Pretend this is June 1st, 'Cause here's another great picture and one final excerpt!!

We're super busy around here tomorrow, so I'm posting my June 1st a little bit early.

One more Romantic Times picture to share, my favorite of them all...Romance Cover Model (and nice guy), Peter DeCicco and new friend Dana and me at the Vampire Ball.

Everyone was in costume but me it seemed, so my friends helped me become "the victim"...I was in thrall, LOL!! Can you blame me after checking Peter out? Someone even had these nifty tattoos. Can you see my bite?

Okay on to yesterday's winner from the comments section...Meljprincess, pick a book!! The list is dwindling, but there are some great ones left still (and lots more promo goodies, too):

Count Down-Iris Johansen
Darker Than Midnight--Maggie Shayne
The Dark One--Ronda Thompson
On Blue Falls Pond--Susan Crandall
Chill of Fear (Hard Cover!!!)--Kay Hooper

And, one final excerpt from The Perfect Daughter before we move on to celebrating my July Superromance, The Prodigal's Rturn. The scene is too long to give you all of it, but I think I found a good place to leave you hanging ;O)

Sigh, my hero and heroine have a long road ahead of them, but I'm dying for you to join them on their ride. The wait is killing me. Hope it's killing you, too LOL!!!

*******

Matt's strong hands caressed Maggie's skin. His body was a fiery warmth she craved, as if she'd been cold all her life. She swallowed his growl, returning in kind the roughness she'd never known she'd wanted before they'd met. Her nails scraped. Her teeth nipped at supple muscles. Their bodies came together one last shuddering time.

Minutes later, their breathing still out of control, he rolled until she was straddling his waist, their chests touching, her brown hair curling madly around her face as she leaned in for another kiss. He palmed her bottom, his fingers long enough to trace downward until she wiggled and collapsed with a purr of contentment. His arms wrapped her in a hard-edged cocoon she never wanted to leave. She cuddled closer and held on to both the moment and the man that she was fighting so desperately to keep.

"That was amazing." He tucked her head against his shoulder, letting out a lazy sigh that made her heart skip the way it always did when something felt this right. Then his tender kiss at her temple shattered the last of the fragile peace she'd been clinging to. "You're..."

She felt his frown in the way his body tensed. Wiped at the tears she knew had trickled onto his shoulder. Pushed away. Drew the sheet around her. Cursed under her breath as she wiped at her face again and fought off the emotion closing in on her.

The doctor no on knew she'd been seeing was a quack. Their sessions, talking about the past, remembering...it was only making things worse.

"I have to go." Matt sat up, too, his voice gentle but his expression grim.

"I know." She nodded.

The task force finally had a lead on the group of Latino gang members who'd ambushed Matt and Bill two weeks ago. Matt's guys had been tracking them ever since the night of the funeral. Out of loyalty to Bill, she kept rationalizing, not out of some obsessive need to avenge the man's murder.

"I should have left a half hour ago." He dragged on his pants in impatient jerks.

"I know, I just..."

... needed to hold you, so I wouldn't think about where you're going...or what could happen...

What had happened before, to Bill and to--

A masculine sigh yanked her from her thoughts. She looked up to find Matt watching her come unglued.

"We're going to have to talk about this." Standing there, shirtless, muscles rippling as he shifted his feet, he had the look of man who'd rather eat dirt than talk.

She'd brought up the investigation into Bill's shooter a dozen times. She'd tried to get him to step back and refocus, but nothing doing. He never wanted to talk about his job or what drove his single-minded devotion to his work, any more than she'd offered up her past and its recent aftershocks for casual conversation. The determined set of his jaw announced their mutual decision to live and let live was over.

Just when she was a sniffle way from a breakdown.

"I'm not trying to make you feel guilty about going to work," she hedged. But she had dragged him back to bed when she'd known he had a midnight call. A bed where she still sat, no doubt looking tragic, wrapped up in sheets still warm from his body. "I--"

"I never said you were trying to." He crouched before her and took her hand.

Not a good sign.

Matt was an amazing lover. A tough man with a huge heart to match every other larger-than-life part of him. But tender and understanding gestures weren't his thing. Neither was looking at her as if she might shatter to pieces.

"You're the smartest, most beautiful, unpredictable woman I'd ever met," he continued. "I'm a lucky bastard, having someone like you in my life. But, I thought you knew...that you understood the risks that come with my work."

"I..." She did understand, too well. That was the problem.

The first problem in her life she hadn't been able to tackle head-on. She hated feeling like a victim every time she thought of losing him. She hated not having a spine where his work was concerned. The woman he'd first met and had had one, and he understandably wanted that kick-ass, confident Maggie back.

So get a grip!

"We can't keep doing this." He sounded almost angry now. Sad, but angry. "I'm not totally sure what's changed, but I don't need to know the reasons. Not when I can see what this is doing to you."

"See what?" she asked in a disgustingly watery voice.

You go, girl!

"That living with me is terrifying you." His fists clenched against his thighs. "I can hear it every time you say, 'I love you,' when I walk out the door--like you might never get another chance."

"I say I love you because that's how I feel." And even though he never returned the sentiment, she knew he cared deeply for her, too. "Since when is that a crime?"

"Since you make it impossible for me to do my job without worrying about how it's going to affect you! You've always known what I do. What I am."

"Yes," she agreed simply, when she couldn't remember the last time anything had felt simple.

Matt stood between total strangers and the harm most people never knew surrounded them. But Maggie knew. She'd survived her teenage brush with drugs and the violence of that world. Her best friend, Claire, hadn't. Her sheriff's deputy uncle had protected her, but she'd seen with her own eyes the kind of risks officers took to do their jobs. Risks that might one day get Matt killed.

She curled deeper into the sheet, hiding the shiver taking control of her body.

"But--" Her throat closed, refusing to finish the sentence.

"But?" Matt's bright blue eyes filled with regret. He smoothed a hand through the messy hair that made her look even younger than she was.

But I can't stand to lose you, too.

"You've changed, Matt," she said instead. "Lately, it's like you're looking for an excuse to push limits. Like you're trying to put yourself more and more at risk, until you make up for what happened to Bill. Like you won't be happy until you totally self-destruct."

The compassion drained from his eyes as she unfairly made this about him, when every last speck of the mess they'd become was on her. "I'm doing the same job I always have. You're the one who's changed. Living like this, scared all the time, it isn't right for you. Maybe I'm not right for you, baby."

Baby.

She jerked away from his favorite endearment, anger conquering the sink hole her emotions had become...