Recommend Monday and a CHANCES ARE Excerpt!

Good Monday All!

Hope you had a fabulous weekend and have some wonderful recommendations for us today. I'm zooming toward the deadline for MIDNIGHT LIES, so I'm making this short and sweet: Tell us what fabulous books we should be reading!

As you know, Thanksgiving is this week and though I'm grateful everyday for all the gifts in my life, I always get a little sentimental this time of year when I think about how truly blessed I am. And I include you in those blessings. Thank you for buying my books, for telling others about them, for your emails, messages, and kind comments. Thank you for coming to this blog once a week and sharing your love of books with others. Without you, I would just be a pajama clad woman sitting in her chair, stuffing her face with chocolate, and talking to imaginary characters. Not a pretty picture!

So, as a thank you, I'm sharing an excerpt from CHANCES ARE. Totally unedited, this excerpt might change a bit before it's finished, but it should give you an idea of Jake and Angela and will hopefully get you even more excited about their story.

Have a fabulous week and a safe and delightful Thanksgiving. Hope you enjoy the sneak peek at CHANCES ARE!

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“Come on, sweetheart, you know you want it. Take it. I won’t hurt you.”

It had been said that Jake Mallory’s soft, gentle whisper could charm the birds from a tree, the snarl off a grizzly, and the panties from the most virtuous woman. He’d never seen it happen himself, but the rumors had always made him laugh. Today he was trying to do nothing more than charm a mouse from behind his fridge. Didn’t seem fair to kill the poor thing but dammed if he wanted to share an apartment with it. The cheese, an excellent gyurere, had been a small sacrifice to make. Now if only the creature would cooperate.

He needed to move to a nicer place. The flat had been temporary diggs to hang his clothes when he’d come to Paris. Working for Last Chance Rescue had seemed like a perfect job but he counted on nothing anymore. Everything in his life was on probation, especially the things that seemed perfect.

Being an LCR operative had worked out so far. He’d been an operative for about four months now, had been on a half dozen rescues, saved lives and helped put bad people away. Nice to know that some things actually were what they seemed.

The LCR people he’d met were what they seemed, too. Odd, since much of their work dealt with lying. Half a year ago he hadn’t trusted a soul. Now, he trusted an entire organization. Working for LCR had restored his faith in people. Not all of them. Hell, he’d seen too much evil shit for that to happen. Even now, he stayed wary, just in case. Jake didn’t trust easy. Never again.

His attention moved to the present as a tiny, whiskered face peeked from behind his fridge. Jake stood statue still. A fishnet might seem like an odd device to trap a mouse but it was his best bet for a live capture and release.

The creature scurried to the cheese chunk lying in the floor. Jake waited till the twitching nose touched the cheese. Quick as a cat, he threw the net over the small heap, scooped up the now squiggling mouse and dropped it into a waiting shoebox.

 Grabbing his keys and jacket, Jake picked up the box and headed out the door. The abandoned building two blocks down seemed the perfect relocation. Should be plenty of company for his little friend.

The cellphone in his pocket played a familiar tune, telling him that his boss, Noah McCall was calling. The shoebox under his arm, he pulled out the phone and held it to his ear. “Mallory.”

“Can you come in?”

“Yeah. Half an hour okay?”

“Yes.”

The line went dead before Jake could answer. Phone etiquette wasn’t high on McCall’s ‘must do’ list. Most of the phone conversations they’d had consisted of one or two words but the tone in his boss’s voice sounded ominous and grim, more so than usual.

His head low to battle the icy, brutal wind, Jake strode to his car. Opening the door, he deposited the box on the front passenger seat and cranked the engine. As he pulled out onto rue de Morgan, he reflected on his boss. Before coming to Paris, Jake had thought Noah McCall was an urban legend. As a cop, he’d heard stories about LCR’s successes but had dismissed most of them as someone’s wishful thinking. It wasn’t until he’d gotten caught up in the middle of an LCR rescue that he realized everything he’d heard was true.

Jake had been a typical tourist the day he’d met McCall. He’d been in Paris for two weeks, staying at hostels, roaming the streets, soaking up the atmosphere. He’d stopped in for a cold drink and a cheap meal at a not so high-class establishment. What he had gotten was a busted mouth, a black eye and a job offer from McCall.

LCR had been running a sting. He hadn’t known that. All he knew was two drunks were attempting to pull a young woman out of the bar and no one was stopping them. He’d intervened and ruined the op. Thankfully another sting had been set up a few days later that had brought down a human trafficking operation.

Even though Jake had blown the op, McCall had been impressed with his intervention. Days later, the LCR leader had called and offered him a job. After listening intently, Jake’s world had shifted once more. For two years, he’d been mired in grief, with no purpose. McCall’s offer had shown him a new path. Now he couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Making a quick stop at the abandoned warehouse, he unboxed his uninvited houseguest and watched it scamper away. Not his usual kind of rescue but what the hell. Killing something just because he could wasn’t his way.

He parked two blocks from the LCR office. It was a cold one today but the frigid air kept his mind from wandering where he couldn’t let it go. The moment he walked into the office, he’d be greeted with what he told himself he shouldn’t want and couldn’t have. Maybe this new assignment would get him out of the country for a while. Lately that had been the only way to keep his hands off of Angela Delvecchio.

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The instant he opened the door and saw her beautiful face, he called himself a fool once again. Her attraction to him had been obvious from the beginning. What had also been obvious was her innocence. Beneath that tough girl persona, the multiple tattoos and piercings, he’d seen the gentle, caring heart of Angela Delvecchio. A heart that could be crushed by some cruel bastard’s uncaring selfishness. Dammed if he would be that man.