As some of you might know, Cardinal of Hope, the third book of the Cardinal Series, is due to release March 2020! It's available for preorder now on Amazon. Get your copy today!!
Also, be on the lookout for new bundles for the series as a way to save money. TBA soon!
Now that that fun stuff is out of the way, let's get to the reason why you're really here!
An excerpt from the new book, Cardinal of Hope:
Triz slid across the bench seat in the back of the van to sit next to me, pulling me into a one-sided hug. Her face was smudged with black grease from whatever she’d worked on, but I could still detect the coconut and acai berries underneath the gas and motor oil.
Triz told me a story about a man that had come to the shop and been shocked at first to see a female working on his precious truck. He’d asked a rapid round of automotive questions to which she’d answered with ease before posing a question of her own that he’d been unable to answer. After that point, he’d opted to hang out in the garage area instead of the shop’s lobby, so he could heckle her for a dinner date.
“You should’ve seen his face,” Triz said, pulling me close as she laughed, “When I showed him a picture of Darcy and told him she was my lover.”
We pulled into a familiar driveway as Darcy turned in her seat. “The devil mend you, Triz! Why do I always become the lover when you want to get guys to back off? I will not be used in this manner!”
“I could be your girlfriend, Triz,” Natasia said, parking the car and getting out.
Everyone followed suit, and I could already see the entire Emerson Team heading off the front porch that once had large, intimidating columns the last time I’d been here. Now it had a double-layer front porch with wrought iron rails and supports. There was furniture scattered about on both the upper balcony and lower porch that made the entire thing feel more inviting.
“I could be your girlfriend, too. I’d enjoy keeping pesky suitors away,” Yolo purred, putting her hand on my shoulder.
The Emerson Team had approached to help, but it didn’t deter the Cardinals from their embarrassing conversation. In fact, it seemed to only make the girls more brash about it.
“You would be about as deterring if Triz had shown him a picture of Callie,” Sabra said wisely. “Visually intimidating, you are not.”
“That is so annoying. I know more fighting styles than that man had brain cells if he couldn’t take a hint,” Yolo said, her nose turned up in the air. Indeed, she was a deadly center wrapped inside a delicate package.
And she was trying to turn me into one as well.
Oh, help me. Was I to become a project for Yolo? She had loads of free time. I’d never be able to do anything else.
Goodbye, Free-Callie.
“Why would she, whoever she is, show someone a picture of Callie?” Brock asked, having beat us here from Delta. “We’re not supposed to take pictures of her because of her spook status.”
“The ‘she’ is Triz, and the ‘why’ is to show an amorous suitor a picture of her girlfriend,” Yolo said, shoving a box into his chest for him to take.
I wanted to slap my forehead when I almost tangibly felt the atmosphere change.
“Callie’s your girlfriend?” Emerson asked, his voice careful.
Darcy answered with the devil in her grass-green eyes. She stepped up and patted him on his cheek. “No, but not for lack of trying on our parts. Give it time.”
END EXCERPT