Welcome guest blogger, Leah Braemel
When Alice first invited me to be a guest on her blog, I have to admit, I hesitated. I write steamy romance. I write really steamy romances. The first blog post I read was about her pastor and her church. I scrolled down and there was a discussion about pronouns in religion. So my first thought was “oh, boy, Alice’s readers are going to be sending her email on having me on as a guest.”
Then I checked out the books Alice writes and discovered she’s sold stories to Harlequin’s Spice Briefs, and Ellora’s Cave amongst other publishers. Phew! Alice writes steamy too. Now I feel safe. Especially since my upcoming release, Texas Tangle, involves a ménage. And not just a one night event, but where the three lovers are seriously considering making it a permanent arrangement.
The whole idea came to me during a trip to Texas back in 2007 when I visited a farm where one of my critique partners breeds Arabian BLUE horses. As she was taking around her farm, introducing me to her horses, and her donkey Gandalf, the plot bunnies started hopping around my fertile imagination. (Like everything else in Texas, plot bunnies come in the extra-large size. By the way, I’d never seen Texas hares before—they proved they do things BIG in Texas. They reminded me of miniature kangaroos!) It took me a while (and two books in between) to get around to actually writing the story that started forming during that trip.
Going with the idea that everything’s bigger in Texas, I gave my heroine a Texas-sized problem to solve. Nikki Kimball’s the proverbial horsebreeder next door. She’s more than a little gun shy about relationships after divorcing her first husband, and now her brother has just stolen everything she owns. Up rides Dillon in his white pick-up truck—after all, most heroes keep their horses under the hood these days. Dillon’s a hard-working neighbor who always sees the best in everyone and everything. He teaches Nikki to laugh again. Laughter comes harder to his foster-brother Brett Anderson. Brett comes with a passel of issues – not the least of which is the history between Brett and Nikki. They shared kisses for one night back in high school but it turned out that Dillon was sweet on Nikki too. Those kisses just about destroyed Dillon and Brett’s friendship, and nearly lost Brett the only family he’d known. So he’s bound and determined not to come between his best friend and the woman they both love again. But that’s tougher than he’d thought, and when Nikki and Dillon discover his secret, Nikki’s caught between the two, knowing whatever she decides could destroy their friendship forever and cost Brett the love and security of the entire Barnett family. Yup, life just got plenty complicated on Dillon’s Double Bar ranch.
Thanks to her cheating ex-husband and her thieving brother, all horse breeder Nikki Kimball has left is a bruised heart, an overdrawn bank account and an empty home. When sex-on-legs Dillon Barnett and his brooding foster-brother Brett Anderson start showing more than just neighborly attention, Nikki is intrigued…and a little gun-shy.
Dillon and Brett have a history; back in high school, the two friends fought a bitter battle over Nikki. Now, ten years later, Brett still longs to be the man in Nikki’s life, but he’s determined to stand back and let Dillon win Nikki’s heart.
Society says Nikki must choose between the two men she loves. Is Nikki strong enough to break all the rules in order to find happiness?
Read an excerpt at http://alicegaines.blogspot.com/p/excerpt-from-texas-tangle-by-leah.html
Interested in reading more about Leah or her books?
Visit http://www.leahbraemel.com/, or follow http://twitter.com/leahbraemel” or http://leahbraemel.blogspot.com/ or http://www.facebook.com/pages/Leah-Braemel/95697551732