Erotic Romance, Suspense
Date Published: January 31, 2018
Publisher: Tirgearr Publishing
A desperate competition and sizzling attraction leads to dangerous desire.
New York Marine biologist Veronica “Roni” Keane is attending the Havana Bay Conference in Cuba. Tomorrow only one grant will be awarded which will provide the winner with professional recognition, resources for a project, and living expenses for two years. She hopes to continue her deceased father’s work, but smooth operator, Carlos Montoya, has won many grants in the past.
Carlos, a freelancer for the Havana Port Authority, works to help protect Havana’s reputation as a bastion of safety. As international travelers flock to the island, attracted by its 1950’s time-warp and colonial architecture, the drug business is running rampant, particularly on Roni’s cruise ship. Something’s not right, and when her scuba tanks are tampered with, Carlos brings in the military police to investigate. For her safety, he keeps her close, but he craves her body.
Their attraction leads to a fun night with a bit of kink. But Roni finds herself in more trouble than she bargained for when the criminals blame her for alerting the military police and come looking for her. Can Roni trust Carlos to protect her? Will she stay in Havana if Carlos wins the coveted grant, or kiss her lover goodbye?
Excerpt:
Chapter One
“Why, Veronica Keane.” A voice heavy with a Spanish
accent drawled from behind her. “A dive bar?” A taunting tsk. “What do we have? A slumming New Yorker?”
She stiffened and closed her eyes. She knew that voice
and its owner, Dr. Carlos Montoya, a finalist like her, competing for the same
damn grant at the biggest Cephalopoda
conference of the decade. Her heart pitter-pattered against her ribs. To
turn toward him would intimate distress, or worse yet, weakness. She wouldn’t
fail to win this grant, not when she was a final contender. “I like this funky
little place.” Sia Macario Café, smack in the center of Havana, allowed her to
observe locals and their daily lives.
“You need to eat with all the mojitos you’ve downed.” The
big tease wasn’t counting. This was her
first drink, but his rumbling, sexy timbre hinted at all kinds of dark, hot
promises. She’d rubbed shoulders with the Cuban scientist all week. This splendid
specimen of Latin male brought on a physical ache that punched low.
A flare-up stirred fear. For her own good, she needed to
resist. “I ordered camarones enchiladas.”
By now she knew the menu on the chalkboard by heart. She tipped her head back to
whiff grilled shrimp soon to arrive in sofrito sauce with fried sweet
plantains.
“The flan is good. Just like my abuela makes.”
“I bet. Your grandmother would be happy to hear that,”
she said, knowing he brought out the best in most people. Two days ago he'd
invited her and a handful of others scuba diving. The chance to ogle him had
been one of the perks. He’d worn nothing but swim trunks, his bare chest on
display. Every glistening muscle was finely etched. Not a drop of fat on him.
Since he’d not given her the time of day, she’d checked him out without him
noticing.
The hard-bodied host had led the way toward habitats of
soft-bodied creatures. To find where invertebrates lived was never an easy
task. Octopuses squeezed into narrow passages of coral for protection and gave
females a place to keep their eggs. She’d discovered the remains of a few meals
nearby.Octopuses scattered rocks and shells to help them hide.
This grant meant
so much to her and no doubt to him as well. Veronica mindlessly toyed with the
gold necklace around her neck, but anxiety crackled through her brain. Unlike
this man of action, she lacked the flamboyant personality necessary to talk
people into things. Carlos had that ability. He'd made friends with judges on
board while she’d conversed with an older woman about a box of scones made with
Cuban vanilla cream.
That day the wind had picked up to a gale force, and this
woman named Bela with Lucille Ball red hair needed help walking to her home.
The half mile down the seaside promenade, The Malecón, had provided her with time to practice her Spanish.
Turned out Bela was Carlos’s grandmother. She’d worked as a maid when the
Castro government came to power. When
private homes were nationalized, titles were handed over to the dwelling occupants.
Bela owned a crumbling home in the respected Verdado district and rented out
rooms.
What Veronica detested about Carlos was his abnormal
level of talent for schmoozing. Not that he wasn't charismatic; he drew her
like a powerful magnet with emotions hard to untangle. Why was a self-assured
woman who ran her own life thinking about a man who commanded everyone around
him?
She inhaled a breath and turned around on the barstool,
caught fast by a gut punch of Carlos Montoya in the flesh. She sighed and
surrendered to the tendrils of want sliding up between her thighs.
Tall and muscular, his lush dark hair curled to his
collar giving him a wild, roguish appearance. His face was lean and chiseled.
His mouth full and tempting. His eyes the smoky-gray of a grass fire and
fringed with black lashes as dense as paintbrushes. He smiled. A faint hint of
mockery curved his mouth, a sensual mouth she imagined to be either inviting or
cruel. Or both at the same time when he leaned over a woman with a diamond-hard
gleam in his dark eyes while she drowned with pleasure. She fought a fierce
desire to run her hand across his broad chest, tip her face upward, and…
His breath tickled her face.
Not
going there. She blinked and forced her mind to focus.
Carlos Montoya was not the kind of man you lost focus around. But that image of putting her mouth full on his and peeling
away his shirt once introduced in her mind
was impossible to expunge. Pointless even to try.
He was an intimidating blend of intellect and sexy
danger. Both qualities had her leaning back against the bar’s edge. If it
weren’t for him, she’d have a chance at winning the grant.
His lips twitched. “You’re staying on one of the cruise
ships, am I right?” He rolled up the sleeves of his linen jacket to reveal a
dusting of manly hair.
”Yes." Her cabin served as her hotel room while
attending the January meetings with perfect high-seventies temperatures. His
eyes locked with hers. She willed herself to move and yet she remained seated,
clutching heat between her legs, a wetness so intense that her breath stalled
in her chest while her heart hammered faster. Soon she’d return to freezing New
York City.
“So, Bonita,
give.” He slid onto the bar stool next to her. “What brings you down from a
lofty ship to grace us lowly Cubans with your presence?”
Bonita.
Pretty lady was not an endearment coming from the mouth curved in a taunting
smile, but not a slight either. Not with his deep, melodic voice speaking words
as if he knew secrets about her. What secrets did he know? Would he pry into
her personal life? She doubted this bad-boy college professor acknowledged
boundaries.
“Just drinks and dinner.” She scrambled for composure.
“Aren’t we attending a world-class conference? I find the local population to
be friendly and kind. That’s not slumming.”
The bartender set down a saoco. “Hope you like it, senorita.”
“Gracias,” she said. “Very nice, served in a coconut.”
“Ah, the saoco,” Carlos said. “Rum, lime juice, sugar,
and ice. The saoco,” he repeated, disbelief heavy in his words. “Um. Wow. Once
used as a tonic for prisoners of the revolution.”
“Medicinal?” She couldn’t help it. She chuckled and
sounded as if a rusty spoon had scraped her throat raw, but it was genuine. The
warm glow in its wake was welcome and needed. .
He leaned an elbow on the bar, his beer bottle with the
green-and-red Cristal label dangling between his fingers. “Be careful with that
one.” He dipped his head toward the front door as if he needed to go somewhere
soon.
That fast, the glow snuffed out. She cleared her throat and gripped the fuzzy surface of the
coconut container.
He placed a five-peso coin with a brass plug on the
counter and whirled it. The spinning motion mirrored a dizzying attraction
going on in low parts of her belly.
She cleared her wayward mind and nodded toward artwork on
the opposite wall. “I plan to buy a painting tonight.”
“Don’t buy anything unless the seller gives you a
certificate. You’ll need one to take art from Cuba. Artists deal in euros in
case you don’t have pesos.”
She’d come prepared but said, “Thanks for the info.”
His coal-black eyes widened as he gazed from her head
down to the tiny straps around her ankles
as if she wore high heels and nothing else.
“You give off a Barbie doll image,” he replied and stood up.
“Huh?”
“Where’s Ken, anyway? Kenneth Morton. He came with you to
the talks in Antarctica. Five years ago.” He grinned, and the mortification in
her belly gave way to a longing which she had no business feeling toward her
competitor.
“Ken and I broke up.” She hesitated for a moment. “You
have a gift for remembering names. Like a salesman.”
“A person’s name is, to that person, the most important
and sweetest sound. Back then I introduced myself to Ken in the men’s room.”
“I remember now. Didn’t you give a talk on a specialized
pigment in the octopus?”
“Ahh, si.” He splayed his fingers over his chest. “A
pigment in their blood is—”
“—called
hemocyanin. Turns their blood blue and helps them survive subfreezing
temperatures. Were you awarded something?”
“The antifreeze protein grant? No. It went to a
deep-diving photographer. He wasn’t chicken about getting lost or trapped under
the ice.”
She slid from her stool and strutted around, jutting her
chin in and out like a chicken. “Bock,
bock, bock, bock, bock, begowwwwk.”
He chuckled. “Cute chicken
dance. Very cute in that skimpy black dress.”
Her cheeks heated, and she
clutched her necklace. He’d seen plenty of women in body-fitting attire. In Cuba, women wore dresses to meetings. If she'd harnessed sexier mojo,
she’d have livened up presentations. Her presentations with an abundance of
dull data went south. She slid
back against her stool and clutched her purse to her stomach as if the small
satin bag could calm the nerves playing deep down kickball. She belonged in her
tidy New York office filled with computers, modems, and research manuals. Not
in this softly lit café where passion oozed from a man’s pores, and artists displayed their canvases.
Here was where Havana’s trendsetters congregated,
and Ernest Hemingway wrote about desire.
“Good luck with your
purchases, Veronica Keane.”
Okay, so they weren’t going to pretend they were going
head to head for the grant.
As if he had more to say, he grinned at her, his perfect
white teeth flashing.. “Do you find us different, like apples and oranges?”
“What am I, an apple or an orange?”
“Hmm. You’re an apple.” He was doing that sexy voice
thing which made her brain shut down. Heady. .
It started with an unexpected spark, an instant
attraction, the jolting jab of oh-I’m-feeling-something. Something like a
flashfire in her belly, but now they were talking. “Am I the apple of desire?
Want to take a bite out of me?” She pulled in a breath. Had she really said
that?
“Bonita, do I
ever.”
“Tomorrow is the final ceremony.” Would she watch him
walk to the podium to accept the grant?
About the Author
Book Buyers Best finalist Kathleen Rowland is devoted to giving her readers fast-paced, high-stakes suspense with an erotic love story sure to melt their hearts. Her latest release is One Night in Havana, #34 in the City Nights series.
Kathleen also has a steamy romantic suspense series with Tirgearr Publishing, Deadly Alliance is followed by Unholy Alliance. Keep an icy drink handy while reading these sizzling stories.
Kathleen used to write computer programs but now writes novels. She grew up in Iowa where she caught lightning bugs, ran barefoot, and raced her sailboat on Lake Okoboji. Now she wears flip-flops and sails with her husband, Gerry, on Newport Harbor but wishes there were lightning bugs in California.
Kathleen exists happily with her witty CPA husband, Gerry, in their 70’s poolside retreat in Southern California where she adores time spent with visiting grandchildren, dogs, one bunny, and noisy neighbors. While proud of their five children who’ve flown the coop, she appreciates the luxury of time to write.
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