PINK NEON: Meet Cecily Brown and Daniel Padilla!
From the
desk of romance author Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy……
Pink Neon!
It’s
that time again, time for me anticipate a new release with small shivers
dashing up and down my spine, with a combination of excitement and
trepidation. Release day is when my
newest “baby” is revealed to the world and all I can do now is sit back and
wait for responses! This one is a
contemporary multicultural romance with a good measure of suspense. Official release date from Rebel Ink Press is
July 3 but stay tuned – once in awhile they sneak it out a little bit
early. If you follow me on Facebook or
Twitter, you’ll be among the first to know if it should happen. Now here’s a little about the story:
Pink Neon begins with a woman driving a
vintage fire engine red GTO over the hills and curves into the Ozarks, a woman
too exotic to be a native with her dark skin and corn-rowed braids. She’s brave, though, and bold as she comes to
start over, to begin again in a different place in order to realize her
dreams. Cecily, my heroine, revealed
herself before I ever began writing but my hero, an FBI agent named Daniel
Padilla strolled into my story and made it his tale, too.
Blurb:
When Cecily Brown roared into the
vacation hotspot of Branson, Missouri, she had nothing on her mind but
distancing herself from her life in Chicago after a divorce. She planned to
make her long standing dreams of owning a boutique called ‘Pink Neon’ come true
and forget the decade she spent trapped in a hellish marriage to millionaire
jeweler Willard Bradford VI. Once she arrives, though, she finds she’s a
minority among the tourists with her corn rowed braids and African-American
heritage but Cecily is determined to stay.
Her cousin calls to tell her the news – her ex-husband managed to
get murdered on the steps of his mansion but Cecily doesn’t care. Her old life
is history and she’s eager to move forward with the grand opening of her
boutique. Her first customer at Pink Neon is a man, dark and mysterious. She pegs
him for a criminal or a cop but their attraction is intense. So is their first
date which ends in intimacy and soon, she’s all but inseparable from Daniel
Padilla. He carries his own old baggage too.
Life’s good until Padilla admits he’s an FBI agent sent to check
Cecily out. She reacts with anger but as she learns she’s become the FBI’s
favorite suspect, she has to trust Daniel if she can trust anyone at all. As
the investigation heats up, she ends up heading south with him to Texas, as she
and her FBI lover try to discover who the real killer might be. But danger
lurks and it’s going to get rough before they straighten things out….if they
can.
Excerpt:
Sweet baby Jesus, my first
customer is smoking hot. I think I just died and he’s my dream angel come to
carry me to heaven. Or he
might be a demon to drag me down to hell.
Either way, I’m willing.
“Hi,” Cecily said as he stepped onto the
soft carpeting. “Welcome to Pink Neon. We’ve just opened and you’ll find an
eclectic blend of beautiful things here.
Is there anything in particular I can help you find?”
Her pat greeting sounded lame now but she rattled it off anyway as she
drank in his face with her eyes. His
copper hued skin, weathered and darkened by the sun, indicated an ethnic
heritage but he wasn’t black. Native
American or Hispanic, maybe a little of both showed up in his family tree along
with some white heritage. He watched her
with deep, dark eyes, both powerful and still.
They reminded her of a placid pond, deep and mysterious surrounded by
shadows. Tiny wrinkles wreathed the
corners of his eyes and a few tight lines around his mouth indicated he must be
older than she was, mid thirties maybe.
His lips were thin, mouth well-shaped and she wondered how well he could
kiss. He looked tough – and she figured
he was – but he had soul, too. Even if he doesn’t know it, he’s got it. For the moment, though, he wore a bland mask.
“I’d like to look around if that’s okay,”
he said in a baritone voice, solid as good steak, richer than whipped cream,
and soft as velvet. Cecily suspected it
could turn knife sharp and hard in seconds.
He’s either a career criminal,
heavy duty, or a cop. Growing up
ghetto she could recognize either one although they often shared similar
qualities.
“Sure,” she said. Resisting the
urge to drum her fingers in a restless beat on the counter to relieve her
tension, Cecily switched on the CD player to find a calm center. One of her favorites, the haunting Take Me Down To The Water by Grace
Potter and the Nocturnals flowed from the speakers, powerful and poignant. Her customer, paused near the gourmet
coffees, halted and his head jerked upward.
He turned to face her, features alive and curious.
“That’s my favorite song,” he said with surprise. “I like most of
their tunes but that’s the one I listen to the most.”
“Me, too,” Cecily told him. She had the song on repeat, had listened
to it over and over while putting the shop together. The shorter cut appealed to some inner
emotion, a deep pocket of need and longing.
The man gazed at her and his eyes shimmered. “Can you sing it?” he
asked. “Will you sing along with the music?”
His question slashed through ten years of silence, a decade during
which she seldom sang. Once, Cecily
lived to sing and cherished music.
During the years with Willard, she seldom raised her voice in song or
listened to tunes. Freed, she’d immersed
herself with music again but it wasn’t until the last week or so, she’d felt
able to sing. Cecily sung along to CD’s
in the car, at home, and here at the shop but without an audience. She parted her lips to say ‘no’, to refuse
but his eyes caught hers and she sensed a kinship, a shared knowledge of
suffering. He lived with anguish and he
knew the price of pain. Kindred souls, we’re kindred souls. Her chin lowered in a brief nod and when the
song ended, she allowed it to begin once more.
Cecily unleashed her voice, blended hers with Grace Potter’s, and added
her rich chocolate to Grace’s vocals. In the first moments, her skin prickled with
awareness of his presence but after the notes emerged the music filled the
spaces between them. She’d sung the
lyrics many times and knew them well.
And she didn’t miss any notes her voice remained true to the
melody. During the song, he moved closer
and closer until at the end, he stood at the counter, eyes intent on her. When the song ended, he stretched his arm
over the barrier and turned the player off.
Tears brightened his eyes, unshed but present in their depths. Her cheeks were wet too although Cecily
hadn’t realized she cried. He extended
his hand to her and she took it, held it instead of shaking it. “Thank you,” he
told her. “I’m Daniel Padilla.”
“My name’s Cecily Brown,” she replied. “I’m
glad we share the same taste in music.”
Book
Spotlight - Pink Neon by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Romance,
contemporary romance, romantic suspense, multicultural romance
Length: 73K
Available
beginning July 3 at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, All Romance Ebooks
My
links:
Twitter:
leeannwriter
From
Sweet to Heat: The Romance of Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Blog:
Rebel Writer: Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Goodreads:
Comments
Post a Comment
We would love to hear from you but hope you are a real person and not a spammer. :)