A Perfect Secret Series, #3
New Adult Contemporary Romance and Mystery
New Adult Contemporary Romance and Mystery
The one secret she can't
stand to keep is the one she can't afford to tell.
The perfect little rich girl, River Pearl Sutton has always done what her family expected of her. She’d become the perfect little beauty queen, the perfect child model and now her global success locks her into a life she never really chose.
Coming home for the summer to prepare for the Founder’s Day Festival, a celebration of her lauded ancestor, she is tasked by her father to write a speech to be delivered at the end of the party.
Returning to Hope Parish brings her back into close proximity with sweet-talking, skirt-chasing Braxton Outlaw, the boy who always seemed immune to her charms in high school. But now he looks at her with those challenging blue eyes, both intimidating and seductive at the same time. Using research of her family lineage and his as way to get close to this bad boy, they fall into a hot, torrid affair.
She stumbles across a terrible secret that could bring to ruin not only her reputation, but the reputation and standing of her family. But when her infatuation with Brax grows into something that she can’t live without, she must decide what to do. Keep the secret and lose Brax or destroy her family and lose them.
It’s an awful, heartrending perfect dilemma.
The perfect little rich girl, River Pearl Sutton has always done what her family expected of her. She’d become the perfect little beauty queen, the perfect child model and now her global success locks her into a life she never really chose.
Coming home for the summer to prepare for the Founder’s Day Festival, a celebration of her lauded ancestor, she is tasked by her father to write a speech to be delivered at the end of the party.
Returning to Hope Parish brings her back into close proximity with sweet-talking, skirt-chasing Braxton Outlaw, the boy who always seemed immune to her charms in high school. But now he looks at her with those challenging blue eyes, both intimidating and seductive at the same time. Using research of her family lineage and his as way to get close to this bad boy, they fall into a hot, torrid affair.
She stumbles across a terrible secret that could bring to ruin not only her reputation, but the reputation and standing of her family. But when her infatuation with Brax grows into something that she can’t live without, she must decide what to do. Keep the secret and lose Brax or destroy her family and lose them.
It’s an awful, heartrending perfect dilemma.
EXCERPT
I would never forget the summer the
Outlaws had caught me playing hooky with Aubree and Verity. Of course I had
been the instigator. Verity had been on board almost from the start, because
she was way more than the perfect preacher’s daughter everyone believed her to
be. Aubree was the holdout. In high school, she was so wrapped up in her need
to be perfect she was terrified of doing something naughty. But two against one
wore her down.
I was feeling restless and talked them
into sneaking out to the swamp with me. I had snagged a bottle of really good
wine from my dad’s collection. Which he missed and my brothers guessed it was
me. They had taken the blame to protect their little Princess of a sister.
Shoot. I could spit. I was so sick of the label.
Anyway, we’d sneaked into the swamp with
the triple alibi that each of us was spending the night at one of the others’
house. We’d just been swimming. I had on a bikini which didn’t cover much.
That’s when I’d heard it. An air boat. It wasn’t long before the three of them
spotted us.
The Outlaw trips had been sixteen then,
pure, adolescent renegades, and in my whole life, no one had ever looked at me
as intensely as Brax did that night, me standing there in my
itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny bikini. His brothers had only paused, but not Brax, with
his lazy, hip-shot stance and heavy-lidded gaze. They’d been frogging, had the
filled burlap bags in their hands. His T-shirt had been white, damp, and dirty,
his arms tanned and thick with muscle, the veins running prominently in relief
down his forearms to the backs of his hands. The bright blue fire of his eyes
had caressed me everywhere, stroked my skin, stirring something exciting and
reckless in me. It had been the most powerful encounter I’ve ever had with him.
I had no shame in high school, and I
never ever backed down. It was just my nature, and Braxton pushed every one of
my buttons, the sassy ones as well as the sexy ones.
He looked so damned fine in his tight
jeans, which had done nothing to hide his reaction to me. I’d noticed his
reaction right before he turned to walk away, and if he hadn’t, I might have
done something truly crazy that night.
Not sex, I hadn’t been ready for sex,
but the way he looked at me had definitely made me long for a hot, wet kiss. It
would have been my first kiss and I
wondered what it would feel like with him. His moist mouth, his hot tongue.
There had been no doubt I wanted to feel his arms around me, and to look into
those impossibly blue eyes and taste him. To slide my fingers up into his silky
dark hair, to touch his skin and feel his warmth surround me in a safe way.
Maybe to feel, for a moment or two, like something besides a damn Princess.
Though why I’d thought I could feel safe
with a bad boy Outlaw who broke hearts as easily as he breathed was beyond me.
Now he was physically even stronger,
harder, his face still knee-melting, and his hair still too-long and sexily
mussed up. He hadn’t looked at me the same way again—until only an hour ago.
It had been four years since the night
in the swamp, but I had gone to bed every night since then with his face in my
mind—which was ridiculous, since he’d never, not once, made a move on me.
He finally looked up.
We stared at each other like
adversaries. He was determined not to give in, and I was determined to make him
do just that. It was a battle of wills, and Brax was perhaps the most
formidable opponent I’d ever faced. He’d done an admirable job of keeping me at
a distance. But Aubree opened my eyes, and I was on to his strategy. He also
had revealed it today himself. Before this summer was out, before I went back
to New York City, I would have him. I swore it. I would no longer have anything
on my list of regrets when I was a sassy old lady. Not a cotton-picking thing.
I would bring him to his knees and make
him beg.
Facts
About A PERFECT DILEMMA
By
Zoe Dawson
ü
Before Braxton
sang with his brothers in Outlaws, he was in a band in Lafayette called the Bad
Boys and River Pearl would go there and watch him perform in secret.
ü
I had only
planned to write about 80K and I had so much material I went to 109K. I had to
cut out the whole scene I was going to write with everyone at the Cajun
cousins’ barbeque.
ü
For this book, I
had to do a little research on the Civil War. It was interesting.
ü
Each of the
Outlaws can play several instruments. In fact, Braxton is very proficient on
drums.
ü
River Pearl’s
current house was built on the same land that housed her ancestor, Colonel
Beauregard Sutton. The original house was raised and the newer home built.
ü
River Pearl’s
family owns a pecan store called Nuts ‘N Honey in town where they sell the nuts
and other items.
The author is giving away (1) $25 Gift Card! To
enter, visit her Facebook
page HERE.
About the Author
Zoe Dawson is the alter ego of Karen Anders, award winning,
multi-published author. Her writing journey started with poetry and branched
out into fiction. With a couple of college English courses under her belt, she
penned a historical, then moved onto contemporary romance fiction. Today, she
is happy producing romantic suspense, romantic mystery, urban fantasy and
paranormal novels. The words feed her soul and the happily ever afters feed her
heart.
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