Saturday Snippet...

It's only two weeks and three days until The Wedding Pearls will be released. If you sign up for my newsletter you'll get a short prequel to the story that won't be available anywhere but in the newsletter I will send out on publication day. There's also a short prequel for Wild Cowboy Ways which will be sent on publication day, also. So move your little mouse over to my website photo to the right, click and enter your name and email address on the website. Easy, peasy and then you get an exclusive prequel to the stories.

Today I thought you might like a little snippet from The Wedding Pearls. This is Tessa and Branch's first meeting.

She’d only read a few words when the door pushed open, bringing in a blast of hot muggy air and a tall, good looking cowboy. Tessa was glad she was sitting down or she would have tripped over her own thoughts and fallen right into his arms. He looked like one of those old Marlboro ads and a CD cover of Blake Shelton all tossed in together. Her pulse kicked in a little extra giddy-up and her heart did one of those thumps that only came along these days on special occasions.

“Hello, is Tessa Wilson here?” he drawled.

She closed her book without using the book mark. “I’m Tessa. What can I do for you?”

He nodded toward a chair and asked, “Mind if I sit?”

“Honeymoon?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.” He removed his hat, laid it on her desk and raked his fingers through thick dark hair that feathered back perfectly. She could read people and this man was damn sure nervous. Maybe he was married and planning a trip with his mistress. It didn’t matter; her job was to put him at ease and work a little magic to get him a good deal. Who or where he went wasn’t a bit of her business.

He inhaled and let it out slowly. “I guess I am planning a trip but not one that you can help me with. I’m here on official business.” He slid a business card across the meticulously clean desk toward her.

She picked it up, glanced at the name and looked up into the sexiest green eyes she’d ever seen. He looked far more like a rancher than a lawyer. Dark hair, green eyes, square face with the perfect amount of chiseling and a perfect sized cleft in his chin. She held her hands in her lap with her fingers laced tightly together so she wouldn’t reach out and touch that little chin dent.

Holy crap! She didn’t let clients affect her like this. It had to be that the steamy sex scene in the romance book she’d been reading that set her mind and hormones into overdrive. She glanced down at the cover of a cowboy with a bare chest, hip slung jeans and a cowboy hat in his hands. It was exactly like the black felt hat setting there between her and the new client. She undressed him with her eyes and decided that he wouldn’t look so very different than the model on the novel. She quickly closed her eyes and willed the wicked thoughts away and then opened them again and glanced down at the card one more time.

“Branch Thomas, what can I do for you?” Her throat was dry but she was afraid to uncap the water bottle on her desk for fear she’d drop the thing and make another mess.

His eyebrows knit together into a frown. “I’m not sure how to put this in words and it might come as a shock. I guess the only way to say it is to blurt it out. You’d think this would be easier since I’m a lawyer.”

“Spit it out,” she said.

“Okay then.” He nodded seriously. “I’m here on behalf of your biological mother and grandmother. They would like to meet you. And that trip I was talking about, they’re leaving on Tuesday for a month long road trip around the perimeter of Texas and they would like for you to go with them so y’all can get to know each other.” His words tumbled out so fast and she was so intrigued with his eyes that they didn’t sink in for several seconds.

“I’m sorry we don’t usually plan trips like that but if you’d tell me how far they want to travel each day I could maybe work up some tourist sites and hotels.” And that’s when she clamped a hand over her mouth. “What did you say?”

He picked up his hat and laid it in his lap. “You did know you were adopted?”

She nodded.

Any minute he was going to bolt and run. She could see it in his eyes. “And you did know that you had a biological mother somewhere?”

Another slight tip of the head without losing eye contact with him. “I’ve always known I was adopted. It didn’t matter and I’m comfortable with it.”

“The rest is pretty self explanatory. Your birth mother and grandmother would like to meet you this weekend. They live in Boomtown, Texas, a few miles east of Beaumont.” He looked at a travel poster on the wall behind her left shoulder as he talked. “It’s about a three hour drive from here. They are willing to come over here or if you wouldn’t mind the drive, they would like for you to come to Sunday dinner to discuss this trip.”

“Is this a joke?” she asked bluntly.