Four Letter Words Blurb:
Paige Holmes has made her choice. But as she
begins to get her life back on track, she also starts to question her decision.
Then, the letters arrive. When Paige finds
herself in trouble once again, she must decide who she can trust.
Will she go back to the one she denied, or
will she stand by her choice?
Love and lust are, after all, both Four
Letter Words.
Excerpt from Chapter One:
Laying my head
back against the black leather seats of the Jag and gazing ahead, I lifted a
finger and touched my lips that were swollen from his kiss. The weariness of
the past few weeks was beginning to take over, weighing on my eyelids as they
began to droop. I should have been reassured by the man sitting next to me.
I shifted in
my seat so I could watch him as he drove on. He was a force that even nature
had no hold over. There was an urge to reach out and cling to his broad bicep,
a need to feel the security of his physical strength, aching somewhere deep
inside of me.
We didn’t
speak as he pressed all his weight onto the accelerator, urging the car until
it was over the speed limit. I half expected the shine of blue lights to fill
the inside of the car, with sirens blaring around us. But they didn’t. Of
course they didn’t. Even if a marked car was to pass, I doubted Vance Ellery
would slow down, and I had even less that the police would attempt to pull him
over. I suspected that the personal phone number of every single high-ranking
officer in the country, was tucked away in a neat Rolodex on Vance’s desk or
even stored in the memory bank of his mobile phone for easy access.
The silence
should have been soothing. I should have been able to let my lashes flutter
against my cheeks, and slip into a relaxing slumber. Instead the lack of
conversation added to the tension that built behind my eyes. I closed them,
hoping that soon I would drift off into a deep sleep, where I would be
surrounded by falling flowers, rainbows, and sunlight. Ha! If only I was deserving
of such luck. There were no pleasant dreams awaiting me after the sandman
visited. Only nightmares wanted to be part of my night. They tormented me,
bringing memories that I’d tried to bury and forget. They hounded the darkness,
giving me nothing but misery and pain and suffering. It was as though all my
sins from a previous life had been rolled over into this one.
If the visions
of his face, the sound of his voice had been the only elements of my slumber,
then I might have been willing to slip away and let the desperation of rest
take me to the shadowed places I dreaded. My soul was destined for torture
though. I was to be punished for his crime.
The mere
suggestion of sleep forced my blood to pulsate until it was the only thing I
could hear, throbbing in my temples. The searing pain of anxiety and panic
stabbed at my chest, pins pricking my skin, as I let my eyelids fall. A shudder
fell down my spine, waking me from the light doze I’d stumbled into.
Breathe in,
breathe out. In with the good, out with the bad. In through the nose, out
through the mouth. Breathe in, breathe out. A mantra, taught to me by a yoga
instructor years before hell had entered my life, repeated over and over in my
mind. I inhaled the cool air through my nasal passages, allowing it to slip
down into my pain-filled lungs, exhaling all the bad out of my mouth in a
gigantic whoosh.
Ahead, the
roads were empty, weaving out of the village and headed towards Richart Courts,
the hotel that was to be my sanctuary for the next couple of days before I had
to face the next challenge. New York City.
How anyone
could expect me to go back there was beyond belief. The only logical
explanation for their plans for my future was that facing New York was the
lesser of the two evils that haunted me, threatening to rip away the seams that
had begun to fray around my already tattered edges.
Four Letter
Words is the second, and final, part to Paige’s story. To celebrate its
re-release, the first part of the Words Duet has been reduced to 99p / 99c!
Seven Dirty Words Blurb:
Paige Holmes hides herself in a masculine
world in a desperate attempt to remain safe.
Just as she is ready to face her fears and
her past, she finds herself torn between Matt Jackson and Vance Ellery:
handsome, rich, and safe – or handsome, rich, and dangerous?
Which will she choose?
The one who appears to be the most perfect,
or the one who makes her use all Seven Dirty Words?
Author
bio:
British author, Charlotte Howard,
was born in Oman and spent much of the first part of her life flitting between
Oman, Scotland, and England. Now settled in Somerset, Charlotte lives with her
husband, two children, and growing menagerie of pets.
Her career as a
writer began at an early age, with a poem being featured in an anthology for
the East Midlands. Since then Charlotte has written many short stories and poems,
and finally wrote her first full-length piece of fiction in 2010.
During what little
spare time she has, Charlotte enjoys reading and writing (of course), spending
time with her family, and watching action movies whilst eating curry and
drinking tea.
Charlotte is an active member of Yeovil Creative Writers Group.
Charlotte is an active member of Yeovil Creative Writers Group.
OUT NOW: FOUR LETTER WORDS by Charlotte Howard @Shy_Tiger #FourLetterWords #Erotica #Contemporary #Romance
