Blurb: Alexa Kendrick has no recollection of the car accident that left her scarred and sent her life careening wildly off course. When the half-sister she thought she’d never meet shows up at her door with an invitation to a new life, Alexa finds herself in Florence, Arizona, a town notorious for being populated with more prison inmates than actual citizens…a town that has done its best to hide its own dark secret.
After Ellie is called out of town, she leaves her sister with the keys to her flower shop and Alexa finds herself swapping lives with her sibling: running Ellie’s business, living in the house left to them both by their absentee father…and forging a smoldering relationship with sexy-as-sin penitentiary officer, Nate Fury—a man with his own demons.
But arranging flowers by day and tangling with the only man who has ever seen her real self by night isn’t enough to silence the mysterious panic that fuels Alexa’s dark dreams. When Nate brings home a book written by an inmate, one describing an unspeakable crime, the shackles binding Alexa’s own lost memories begin to shatter. And as the devastating truth comes to light, she realizes that Nate holds the key to unlocking her past, as well as her heart.
Excerpt: For a long moment Alexa was tempted to just go crawl back under the covers and stay there for the remainder of the day.
She couldn’t. She had a flower shop that she had no clue how to open or run.
Irritation settling over her, Alexa slammed a few more cupboard doors until she came across a very battered old metal teakettle. Remembering that she had a package of instant coffee in her purse, she set to work, and within moments had a cup of sweet, steaming caffeine clutched in her hands.
Holding the mug so tightly that it burned her palms, Alexa padded back across the kitchen, down the small hallway and back into the bedroom. There she threw open the curtains and looked out the window at what was early morning in Florence.
Instead of the irritation that she’d expected to double, as she sipped her drink and watched the quiet street, with only the occasional pedestrian or car passing by, Alexa felt a strange sort of peace settle over her, that same feeling she’d gotten the night before, in the diner.
Maybe right here, right now, was where she was supposed to be. If only, she thought wryly, that right now feeling had included the man from the diner the night before.
His face in her mind’s eye, her fingers itched for a canvas and her paints. She would love to try to capture those fascinating lines of his cheekbones, his jaw, the exact shade of that russet hair in vivid oil—and after she’d left the diner, she’d cancelled her reservation at the small hotel and retrieved her suitcase and paints, so she could.
If only she didn’t have to be downstairs in an hour to open a shop to which she didn’t even know how to turn on the cash register.
But as she drained her mug, and let the caffeine settle in her brain, Alexa found that, instead of dreading it, she was actually looking forward to the change in routine. It had been a long time since she’d woken up with any kind of feelings at all about her day—so anxiety, irritation, creativity all filled an emptiness that she she’d been aware of but hadn’t quite known how to fill.
The memory drifted in softly as she stepped away from the window, triggered by a flash of buttery yellow sunlight shining through the glass. Just the faintest wisp of knowing, a sense that she’d experienced it sometime before.
A red and white skirt swirled around her legs, which were short and chubby with youth. She sat on the floor here, in this very room, watching the sun as it played through the glass.
“We have to go now, Alexa.” Her mother, younger and straighter, face streaked with tears as she scooped Alexa up off the floor. “We have to go home.”
“No! Stay! I want to stay here!” Alexa kicked and screamed, reached out for an older woman who crossed her arms over her chest and looked at the floor.
That was it—that was all that she remembered. It left more questions than it answered.
Untouched releases next week. Amazon
The Giveaway runs the entire length of the tour – so stop by each blog to enter! The schedule:
12/3 Fiction Vixen
12/4 Smexy Books
12/5 The Sub Cub Books
12/6 Vilma’s Book Blog
12/8 Heroes and Heartbreakers
shana says
Looks good. I’ll look for more by this author.