Excerpt & Giveaway - Glass Tidings by Amy Jo Cousins

Glass Tidings

By Amy Jo Cousins

About Glass Tidings: 

Eddie Rodrigues doesn’t stay in one place long enough to get attached. The only time he broke that rule, things went south fast. Now he’s on the road again, with barely enough cash in his pocket to hop a bus to Texas after his (sort-of-stolen) car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Midwest, USA.

He’s fine. He’ll manage. Until he watches that girl get hit by a car and left to die. 

Local shop owner Grayson Croft isn’t in the habit of doing people any favors. But even a recluse can’t avoid everyone in a town as small as Clear Lake. And when the cop who played Juliet to your Romeo in the high school play asks you to put up her key witness for the night, you say yes. 

Now Gray’s got a grouchy glass artist stomping around his big, empty house, and it turns out that he . . . maybe . . . kind of . . . likes the company. 

But Eddie Rodrigues never sticks around. 

Unless a Christmas shop owner who hates the season can show an orphan what it means to have family for the holidays.

Available from Riptide Publishing and Amazon  

Excerpt:

This was an incredibly dumb idea.

Eddie huddled into his hoodie, head ducked against the knifing wind, wishing he’d tugged another long-sleeved T-shirt from his bag and put it on before leaving the shelter of the broken-down car back on the highway. He’d been in a hurry to get away from the car, though, and when he’d hit the road before the sun went down, it hadn’t felt that cold out.

Could be worse. Could be snowing.

The November freeze wasn’t exactly unexpected in Illinois, but Eddie was normally a thousand miles south by this time. The Renaissance faire circuit wrapped up each year with some late-autumn festivals in the deep South, where the weather stayed warm enough until Thanksgiving for strolling minstrels and washerwomen who ladled out insults by the bucketful. Most years, Eddie would have worked his way down to Texas by October, saying good-bye to the northern states until the next summer.

But this year, November was drawing to a close and he was way off schedule, having been dumb enough to trust a soft touch and an easy smile. If Eddie’d had any luck at all, he would have been halfway to Texas by the time the sun rose, jittery from caffeine and the many cigarettes he would have smoked on the highway to keep himself awake. That much nicotine at one time would thrum in his blood, his body unused to him indulging in his addiction like that. Instead, it was almost midnight on Thanksgiving, edging into the early hours of Black Friday as he walked.

Thinking about cigarettes made him want to fire one up right now, but that was a dumb-ass idea. No sense wasting smokes.

Not like you’re going to fall asleep walking.

He’d expected there to be a twenty-four-hour gas station just off the next exit, so he hadn’t minded the miles he’d had to hike on the highway shoulder.

Always the optimist, buddy.

His own snort of disbelief startled him as he trudged through the fogged puff of his breath. Optimist. Right. All he wanted to do was hunker down under a rock somewhere, but sure, he could call it optimism to assume he’d find a gas station at a highway exit.

About Amy Jo Cousins: 

Amy Jo Cousins writes contemporary romance and erotica about smart people finding their own best kind of smexy. She lives in Chicago with her son, where she tweets too much, sometimes runs really far, and waits for the Cubs to win the World Series. 

Connect with Amy Jo:

• Website: amyjocousins.com/
• Blog: amyjocousins.com/blog/
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/AmyJoCousins/
• Twitter: @_AJCousins
• Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/amyjocousins/ 

Giveaway: 

To celebrate the release of Glass Tidings, one lucky winner will receive $20 in Riptide credit!

Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest.

Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 10, 2016.

Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries.

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