Blurb:
Brooks and Rique desperately want to
win a coveted chef’s job offered by an eccentric millionaire in paradise. Even
more, Rique desperately wants to stay alive.
Brooks and Rique
desperately want to win the head chef’s position offered by an eccentric
millionaire Jonah Verleun on his beautiful, private but peculiar island that
includes a zoo full of exotic animals, an amusement park and a monster shark
tank beneath Jonah’s bedroom floor. While Brooks wants the job to escape his
heartache and the lover who thwarted him, Rique is hiding from the mob, hoping
to live long enough to pay them off with the prize winnings. Fierce
competitors, they cook up a storm in a series of cooking challenges while
trying to turn down the heat on their intense attraction. When a hurricane
strikes the island, the storm Rique has been cooking up explodes, and no
heart—or body—is safe.
Excerpt:
They ran, hunched
over, zigging and zagging as bullets flew around them. Rique damned himself for
putting Brooks in this mess. He wondered if the mob held the others prisoner
and that’s why they didn’t answer the door.
He
turned the first corner they came upon and then the next. He stopped dead and the
air left his lungs. A moment later Brooks ran into his back almost knocking him
over. He swayed dangerously but managed to stay upright and spread his arms
wide to keep Brooks from stumbling forward.
He couldn’t believe
his eyes. One of Jonah’s tigers lay in their path crouching low, baring his
teeth, and eying them as if they were dinner.
He
tried to quell the jitters attacking his stomach so the animal wouldn’t smell
his fear then whispered to Brooks through clenched teeth, “What do we do now?
Freeze or run?”
“Run.
But where?” Brooks whispered back, a frown trembling on his lips.
“To
the closest protection.” He prayed their hunters had lost them, that they
wouldn’t run back into a barrage of bullets. As Rique bunched his muscles to
run, already feeling the animal’s fangs ripping into him, he noted how the
tiger’s thick muscles corded in his shoulders, and how saliva ran down his
snarling lips.
“Dear
God, we’re going to die.” Panic laced Brooks’ voice. “If we get out of here
alive, let’s both turn down the job and move in together.”
Swallowing
hard, Rique couldn’t reply so he nodded. Besides, as much as he wanted to live
with Brooks, he couldn’t do it as long as he was indebted to the mob. However,
the point was moot. He couldn’t see a scenario in which one of them didn’t die
in the next five minutes.
Feeling
responsible, Rique couldn’t let anything happen to Brooks as long as he was
alive. He would take on the tiger giving Brooks time to reach safety. “On the
count of three, run!”
As Rique whispered,
“One,” hisses, then a blood-curdling growl wrenched the air. It was a different
sound than the tiger was making. Then a crocodile bellowed and jumped out of
the bushes and snatched the tiger by its belly. As it dragged the struggling
creature back to the bushes, the tiger howled in surprise and pain. It clawed
the air in vain as the reptile’s powerful jaws clamped tighter biting through
flesh and bone.
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Bio: Ashley Ladd
Ashley Ladd lives in South Florida with her husband,
five children, and beloved pets. She loves the water, animals (especially
cats), and playing on the computer.
She's been told she has a wicked sense of humour and
often incorporates humour and adventure into her books. She also adores very
spicy romance, which she weaves into her stories.
You can find Ashley at:
