I now have a giveaway copy of this book that I featured also last week (two blog posts down), so get your comments in for a chance to win! Isn't this a delightful cover?
I've also got an excerpt, so read on!
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PJ Sugar would never escape trouble. Clearly, she couldn’t shake free of it – regardless of how far, and fast she ran. Of course, it followed her from Minnesota, to South Dakota, to Colorado, to Montana, down the shore to California, and finally over to Melbourne Beach, Florida where it rose with teeth to consume what should have been the most perfect night of her life.
She stood on the shore, her toes mortared into the creamy white sand, the waves licking up to her ankles, and with a cry that sounded more frustration than fury, threw her linen espadrille her best fast-pitch line drive. It sailed high, cutting through the burning sky, disappeared briefly in the purple haze of night, then splashed into ocean.
Gone. Along with her future.
A seagull soared low, screaming, pondering the morsel it may have missed.
Men.
PJ clamped her hand over her left shoulder, high, near the apex where the word Boone marked her in floral script.
Thank you so much, Boone for wrecking yet another relationship. No, it wasn’t enough that he’d run her out of her hometown of Kellogg, Minnesota, without so much as an apology. Not enough that he lurked behind every dream, with his pale blue eyes teeming with memory. Probably the saboteur had forgotten the girl who wound her arms around his waist, dug her face into the leathery pocket between his shoulder blades as he roared them away from Kellogg on his Kawasaki. Like a modern day Jesse James, he held hostage all the sweet memories of her childhood, stealing them like the outlaw he was, right along with her heart.
Tonight’s fiasco made it only plainly clear it was time for her to steal it back.
“PJ, c’mon back inside.” Matthew, trekking out onto the beach, kicking sand into his dockers, looking piqued as the wind raked fingers through his brown, thinning hair, snagged his tie and noosed it around his neck. He held her purse in his hand, like it might be a bomb.
Ten feet away, he held it up to her, like a carrot. “They haven’t even brought out the crab legs. You love those.”
“Oh sure I do. Right along with brussel spouts and pickled herring.” Apparently, she’d been so soundly ensconced in Happily Ever Land she’d failed to see that the man she wanted to marry didn’t even know she, indeed, hated crabs.
Pretty much all shellfish.
Thanks to the fact she was allergic to it.
He lowered the purse, as if her words stung him. “Really?”
The truth was, Matthew probably didn’t even know her favorite pizza choices. And a good marriage was built on knowing the kind of pizza a gal liked. If that wasn’t a wake up call…
PJ shook her head, her mouth half open, not even sure where to start. Behind them, caliente music drifted out of Dungarees Restaurant, festive themes for happy couples. Twinkle lights stringing along the thatched roof overhung the porch and the piquant smell lifting off the grills on the patio snarled her empty stomach. Maybe she should go back inside, pick up the wicker chair she’d knocked over.
He owed her dinner, at least.
She stood her ground, forcing him to march her belongings across the sand.
“Here’s you’re uh…suitcase.” He held it out to her, letting go before she had her hand on it. It dropped with the weight of an anvil onto the glossy sand.
“Hey, even a wanna-be Birkin bag deserves your respect, pal.” She scooped it up, realizing she’d been entirely too civil during his execution of their relationship. “You never know when you’re going to need something.” Laugh all he wanted -- if a gal was going to haul around a purse, it should be filled with all things handy. Tape, to shut someone’s mouth, for example. Or a flashlight, to guide her way home across a black expanse of shore.
“Sorry.” He stuck his hands into the pockets of his khakis, his sports coat like a warning flag as it whipped around him. “C’mon PJ, come back inside. Please. It’s cold out here.”
“Seriously? Because ten minutes ago you were telling me exactly how I wasn’t the girl for you. How, after nearly a year of dating, on a night when I expected – “ Nope, she wasn’t going there. Wasn’t going to give him the slightest satisfying hint that she might have come to dinner tonight hoping – convinced, even -- that he’d actually take a knee and put words to what she thought she’d seen in his eyes. Devotion. Commitment.
How could she have cajoled herself into believing that Matthew Perfect Buchanan, church singles group leader, seminary student might see a pastor’s wife in her.
And she’d cleaned up, too, over the years. Maybe she wasn’t exactly the picture of a pastor’s wife, with her curves, dark red hair, too many freckles still spraying her nose, like she might be fifteen. She’d never been sultry, more on the cute side, she supposed, her height against her. But her eyes were pretty – green, and honest, if maybe too wide in her face. Even if he didn’t think her pretty, couldn’t he see past her rough edges to the woman she longed to be – a friend of Jesus, a woman of principle, a servant of grace? A girl who’d finally outrun her mistakes.
Apparently not.
She should be flinging herself out into the surf right behind her espadrille.
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ISBN 1414313128
Tyndale
Romantic Comedy/Suspense
PJ Sugar knows three things for sure:
After traveling the country for ten years hoping to shake free from the trail of disaster that’s become her life, she needs a fresh start.
The last person she wants to see when she heads home for her sister’s wedding is Boone—her former flame and the reason she left town.
Her best friend’s husband absolutely did not commit the first murder Kellogg , Minnesota , has seen in more than a decade.
What PJ doesn’t know is that when she starts digging for evidence, she’ll uncover much more than she bargained for—a deadly conspiracy, a knack for investigation, and maybe, just maybe, that fresh start she’s been longing for.
About Susan:
Susan May Warren is the award-winning author of seventeen novels and novellas with Tyndale, Steeple Hill and Barbour Publishing. Her first book, Happily Ever After won the American Fiction Christian Writers Book of the Year in 2003, and was a 2003 Christy Award finalist. In Sheep’s Clothing, a thriller set in Russia , was a 2006 Christy Award finalist and won the 2006 Inspirational Reader’s Choice award. A former missionary to Russia , Susan May Warren now writes Suspense/Romance and Chick Lit full time from her home in northern Minnesota .
Since it's launch month for her new book, Nothing But Trouble, Susan is running a "sweet" contest when people go "Hunting for Trouble" in their local bookstore! Click HERE for the Contest details!
Mark Mynheir was born and raised on the east coast of Central Florida. Like most boys growing up, Mark enjoyed sports, mainly football and martial arts.
When everything is ripped away...
