling wide. She had somehow thought he’d disappeared off the globe. Not much had changed. That slight curl to his hair, the dark halo a perfect frame for his broad-jawed, rugged face. Thick, velvet locks, the color of dew-soaked mountains and earth. Piercing eyes, like planets orbiting her heart. The longing of years seemed to converge on this particular moment. She pulled back, frightened by the intensity of her feelings.
“I like your new gallery.”
She shivered and clasped her chiffon top close to her chest. His voice had deepened over the years. He had matured like she had grown up, changed, and moved on.
“Thanks. I’ve been open for three months already.”
Her voice came out like a squeak. Her palms were moist and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t keep her eyes off him. He truly was the best artwork in the world—the way his body moved—the whole picture of him.
“May I?” He pointed to the art she’d spent days arranging perfectly on the walls.
“Of course.”
He paused before each painting as she held her breath, longing to read his mind on what he thought of them. Then he spent longer before her latest work. She moved up behind him and stared at the misty oil canvas in muted colors of a figure standing on a pier, overlooking a churning sea. The man appeared pensive and peaceful with the grey, choppy waves around him and the dark, billowing clouds above him. She followed the shape of the real man in front of her with her gaze. Who would have thought he would come here? All these years, she’d figured him gone forever. Buried under new dreams and desires. Little did she know her need for him could resurrect just with a brief encounter.
“How come they’re all landscapes?”
She shrugged. “Landscapes are my genre.”
Except for those crazy mother and child paintings stashed away at home that no-one’s ever seen. Days and days of her spare time were taken away painting a picture of an African mother with her newborn twins, a Chinese mother with a toddler in a pram, and the hippie mom with her baby in a pouch attached to her middle. The feeling bubbling inside her while she painted them had been unsurpassed by any other. What would Ryan think of them? It was safer that he didn’t know. Better he believe she was a landscape painter and nothing else.
He moved on to one of the other artists’ works. Did he hate her landscapes? Why did it matter to her so much what he thought of her art? Not like she still loved him. Not after all these years. But he had inspired her art in a way—got the ball rolling because she used to spend hours sketching him while he romanced her best friend and roommate, Annie. That felt like decades ago, yet was only seven years. Ryan had been the highlight of her waking hours then, her shy and aimless period when she worked in a mindless job for little pay, before she realized she could study her passion. Art.
“Where are your sketches?” he asked.
She frowned. “They’re at home. I stopped sketching my second year in college because that’s when I developed my best painting style. My sketches didn’t get me top marks.”
“But they’re so realistic.”
“You never looked at them.”
“I’ve studied the one. Constantly.”
She turned away, her face hot and the hairs rising on her arms in a wash of tingles. Had he come into the gallery on purpose? She strode to her desk, reaching it in a moment, relishing the distance between them. If Ryan could evoke such feelings in her now when she was with another man, would she ever be free from his grip? The heat of the room suffocated her, and she tried to take in several breaths. If only she had the power to block out the effect he had on her. So, he’d been thinking of the letter she sent him. The same one that disclosed her heart’s feelings toward him. Too late to come here now and talk about it. Stir up feelings she had no right feeling anymore. And why all the questions about her art? As if he really cared. Ryan didn’t care. If he did, he’d have come back to her years ago.
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If you click on the Rafflecopter link below, you could either win the grand prize of a $15 Amazon voucher or one of 5 dragonfly swag bags. I've made beautiful beaded necklaces in a variety of colours and designs - one for each bag.
Here's a pic of one of them:
