Title: Christmas Holiday Hearts
Author: Kris Pearson
Genre: Sexy Contemporary Romance
Book Blurb:
In this heart-wrenching holiday romance, a devastating fire ruins school-teacher Ellie McKenna’s rented apartment. She urgently needs a temporary home and a few weeks’ work to get her life back on track. A short term Christmas contract tutoring twin daughters on a huge coastal farm sounds ideal – until, too late, she meets the billionaire owner.
Ellie’s dream job turns into her worst nightmare once she discovers the man she’ll be working for is her long-ago holiday fling. He gave her the hottest memories of her life – and a son he knows nothing about. Now she’s trapped on beautiful Wharemoana Estate, torn away from her wonderful boy while she tries to resist his still-so-tempting father.
Tony Robinson is grieving and guilt-stricken after the slow death of his unsuitable wife. He’s shocked to see the temporary teacher is the beautiful holiday lover he’s never forgotten… that he’s been given a second chance to romance the woman he should never have lost touch with. To his displeasure he finds that although their fierce attraction still rages red-hot, she’s determined to keep him out of her life.
Ellie fights him any way she can, but Tony is so much more of a man now – and could undoubtedly steal Callum away with his wealth and power. She knows he’d love a son after having two daughters. An older son who’s the absolute image of him. Concealing her secret baby’s existence gets harder and harder as the long summer days grind by.
Excerpt:
Tony took the jam from the shelf and set it down beside her plate. He sat. The intense atmosphere was broken seconds later by the arrival of a mini-whirlwind. His five-year-old twins and a wheezing brown spaniel skidded into the sunny farmhouse kitchen together.
“I won.”
“No—I won.”
“I think Tasha beat you both,” Tony said as he bent to rub the old dog’s ears.
He spread his arms wide and both daughters launched themselves into his lap. He tightened an arm around each and kissed the tops of their blonde heads. Ellie met his eyes again as she watched the little family tableau.
“So you’re going to turn my two scatterbrains into brain-boxes?” he asked.
“I’m hoping so,” she replied, wishing fervently she was the one being hugged. “I thought we might start with a walk around the outside of the house,” she said to the girls, hoping her pounding heart wasn’t making her voice quake. “You can tell me all the things you know and I can find out what I’ll have to teach you.”
“Ten more minutes,” Tony said, glancing at the kitchen clock and releasing his daughters.
“When the big hand’s on twelve, and the little hand’s on nine, Daddy.”
“Right,” he agreed, rising to switch on the electric kettle. “Antonia and Carolyn,” he added to Ellie. “You’ll soon be able to tell them apart.” He made a game of chasing the girls out of the kitchen and turned back to her. “Tea or coffee? You always had coffee in Sydney if I remember rightly.” One dark eyebrow quirked up with the question.
“Yes, still coffee,” she said—the memory of her first morning with him slamming back to taunt her. Because of course they’d drifted asleep after making love, and woken as the early sun spilled across them, Tony moving over her to imprison her beneath him yet again.
“Not too sore?” he’d asked between hopeful kisses. And Ellie, already alight, had murmured she’d be fine, and opened to him. He’d pleasured her first with a knowing finger, circling smoothly, insistently, until she’d relaxed and was ready, panting softly as her climax approached. Then, as she gasped with the pleasure of it, he slid home with a long husky sigh of satisfaction.
“Much too sore,” she’d teased him a little later, as their bodies glided together in the tumbled bed. He was gentle with her. And afterwards, he’d brought coffee to bed, dipping his forefinger into the mug, anointing her nipples and licking the coffee off again as she giggled.
“Still black?” he asked.
“Mmmm?” She was miles away.
“Still have your coffee black?”
She nodded, not able to speak for a moment. She was in the shower with him, soaping him all over, before he left for work that long-ago morning. She’d never seen such a beautiful body, and Tony was not the least self-conscious about his superb physical assets. In the bright light of the bathroom she’d explored and admired him, watching with fascination as his sex responded to her slippery caresses.
She shook herself back to the present and accepted her coffee, eyes avoiding his probing gaze, willing the tremors to leave her. For she was shaking all over, remembering. And she must try not to remember. Not to remember that golden week when she’d finally been treated as a woman. “It sounds as though the twins know how to tell the time, anyway,” she said in desperation.
“They’re okay on time, and numbers generally. Julia got them up to speed there.”
Ellie noticed he said his wife’s name matter-of-factly—no emotional catch in his voice.
“And you’ll find they’re very good on how animals make babies.” He flashed a wicked grin at her as Ellie choked on her coffee. He rose and reached to circle a firm hand over her back until she recovered from her splutters.
She had to fight hard not to respond to his well-meaning caress. Because of course it was only a pat on the back—she’d certainly not read more than that into it.
“Fine on colours,” he continued, hand still circling softly. “No good at reading. Should they be reading yet?”
She cleared her throat and tried to shrink away from him. “It’s time to make a start. I’ll get onto that right away.”
He nodded, satisfied. “How strange it should be you,” he mused. “Ellinore for Ellie. I gave it no real thought...”
“You had other things on your mind.”
Another woman, another family.
“Yes... well...” He finally removed his hand and Ellie willed herself not to snatch it back. It had felt so right moving across her thin T-shirt, comforting her yearning skin.
She took a bite of her toast and found she’d not yet spread it with jam. She reached for the jar—brand new, the lid firmly screwed on. Store-bought, not homemade, which she found surprising so far from the nearest town. She wrenched at it to open it, but it was stuck down with sugar.
Tony closed a warm hand around hers. “Let me,” he said without fuss.
She relinquished the jar to his superior strength, and watched as he twisted it undone. “Not a luxury I’m used to.”
“Strawberry jam?”
“A man to open jars.”
Buy Links:
Amazon UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FFKWS5U
Nook http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christmas-holiday-hearts-kris-pearson/1122718264?ean=2940045217989
What I love most about the holiday season:
Meeting up with people I may not have seen all year. And the food!
Giveaway:
Enter to win a $100 Amazon (US) Gift Card
Open internationally
Runs July 1 – 31
Drawing will be held on August 1
Author Biography:
Kris was born to write - at twelve she completed her autobiography – an easy subject which required no research. It filled a whole school exercise book.
She lives in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. She has used this lovely city as the setting for six of her novels - hot, passionate, contemporary romances full of love and laughter.
She’s taken readers to wider New Zealand for the three stories that make up her Heartlands series. This is where you’ll meet the girls and guys who live in remote country areas. She has also published two sheikh novels.
Her current series is set in Scarlet Bay – a beach holiday resort which doesn’t quite exist – but it would be a little north of Wellington if it did.
Her most widely distributed novel is 'The Boat Builder's Bed'. Gambling that people would enjoy it, she made it free in 2011 when this was a new thing to do, and more than two million copies were downloaded in a few weeks which kick-started sales of all her others.
She has worked in TV, radio, several advertising agencies, and then spent many happy years as a retail ad manager. Totally hooked on fabrics, she followed this by going into business with her husband as a curtain installer. (Obvious career progression!)
It was finally time to write fiction. In nineteen years she hasn’t fallen off her ladder once through drifting off into romantic dreams. All the places she’s visited and people she’s met on décor jobs have been wonderful inspiration for her settings and characters. She once stole a whole house, although politely ‘built’ an extra storey on to disguise it.
She writes sizzling contemporary romance, pure and simple. Well, maybe not that pure. They're sexy stories about modern couples who fall in love and into bed along the way, just like real people do. She’s the author of fifteen novels so far, three of which were finalists in New Zealand’s full-novel Clendon Award. Four have been translated into Spanish, two into Italian, and one into Portuguese.
Kris inherited her mother’s love of gardening, and has so many flowers that hay-fever is possible if you visit. She has a much tidier garden than house.
She enjoys playing with her website - http://www.krispearson.com There are plenty of New Zealand photos and free reads there if you click on the different covers.
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