Woman of Sunlight -- First Ever Chance to WIN!!!

First of all a disclaimer.
I am sick.
Not (probably) sick enough you can catch it through the keyboard, but something gross. Not flu, just a stomach bug.

So I am being a complete slacker here and posting an excerpt from my March release

WOMAN OF SUNLIGHT

I wish I had the energy to teach you all something. That IS what we're supposed to do, right?
But I'm afraid whatever I tried to teach you would actually make you a WORSE writer.

So I am justifying my slacker-ification by saying I am protecting you from my probably bug-affected advice.

Woman of Sunlight
Book #2 in The Brides of Hope Mountain Series
Heroine Ilsa, the wildest of my wild women living on top of Hope Mountain, finds herself in a town. And she keeps being told rules on how a proper young lady behaves and she's just so confused!

An excerpt from when the hero, New York City businessman Mitch, comes home from his wealthy, high-powered life when someone seems bent on killing him....finds Ilsa, the wild mountain Tarzan-woman in the hallway outside his hotel room. She was sleeping in the same room with Mitch's ma who snores. And Ilsa decided it was leave the room or smother her.

And she's not supposed to be out there.

Woman of Sunlight

Book #2 in The Brides of Hope Mountain Series

A squeak from behind made her jump. It wasn’t the door Mitch and Quill were in, it was the

one next down. But it was Mitch standing there, fully dressed, looking at her.

Leaping to her feet, desperately happy to see a face she knew, she rushed the few steps to him and asked, “What are you doing in there?”

“Shh-shh,” Mitch held up a hand as if to push her back. He didn’t touch her but she, who did not know much about reading expressions, quit talking immediately.

“You’ll wake up Ma and Pa.”

Ilsa felt the painful truth of that. Wasn’t she out here in the hall because she didn’t want to do that?

“You can’t be out here in the hallway.” Mitch looked left and right with a line of furrows on his forehead.

“Yes, I can.” She spoke the obvious. “Here I stand, in the hallway.

With a tight, hard shake of his head, Mitch said, “I mean it’s not…um…there are rules for the behavior of young ladies. You’re breaking one of them.”

Ilsa had never had many rules in her life. She remembered how Ma Warden didn’t like her ankles showing. Ma’d said that was a rule. Had her ankles been showing while she sat on that step?

“What rule are you talking about?”

Mitch squinted his eyes at her and she thought maybe, in the dim lantern light of the hallway, she saw his cheeks turn a bit pink.

“Th-the rules about, about how a young woman should—should conduct herself in matters of-of propriety.” Brash, fast-talking Mitch seemed barely able to get the words out. And, unless he had a fever—and she really hoped he didn’t because she’d probably catch it—he seemed to be blushing.

And talking in strange, unfamiliar words.

“What does propriety mean?”

Mitch clapped an open hand over his eyes then dragged the hand down, past his nose, his mouth. “It doesn’t surprise me in the least that you don’t know.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“I-I’ll explain.” Nodding, Mitch seemed to be forcing words from his mouth. “What I mean is a woman should not be alone. It’s not safe. A man could bother you.”

“You’re bothering me quite a bit right now, so that’s the truth. But I see no point in waking up your ma so she can watch you bother me.”

Brides of Hope Mountain book #1

Mitch’s jaw went tight. Ilsa studied it, wondering what in the world the man was thinking.

“I’d like to bother you, Ilsa.”

“That is still not an answer.”

“Oh, it’s an answer all right. But you’re too innocent to realize it.” Mitch paused. Cleared his throat. Cleared it again. “A young woman who is not married, well, the thing is, if someone saw you out here alone, they might—that is, a woman, if a man came upon her alone in the night and then someone else came along and saw the man and woman alone in the night—”

“You mean alone like the two of us are right now.”

Mitch’s throat moved as if he were swallowing something that wasn’t going down easy.

“Yes, exactly like the two of us are right now. If someone found us alone together in the night, well, people might think we were being…doing…that is…” Mitch fell silent as if he just could not put his worries into words.

Ilsa leaned close and whispered, “I thought you were sleeping in the same room with your Pa?”

Mitch shook his head and started talking again, so it was good she changed the subject. “After you and Ma went to bed, I went down and asked if there was another room empty.”

He leaned closer and whispered so quietly she was almost reading words shaped silently by his lips. “Pa snorts like a cave of grizzly bears.”

Ilsa straightened away from Mitch and giggled. She slapped her hand over her mouth but the laughter was there, just muffled. Mitch’s eyes gleamed as if he wanted to laugh himself.

“Ma, too, as I recall,” he said.

 Ilsa nodded from behind her hand just as the door next to Mitch, not the one Quill was in, clicked open.

Grabbing her wrist, Mitch yanked her into the room and shut the door swiftly and silently and pressed her back to the door.

“What—”

Mitch clapped his hand over her mouth this time. Heavy boots walked past Mitch’s door. Mitch looked at the floor, his eyes unfocused. Listening to the man walk by.

Ilsa didn’t know exactly what Mitch was trying to say about it not being right for a man and woman to be alone together in the night. But she was very sure if it was wrong to be alone in the hallway, then it was also wrong to be alone in his room.

Time to go back to Ma, snoring or not.

She listened as the man turned and began walking down the stairs. Where was he going at this late hour? Or was it an early hour? Ilsa wasn’t sure. She often rose before the sun. Maybe morning was coming and this endless night would pass.

Mitch slowly lifted his hand from her mouth. His hand closed and opened in a way that drew her eye.

Mitch kept listening but now he looked at his hand, then those brown eyes shifted to meet hers. His hand quit opening and closing and rested on her upper arm. He rubbed up and down, and Ilsa thought of that moment when she’d been riding with him. A moment where he’d seemed too close, then closer yet.

Now his hand caressed her arm, then the other hand lifted to her other shoulder and slid around to her back.

In the dark of his room, with those footsteps fading, Mitch said quietly, “I lived a life surrounded by people I couldn’t trust. I realize now many of them just told me whatever they thought I wanted to hear because I paid their salary. And I’ll admit I did tend to fire people who disagreed with me because, of course, I thought I was always right. For years, I’ve heard little but yes, sir, right away sir, whatever you think best, sir.”

“That seems nice.” Ilsa rested one hand on his broad chest and patted him because he seemed unhappy with himself. “I wouldn’t mind if you’d start saying yes more often.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’d be wise at all.”       

“Saying yes to me? I am sure I would like it very much.”

“I’d make sure you liked it very much.”

Ilsa wasn’t sure, but the way he said it made her wonder if he was talking about something completely different than she was.

Mystified, she said, “If, instead of scolding all the time, you say yes to me, of course it I’d like it.”

The room was nearly pitch dark, shrouded in deep shadows, but she had fine vision in the night and her eyes had adjusted and she could see him well, and hear the rise and fall of each breath. Smell him. His scent only made her realize how, until just recently, she’d never been near a man. And never close enough to be so surrounded by all these impressions of him.

His hands slid up and down her arms, both of them now.

“All those years, and now I come home to find a woman with wide-eyed innocence, who speaks her mind, even when I don’t want to hear it. I find that refreshing and I am enjoying it.”

“I don’t remember you enjoying it particularly.”

He gave a small, gentle laugh. His hands relaxed, then tightened. “You have to get out of here, Miss Ilsa.”

She most certainly did.

“Your hand over my mouth to keep me quiet gave me to suspect you were trying to let that man go past without him seeing or hearing us.”

“Yes, as I was trying to say, it is against accepted rules for a young, unmarried lady to be seen in the night, alone with an unrelated man.”

“Is it against these rules for that man to be alone at night?”

“No, the man can be alone, just not women.”

“Why on earth is there such an unfair rule?”

Mitch was silent. Ilsa suspected because he didn’t have an answer any more than she did.

“Well, we’re alone but no one can see us in here. So then is this not against the rules?”

“It is most definitely against the rules.” Mitch closed his eyes. His hands opened and closed on her upper arms. “You go back to Ma’s room, and you stay in there no matter how loud she snores.”

“I was daydreaming about smothering her with a pillow. I thought it best to get out.”

A chuckle escaped Mitch’s lips, which drew her eyes to them.

“Go on right now, before it’s too late.” Mitch was still holding her, in fact if she wasn’t mistaken, he might be holding her closer than ever.

Although it might have been her moving closer, not him.

“Too late for what?”

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