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Albert Camus

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Excerpt and Giveaway Finding the Right Girl (A Nice GUY to Love spin-off novel) by Violet Duke

Description:

From the New York Times & USA Today bestselling author who brought you the Nice Girl to Love trilogy, comes A Nice GUY to Love spin-off...

Brian Sullivan has been in love twice in his lifetime. He lost his first love to early-onset Huntington’s, and he lost the other more recently…to his brother. And somehow, his heart has managed to heal itself after both. Amazingly, without therapy. That doesn’t mean Brian hasn’t gotten more wary along the way, however. In fact, he’s been thinking lately that maybe his brother’s now retired nothing-but-flings rule isn’t such a bad idea. Unfortunately, being the nice guy poster boy and all, he isn’t exactly versed in the fine art of flings. So he looks to the outrageously ‘unique,’ provokingly button-pushing Tessa Daniels for a crash course.

There’s absolutely no way he’s falling in love with this one...right? 

Tessa has no idea what she was thinking telling Brian that she was some sort of fling expert. She’s never been flung before and she sure as heck doesn’t know where or how to begin flinging a guy like Brian. It was a temporary lapse in sanity, really—no doubt because of the can’t-help-but-fall-for-him brain fuzz that hits her whenever he’s around. Not only does the man have her being more herself than she’s ever been in her life, but he’s the only person she knows who seems to have as many demons and skeletons in the closet as she does. What’s more, he’s got her thinking of the one thing she stopped letting herself even hope for years ago. 

A happily ever after.
EXCERPT:





She’d had her legs wrapped around a tree to brace herself. So she wasn’t completely insane. Though the jury was now out on him. Here they were just having scrambled their way up a steep ravine to avoid a pack of rabid javelina and his brain was thinking about how it would feel to have those sexy legs of hers wrapped around him instead.

That’s when he finally noticed the gouging scrapes and gashes slashed across her calves. “Shit, you’re bleeding. Come here, let me—”

She jumped back and gave him a look. Not a wary one but one that looked…confused, out of sorts. 

Maybe she hit her head when she fell.

“I’m fine.” She backed up again when he took another step forward.

There was that look again. Like she was expecting him to suddenly sprout a second or third head.

“Thanks for coming to my rescue back there. I really appreciate it. But really, you don’t have to do this knight in shining armor thing. I’m good.” 

When she reached down to brush the blood off her legs, smothering a pained wince as she pulled a set of keys out of her pocket, he reached for her again, not wanting her to go with an intensity that surprised him. 

“Turn around,” he tried gentling his voice. “Let me check out your legs.”

Smooth, Sullivan. Real smooth. At least that made her stop backing away from him. Of course now she was just staring at him like he was nuts. “Let me check out your injuries,” he amended. “I have a first aid kit in my car.”

“Oh. That’s okay, so do I.” She was back to cutting quickly across the lawn. Three more stealthy steps back. “I have a whole survival kit in there, in fact,” she continued on a cute ramble, “complete with food for a week, extra changes of clothes, and a small generator. I even have a sam splint and one of those foldable pocket walking canes in case I break a leg or something.” 

Well that was…unexpected. Brian wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “Are you some sort of apocalypse radical or just on the lam from the authorities?”

Yeah…he should’ve kept his mouth shut. The woman rattled him, infected him with that talking out of his ass virus he hadn’t had since he was a teen.

But for some reason, the asinine comment succeeded in making her stop retreating. And laugh.

That laugh.

“I almost forgot how much I like you, Brian.”

Likewise.

“Listen, thanks again for saving me, but I really do have to run. I’ll ask Connor for your number and take you out for coffee sometime. Or pie!” She grinned. “Pie is better as a thank-you.”

Then she turned and ran off to the parking lot, leaving Brian to stand there and simply stare at her long ponytail windmilling around with every buoyant step she took.

The fact that she stopped suddenly and spun around at the edge of the lot to give him a final smiling wave had him completely off-kilter. She was freakin’ adorable as hell. 

And absolutely, positively the last woman on earth he pictured himself being this drawn in by.





Books in series:

About the author:
National bestselling author Violet Duke is a former professor of English Education who is ecstatic to now be on the other side of the page writing wickedly fun contemporary romance novels. Besides writing and feeding her book-a-day reading addiction, she can often be found tackling reno projects with her power tools and trying pretty much anything without reading the directions first, or cooking 'special edition' dishes that laugh in the face of recipes. Violet lives in Hawai'i with her two cute kids and similarly adorable husband.

Author's Giveaway

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