Blurb:
Jane
Hollinger is the wrong side of thirty, divorced and struggling to pay the
mortgage her cheating ex left her with. As a qualified genealogist, teaching
family history evening classes is a way for her to make ends meet. But she
begins to wonder if it’s such a good idea when a late enroller for the class is
a little... odd. “Badly-blond Bloke” both scares and intrigues Jane, and when
she discovers he is her all-time favourite actor and huge crush, Robert
Armstrong, she’s stunned. Even more stunning to Jane is the fact that Robert is
interested in her romantically. He’s everything she ever dreamed of, and more,
but can she overcome her fear of living in the public eye to be with the man
she loves?
Excerpt:
Jane
glanced at her watch. It was half past nine. She’d stayed late after this
week’s class to work on a PowerPoint presentation. Now it was a bit too late
for her to join her students at the pub.
She pulled the large bunch of keys from her bag and turned off the light
as she left the room. After locking the door, she walked to the centre’s main
entrance and began to punch the security code into the alarm system’s keypad.
She stopped when a door banged shut some distance behind her, nearly jumping
out of her skin when a figure left the Gents toilets and made a slow approach.
She fumbled in her bag for her personal alarm.
“Stop!” she held the alarm in front of her defensively.
The man raised both hands in the air as if at gunpoint, dropping his
notebook.
She was quick to inform him, “I can set both alarms off right now, you
know?”
“I know, but I’m in your family history class and I just want to go
home. If it’s all right with you?”
“Walk forward three paces.”
He complied, halting under a flickering strip light. It was the
badly-blond bloke.
“Look,” he told her, sounding tired, defeated. “I’ve been wearing
contact lenses all day and my eyes are killing me. So, the last thing I need
right now is to be deafened as well. I just want to go home and go to bed.”
“You’ve been in the Gents for half an hour. If you’ve been doing drugs
in there—”
“I’ve been taking the bloody contact lenses out!” he snapped, reaching
into his pocket.
“Don’t! Stop!”
“Do you want to see them or not?” A nondescript English accent had
replaced his Cockney one. “We can’t stand here all night. I’m just going to
reach into my jacket pocket and show you the contact lenses, all right?”
She gave a jerky nod and watched him. Sure enough, a small blue and
white contact lens case emerged.
“My eyes have been absolutely killing me all evening. It’s a complete
nightmare putting them in and getting them out. You don’t wear them?”
“No,” she whispered, edging out onto the steps, still holding her
personal alarm aimed at him like a gun. “Just get out.”
“I’m sorry for frightening you.” He retrieved the notebook from the
floor and sauntered past her, close enough for her to see how red-rimmed his
eyes were. “Good night.”
Standing at the door, she watched him cross the car park to a vehicle at
the far end. It beeped once and he got in, pulling out of the space a moment
later. As it crawled towards her, she could see it was a black Lexus. It was an
odd choice for someone who looked like a gangster. Surely an SUV with
blacked-out windows would be more his style? When the car left the car park,
she slumped back against the door, fighting the urge to cry. After a few deep
breaths and with the personal alarm clenched between her teeth, she eventually
set the security alarm, turned out all the lights, locked the door, and fled to
her Volkswagen.
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About me:
Lorna Peel
is an author of contemporary and historical romantic fiction. She has had work
published in three Irish magazines – historical articles on The Stone of Scone in
‘Ireland’s Own’, on The Irish Potato Famine in the ‘Leitrim Guardian’, and
Lucy’s Lesson, a contemporary short story in ‘Woman’s Way’. Lorna was born in England and lived in North Wales until her
family moved to Ireland
to become farmers, which is a book in itself! She lives in rural Ireland, where
she write, researches her family history, and grows fruit and vegetables. She
also keeps chickens (and a Guinea Hen who now thinks she’s a chicken!).
Thank you
for featuring me on your blog, Lynelle!
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