Official Cover Reveal for Ardently Yours!

Ardently Yours arrives February 18th. The preorder is up!

This book was meant to be a cute, lil' prequel novella. Hahaha...big breath...Hahaha!

Apparently, I haven't yet mastered the art of giving you an entire origin story in a two-hour read. Before I knew it, it was a full-length novel, and:

• Charlotte was going to the masquerade ball with diamonds on her shoes, (and Arden was losing his mind with jealousy for the first time in his life).

• Arden was getting his ass whooped by a rooster. (Her dad was unimpressed).

• Four-year-old Bronwyn and eight-year-old Henry were causing a kerfuffle big enough to require Coast Guard intervention.

• And, oh, yeah, there's the whole "Earl Had to Die" sisterhood thing.

I truly loved starting with Arden McRae, an uptight, white-hat, "there's never an excuse, only a motive" prosecutor and watching him slowly unravel for Charlotte, then re-knit himself into the man he is Present Day.

SNEAK PEEK

I shake my head, then scowl at Charlotte’s home. “Did you have any idea how bad this would be?” My voice is an accusation.

Charlotte and Bronnie have been living here alone without another house in sight. We passed her nearest neighbor’s home a mile back. “She could be screaming for help out here, and no one would hear her.”

The road from her place into town winds in a narrow, twisting nightmare. A mountain rises on one side, and a ravine plummets fifty feet to the Susquehanna River on the other. She drives that road daily, through all four seasons, with Bronnie in the backseat.

I eye the inky shadows of the woods looming around this property. The Blackwater Bear statue was all well and good when I imagined real bears as wildlife that she had no risk of encountering, but she lives in what is, essentially, a clearing surrounded by forest. A bear or mountain lion isn’t going to know to stay off her damn lawn.

“Crime rates are a lot lower around here. She doesn’t need the kind of security you do,” Reese says.

“They’re lower, not nonexistent. This place looks like somebody could cut their way inside it with a pocketknife. She’s a sitting duck out here.”

I barely finish speaking before her front door swings open with a crash, and Charlotte steps out onto her porch. Her honey-blonde hair is in a messy bun, her red flannel pajamas have snowmen screen-printed on them, and her feet are stuffed inside a pair of winter boots.

Without a hint of hesitation, she cocks the shotgun she holds in both hands, lifts it to her shoulder, and aims it straight at us. “I don’t know what you boys think you’re up to out here, but I suggest you get back in those cars and be on your way before I have to teach you a painful lesson about sneaking around where you’re not invited.”

Reese whistles between his teeth. “I get why you’re obsessed. That woman is hot.”

I send him a withering glare as the three of us lift our hands in the air.

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I'll be posting a quote a day from Ardently Yours on my Facebook page and on IG. I'd love it if you come by to say "Hi!"