New Release Spotlight & Giveaway - At Second Glance by Vicki Ballante ( A @DecadentPub #Romance )
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I'm delighted to welcome my pub-buddy Vicki Ballante here today. At Second Glance is a brand new contemporary romance from Decadent Publshing's Escape to Africa line. Here's a sneak peek!
Giveaway
Vicki's giving away a $20 Gift Card to celebrate her release. Don't forget to scroll all the way down to check out the Rafflecopter widget.
Content Notice: 18+ Excerpt Below
At Second Glance by Vicki Ballante
Four years after her divorce, Merryn decides she’s ready to find someone. Joining an online singles site, she connects with the perfect guy. Funny, sexy, sensitive. When he suggests they meet, excitement compels her to say yes.
Kirk pines for his ex-wife, but realizes he must move forward. After several stimulating online chats, he believes she might be the one for him. Smart, sexy, willing to experiment and learn. But when he happens across his ex, all his plans fly out the window.
Will Merryn learn to relax and have fun without giving her heart? Can Kirk forget the past and become the man he longs to be?
Amazon | B&N | AllRomance | Smashwords | Decadent
Excerpt
“Where did you meet this guy?”
“Online.”
“That’s not safe.”
“I trust him.” Fire spurted from her gaze.
She’d never trusted him when they’d been married. Never let him take the lead. How come time hadn’t healed the wounds? Instead, they’d festered inside him.
Online relationship? He felt the blood drain from his head.
“What?” Panic rose in her voice. “Are you Panda?”
He considered pretending otherwise. He could make his escape now and forget about the crazy mistake of meeting a strange woman in a restaurant because of an internet connection. Then he wouldn’t remember all those times he’d tried to reach out to her and she’d pushed him away and read her book or gone to sleep. The accusing words when she’d found out he’d been looking at porn. The hatred in her eyes when she’d asked him for a divorce.
“Are you?” She collapsed on the chair opposite him.
“I…I can’t do this.” He rose. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t meet guys you don’t know.”
“It’s a public place.” There was a catch in her voice.
“I don’t remember you being so pale. Blonde doesn’t suit you.”
She wrapped her face in her hands and became as stiff as a corpse. A crack of sympathy passed through him for a moment, but he pushed it away. Yet, she was Hedge. The woman who wanted to experiment. Who hurt from a previous relationship.
He’d called himself a loser.
A laugh came out, sounding out of place, and then he laughed recklessly.
She jerked her head towards him, anger evident in the harshness of her features.
“I called myself a loser.”
“What?”
“It’s ironic, isn’t it? If we’d both gotten over all our baggage from our messed up marriage, maybe we wouldn’t be here, digging up all the past hurt.”
“I didn’t know who you were. I wouldn’t have said those things to you. It’s the first time I’ve told anyone how I feel.” She didn’t look good with her face screwed up.
He glanced at her body. Had that changed? Her breasts pressed tight against the black shirt she wore. He remembered the first moment she’d shown herself to him on their wedding night. Merryn had insisted upon waiting for that special night. Her reserve had made her all the more desirable to him. In the beginning.
What if he could have another chance to touch her body? She was still shaped to perfection. None of the other women he’d had compared to the beauty of Merryn’s body. The shape of her twins, those pink taut nipples, and the peaks contrasted against her narrow waist. The gentle dip from her slight stomach to her intimate area. He sighed.
“You still want to experiment?” He’d always been impulsive, but seriously, had he said that?
About Vicki Ballante
Vicki writes erotic and fantasy romance. She loves taking her characters into an alternate world where strange and sexy things happen. She lives with her patient husband and three noisy kids in South Africa. In between being a busy stay-at-home Mom who hates housework and spends half her life cooking everything from scratch, she runs several blogs, writes under another name, and buries herself in the delightful world of her characters. When growing up, her school friends asked her if she wanted to be a nun. She always said “no.” Wonder whether they’d agree if they read her books.
