Woke by Award-Winning @peggy_jaeger is a Beach Reads pick #chicklit #beachread #giveaway

Title: WOKE

Author: Peggy Jaeger

Genre: Chick Lit

Book Blurb:

Waking up each day is a gift…. On her 21st birthday, someone slipped a potent drug combination into socialite Aurora Brightwell’s champagne putting her in a coma for the next ten years. It’s been a long road back, and it’s time to reclaim the life she lost and find out exactly what happened on that fateful night. Financier Kincade Enright has his own reason for helping Aurora discover who poisoned her, but for the time being he’s keeping that - and his true identity - to himself. What he can’t keep hidden though, are his growing feelings for the one-time paparazzi darling and party-girl. When this prince of finance joins forces with the former sleeping beauty, nothing can stop them from finding the answers they seek…or prevent the powerful emotions developing between them as they search for the truth.

Excerpt:

Showered, dressed, and no longer smelling like something a feral cat found in a dumpster for dinner, I packed up my gym bag and made my way to Sam’s office.

As I came out of the locker room, my cell in my hand while I scrolled through my messages, I wasn’t watching where I was going and came to a shattering stop when I barreled straight into someone. The force of the hit was strong since I was going one way, the person I bumped into going the opposite, and I ricocheted backward. I would have fallen flat on my ass if strong arms hadn’t reached out and kept me upright.

“I’m so sorry,” I stammered at the same time a rich, deep voice said, “Steady.”

When I’d knocked into him my phone fell from my hands to land on the carpeting between us. I glanced down at it then up into a pair of the darkest green eyes I’d ever seen, zeroed in on my face. Thick brows were pulled together over them as he peered down at me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

A weird sense of loss shuttled through me when he removed his hands from my upper arms. Tall, at least six-two, he was clad in a chest hugging workout shirt that accentuated the bulk in his biceps. His forearms were wide and corded, giving evidence he spent some time in the gym, and he was built like an upside down hanger, broad in the shoulders, trim in the waist and hips.

I blinked when it dawned on me he was waiting for a reply.

“Yes. Yes, and again, I apologize. I wasn’t paying any attention to were I was going.” I stooped and picked up my phone, noting on the way back up how long his legs were.

“I owe you an apology as well, since I wasn’t either. No damage, I hope.” He pointed his angular jaw at my phone.

“No. No, it seems to be okay.”

His face relaxed from its quizzical expression, and a tiny uptick grew in one corner of his full mouth. Wrinkles blossomed and fanned at the edges of his haunting eyes giving his face a softer, sociable mien.

Well, now.

Something stirred deep down inside me when he grinned and it took a moment to realize it was interest.

Maybe, if I was really going to analyze it, desire.

My eyes batted a few times when the notion hit me. Desire of any physical kind had been alien to me for some time.

While he stared down at me I did the same to him.

His tawny colored hair was cut short, not quite military style, but close. It had a subtle wave twining through it, telling me that if he wore it longer, the ends would curl.

My fingertips did a little tingly fandango, almost as if they wanted to thread through it.

He smelled clean and fresh, like a soap that didn’t have a twenty-dollar name attached to it. I disliked cologne on men and had smelled quite a few guys here at the gym who felt it necessary to douse themselves before a workout and after. This guy smelled, well, like a man should and not like a bottle of designer liquid.

He wasn’t sweating, indicating he hadn’t started his workout yet.

And standing here ogling him was going to keep preventing that, so…

“Well, again, I’m sorry for being so”—I flipped my free hand in the air—“unobservant. Enjoy your workout.”

I took a step around him and slung my workout bag into the crook of my elbow.

Once upon a time I would have glanced over my shoulder and given him a sexy little side wink. But that was twenty-year-old Rory behavior not thirty-five year old A.J.

“You, too,” he called after me.

Without even thinking, I turned my head and smiled.

I guess there was still a little of the younger version nestled somewhere inside me.

Buy Link:

Available only at Amazon/Kindle/KU here:

https://amzn.to/2TWeNi6

Why is your featured book a must-read?

Second chances come about once in a lifetime for most people. This is a story of second chances that benefit everyone – including the heroine – who takes them.

Giveaway –

Enter to win an e-book bundle of all 51 books featured in the Beach Reads Bookish Event:

https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/92db775068/

Open Internationally.

Runs July 17 – 22, 2020.

Winner will be drawn on July 30, 2020.

Author Biography:

Peggy Jaeger is a contemporary romance writer who writes Romantic Comedies about strong women, the families who support them, and the men who can’t live without them. If she can make you cry on one page and bring you out of tears rolling with laughter the next, she’s done her job as a writer! Family and food play huge roles in Peggy’s stories because she believes there is nothing that holds a family structure together like sharing a meal…or two…or ten. Dotted with humor and characters that are as real as they are loving, she brings all topics of daily life into her stories: life, death, sibling rivalry, illness and the desire for everyone to find their own happily ever after. Growing up the only child of divorced parents she longed for sisters, brothers and a family that vowed to stick together no matter what came their way. Through her books, she’s created the families she wanted as that lonely child. When she’s not writing Peggy is usually painting, crafting, scrapbooking or decoupaging old steamer trunks she finds at rummage stores and garage sales. A lifelong and avid romance reader and writer, Peggy is a member of RWA and her local New Hampshire RWA Chapter. As a lifelong diarist, she caught the blogging bug early on, and you can visit her at peggyjaeger.com where she blogs daily about life, writing, and stuff that makes her go "What??!"