Where has the summer gone?? Only three more weeks until LEAVE THE NIGHT ON is released into the wild. How about a sexy little teaser...

If their first kiss was about revenge and their second about sealing their bargain, this kiss belonged to just the two of them. Gentle, yet devastating, the kiss made him want to stay in limbo with her forever.

He took her mouth in a series of gentle nips and forays, not wanting to push her too far, too fast. But, she wasn’t playing by the same rules, her hands spearing into his hair and tugging him closer.

Her throaty, breathless sigh made his typical morning erection even more painful. Was she even aware the sexy little noises she was making drove him insane? He pulled back. Her eyes were closed but she’d pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, letting it go slowly, as if she was aware he was watching and wanted to tease him.

She ran her hand down his chest to his arm, the pull she exerted light but commanding, and hooked her leg over his. Her nipples poked at the thin fabric of her tank top. Through it all, her eyes remained closed. He didn’t want to be a faceless fantasy.

“Look at me.” His voice was roughed with sleep and more emotion than he wanted to claim.

Her eyes fluttered open, the shadows cloaking them both a blessing and curse. As much as he attempted to keep his thoughts hidden, he longed for all her secrets.

“Wyatt, please.” Her voice was husky and wanting.
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His name on her lips offered satisfaction. If he could only have her for a little while, he not only wanted to leave her with memories she’d never forget, but make sure she understood how desirable and powerful she truly was.

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Less than two months until the release of LEAVE THE NIGHT ON!! I'm SUPER excited for everyone to make the acquaintance of three blue collar brothers from the Louisiana side of Cottonbloom. They own a car garage and restoration business. They're smart and sexy and good with their hands:) First up is Wyatt Abbott, one of the twins (fraternal, not identical...there's no Parent Trap situation going on here.)

The heroine is Sutton Mize. On the surface, she's a perfect Southern lady, but she struggles with being a people pleaser and needs a good man to break her out of her mundane little world. She made a cameo appearance in my Xmas novella, Candy Cane Christmas. Wyatt has had a crush for a loooong time, when her dad was a regular at their car garage. When opportunity knocks, Wyatt is reckless enough to fling the door open...

Here's the blurb and next week, I'll include an excerpt.
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Sutton Mize is known for lavishing attention on the customers who flock to her boutique on the wealthy side of her Mississippi town. So when she finds a lace thong in her fiancé’s classic cherry-red Camaro, she knows just who she sold it to: her own best friend. In an instant, Sutton’s whole world goes up in flames. . .
Wyatt Abbott has harbored a crush on Sutton since he was a young kid from the other side of the tracks. He witnessed Sutton’s shocking discovery in the Camaro at his family-owned garage—and it made him angry. What kind of man could take lovely, gorgeous Sutton for granted? But then Sutton comes up with an idea: Why not give her betrothed a taste of his own medicine and pretend that she’s got a lover of her own? Wyatt is more than happy to play the hot-and-heavy boyfriend. But what begins as a fictional affair soon develops into something more real, and more passionate, than either Sutton or Wyatt could have imagined. Could it be that true love has been waiting under the hood all along?

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Do you love YA books? Check out this new release novella from my buddy Vanessa Barneveld! She finaled in the Golden Heart with me back on 2014. Read on for the blurb, excerpt, and buy links!

​Release day for Vanessa Barneveld's YA novella, LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG, is here! This quick read is full of heartbreak and hope. Vanessa will donate half of the profits from the sale of her novella to a charity that supports young people dealing with cancer. So make sure you pick up LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG. It's only 99 cents at these e-tailers:
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Add LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG to your Goodreads shelf.
 

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Summary
He has six months to live. She has six months to save him...
Molly Corbett can’t stand seeing her childhood pal Alex Gibson destroy himself. He’s gone from straight-A student to rebel without a cause. With so much at stake, some serious interference is called for—or at least Micromanaging Molly thinks so. Alex needs to get back on the path to the Ivy League. But the harder Molly pushes Alex, the harder he pushes back.
 
Alex has a secret.
 
Well, two secrets. Number one: He has terminal melanoma. With six months to live, Alex hasn’t got a second to waste. And hanging around hospitals when his friends think he’s cutting school definitely counts as wasted time. Instead, he’s going to drop out, surf, drive fast cars…and finally put secret number two out there. He’s in love with Molly and he’s going to tell her before it’s too late.
 
Edgy, and yet wonderfully tender, LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG sent me to reader heaven!
~ Tina Ferraro, author of THE ABCs OF KISSING BOYS
 
 
LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG Excerpt 
Around six the next morning, I find Mom sitting at the island bench in the kitchen. She looks pretty chill for someone who just laid on a breakfast of fruit salad, yogurt, sautèed mushrooms and kale, unbuttered whole-wheat sourdough and two eggs, sunny-side up. A thick, football-field-green smoothie sits in a tall glass by the blender. Great. More kale.
 
“Hey, Alex!” She smiles over her coffee mug and pats the stool next to her. “Sleep well?”
 
I shuffle onto the seat and stare at the food. “Have I died and gone to buffet heaven?”
 
My mother winces at my choice of words, then makes a big effort to put on a happy face like she always does. “I want you to keep your strength up. You don’t have to eat all of it. Just most of it.”
 
“And you don’t have to go out of your way to make this for me. I mean, thanks. A lot. But I don’t have much of an appetite.”
 
“Oh, I’m having some, too,” she says in an overly bright voice. With her fork, she scoops up a tiny portion of kale, hardly enough to fill a mouse’s belly.
 
Since my diagnosis a few months ago, Mom hasn’t been eating much either. This doesn’t stop her from testing all the “cancer-fighting” recipes she finds on Pinterest. Baking is therapy, she says. I call it a waste of food. Fortunately, the family next door is more than happy to take excess lentil loaf off our hands.
 
Every hour of every day, I wonder what will happen to Mom after I go. She’ll be all alone. Dad moved back to Australia after the divorce. He’s making custom surfboards, connecting with old friends, so I know he’ll be okay. Mom’s literally got no one. Except the perpetually hungry neighbors and her five employees. Yet another reason why I shouldn’t die so young.
 
It’s crazy. Why does it have to be like this? Maybe the doctors got it wrong. They’re not infallible. They’re not gods. They can’t predict the exact number of months, days, hours, and seconds a person has left on Earth.
 
Then again, I’ve peeked at my medical records. I know it doesn’t look good for me. With the help of a counselor I’ve gotten to the stage of mostly accepting that I’m headed for a dead end. I’ve even started giving some of my stuff away. The iPad Dad gave me is now Molly’s. Mom won’t have to go through boxes of my middle-school clothes after I’m gone because I’ve already dropped them off at Goodwill. The cobalt-blue board I learned to surf on? I’m giving that to a kid down the street whether he likes it or not.
 
Noticing I haven’t touched a single morsel, Mom says, “Will you at least have the kale, broccoli and goji berry smoothie? You don’t even have to chew. Close your eyes and drink it.”
 
Speaking of acceptance... Yeah, Mom’s adamant that five doctors on two continents are wrong and that I’ll make a miraculous recovery. All we need is faith and love and kale.
 
I would rather eat broken glass mixed with cyanide, but for Mom, I guess I can manage this. Forcing a smile, I sip chunks of raw broccoli that slipped by the blender’s blades. I’ll check over the blender later, make sure it’s working okay.
 
“After breakfast, I’m taking you to that appointment you missed yesterday,” she says quickly.
 
Feeling guilty, I look away. She didn’t hammer me for skipping out on seeing this “amazing herbalist-slash-psychic-healer.” Still, I know she was disappointed in me. “What about work? You’ve missed a lot of days because of me.”
 
“It’s fine. Things are slow anyway.” Her voice is two octaves higher than usual.
 
She’s lying. The real estate biz in this corner of SoCal is booming. Foreclosures have brought in the flippers—the people who swoop in on bank-owned properties and fix them up for a profit.
 
“But you need those commissions.” Silently I add, To pay my medical bills.
 
Another reason to feel guilty. I’m aware of how much my cancer is costing my parents. Flights to a melanoma specialist in Sydney and more hospital follow-ups here don’t come cheap. My folks tell me not to worry about that, but ironically I’m old enough to figure out that dying young is expensive.
 
And now Molly’s pushing me to apply to Yale.
 
I can’t blame her. She knows it’s been my dream since forever to go to Yale, get a medical degree, become a pediatrician. But it’d be a waste of time and money for me to even try to follow that dream.
 
I grimace at the olive oil oozing from the barely touched kale and mushroom thing.
Waste. Sure is the theme of the day. Of my life, even.
 
About Vanessa 
Vanessa lives in Australia with her musician husband, a photogenic cat, and a ghost. In addition to writing, she works as a TV closed captioner for the deaf and audio describer for the blind. Her pastimes include baking, iPhonography, and traveling the world on a quest to find the world’s greatest fries.
 
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | GoodReads
 
For giveaway and book release news, sign up to Vanessa's mailing list.

I really hate seeing stores stock Christmas decorations before I've even shopped for the kids' Halloween costumes or I've planned what to make for Thanksgiving. But publishers and readers love their Christmas stories right? And, now I've turned into part of the problem...*shakes my head* My Cottonbloom Christmas novella is releasing in a month's time! October 25th to be exact.

Can I be honest...I don't find Christmas to be a very romantic holiday. Barring the obvious religious implications, to me, it's all about the kids. It's attempting to get them not to cry for a picture with Santa. It's staying up until midnight or after putting that doll house together using instructions written in Japanese. It's about Chex Mix and decorating cookies and putting handmade ornaments on the tree. And, if it's not centered around your kids, then it's your nieces, nephews, or pretty much any other random kid. The only "romantic" symbol I can think of is mistletoe. So romance writers have that going for us, I guess. Lol.

I also really wanted to call this book something different...CHRISTMAS IN THE COP CAR. Doesn't that sound intriguing? Do I sound like the Grinch? I actually loved writing this novella, mainly because I wanted to give it a little bit of a spin...hence the cop car. But you'll just have to read it to find out what happens:)

In the mean time, let me add to the over-saturating Christmas problem by sharing a snippet, although it has nothing to do with Christmas...Also, if the hero sound vaguely familiar, Jeremy Whitehurst (aka Whitey) was a secondary character in all three of my Falcon Football books and all three Cottonbloom books. (More info here) So maybe it's fitting that he only gets an HEA through a Christmas miracle...

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Kayla's gaze trailed down his body, then went to the sky. “Looks like the storm has settled in for the duration. How about I give you a lift home? And maybe buy you a late lunch for your help?”

Jeremy had spent his formative years reeling from one crisis to the next, his bad decisions piling up like animal bones. He didn’t know if she qualified as a bad decision or a crisis, but being around her made his footing feel suddenly precarious as if he were one step from quicksand. He should say no. He would say no.

Yet confronted with her half-smile and hopeful eyes, he said, “Sure. That’d be great.”

“Let’s make a run for it.” She grabbed his hand on her way by him, laughing like mad. They loaded into the car, and still giggling, she turned to him. Her smile was sweet and uncomplicated and turned her from pretty to something magical. If he believed in such things. Which he didn’t.

Except, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from her. The rain muffled the outside world, turned off the voices sounding alarms in his mind. Without thinking about tomorrow or even the next minute, he leaned in and kissed her.

Her quick intake of breath stole his. Thunder clapped. Her upper body tipped toward him, and she wrapped one hand around his nape, the other delving into his damp hair.

Her surrender was the signal his body was waiting for, and he deepened the kiss, pulling her lower lip in his mouth and running his tongue along the soft flesh. Her gasping moan was loud in his ear and gasoline to the ember of desire he’d been desperately trying to stamp out.

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Wow, so it seems like I was posting for my last release just a few days ago! If you missed Caught Up in the Touch, you can read an excerpt here. And, it was RWA week, so I know most people did miss it! Lol.

For now, I'd like to jump back in time two hundred years or so...to England during the Napoleonic Wars. Although, my first published books are small town contemporaries, the first books I wrote were Regency historicals. They were (are) my crack. AN INDECENT INVITATION was the first book I wrote. I learned to write by rewriting (and rewriting and rewriting) this book. It got the attention of my agent and finaled in the Golden Heart in 2014. It's always going to be special. Plus, it's a seriously good time!

"Trentham is careful not to settle for easy answers or simple explanations, making for a tale full of unexpected twists and turns and emotional complications." -- RT Book Reviews, 4 stars.

"Danger, intrigue, and passionate love--what more could a Regency romance lover want? The first in Trentham's "Spies and Lovers" series is a well-written, engaging, and very steamy delight.--J. Harris, Library Journal

"Witty, compelling, and sensuous, Laura Trentham's is a fabulous new voice in historical romance." -- Valerie Bowman, bestselling Regency author

How about an excerpt:

Gray smoothed back his damp hair, took a deep breath, and peeked around the doorjamb into the drawing room. His dip in the chilly pond had done wonders for his tattered self-control. Lily hadn’t noticed him yet. Her face was a study in concentration, brows drawn in and teeth worrying her lips, keeping them red. Combs held her hair in check, but part of the thick mass obscured the white slope of her neck and delicate collarbone.

She worked the picks in synchronicity. Her focus was the most difficult lock of the set. He glided into the room and kept the settee between them as if it offered some protection from her allure.

Christ, she was beautiful and brave and made him laugh…and she wanted to be his friend. One of the pathetic beaus orbiting her sphere would be the first to kiss her, the first to awaken her sensual nature, the first to bed her. She deserved to be a duchess and rule London. Logically, an arranged marriage made perfect sense.

But the completely illogical part of him, situated somewhere between his legs, scoffed. It was only a kiss, after all. She wanted a basis of comparison, she said so herself. Why not offer himself up as illustration?

She straightened from her task and blew a stray tendril off her forehead with a gust of air. “I give up. What’s the trick? Will you show me?”

Less than five minutes in the room together, and he was back where he started. He wanted to kiss her. Why deny it? Why not surrender, at least temporarily, to the madness she inspired? Turning back to the door, he closed it with a soft snick.

He moved faster now that the decision had been made. Standing behind her, he brushed her hair over one shoulder, leaving a side of her neck bare. “Let’s try it this way,” he whispered.

He wrapped his fingers around hers, surprised not to see the sparks that made his fingers twitch. The full length of his body pressed against hers, and her sweet, rounded bottom notched into his pelvis.

“Like this?” She leaned over the desk, her voice trilling high. Somehow, their entwined fingers found the lock. His moved on instinct alone.

His body curved over hers. She would have no idea how tempting their position was. His erection had grown to undeniable proportions, and he canted his hips away. He didn’t want to send her screaming from the room.

Their fingers worked clumsily, but he didn’t care. His lips sought the warmth of her skin but stopped an inch away from her neck. Slow, deep breaths of rose-scented woman escalated his desire. Never letting his lips touch her, he skimmed them down her neck to her exposed collarbone and back up to her temple. Fine hairs along her nape stood at attention, aware of his sly machinations.

At some point, they gave up the pretense. Their hands dropped to the top of the davenport, their fingers still tangled. Finally, he allowed his lips to fall to her neck. The kiss he laid beneath her ear made her wriggle back into him. Her head notched into his shoulder, and her buttocks cradled his erection. She didn’t scream but let out a breathy moan.

He allowed his lips to follow his earlier path, this time dropping small kisses, licks or nips along her bare skin.

“G-Gray, is this a lesson?”

Perhaps it was. He spun her and lifted her to sit on the sloped top of the desk. Shoving her knees apart, he filled the void with his hips. She grasped the sides of the desk.

He needed to slow down, calm down. He wove his hands through her hair, thumbs framing her face. Her eyes were enormous pools of uncertainty, lips parted in shock. This was her first kiss. He should be tender, say something romantic and soothing.

“Lily,” he said, his voice like gritty sandpaper, “if I find you in a garden kissing one of those other fools, I’ll rip their bloody arms off. Do I make myself clear?”

A small sound of acknowledgement escaped her throat.

With effort, he didn’t allow his mouth to crash down on hers but tightened his hands in her hair with a desperation he didn’t understand. He wanted to plunge his tongue inside her mouth as a claiming. Instead, he forced his lips to settle over hers with insincere gentleness.

Soft and pliant, her lips tamed his frenzy until, instead of domination, he sought to give pleasure. Brushing his lips back and forth over hers, he drew her full lower lip between his and sucked. She slipped her hands under his arms, curling them around his shoulders.

In equal amounts of ardor and innocence, she returned his kiss. Her explorations gave him time to seize control over his urges. Mimicking his play, she sucked on his bottom lip. He darted his tongue over her top lip, foretelling his intentions. She opened her eyes, inhaled against his mouth and whispered his name.

He released his hold on her hair and cupped her face. “Close your eyes and open your mouth for me. Do you want a real kiss or not?” Simmering raw, elemental desire hid behind his teasing voice.

A trust he didn’t deserve radiated from her blue eyes before she obeyed, closing them and parting her lips. His tongue made gentle forays inside her mouth. Startled at the invasion, she pulled her tongue back, and he rumbled deep in his chest. Like with all her lessons, she was a quick study, and soon she stroked her tongue boldly against his. A low groan escaped his throat.

She ran her hands up his chest and wrapped them with a clutching intensity around his neck. Her body flowed against his like molten metal, and like metal, his cock responded in kind.

One hand left her face to press into her back, arching her even farther into his chest. The other slipped under her skirts to grasp a silk-covered calf. Smothering the echoes of his father’s warnings, he lifted the hem of her dress higher, needing to feel the tantalizing bare skin of her thigh. An inch would surely satisfy this compulsion.

Questing fingers brushed soft, naked skin. His lips craved the same, and he dropped kisses along her neck. Her head lolled back, thrusting her breasts upward.

He spread his fingers wide over her outer thigh. As soon as he brushed the lawn of her drawers, he would retreat. Except his fingers continued onward until they curled around her bare hip. His passion-fogged brain slowly processed the implications.

“Where are your goddamn drawers?”

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Keeping her safe is difficult, keeping a proper distance from her is downright impossible.

Warning: This book contains spies, scandals, naughty liaisons in houses of ill repute, men who think they know everything and women who know they do not.

Happy reading!

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