Hola! Hope you are all having a wonderful Thursday. I'm doing well, just off to another day of college. Before I go, I have the inspiring and very kind Ann B. Harrison. A few months ago, Ann was my very first blog guest, so naturally that makes her one of my most favoritest(yes, I have decided that is now a word) people ever. :-)
Today she is sharing Taming the Outback, which released last August with Breathless Press.
Ann: Libby
is a widow with two kids, a job going nowhere and a mortgage that she can
barely afford. When she is told of an inheritance, she jumps at the chance to
take her kids to the country and start a new life.
Unfortunately
for her, the neighbor Nathan is horrified that a city chick is even thinking
she can manage a large farm and tries to talk her into going back to what she
knows.
Libby
is determined to stick it out and keep her little family together.
The
only problem is, Nathan does something to her sense of calm. When he is around,
her temper is frayed, her emotions on a roller coaster.
She
plans to seduce him thinking that once she does, things will settle down and
she will be happier.
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Excerpt:
“Damn, damn, damn,” she muttered,
slamming her hand down on the steering wheel.
“What the hell just happened?”
yelled Josh, his voice high with fright.
“The car has overheated,” said
Libby knowing full well that there was more to it than that.
“Can you start it again when it
cools down?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Josh,” Libby said,
her heart pounding as she tried to think of what chances they had of being
rescued on this dark deserted road.
Trying to sound brave she turned to him with an attempt at positive
thinking. “Let’s wait and see, shall we.”
“Just great,” he snapped in his
usual angry tone. “What a welcome to the country, broken down on the side of
the road, no houses in sight and no hope of recovery.”
Holly sat quietly thumb in her
mouth, holding onto Henry, with her gaze on her mother.
“Let’s just give it a minute,
okay?” said Libby. “If the car won’t start, I will call Aaron and ask him to
send Tom to get us. We aren’t that far from the farm.”
They sat in silence for 15 minutes
before Libby felt confident that the car would have cooled down enough to start
again. She sat up in her seat and put her hand on the key. Turning it, she held
her breath. The clicking sound made her groan and she quickly turned off the
key slumping back in her seat.
“I think you killed it, Mum,” said
Josh.
“Thanks. I kind of figured that
much.”
“What do we do now?” asked Holly in
a small scared voice.
Before she could answer, lights
blinded her in the rear vision mirror. She put her hand up to shield her eyes
and got out of the car, telling the kids to stay put.
The four wheel drive truck pulled
up behind her and the front door opened. She couldn’t see the occupant until he
stood right in front of her, towering over her in the dim light. He was dressed
in dusty work clothes, jeans snug on his broad hips. His shirt sleeves were
rolled up to his elbows showing off strong tanned arms. An old worn hat was
pushed down over his short hair, hiding his face as he stood looking down at
her.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a deep
voice that rolled over her triggering something familiar deep in her brain.
“No, my car overheated and now it
won’t start,” said Libby sighing as she followed him to the front of the
vehicle.
He shone a torch at the bonnet and
told her to release it. He lifted the bonnet and stuck his head under it and
looked around with his torch, muttering and cursing. He slammed it back down
and turned to her.
“You have a broken radiator hose,”
said the stranger. “The top one has completely blown and the bottom one is on
its way out. Don’t you check your car at all? It’s a bloody mess under that
hood.”
“My car runs fine normally,” said
Libby, her back straightening. “But thanks for looking at it anyway. I won’t
hold you up any longer.”
“Testy little thing, aren’t you?”
he said, pushing his hat back on his head as he came closer to her his face
barely visible in the fading light. “We don’t leave women on the side of the
road out in this country.”
“What are you doing here?” Libby
asked as she recognised the lawyer that had made such an impression on her at
Aarons.
“I live here. The question should
be ‘what’re you doing here?” he replied with a sneer before walking away from
her.
Leaning on the back of his dust
covered truck he pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and punched in a number.
He glanced over at Libby pacing back and forward while he waited for someone to
pick up.
He had
known that she was due soon but he didn’t expect to meet her out on the
highway, broken down.
“Tom, its Nathan, I’m out on the
side of the road at the highway end, just before the turnoff. I think I have
something that belongs to you,” he said grimacing as he looked back towards the
women watching him. “You had better bring the truck out. Yeah, sure, I’ll wait
with her. Don’t be too long, she’s a little bit fiery. Sure, bye.”
“So,” he said to walking back to
stand before Libby. His heart was thumping and a thin sheen of sweat was making
his face heat up as he let his gaze run over her body from her pert nose to her
long bare legs. He noticed the blush on her cheeks while he scrutinised her
under the torch light. Damn you Uncle Aaron, cute and fiery, he thought, too
dangerous out here. If circumstances were different, another time and place he
could get attached to this women. “You are the city chick that’s going to take
Quincy Station into the black, eh? I wonder if you know what you are taking on,
sweetheart?”
She lives in the middle of the desert in Australia in a small mining town with her own handsome hero of many years. Ann has always loved the ups and downs of life in small communities and she shares this with readers in her rural romances.
Strong, spunky heroines with a good dose of sass thrown in feature in her stories. Of course these women need an equally strong hero. Bring on the Outback hero and watch the passion ignite.
When not writing, Ann runs a day care centre and looks after young children for working Mums and Dads. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, walking her very large dog, Hugo, and fighting with her computer.
To learn more about Ann and check out her other titles, visit the links below!
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