Serendipity - Faith and Ethan - out now!
Kismet - a short story - Lissa and Trevor - out now! (ebook only)
Destiny - Nash and Kelly - out January 3, 2012
Karma - Dare and Liza - out May 1, 2012
Read on for an excerpt from Destiny, the next book in the Serendipity series
Destiny
One
Nash Barron might be cynical about life and more recently about love, but even he normally enjoyed a good wedding. Today’s affair had been an exception. The invitation had requested the presence of “close friends and family.” Nash wondered if he was the only one in the group to notice the irony.
The groom’s two brothers, Nash included, were a step short of estranged, and they’d only known the flower girl, their newly discovered half sister, Tess, for six weeks. The bride’s father was in jail, which left her flamboyant decorator friend to give her away, while her mother spent the afternoon downing wine and bemoaning the loss of her beloved home, which just so happened to be the site of the wedding. The landmark house on the hill in their hometown of Serendipity, New York, was now owned by the groom, Nash’s brother Ethan.
Come to think of it, the irony of the situation might be the only thing Nash had enjoyed about this day.
That and Kelly Moss, the woman sipping champagne across the lush green grass of the backyard.
Tess was Nash’s half sister, a product of his father and Tess’s mother’s affair. Kelly, Tess’s half sister on her mother’s side, was a sexy woman who by turns frustrated him, intrigued him, and turned him on. Complicated yet simple enough to be summed up in one sentence: Kelly Moss was a beautiful woman and they were in no way blood related.
Which didn’t make his desire for her any more acceptable. A simple acquaintance-like relationship seemed the safest route, yet Nash had been unable to find comfortable ground with either Kelly or Tess in the time since they’d been in Serendipity. Nash had no idea why he couldn’t connect with his fourteen-year-old sister, who seemed determined to freeze him out.
As for Kelly, at first Nash blamed his frustration with her on the fact that she’d unceremoniously dumped Tess, a sister the Barron brothers knew nothing about, on Ethan’s doorstep back in August. She’d demanded he parent the out-of-control teen. Nash hated to give Ethan credit for anything, but he had to admit his older brother had turned the wildly rebellious kid around in a short time. But Nash still had issues with Kelly’s methods. So when she’d resurfaced and moved to town, he’d been both understandably wary and shockingly attracted. And she’d been getting under his skin ever since.
Nash turned away and his gaze fell on Ethan, his brother whose luck seemed to have done a one eighty since he’d abandoned his siblings ten years ago. He had chosen the perfect day for a wedding. Though early October, the temperature had hiked into the low seventies, enabling him to have the wedding outdoors. Ethan stood with his arm around his wife, Faith, talking to their youngest sibling, Dare. Even he had forgiven Ethan for the past.
Nash couldn’t bring himself to be so lenient.
He glanced at his watch and decided his time here was over. The bride and groom were married, cake served, bouquet thrown. He finished what remained of his Ketel One, placed the glass on a passing waitress’s tray, and headed toward the house.
“Leaving so soon?” a familiar female voice asked.
“The festivities are over.” He turned to face the woman who’d hijacked his thoughts just moments before.
Kelly, her hair pulled loosely behind her head, soft waves escaping and grazing her shoulders, stood close beside him. Her warm, inviting lemony scent enveloped him in heat.
Nash was a man who valued his personal space. Kelly was a woman who pushed past boundaries. Yet for a reason he couldn’t fathom, he lacked his usual desire to find safer ground.
“The band is still playing,” she pointed out.
“No one will realize I’m gone.”
Or care. His leaving would probably ease any tension his presence created.
“I would.” She gazed at him with perceptive brown eyes.
Intelligent chocolate-colored eyes that seemed to see beyond the indifferent facade he presented to the world. One he thought he’d perfected in his late teens, when his life had been turned upside down by his parents’ deaths followed quickly by Ethan’s abandonment of both Nash and their younger brother, Dare.
“Why do you care?” he asked, even though he knew he’d be smarter to walk away.
She shrugged, a sexy lift of one shoulder that drew his attention to her soft-looking skin.
“Because you seem as out of place here as I am.” She paused. “Except you’re not a stranger to town or to this family.”
Out of place. That one comment summed up his entire existence lately. How had she figured him out when no one else ever could?