Winter Heat: Excerpt 3, and A Cool Video to Watch!

One final Winter Heat Excerpt, to brainwash you into going and buying the book if you already haven't ;o)

And for those clammoring in the comments and my inbox for more news on Dark Legacy--coming soon to a blog near you, I promise. Just as soon as I get the draft of the book into my editor... All 400 pages of it...

And so you'll know a little what the last few weeks of a deadline this big feels like, here's a fun look at what water does when a single drop hits a hard surface... It's kind of like trying to weave (read POUND) a single change or idea through 400 pages of a story, lol!

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1897461/

Wish me luck everyone! Dark Legacy cover and promo news and descriptions and all sorts of good stuff soon. Until then, enjoy a bit more of Felicia and Tony's story (and, by all means, read all of it, after you BUY THE BOOK ;o)

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Winter Heat
Scenes Three and Four

"I've lost my mind," Felicia insisted several hours and twice as many second thoughts later, at the welcome dinner's cocktail reception.

"It's the altitude." Willard smiled up a passing waiter, then shamelessly checked out the guy's butt.

"It's your bad influence." Felicia straightened and re-straightened her fucia Versace minidress.

"Enjoy." He eyed the non-existent back of her outfit. "You fit in perfectly here. Forget about Rossi. It's very chic to—"

"Make an fool of myself?" First in front of Rossi, then the poor bell man.

"To wear your fabulousness with daring and pride, darling."

"Kind of like humiliation is the new black?"

"You're talking as if you went streaking through the lobby. You deserve to let loose a little."

"Is that what they're calling it these days?"

"You've come this far. It's just dinner, Fe."

"Yeah, and it was just a few sips of wine in the car. Just a dare to loosen me up. Just a kiss."

"No, honey. That was straight up sex with your clothes on. Whatever crawled up Tony Rossi's ass after you lifted your spell on him, that man's the hottest thing in pants I've seen in a long time—and you had him melting all over you."

Yeah, except who had been melting whom?

Willard had egged her into entering her sonnet in the contest in the first place, after he'd shown up at her door late one night on his way home from clubbing. She'd been in her rattiest guy pajamas—a pair of her ex's, actually—and that's when she'd finally gotten it. Her best guy friend had a sexier wardrobe and dated hotter men than she had in years. It had been time to stop wallowing in the efficient, business side of her personality that Phillip had found so boring. Time to mine for passion, before the well dried up.

But a secret part of Felicia wondered even now if it wasn't already too late.

"Don't throw in the towel!" Willard insisted. "I won't hear of it. Men will be crawling all over you and your couture tonight, gay or straight. If you're not going to work this fabulous makeover for you, the least you can do is be my arm candy, until I land myself a live one."

It was a beautiful dress. One of her favorite purchases for the trip. When she'd tried it on at Bergdorf's, she'd felt a forgotten piece of herself coming back to life. The same passionate piece that had kicked into high gear downstairs, in the arms of a man who'd left her feeling giddy, then completely forgotten—dismissed—once he'd decided she didn't suit his PR plans.

The judgmental bastard!

She was a guest for the weekend. She could quit this scene any time she wanted. But that would mean walking away with her designer tail between her supermodel-long legs.

Was she really going to prove her ex and her own subconscious right—by conceding that leave-them-panting sexy had never been her talent, and never would be?

Hell no!

She snatched a glass of champagne from a passing waiter's tray, and raised the flute to salute Willard.

"Let the games begin!"


***

Tony had heard of men buzzing around a woman like bees near a honey pot. And he'd spent the last twenty-four hours running interference between Maddy Lov and the hard-partying crowd that trailed after her. But he'd never seen anything like Felicia Gallo, wearing Versace's finest as if it were a second skin. Or the effect she was having on the rising testosterone level in the banquet room.

She'd wrapped herself up in his mother's favorite designer. She was wearing matching heels so high, every step she took without mishap was a triumph of fluidity and grace.

Versace was on the wilder end of the designer spectrum. But it was a must-have wardrobe staple for the adventurous socialite. Or so Tony's mother insisted every time she spent a new fortune on the label's newest line. Too bad Gabriella Rossi had never showered the same attention on her husband and only child. Not that Tony's father had minded.

The two still lived the same jet-set lives as when they'd relegated Tony to boarding school at too young an age—alternating their time between Aspen and Milan, Florence and Madrid. New York and Paris during fashion season. LA for the awards shows, which were the few months out of the year during which Tony sporadically saw them.

Their empty relationship was the envy of everyone they met, and his mother's glamorous, sophisticated façade was their crowning, glittering glory. A facade the romantic Ms. Gallo had obviously honed to her own advantage. Gone was Felicia's skin-tight snow suit, which he doubted had seen the first flake of winter ice. In its place were swirls of severely cut color and silk that invited a man to smooth his hands over every restless curve and valley.

She'd collected quite a bevy of admirers throughout the cocktail hour. A room full. And her friend, Willard, dressed to kill in what looked like Armani, was scoping things out for himself.


Actually, he was headed Tony's way!

"She's really something, our little poet, isn't she?" The man held up a copy of the program Tony had carefully designed, complete with a border of hearts and flowers that reeked of romance.
Tony had spotlighted Felicia's sonnet on the cover page. He glanced at the poem again, trying to match it to the woman sipping a cocktail and flirting with the besotted men standing on either side of her.

"She's...unexpected," was the best reply he could manage.

Wickedly complex and appealing in a primal way that he couldn't take his eyes off of. But, unexpected or not, she was nothing more than a principle player in his business plans for the opening. A means to an end, that it was his job to control.

"She's not the only unexpected distraction tonight." Willard sighed in response to Tony's scowl. "You're gorgeous. A young Paul Newman, but rough enough around the edges for some flavor. You clearly have a sense of style most heterosexual men refuse to own. But you're straight as an arrow, aren't you? Pity."

Willard was a straight-shooter. Right up Tony's ally. And he seemed to have a precarious hold on Tony's star poet's leash.

"It doesn't matter what I am." Or what he wanted outside the job. Tony's gaze tracked the way the curve of Felicia's bottom rounded against the hint of a skirt that finished off her dress. "I'm working. When I'm working, focusing on anything or anyone else is out of the question."

"Uh huh." Willard was watching Tony watch Felicia, his knowing smile almost as wicked as his friend's ass.

"Listen—" Tony turned his head to make it clear that he didn't have time for whatever games Willard wanted to play.

But out of the corner of his eye, he saw Felicia stumble—right into the waiting arms of one of the bachelors panting after her.

"Shit!"