Oh and another excerpt…

A fine appreciation for single malt was something they’d discovered a couple of years ago after Finn had done a Wild Life show on Skye, in Scotland. In amongst all the rock climbing and trekking, he’d visited a distillery, bringing back a bottle for her.

It had been a joke at first, since neither of them had been able to tell the difference in taste, but slowly it had become another one of their little traditions. She’d given him a whisky-tasting course once for his birthday. One he’d dragged her along to as well.

She took a sip. Fire and peat and smoke. The warm glow of embers. “Wow, this is pretty good.”

His grin deepened. “Yeah, I thought so too.” He raised his glass. “Slainte.” Then he sipped.

The warm glow of the Scotch spread through her, easing her tension. Giving her a little bit of respite.

“So, how’s the show going?”

“Pretty good. Ratings are excellent, which means I’ll be doing a third season.” He leaned his hip against the breakfast bar. “Put a proposal in to the producers about going to Nepal. Thought Everest might be a draw card.”

Anna took another sip of Scotch to cover the instinctive denial. God, she hated it when he went somewhere dangerous. Still, that was who he was. He liked a physical challenge. The adrenaline rush. And he was good at it.

She still remembered the skiing trip she’d taken with his family when she’d been ten and Finn twelve. They’d learned to snowboard for the first time. She’d spent the week sitting on her butt while Finn had picked up the basics in half an hour. He was doing jumps by the end of the trip.

“Are you sure?” she said, unable to help herself.

He just gave her that Finn Shaw grin, tinged with the tease he saved for her when she was being too careful. “And you call me protective.”

“It’s Everest, not Mount Eden. You don’t just drive to the top so you can get a view of the city.”

“I’ll have other people with me. You know I’m careful.”

Yeah, she did. He’d got a lot better over the years when it came to the dangerous sports he indulged in, taking on board some of her cautiousness. He’d often complained she was turning him into a lawyer, but nevertheless he didn’t stop doing it. And once he’d got the Wild Life job and had a crew to look after, he’d become even more safety conscious, his innate protectiveness coming to the fore.

Finn took another sip. His eyes glinted. “Plus, I’m good.”

“Even if you do say so yourself.”

Well, Finn had never met a sport he couldn’t do well within hours of trying it. As a total nonathlete, she’d always found that very impressive.

“I do say so myself.”

“So modest.”

“That’s me. Modesty is my middle name.”

“I thought Clive was your middle name.”

He laughed. The warm, genuine Finn laugh that made her feel good every time she heard it. “If that ever got out…”

“Oh, I know. Believe me, I know.”

“Think of my fans, woman.”

This time it was her turn to laugh because Finn did indeed have many fans. Who wouldn’t give a crap about his middle name as long as he gave them a signed autograph. Or even a kiss. “You think of your fans. I’ll think of the blackmail potential.” It was good to be here in his apartment, sipping Scotch and talking crap. Familiar. Normal. She’d missed this as well.

Anna finished her whisky and put it down on the wooden counter. “Another, barman.”

He poured her another measure. Then said, “You’re putting it off.”

Oh crap. He knew her too well. And yeah, he never let anything go.

She didn’t look at him. “Putting what off?”

“Putting off telling me whatever it is that brought you here.”

“How do you know that?”

“How do I know? You asked me for help, remember? And you still haven’t told me exactly what kind of help you need.”

The tension that had eased while they’d been talking began to gather inside her again. A tension born of nervousness and trepidation and…fear.

Fear he wouldn’t do what she wanted. Fear he would.

Anna picked up the tumbler, knocked back the Scotch in one hit. The alcohol burned its way down her throat and she coughed.

“Jesus, Anna. That bottle cost me five hundred bucks. You could savor it a little.”

She put down the glass, eyes watering, blinking at him.

“You don’t want to ask me, do you?” A straight-out question. No games. That was Finn.

It deserved a straight-out answer. “No. Not really.”

“Then why are you? And what the hell kind of help do you need that makes you afraid to ask?”

She’d thought long and hard about how she wanted to ask him. She’d practiced it in front of the mirror, rehearsed it over and over, but nothing had ever sounded right in her mouth. Right now, asking while drunk seemed a fine idea.

Pushing the tumbler toward him, she said, “Hit me.”

Finn put the cork in the bottle. “No.”

“Finn.”

“I said no.”

“Why not?”

He straightened, gaze opaque. “Since when do you have to be drunk to ask me for help?”

Anna swallowed. Better out than in, right? “Since I decided that I want you to sleep with me.”

Have taken on a new and exciting opportunity that’s due June. Plus have final galleys for my May release with Entangled. Plus two books due at the end of March. Have just done first pass edits on the Chessman (Black Knight, White Queen) and I know edits for the next Talking Dirty book will be upon me soon. It’s getting busy.

It’s good to stay busy while I await the book release, suffering from random bouts of nausea, mixed with touches of hysteria as I obsessively check my Amazon rank.

This is kind of the moment I’ve been working toward for five years now, the moment I’ve been dreaming about since I was little. My book out there for people to buy. I never dreamed it would be romance and I never even imagined it would be as an ebook but fate moves in mysterious ways. And to be honest, I’m ecstatic with the result!

To celebrate, I’m going to post another excerpt that follows on from the one on the Samhain site. Hope you enjoy!

 She took another sip of her beer. “How’s Katie?”

Ignoring his question. Another one of her “I don’t want to talk about it yet” techniques. Fuck that. “You said you were going to give me an explanation. Or have you changed your mind?”

A hand pushed one of the dark wings of her hair behind her ear. “No, I haven’t. I just wanted to know what you’ve been doing.”

“If you’d bothered to listen to any of my messages, read any of my emails, or even answer your bloody door, you’d know.”

Green eyes slid away from his.

Great. Now he really did sound like a petulant, angry child.

He lifted his bottle, took a sip of beer. “Katie and I broke up. She wanted more. I didn’t.”

Anna let out a breath, dark brows knitting together. “Oh, Finn. I’m sorry.”

She always was sorry whenever he broke up with a girlfriend. Sorrier than he was. He lifted a shoulder. “Easy come, easy go.” Because he didn’t want to settle down. Katie had been a lovely girl, but when she’d started angling for “the conversation”, he’d had to get out. He wasn’t a cruel person, and keeping her hanging on just because he’d liked the sex wasn’t right.

“Finn,” Anna murmured.

“No, it didn’t worry me, truly.” Only a little.

Anna’s watchful green eyes looked at him from beneath her new fringe. “But something happened, didn’t it? That’s why you’re so angry with me.”

Ah. Deflection. Another Anna-ism. When there was something she didn’t want to talk about, she turned the conversation back on him. Fuck that too.

Finn leaned forward. Put his beer on the floor, elbows on his knees. Stared at her. “This isn’t about me, Green Eyes. So come on, spit it out. Why are you here after six months of silence? What happened?”

Green Eyes. Finn’s affectionate nickname for her. She’d always liked it. Liked how it made her sound exotic when she was anything but.

Yet even the familiar sound of it didn’t stop the cold feeling spreading through her. Neither did sitting here on Finn’s comfortable leather couch, the same couch she’d spent so many nights sitting on, talking or watching TV, or listening to music or arguing, or sleeping on when she’d had too many glasses of wine to drive home.

It should have reassured her. Should have grounded her. But it didn’t.

Because what had happened six months ago was too big for familiarity to overcome. As was the request she had to make. Still, she had to try. Had to ask.

Finn never let anything get in his way when he wanted something. He never had. And she knew he’d always wanted to help her. That was why she was asking him in the first place. That and because she trusted him as she trusted no one else.

Anna took a fortifying sip of her beer. Talking to him shouldn’t have been so difficult, but the therapist she’d gone to see for a few months afterwards had told her not to expect miracles. That these things took time. But if she couldn’t tell her oldest, most trusted friend, then who could she tell?

She held the beer loosely in her hands, trying to get up the courage to meet his gaze. Trying to fight the fear that had made a home for itself inside her soul.

“It’s serious, isn’t it?”

Anna swallowed, looked up.

All the anger in his eyes was gone. Dark brows drew together in a frown. The sun coming through the windows struck gold highlights from his shaggy, surfer-blond hair.

Dark eyes, straight dark brows, blond hair…unusual. Striking. She’d never really noticed before. But then she’d seen the parade of women in and out of his bed. She knew that Finn Shaw, the man she thought of more as a brother than anything else, wasn’t exactly lacking in the looks department.

Don’t go there, girl.

But she had to go there, didn’t she? Now she was here, knowing the request she was going to make of him?

“Yeah,” she said, taking a breath. “It’s serious.” He didn’t move, but a sense of stillness seemed to steal over him. Most of the time Finn was a ball of restless, kinetic energy, but when he listened, he listened.

“Tell me.”

Bossy son of a bitch. Anna gripped the bottle she was holding, trying to think of how to broach the subject. Normally she thought everything through carefully, the legacy of a career in law, but when she’d thought about this moment, her mind had always gone blank. She didn’t like the feeling. Groping around for some words, she eventually said, “You know Michael and I were having problems, right?”

Finn moved, a sudden, fluid motion, leaning forward in his seat, a dark kind of anger in his eyes. “What did he do?”

Oh, great, Mr. Alpha Male was on the case now, was he? Finn had a protective streak in him a mile wide. Plus he seemed to think that no one was good enough for her when it came to her boyfriends. He’d never liked any of them, Michael least of all.

“Nothing,” she snapped, angry with him all of a sudden. Him going Incredible Hulk on her was the last thing she needed. “Stop jumping to conclusions.”

The intense look on his face didn’t waver. “You said you were having problems.”

“It wasn’t to do with him, okay? The problems were mine.”

He didn’t look the slightest bit appeased by this. “So what was the issue?”

“We…he asked me to marry him.”

A look passed over Finn’s face. Something she couldn’t interpret. “When?”

“Six months ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Anna swallowed. Screw beer. She needed whisky. Right now. “I’m getting to that. Have you got anything stronger?” She gestured to the beer.

Finn ignored the question. “Get to the point, Green Eyes.”

Crap. She found her hands were clasped tightly over her knees, pressing against the denim of her jeans. “I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what to say. I was confused.”

“About what?”

“About his proposal.”

“But I thought you wanted to get married?”

Yeah, so did she. But when Michael had asked her, something inside had held back. “I did.” She swallowed. “But I needed some time to think. I went out with Lily—”

“What about me? You didn’t think to talk about it with me?” He sounded pissed off.

“Sometimes you need a girlfriend—”

“Don’t give me that shit. That’s never bothered you before.”

Oh, bloody hell, he really was angry. “You weren’t there. I called but you were in a meeting.”

He let out a breath, sat back in his seat again. “So you went out with Lily.”

“We went to a bar. Had a talk.” Her hands clasped her knees tighter. “Lily left after an hour and I…I stayed to think about it. Just to have some time alone.”

His long, lean figure went still again, obviously picking up on her tension. “And?”

Anna swallowed. “And the next thing I knew, I woke up in an alley.”

Finn was staring at her. His eyes had gone almost black.

“I’d been drugged, Finn,” she made herself go on. “I’d been assaulted.”