I’m so excited to be back at Petticoats and Pistols with all these gals. I had a blast last time! Today I’ll be giving away an e-copy of HER HEART FOR THE ASKING, book #1 in my Texas Hearts series, to one lucky commenter.
I’m really excited about the e-release of my Texas Hearts series, which was originally published in hardcover by Avalon Books. Texas Hearts includes HER HEART FOR THE ASKING, HIS HEART FOR THE TRUSTING and THE MORE I SEE.
All three of these titles have something about them that I absolutely love and that resonated with me while I was writing the stories. HER HEART FOR THE ASKING is the book that was never going to be a book! That’s right. This story started out as a quick little blurb in an article I was writing over 12 years ago on how to pitch your story to an editor.
I’ll admit I was a bit shy about using one of the pitches I’d used in actual editor appointments at conferences. Why I don’t know. I’d always received good feedback on those pitches which resulted in a request from an editor. So in writing the article, I just wrote up a quick pitch about a Philadelphia girl who needs to learn how to run her uncle’s Texas ranch from the rodeo cowboy who’d broken her heart years ago.
Simple right? Hmm, wait a minute. I think I threw in a twist and a secret and a promise from the past, too. I don’t recall exactly. But the response I got from that article surprised me. Readers emailed me asking when the book was going to be published.
I scratched my head. I hadn’t even planned on writing it! But since people were so interested in the story, I decided to give it ago. HER HEART FOR THE ASKING sold during a face-to-face editor appointment with an Avalon editor. I can’t even tell you how exciting it was to get a contract offer this way.
Here is the blurb and excerpt from HER HEART FOR THE ASKING:
Mandy Morgan swore she’d never step foot in Texas again after Beau Gentry left her for life on the rodeo circuit eight years before. But now her uncle’s heart is failing and she has to convince him that surgery will save his life. She never dreamed the first thing she’d see when she stepped off the plane would be her biggest nightmare…the one man she’d never stopped loving.
Beau Gentry had the fever for two things: the rodeo and Mandy Morgan. But for Beau, loving Mandy was complicated by his father’s vendetta against her uncle. This led him to make the hardest decision of his life, and he can still see the bitterness and hurt on Mandy’s face. All these years it has killed him to think Mandy had forgotten him and moved as far away as possible from him. But now they’re back in Texas, and he’s going to do all he can to win back her love.
Excerpt:
“What are you doing here?” Mandy Morgan asked, dropping her too-heavy overnight case on the sun-roasted tarmac. After a grueling forty-eight hour work stint and a five-hour flight from Philadelphia, she stood wilting under the brutal Texas sun, facing her biggest nightmare.
Beau Gentry.
She groaned inwardly, drinking Beau in with her eyes as if she hadn’t had a drop of water in months. Eight years was more like it. If she were eight years smarter, she would be moving her aching feet as fast as she could in the opposite direction. But all she could do was stare at eyes so bright they rivaled the blazing sun. At lips so kissable she’d spent the better part of her adult life trying to wipe the memory clean from her mind.
She had expected Beau would have aged some. When she allowed herself to think about him at all, she reminded herself. The faint lines etched in the corners of his sleepy gray-blue eyes gave a hint of maturity, but most probably caused by long days in the cruel sun.
She fought the urge to take a closer look at his ruggedly handsome features, but failed. How could he have gotten better looking after being abused by every bronc-busting horse on the rodeo circuit? His angular jaw, strong and determined, was shaded with beard growth that was probably a day old, maybe more. Mandy suspected if Beau grew a full beard, it would grow in thick and be the smooth texture of his almost black head of hair. She forced aside past memories that gave her such knowledge with renewed irritation.
The man didn’t even have the decency to have a crooked nose. What should have been bent and awkward from being broken a few too many times was instead long and straight, shaped perfectly between high cheek bones most women would swoon over, or kill to have themselves. But on Beau Gentry, it was just one thousand percent robust cowboy.
Damn him.
“I’m your ride out to the Double T,” Beau said, gripping the edge of his white straw cowboy hat and tipping it in a cordial gesture.
She ground the heels of her low pumps into the soft tar to contain her growing irritation. Did he think she was an idiot? “No way.”
“‘Fraid so,” he said, his expression slightly askew.
“Hank didn’t mention anything about you coming to get me when I spoke to him on the phone.”
“I suspect he thought you would have found some excuse not to come if you knew I was picking you up.”
“He would have been right. Why didn’t one of the hands come get me?”
Settling his hand at the base of his neck, Beau replied, “You’re looking at him. As of three weeks ago I am one of the ranch hands at the Double T.”
* * * * * *
Texas Hearts series includes:
HER HEART FOR THE ASKING
HIS HEART FOR THE TRUSTING
THE MORE I SEE
These are available as Kindle, Nook and Smashwords.
You can visit Lisa at http://www.lisamondello.blogspot.com/
