Another winner--and a teaser of an excerpt

Hey everyone!! We'll start with prizes and move right into an excerpt of my latest draft (for my Feb. 07 three-quel to my "daughter" series, The Perfect Daughter).

Yesterday's winner is...Ayreann. Send your book pick and mailing address to anna@ananwrites.com, and I'll get you all set up ;O). Please use the list from yesterday's blog post, minus Amanda Ashley's "Desire in the Dark"--Amy snapped that one up.

The prizes for the last three days are packed up and going out priority today. Everyone should have their goodies early next week. Be sure to let me know when they arrive.

Okay, I'm off to do some errands and all-around relaxing things today. I'm diving into several new proposals starting this weekend and next week, so I'm taking a few days to recharge after the craziness of my last deadline and the week of hard, hard work at RT--see, one more pic of me working hard is required to give you just the right image of why I need a bit of a break...Deven was fiercely telling everyone to back off, the writers need to rest...isn't he sweet ;O)

Speaking of my last deadline, I'm proud as punch at the way The Perfect Daughter turned out. We'll have to wait a while to see what my editor thinks, but in the mean time, I'd love to give you a taste.

Those of you who've been following this series, Maggie was 17 when we first met her in The Unknown Daughter, and eighteen/nineteen in The Runaway Daughter. Now, at 25 and about to finish up graduate school at NYU, she gets her own romance in The Perfect Daughter. She's in love with a tough, Italian NYPD detective, and as she fights to hold onto her relationship, she's also fighting demons from the past--the terrifying things we've all watched her go through in the first two "daughter" books. She's worked so hard to be the put-toghether, can-handle-anything woman her family's always thought she was. But the perfection she's been clinging to is starting to crack in places. The fear and pain leaking through could cost her everything she loves most, particularly Detective Matt Lebretti.

The story begins in NY, but have no fear, everyone's back in Oakwood, GA before you know it. The small-town community and family ties in this book are wonderfully heartwarming.

So here's the first scene. Let me know what you think, and if you likie I'll post another on Monday ;O)

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"Stop hovering, Mom." Maggie Rivers barely glanced at the woman who'd joined her beside an ornate stained glass window.

She'd been supporting herself for years. She was putting herself through grad school and living with the man of her dreams. She knew her mother, a self-made success in New York business circles, respected all she'd achieved. But today, Carrinne Wilmington-Rivers was displaying an alarming talent for hand-wringing.

"I'm fine," Maggie insisted. "Please go wait with Dad."

She couldn't remember the last time she'd actually felt fine, and the strain was clearly showing. But why did her family have to pick today to finally call her on it?

Her dad was waiting somewhere amidst the crowd of Class-A-dressed officers who'd filled the enormous Manhattan cathedral. But her mother had abandoned their perfectly good seats to offer the kind of public support that could only mean disaster. The kind of lean on me, when you're not strong display Maggie refused to let NYPD Detective Matt Lebretti see her needing.

Matt and the other pallbearers would be carrying the flag-draped coffin into the church soon. Then he'd join her at their own seats near the front. She had an entire funeral service to get through, for a man she barely knew. A man whose death was, for her and Matt both, entirely too personal. Indulging in a heart-to-heart with her mom wasn't going to happen. As if it already wasn't impossible not to picture this service being for Matt instead of his partner.

He and Bill had been standing two feet away from each other when Bill went down.

"I know how hard this must be for you." Her mother laid a comforting hand on the shoulder Maggie kept subtly stretching. Her entire body felt like a throbbing migraine waiting to happen. "I just wanted to see if you needed anything."

"I need to focus on Matt right now."

She needed to be as okay as she kept insisting she was.

She caught sight of him through the cathedral's open doors, where he was waiting on the steps for the hearse to arrive. Her heart caught at the rigid set of his classic Italian features. He was determined to be okay, too, no matter how responsible he felt for Bill Donavan's death.

"It's not like this is the first funeral I've ever been to." She steeled herself against the unwanted echoes of everything she'd left behind to get on with her life.

She was a Rivers. Getting on with it was in her blood. Wallowing in the past was a waste of time.

"Matt's clearly worried about you, too. He--" Her mom stalled at Maggie's wordless glare to, shut up, please. "Letting yourself lean on people while you deal with something like this isn't the end of the world, honey."

Something like this.

A sea of blue.

That's what her dad had said a NYPD funeral would look like. But his description hadn't begun to prepare Maggie for the reality.

Five years ago when she'd started NYU, he'd transferred from being the sheriff of small-town Oakwood, GA, to a captain's position in one of New York's outlying boroughs. His county-funded job mostly involved enforcing civil laws and warrants, unlike the city officers who dealt with the bulk of the day-to-day violence and street crime. Still, he and his deputies had attended every department funeral in the last five years. They all turned out--NYPD, New Jersey officers, sheriffs, port authority cops. They showed up in force to honor the ultimate sacrifice made by an officer who'd put the safety of others before his own.

Maggie let her gaze travel to the front pew, where Bill's grieving widow and mother were clinging to each other. Women who'd given a hero their heart, never believing this could happen. Not really. Not to them.

No one ever did.

"I'm fine," she assured her mother. She had no business being anything else. "Don't worry about me."

But Carrinne was a long way from convinced as she walked away. She'd shot Maggie that same you're kidding, right? look more than once over the last few months.

Okay, so fine wasn't the right word to describe standing alone in a cathedral teaming with grieving people. But she'd earned herself a few blessed moments of silence, free of her family wondering how messed up she really was. Free of them asking questions that she had no intention of answering today, any more than she had since she'd gone back to Georgia last summer. She'd gone down for her great-grandfather's funeral, unearthed memories she'd thought were long-dead, and everything had begun to unravel.

The past had a stranglehold on her life now. Every day, she fought off the panic. The compulsion to beg Matt to hold her, to stay with her instead of going to work, so the fear of losing him and the need to run from everything would go away, at least for a while.

Just what a stressed-out NYPD detective longed for, a clingy, slightly unhinged girlfriend.

As if sensing she needed it, Matt smiled solemnly from his post at the door.

It hurt like hell, but she made herself smile back.