Since it was my first ebook published, I figure it’s only fitting that I post an excerpt from Her Best Friend’s Lover.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

“Dale, why are you doing this to yourself?” she asked, knowing he’d never be able to answer.

He gazed up at her with dazed eyes, clearly befuddled.

“She loves him, Dale. She can’t help that,” Lauren said, taking the picture from him and turning it face down before catching his cheek and forcing him to look at her. Holding his face in her hands, she stared in to his eyes, her own heart breaking. “She loves him,” she repeated slowly. “Love doesn’t follow logical rules. We don’t always love who we want to, or who we ought to. You have to let her go. She’s beyond your reach now.”

“What in the hell do you know about love?” he snapped, jerking free from her gentle touch.

She smiled sadly. “A lot more than you would think, Dale. I know what it’s like to love somebody you can’t have. And I know how hard it is to let it go, to carry on life as normal while that person lives a life that doesn’t, and never will, include you.”

Shoulders slumped, Dale stared dejectedly at his hands, trying to tune out the sound of her voice.

“I know what it’s like to love somebody who doesn’t love you back, Dale,” she repeated. With a delicate shrug of her shoulders, she quietly finished, “You won’t be able to replace her with somebody else, Dale. The women you date deserve better than to be treated as a substitute for the one you really want.”

“Who the hell are you to give me advice on my love life?” he demanded, slamming down the whiskey. The potent amber liquid splashed out of the bottle, spraying Lauren with droplets as Dale surged to his feet.

With a steady hand, Lauren wiped a trickle of liquor from her face before rising and meeting Dale’s turbulent gaze with her own. “You don’t have a love life, Dale. You have a sex life, in which you pretend every woman you sleep with is Nicole Kline. And you have a dream life, where you imagine yourself in his place, the father of her children, the love of her life.”

His eyes closed and he turned his head away. “I can’t put her out of my mind, Lauren. I try, but I can’t,” he said, his voice tight and shaky. “Do you know how he treated her? What he did? They were going to be married, for pity’s sake, and just a few months before the wedding, he knocks another woman up. So he married that bitch and left Nikki alone. He broke her fucking heart, but when his wife died, he figured he could get Nikki back.

“He didn’t deserve her!”

“If she had been mine, I would have cherished her every day of my life, she never would have been hurt the way she was. I would have treated her like a queen and I never would have hurt her.”

Very calmly, very succinctly, she said, “Bullshit.”

His head snapped up and his startled gaze flew up to meet hers. “Excuse me?” he said, his voice going cold once more. Glacial ice had already formed in those blue eyes.

“You can’t love somebody without hurting them from time to time. You’d be a fool to think otherwise. Pain is a part of loving. Without it, we’d probably take all the good things for granted.”

“I would treasure her. I love her, damn it!”

“You worship her,” Lauren countered. “You’ve put her on a damn pedestal and would kneel at her feet if you could. She is the cursed princess from one of your kid’s tales, Dale. You’ve told me this story before, buddy. I know all about the betrayal, all about her rough childhood, and all about how you fell in love with her only to lose her to him. You don’t love her.

“You want to rescue her, help her put her life together and coddle her. But she’s a real woman, with real needs. She doesn’t need worshipping and she doesn’t need to be treasured. That makes her sound like some kind of possession. She needs a man to love her as a woman, not as an ideal.”

“What in the hell do you know about it?” he demanded, stumbling to the side and nearly tripping over the coffee table. With a growl, he shoved it, sending the whiskey sailing through the air and the heavy oak table upended on the floor. “What in hell do you know about love? You don’t even let a guy within ten feet of you.”

“That’s because I don’t have anything to offer one. My heart belongs to somebody and I don’t believe in casual sex.” Lauren turned her gaze away so that Dale wouldn’t be able to read that he was the one who owned her—heart, mind, body and soul.

Her elegant shoulders lifted and fell in a casual shrug before she loosely linked her hands in front of her. “Dale, I’d rather be alone, just me and my wishes, than to fall into bed with every other guy who comes along. I might forget for a little while, but then it’s over. I’d be even more lonely than I was to begin with.”

Dale sat silently staring at the puddle of spilled whiskey that was seeping into his deep, plush carpet. How could she so accurately describe it? he wondered. How did she know about the ache that lived within him?

He scowled as the answer came into his drunken mind. Because, as she had told him, she was in love with somebody who didn’t have the sense to love her back. “Better off without him,” he announced, wishing for another swig from the bottle.

“Pardon?”

He grinned foolishly at her and mimicked her formal, regal tone, “Pardon?” before laughing. “That’s what I love ‘bout you, Lauren. You’re such a damn lady, even with a drunk ass idiot.” He glanced around the room, wondered if he’d actually drunk enough to make it spin or if the fault buried below Kentuckiana had finally started shifting. “Better off without him,” he repeated. “Probably ain’t good ‘nough for ya, anyway.”

Arching a slim black brow at him, she agreeably said, “Probably not.”

“This place is a damn sty,” Dale said, his foul mood gone in the blink of an eye. “What kind of pig lives here?”

“Hmmm, I wonder,” Lauren murmured, tucking her hands into her pockets to keep from reaching for him. He was so damned adorable. So damned sexy and rumpled.

He chuckled under his breath and dropped back down on the dark gray couch, staring up at her. Her face was turned sideways, studying the unholy mess, treating Dale to a clear view of her perfect profile. Clear ivory skin, deep smoky eyes, wide lush mouth. “You sure are pretty, Lauren,” he said, grinning up at her. “If you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Thank you,” she said politely, a smile tugging the corners of her mouth as she turned her head to look at him. “Of course, I realize your judgment is a tad bit impaired right now.”

“Tad bit, my ass,” he muttered, enjoying the sensation of the room spinning around. The only thing in focus was Lauren, with her watchful gray eyes and amused smile. Dale lowered his gaze to her mouth—that wide, lush mouth, curved up in amusement. Carefully, concentrating on each separate movement, he rose to his feet.

“Why don’t I fix you something to eat and then clean up this mess?” she asked, sidestepping neatly when he reached for her, then positioning herself at his side as he tried to steady himself.

“Not hungry,” he told her, a sweet smile on his face. He reached out, stroked his hand down the satiny skin of her cheek. “Soft,” he murmured, turning his hand around and stroking his knuckles down her jaw to her neck.

“So are we friends again?” His gaze, bleary and bloodshot, wandered over her face. “You here to make me feel all better?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m going to fix you something to eat so you don’t wake up with a hangover the size of Kansas,” she said steadily, even though her heart started tripping when his eyes started to linger, none too subtly, on her mouth.

“Don’t wanna eat,” he sulked, reaching up to touch his index finger to her bottom lip. “Not unless you’re on the menu.”

Drunk or not, he knew heat in a woman’s eyes. And what he saw flare in her gaze was a damn forest fire.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Da rulz

• Each day, you get a new chance to win one ebook from my backlist. I’ll post an excerpt from one of my ebooks. To enter, just respond in comments to each new daily excerpt and you’re entered.
  
• Winner’s name will be posted on the blog and you do need to check the blog to see if you’ve won. I’m sorry, but I’ve spent way too much time chasing down winners…and hey, I gotta write. I’ll try to get it posted the next day, but be patient with me. I’m sooooo forgetful.
• The winner will select one title from my ebook backlist, posted below, or you can check it out via my website here.
• You can enter each day, but once you’ve won, you can’t win any more for this ‘ebook-a-day’ giveaway.
• Please only enter once each day. Don’t enter under multiple email addies. This is rude, it isn’t fair to others. FYI, WordPress tracks IP addies. I reserve the right to delete suspicious entries. Also, because of those who’ve tried rigging contests in the past by entering under multiple emails, I restrict all contests to one entry per household. For more on my contest rules, check out the disclaimer page
  
• The contest is open to anybody, even if you’ve won something from me before. (excluding the ‘ebook-a-day’ contest). The prize is for an ebook, you can take your pick from my backlist, but I won’t be substituting a print book for an ebook. Trying to promote ebooks and all….

And…I won’t just draw one name. I’ll draw 3 each day. So that’s 21 chances to win.

Getting down to the last few giveaways. Good luck!

Just a reminder about the contest for an ARC of Through the Veil.

Contest is now over and winners have been posted.  To avoid confusion, this post is now closed.