Crimson
Footprints
by
Shewanda Pugh
Genre:
Romantic Suspense
On
the night of her brother's murder, Deena Hammond stumbles upon Takumi
Tanaka, lost and on the wrong end of a .32. After rescuing him from
the certain fate driving through her neighborhood in a Porsche will
bring, a sweet kind of friendship begins. A balm for her
grief.
Maybe,
Deena likes to think, it happened the day her mother killed her
father. Or maybe, it was always a part of them, like DNA gone bad.
Whatever the case, Deena knows that her family would never approve,
hell, never acknowledge, her fast-growing love for Tak. And had he
never made love to her in that unraveling, soul-searching sort of
way, she could've done the same. But loves a devil that way. So,
their game begins. One where they hide what they are from everyone.
Anyone.
Tak
understands this for now. After all, Deena's career hinges on the
favor of her mentor and boss: his hard-ass of a father. And the
Hammond family is already stretched thin with grief. Yet, each step
Deena takes toward family and career brings her closer to an
acceptance she’s never had—and away from him.
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“So, what does my little architectural scholar
think of the Atlanta skyline?” Tak asked as he took a sip of sweet tea.
Deena lowered her gaze. It was the right
question, a distraction from the jitters she felt from being hundreds of miles
away from home with a man who made her wake up in desperation.
She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. There’s a lot
of modern and postmodern stuff here, but that’s not surprising. Atlanta’s a
southern city, but it’s a hybrid one. In a time when much of the south rejected
what they saw as an encroachment on an old way of life, Atlanta was going
through a transformation, if you will. They wanted to be seen as a progressive
city, a sort of beacon of the ‘New South’. You know
how some of the best architecture reflects the values of the people around it?
Well, Atlanta’s no exception. You can see the rejection of antebellum roots
and—”
Deena paused, her cheeks coloring. “I’m so
sorry. Before this is over you’ll wish you asked some other girl to come with
you.”
Silence followed. Her words implied more than
she’d intended about their reasons for being there, implied more than the
careful friendship they’d maintained to that point.
A slight smile played across Tak’s lips.
“Don’t be silly, Dee.” He watched her as she shifted, before apparently
deciding she’d squirmed enough. “You’re a genius. My otosan
must love talking to you.”
Deena shrugged. “It’s a big firm. I don’t
really spend time with your father.”
Tak laughed. “You do. You just think you
don’t.”
“Now what in the world does that mean?”
“My dad’s a brilliant man whose whole life is
wrapped up in that firm. He hired you because he saw something. While you were
his intern, he studied you, figured out what you were made of, and decided that
he liked it. In other words, he was spending time with you even if you weren’t
spending time with him.”
Before Deena could respond, the waitress
returned with their food. Pecan waffles and scrambled eggs, biscuits and
country gravy and two unidentifiable piles on saucer plates were placed before
them.
“What in the hell is this?” Deena said,
lifting the edge of a saucer for inspection. Her nose crinkled at the mass.
“It’s hash browns. Try it.”
Tak grabbed a bottle of syrup and went to work
on his waffles.
“Hash browns where?”
Tak grinned. “Hash browns there.” He jabbed at
the mass with his syrup-covered fork. “There’s also onions, ham, cheese, chili
and tomatoes.” He pointed at each item with the utensil before returning to the
slicing of his waffles. “And it’s all quite good.”
She looked at the red and yellow goo that
covered the potatoes in distrust. She didn’t want to think of how many calories
might be in that little saucered dish, with its fried potatoes and ooze of
cheese. She didn’t want to think of what her ass would look like in a swimsuit
after a bite of that stuff.
“Come on, Dee. Open up already.”
Tak stuck his fork into his mouth to clean it
before taking a stab at her hash browns. He came away with a thick wad, and
trained it towards her mouth. “Just a little now.”
With a hand beneath her chin, he guided the
gooey hash into her mouth. An explosion of flavor slipped between her waiting
lips, and with it the fork that had once been in his mouth. She blushed.
“Uh oh,” Tak said as he caught chili with his
thumb. Quickly, he returned the finger to her mouth, her lips parting to accept
it. He gasped loud enough to draw the eye. Their gazes connected, locking for
too long. Staring, neither speaking, breathing as the seconds passed until he
receded. Wide-eyed, Deena cleared her throat and looked away, red-faced and
stiff. Tak stared, a sober, blinking astonishment on his face. Both finished
their meals in silence.
Shewanda
Pugh's a tomboy who's been writing romance since an inappropriate
age. While she's been shortlisted for a few awards and snagged a
bestsellers list or two, there's nothing she enjoys more than hearing
from her readers.
In
another life, she earned a BA from Alabama A&M University and an
MA in Writing from Nova Southeastern University. Though a hardcore
native of Boston, MA, she now lives in Miami, FL, where she sulks in
the sunshine, guzzles coffee, and puzzles over her next novel.
Follow
the tour HERE
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