Happy Book Birthday Pride & Pancakes

Today Pride & Pancakes turns One Year Old!

This book marked the start of my publishing career with Totally Enchanted. Since then, I’ve put out Special Delivery, Rash & Rationality, and Ink. Have you met Tristan & Beth yet?

When Beth Cho is tasked with interviewing elusive musician Tristan Harty, it’s hate at first sight. Despite his sapphire eyes and lithe frame, he’s got to be the most infuriating man on the planet.

Tristan Harty is already sick of reporters and this one is proving no different. Sure, she might be adorable with her ebony hair and big brown eyes. But her incessant need to dig into his past is dragging on his last nerve.

The bickering duo vow never to meet again, but Mother Nature has other plans for them, trapping them in a Vermont cabin via a blizzard. The more Beth learns about the aristocratic Tristan, the harder it is for her to keep her professional distance, just as Tristan discovers a familiar heart beating in the beautiful reporter’s heart.

But what happens when the snowstorm’s over, and the melted Tristan and enamored Beth are free to leave? Can their reluctant attraction bloom into a deeper love with the thaw of their judgmental ice. Pride & Pancakes is a sweet yet steamy contemporary story inspired by Pride & Prejudice.

---

Water spurted out of the showerhead, picking up steam as it bounded about in their cozy tiled grotto. Beth’s shoulder took some of the brunt, her poor arm serving as the thermometer, but a few of the drops beaded up on his face. The stern expression softened, the tension across his cheeks and forehead fading to a surprising tenderness in the hot steam.

“Ah,” she called, having to drag herself away from tasting the dew on his lips. “It’s getting warmer.” Walking forward, her hands extended until the palms pressed to the wall, she gave in to the siren’s call of the shower. All the sweat and fear from the ice skating debacle washed down the drain. Her skin—frozen by the lake and the terror of shattering through ice—heated as the water kissed her body.

Beth rolled her hands back across her face, dousing her hair in the shower’s stream when she heard a choking sound. She found Tristan paralyzed where he stood. While the water beaded up across every curve of her exposed skin and saturated her bra and panties, only a few drops struck his underwear. And…he was certainly not lacking in the shorts-filling department. Giddiness surged through her veins and Beth snapped her sight to his feet.

Oh, come on, stop blushing and darting your gaze away. When are you ever going to see him again? That fact drew a sour turn to her stomach, but she couldn’t run from the logic either.
“Here.” Beth reached out to pick up his hand and tugged him closer. Tristan skidded on his toes as if he really expected to just stand inside with her without getting wet. In pulling him closer to the shower, Beth forgot to step away. Tristan smacked his right palm into the wall, his body pinning hers directly under the fall of water.

Bending his head to become her personal umbrella, he took the brunt of the spray to his back. Rivulets streamed from his scalp down the sides of his face as he stared, eye to eye with her. So close, her skin warmed from him and not the last vestiges of the hot water. His forehead nearly crested against hers, Tristan pressed his free hand between their bodies as Beth let it go.

“You are…” Tristan grappled for words, his breaths scrambling like a man straining off a cliff’s edge. Raising his fallen palm, he hovered it less than a centimeter above her drenched body. As he skirted around her hip and trailed deeper to her waist, she shivered at the electricity sparking between them. He didn’t touch her, but the heat of his body, the rising scent of his masculine form, the beading of water against their skin set her off.

Panting and shivering, Beth clenched her toes in anticipation of his palm touching her. Of it parting through the fall of rain to grip her arm, the hand tugging her to his lips. But Tristan held off, his gaze never leaving hers, and she returned the laser focus as he circled up around the edge of her bust.

“I can’t stop,” he whispered, ignoring the nipple straining through her waterlogged bra. Swerving along her shoulder, he slowly walked the tip of his fore and index fingers across her narrow collarbone, every touch of his finger matching her rising heartbeat.

At the hollow of her throat, he rested his fingers before they began to ascend her jaw. From the tip of her wide chin, he glided the back of his forefinger, slicing off every water droplet on the way. “Tell me to stop.” His paused his finger. “And I will.”

Launching on her tiptoes, Beth circled both her arms around the back of his neck. “I can’t do that,” she said just before guiding his lips to hers.