by
Jenna Bennett
Doesn't look like anyone else is posting today, so I'll just share that I published the fifth and last - at least so far - Cutthroat Business mystery this week.
A Done Deal is available through
Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, and
Smashwords, for any eReader you might have.
Here's the blurb:
Silver bells, silver bells...
It's Christmas time in Nashville, and all Savannah wants to unwrap on Christmas morning is Rafe. Unfortunately, things don't look so good. He's back in town, but not alone: on his arm is a stunning brunette, just the kind of woman Savannah always suspected was his type.
When Alexandra Puckett asks her help in figuring out a way to stop Maybelle Driscoll from marrying Alex's father Steven, Savannah jumps on the chance. It'll give her something to think about other than Rafe and the mysterious Carmen, and anyway, she doesn't like Maybelle much herself.
Between investigating Maybelle's past, helping her clients Aislynn and Kylie buy a house, and stalking Carmen and Rafe, she soon has her hands full. And that's before someone starts gunning for her. Suddenly it's not a question of unwrapping anything on Christmas morning anymore; it's a question of whether she'll even survive to see another Christmas.
And here's a taste of Chapter 1, a few pages in:
Todd looked
coy.“What would you like Santa to bring you, Savannah?”
Rafe, I though, and immediately chastised myself. He
was gone, he wasn’t coming back, he didn’t want me. I smiled. “Nothing. I have
everything I need.”
“Diamonds?”
Todd suggested.
“God, no.”
That brought to mind engagement rings, and I couldn’t imagine anything worse
than having to turn down another proposal in front of my entire family on
Christmas Eve.
“A puppy?”
From his
expression, it was almost as if he thought a puppy would make up for the baby
I’d lost. My baby had been barely bigger than a blueberry when I miscarried, but
after all the agonizing I’d done over whether or not to keep it, it had become
very real to me. And as much as I like puppies, it wasn’t the same.
“I live in
an apartment,”I said. “With a no-pets policy.”
“I guess a
kitten is out of the question too, then.”
“You could
get me a goldfish. I’m allowed to have those.”
Todd’s
expression lightened. “Do you want a goldfish?”
“Not
really,” I said apologetically. “I was joking. I don’t really need a Christmas
present.”There was nothing anyone could give me that I wanted. Especially
Todd.
I wondered
if I ought to ask him what he wanted for Christmas, but I was afraid of what the
answer would be. And I’d bought him a sweater in any case.
I speared a
mushroom with my fork and lifted it to my mouth.
“Isn’t that
Collier?” Todd said, looking over my shoulder.
For a
second, my heart skipped a beat and I almost choked. Then I realized two things:
1) he’d probably only said it to get a reaction from me—Todd was suspicious of
my feelings for Rafe long before there were any feelings to speak of—and 2)
there was no way he could be right.
I swallowed
the mushroom and made sure my voice was steady. “I doubt it. If he were back in
town, I’m sure someone would have told me.”
And it
probably wouldn’t have been Rafe himself. If he hadn’t stuck around when I lost
the baby, and he didn’t get in touch after I was shot, he wouldn’t bother to
call to tell me he was back in Nashville, either.
I had,
however, become friendly with Tamara Grimaldi, homicide detective with the
Nashville PD, and she knew Rafe too, and kept tabs on him through her contact in
the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations. I trusted her to let me know if anything
important happened. Like, if he died. Or if he’d been shot or hospitalized.
Or if he’d
come back to Nashville.
Todd
nodded, reassured by my lack of interest, and forked up another piece of veal.
I continued
my internal monologue while I chased mushrooms around my plate. Even if Rafe was
back in town and nobody had bothered to tell me, he wouldn’t be here at
Fidelio’s. He despises the place. I’ve had dinner with him here twice, and both
times he treated the fancy cuisine and snobbish waiters with irreverent
amusement. He wouldn’t choose to come here unless it was with me. And since we
were over and done, he had no business being here. It was probably just someone
with a passing resemblance to Rafe. Todd was a little bit paranoid on the
subject; he was probably just seeing things.
“Are you
sure he’s not back in Nashville?”Todd said. “Because that really
looks like him. Just the kind of woman I’d expect him to be with,
too.”
Woman?
I twisted
on my chair. “Where? I really don’t think...”
And then my
breath went when I saw that yes, it was indeed Rafael Collier on the other side
of the restaurant, just sitting down at a romantic table for two. A table I had
once shared with him, as it happened. Behind a pygmy date palm. And the woman he
was with was exactly the kind of woman I would expect him to be with, too.
A woman
very much not like me, I might add.
Like Rafe,
she looked like she might be of mixed race. Long, dark hair fell straight like a
waterfall down her back, and she had exotic almond-shaped eyes in a stunning
face with flawless caramel skin and red lacquered lips. She was shorter than me,
and even in four inch heels she barely came up to his shoulder. Granted, he’s
tall—six three, give or take—but she was still on the petite side. And she was
poured into a short, tight, Christmas-red dress that clung to every curve she
had, and his hand was right there, on the exposed skin of her back. That, more
than anything else, hurt. He was touching her. In a sort of intimate way. Skin
to skin. The same way he’d touched me.
I own a red
dress too. I’d bought it to coax a proposal from Todd, back when I thought being
engaged to Todd would make me less likely to indulge in my feelings for Rafe.
Instead, it had been Rafe who peeled it off me at the end of the
night.
My dress
isn’t as short or as tight—hers looked like lycra; mine’s satin—but it’s also
backless, and I could remember disconcertingly well the feeling of his hands on
my back, warm and hard and a little rough. I could remember what happened
afterwards too, and the thought that they’d be leaving Fidelio’s and going home
to make love in his bed—the bed where he’d made love to me—was enough to turn
the Chicken Marsala to sawdust in my mouth.
# # #
Merry Christmas, all!
