The Rebel Heir
The Spare Heirs, #2
Author: Elizabeth Michels
Pubdate: September 6th 2016
ISBN: 9781492621362
The Spare Heirs Society
Cordially Invites You to Meet Ash Claughbane: The Imposter
Lady Evangeline Green is
living a lie. To please her family, she masquerades as the perfect
debutante…until she meets the wickedly charming Lord Crosby. With him, there
are no rules. She’s finally free to do as she desires—but freedom comes with a
price, and Lord Crosby is not what he seems…
Ash is not Lord
Crosby. He’s a con artist, a noble Spare Heir living off his silver tongue.
When the Greens ruined his family, he swore he’d make them pay, and he never
doubted his devotion to revenge…until he met Evangeline. Now, caught in a web
of lies, torn between duty and desire, what’s a con to do but deceive all of
London and steal the one lady who dared match wits with the devil
himself?
Buy Links:
*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Hi, everyone! Let’s play a game! Since deception is a key ingredient in THE REBEL HEIR, the second book in my Spare Heirs series, I thought it would be fun to play two truths and a lie. Can you guess which fact isn’t true about me? Good Luck!
Fact 1.) The Tragic
Snow Angel Incident.
One winter I took a trip with
my family to the mountains of North Carolina. While we were there being
cozy in front of the cabin’s stone fireplace on the top of a mountain, there
was a snow storm and we woke up to 18 inches of snow. For a southern
girl, that’s pretty exciting. So I was out the door that morning with a
smile on my face. Spying an area that was untouched by footsteps, I knew
I wanted to make a snow angel!
I closed my eyes and fell
backward, ready to meet a cold pillow at my back. Instead, the surface
crunched as it swallowed me whole. Minutes later I was still sprawled on
the gravel drive, looking up from a person shaped hole in the snow much like
when a cartoon character jumps out a window and only that section of glass
breaks. As it turns out, snow isn’t that soft. And that’s how I
broke my tailbone—in a tragic snow angel incident.
Fact 2.) The Hair
Debacle.
When my husband was in
college, I had many different jobs. He went to Clemson University, (Go
Tigers!) which is in the small town of Clemson, South Carolina. Needless
to say jobs in my field of interior design weren’t plentiful. I tried
many different paths during that period of time from measuring people for a
weight loss company, to managing a plumbing parts showroom, I tried it
all. But the worst of my jobs, in my opinion, was when I sold hair to
bald men.
I managed a local branch
office of a toupee company. Men would come into the salon and have their
hair glued down every few weeks and leave with luxurious heads of hair. I
was in charge of an inventory of hundreds of toupees and the staff who
administered the glue. And the worst part of this? I was fired for
improper filing of hair pieces. It was quite the hair debacle.
Fact 3.) The Glitter
Fiasco.
I’m a huge fan of sparkly
things. Years ago, I took my fondness for bedazzling to the next level
with the help of an author friend when we started adding a bit of sparkle to
the lives of our friends at writer conferences. Some may refer to it as Glitter
Bombing hotel room doors at 3 am, but I like to think of it as spreading
cheer—lots of glittery cheer. *grins*
At a conference last year,
armed with glittery confetti and a roll of scotch tape, we slipped out the
door. Two doors into spreading cheer around the conference hotel, we
paused at a long, narrow table opposite the hotel elevator doors. We knew
that our next friend was still awake and we needed to get in and get out as
quickly as possible. To get ready, we looped pieces of tape around our
fingers and stuck them to confetti for the door. There we were, each with
ten pieces of sticky paper on our fingers and bags of glitter on the table in
front of us when a member of the housekeeping staff walked around the corner
carrying an armful of towels. We froze. She pressed a button on the
elevator.
Always a quick thinker, my
friend picked up the only thing other than our bags of glitter and confetti on
the table—the telephone receiver.
“Front desk.”
She pushed the button to hang
up, but kept the phone to her ear, never saying a word. We had no reason
to be standing there at 3 am, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the blank wall
opposite the elevators. And the lady’s elevator simply refused to
arrive.
Had it been 3 minutes?
10? Would the silence ever end?
Fighting back laughter, I
turned to my friend. “They’re not answering?”
My friend had been poised
with the phone to her ear for longer than could be considered normal.
Still, silence. Finally the elevator arrived, the doors opened, closed
again, and we ran. Anxious to get away from the scene of the crime, we
tore into the bag of glitter faster than we’d intended, leaving a HUGE pile of
glittery confetti on the floor outside our friend’s door. And that was
when hotel security arrived...
We were escorted off the
property, still in our pajamas and with glittery evidence covering our
hands. And that’s how I was arrested for being too sparkly, as well as
banned for life from a major hotel chain. It was a complete glitter
fiasco.
*^*^*^*^*^*^*
An Excerpt:
His heart beat beneath Evangeline’s
hand.
“Ash, this is dangerous— whatever is
happening here…”
“I know.” He grinned the wicked grin
of a swindler about to steal the prize. “Say that you enjoy it as much as I do,
Evie. Admit that you like breaking your rules with me.”
“They aren’t my rules,” she said.
“Then why follow them?”
She swallowed and looked up at him.
“I make poor decisions on my own.”
“I disagree,” he said, still holding
her close. He toyed with the hair that fell over her shoulder.
“I haven’t thrown you from my
bedchamber. I’m certain that’s a poor decision.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” he said
with a grin. “What’s your opinion? What do you want, Evie?”
You, her heart screamed, but her
mouth refused to form the word. Her gaze dropped back from the depths of his
eyes to his lips. He was so close, and yet he only touched her hair and held
her hand to his chest. It would be so easy to rise to her toes and show him
what she wanted. And yet it wasn’t easy at all.
“You think I haven’t noticed
that you’ve been staring at my mouth since I arrived?”
“I have not…” She began to disagree,
but it would have been a lie and he knew it.
“Say that you want me to kiss you,
Evie.”
“I would never…” she began, but fell
silent.
“Tell me you want me. Say the words
and I’ll kiss you.”
Evangeline’s lips parted, but she
said nothing.
“Say, ‘I want your lips on mine,
Ash.’ That’s all you have to do. I could show you so many things, Evie. Do you
want me to? Say the words.”
Her breathing came out harsh as her
heart pounded in her chest. How was he making her so unsettled simply with
words?
“I could bring you so much pleasure,
Evie. Do you want me to touch you? To truly touch you? If you asked me, I would
fit your breasts into the palms of my hands just like this.” His hand hung in
the air over her breast, close enough that she could feel the heat of his skin
through her night rail. “Then I would lower my mouth to take your nipple
between my teeth, tugging at your polished exterior until the real Evie pulled
me closer. I would take your breast into my mouth and with my tongue…” He sighed,
dropping his hand away from her. “But you have to tell me you want it.”
“Ash,” she whispered, already missing
the heat of him close to her skin.
“There’s a world out there that you
could experience. All you have to do is stop hiding and tell me what you want.”
It wasn’t that simple, was it? She
opened her mouth, unsure how to speak of her own desires. She never talked that
way, not like Ash was able to do. But the truth was, she did want him to kiss
her. She wanted everything about this man. That was also the trouble. She
couldn’t be trusted to speak— not just now. “I…”
He grinned and brushed a strand of
hair from her face, placing a kiss on the top of her head as he did. “You’re
almost there. Just a few more words. Perhaps you need more encouragement.”
“No.” She took two steps backward
until her heels bumped the wall. “I- I’m quite…”
“Evie, has anyone ever spoken to you
this way?” He took slow steps to close the gap between them.
“No,” she breathed.
“Do you like it when I do?” He
grinned down at her as if he could hear all the thoughts she was too afraid to
voice aloud. “I think you do. Do you want me to continue?”
“Do I have to say that as well?” she
asked.
“No. I’ve learned in my line of work
that it’s sometimes necessary to give someone a taste of what they want before
they’ll pay the price.”
“Is that what you’re doing to me? Is
this a taste of what’s to come?” Heaven help her, she hoped it was.
“Only if you want it. That’s my
price.” He shifted her hair from her shoulder as he spoke, letting it fall down
her back.
“That seems…” Whispers of his touch
brushed down the side of her neck as he moved her hair. She worked not to lean
into his palm and feel the full force of his hand on her skin. “…reasonable.”
“I thought so as well.” He shifted
even closer to her, leaning his arm on the wall above her head and surrounding
her without the benefit of his embrace to steady her. “If you tell me you want
me to kiss you, I’ll kiss you here.” He spoke the words against the sensitive
skin beneath her ear before moving down her neck, not touching her, but close
enough that she could feel the warmth of his lips.
She splayed her hands on the wall
behind her to keep from tipping sideways. He wasn’t even touching her, and
still she struggled to breathe.
“I would kiss my way down your neck
to just here where I can see your pulse beating rather fast. Is it beating fast
because you want me to kiss you, Evie?” he asked against her skin. “You know my
terms. Say the words. This is only the beginning…”
*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Elizabeth Michels is the award-winning author of the
Tricks of the Ton series. This romance author lives in a lake-side town
in North Carolina with her husband and son. She’s a fan of shoes, coffee,
mimosas, laughter, hugs, things that are sparkly, and tater tots. Oh, and
she likes her readers a lot too. Dive into her latest series about the members
of a secret club in London, The Spare Heirs Society, today! Connect with
Elizabeth on her website: http://www.elizabethmichels.com/
*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Giveaway:
10
copies of The Infamous Heir, book one in the Spare Heir series
The
giveaway will run from 8/28 – 9/19
No comments:
Post a Comment