Only a few days now until Summer Chaparral is released and I’ve got another excerpt for you!
You can preorder at Amazon | iBooks | Kobo | ARe
(Buy links for Nook are coming soon.)
The low peach tree rustled as they approached, jostled by the lady whose skirts and shapely ankles were visible beneath the foliage she was entangled in.
“That you, Catarina?” Felipe asked as they drew rein.
Jace’s pulse thumped against his veins as the curves of the lady’s backside were thrown into sharp, enticing relief when she wriggled her way backwards out of the branches.
“Yes, it’s me,” she called cheerfully as she turned around. “Oh,” Catarina said as she caught sight of Jace. A burlap sack was slung across her shoulders, bulging at her hip. Lady Bountiful, bringing in the harvest. A mouthwatering harvest, no doubt.
“Hello, Señor.” Her greeting was polite enough, but her eyes were wary. Meeting in the dark was one thing. In the daylight was quite another.
He tipped his hat. “Señorita.” She wasn’t the only one feeling awkward having to retreat behind the polite fiction of being nothing more than strangers.
He wondered if she carried his handkerchief even now, pressed against her somewhere under all those clothes.
“Can you spare any peaches for us?” Felipe asked.
“Yes, of course. This is the last of them. After this, they’ll be canned, not fresh.”
“Well, your canned peaches are almost as good.”
The compliment brought forth her smile, the one with the dimples. She handed Felipe his first, before turning to Jace, peeping up through her lashes as she held out a ripe peach, a blush covering it from bloom end to stem.
At that moment, watching the lady offer him that fruit, he understood exactly why Adam fell. If Eve had looked anything like Catarina did, the poor dumb bastard never had a chance.
Keeping his gaze locked with hers, he bent from the back of his horse and took the fuzzy peach, his hands brushing hers as he did. The peach fit perfectly in his palm, just as he’d imagined her breasts might. As he brought the fruit to his lips, the unmistakable scent filled his nose, spicy, sweet, and warm all at once. He bit, hard, and his mouth flooded with the juice, running down his chin.
The memory of last night came rushing back to him, her scent teasing him as he’d clasped her hand, a scent he’d called cinnamon to match her eyes.
He’d been wrong; she didn’t smell like that at all. She smelled exactly like a peach at the height of summer. Lush and spicy, with a promise of the sweetness to come.
The man who married her would have his house filled with that scent, would lie down with her at night and breathe it as he slept. The scent would mean home for that man.
Jace would never again be able to smell a peach without thinking of her.
Christ almighty, but he was in deep.
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