Hey peeps!We're reaching the conclusion of Chapter 2 here - will there be a game changer thrown into the plot, especially to make Logan civil with Neha again? Read on to find out!
And yay - this book comes out officially tomorrow!!!
Catch up with all the excerpts I posted this past week-and-a-half, right from Page 1!
pages 1-5 here;
pages 6-8 here;
pages 9-11 here;
pages 12-14 here;
pages 15-17 here;
pages 18-20 here;
pages 21-23 here;
pages 24-26 here;
pages 27-29 here;
pages 30-32 here;
pages 33-35 here.
And the full book is out! Get it from Amazon US ~ Amazon UK ~ Decadent Publishing ~ Barnes & Noble (Nook) ~ AllRomance Ebooks ~ Smashwords
~~~~~
The walls of the house closed on him,
making him suffocate with the need to be out and about. Bloody hell. Why did he have to think of the past? He banged his
fist into a wall and didn’t wince when another knuckle tore open. Some would
think boxers had strong hands, but they’d be surprised how a little
insignificant action could injure hands rendered fragile by too many punches.
Not bothering with the blood seeping down
his finger and drying into an ugly scab, he stormed out of the villa and headed
for his car. After sliding behind the wheel, he started the engine and set out
on the road toward the cyber village of Ebène and the cybertower housing the
station.
He’d planned to work from home today, but the
prospect had turned to custard. Being in the station’s setting would ease his
mind, and hopefully, make him forget New Zealand.
The memories refused to clear from his
mind, and he gave in to their tug with reluctance.
Privilege. He chuckled with bitterness. Privilege had lured his mother and saddled
her with two sons, before dumping her back unmarried and on her own in a shack
in Newtown, the poorest working-class suburb of Wellington back in the days
when he’d been young.
Anne Warrington carried to her grave the
name of the man who had fathered her children. Logan had never been able to
extract anything about him out of her.
The only time she spoke about him happened when
Logan came home flanked by two police officers, at fourteen, after having been
involved in a fight in the rowdiest pub in the area.
After one glance at his bloodied fists and
bruised face, she'd asked him if he preferred to be feared or respected. Fear proved
easy to stir, but respect wasn’t easy to earn. Privilege won’t earn you respect, she’d added. A wistful sadness
had tinged her words, and he’d known she thought back to her own life. Seeing
an opening, he’d prompted if his father came from that world, getting an
affirmative reply.
To this day, Logan still carried those
words in his mind. They’d been the ones to forge his character, made him strive
for more when he could have settled into one of the racist, bullying gangs in
the neighbourhood.
The sight of a bright yellow car on the side
of the road caught this attention. The driver seemed to be replacing a flat tyre
at the back, sunlight reflecting off shiny black hair.
A woman? Should he go help? She appeared alone,
pulling the heavy spare out of the boot herself.
As he parked a few feet behind the Citroën,
his stomach lurched when he glimpsed the driver from up close. Neha Hemant. Bugger. Why her? He wouldn’t take the
easy way out, however. She could probably use a hand. He stepped out of the SUV
and walked toward her. She glanced up and brushed the hair from her face, to
leave a small trace of dark grease on her flawless cheek. Her eyes widened when
they locked on him, and she muttered something he couldn’t quite hear.
His gut told him she’d sworn.
“Need a hand?” he asked.
She fixed him with a dark, even glare and went
about her task of dragging the spare next to the punctured one. “No. Thanks. I
can manage.”
She carried on with changing the flat, and her
lack of further conversation or glance in his direction made him think she
ignored him completely. However, when the time came to pull the tyre from the
chassis, she visibly struggled.
He knelt by her side and settled his hands
on the black Michelin rubber surface to tug it out for her.
Logan received the surprise of his life when
she slapped his hand away.
“Don’t you dare,” she said in a low growl.
Too stunned to react, for even his temper
had been dumbstruck, he sat there in a squat as she huffed and wrestled with
the tyre, finally wrenching it free.
The weight and the sudden give knocked her
off balance, and she fell back. He shot an arm out to catch her before she hit
the hard asphalt.
She shrugged away from his touch and
continued with her task.
“Let me help,” he again said.
She bowed her head, and her hair fanned about
like a curtain at the sides of her face to block the sight of her features. After
a few seconds, her body started shaking.
Bugger,
no. She was crying?
At a loss, Logan reasoned he could at least
finish the task for her, since she sat in no fit state to continue. She’d
probably inflict some injury upon herself.
He put the spare tyre in place and had started
to screw it back in, when she snatched the spanner from his hand and proceeded
to secure the bolts.
“I said I could do it. I don’t like
accepting favours.” She turned to face him, her huge eyes glistening with
tears, yet her voice had an incredible hardness when she calmly said, “It’s a
question of principle.”
Touché. He didn’t know what to say, his wit having deserted him.
“What is it with everyone?” She rambled
without looking at him. “Why do you all think I’m not up to par to achieve
anything on my own? Why take me out of the comfy little cotton box, right?” She
snorted. “Does your mother drive you insane, Logan?”
She continued before he could answer.
“No, I bet not. She wouldn’t dare, would
she? Mine would drive anyone over the edge. Because I’m looking for a job,
she’s got it in her head I’m out looking for a man to warm my bed.” She snorted.
“Everyone’s conspiring to drive me crazy. Why can’t anyone accept how some
people have more dignity than to accept favours? All I’m doing is trying to look
after my kids in an honest way. How will I have respect for myself if all I do
is give in to favours?”
She stopped and stared straight at him.
“Why am I telling you all this? You’ve
already put me in a box and labelled it as ‘cheap and worthless’, innit?”
Logan’s skin crawled with shame. Heat burnt
his dignity. Did he do that? Bloody hell, where would his respect for himself
go if such was the case?
Processing all this in his mind, he startled
when Neha got up and pulled all the tools around them in her hands. She stepped
up and around to the boot of her car, placing the metal objects in a corner at
the back.
He heaved the flat tyre and dropped it in
the stow, under her angry glare.
“I said I can—”
“I know. You can do it. I wanted to help, that’s
all.”
“Thanks.”
She muttered the word while closing the hatchback door. She rushed to the front
without another glance, for all intents dismissing him as if he were nothing
more than a speck of dust in the air around her.
Why didn’t such a callous treatment make
him fly into a temper?
Her previous words rang in his head.
What sort of woman did it take to attempt a
tyre switch when she could simply call for help or hail someone to do it for
her?
A
woman who doesn’t ask for favours.
He’d been an arse.
He strolled over to the driver’s window and
bent forward until his face drew level with hers.
“Two weeks’ trial. You start Monday.”
Once back at his car, he stopped by the
door. Closing his eyes, he prayed he’d taken the right decision.
Something told him he had. The same something
that made him realize Neha had remarkable similarities with a woman he
respected more than anything.
His mother.
Continue reading...by getting the full book from the following outlets! Amazon US ~ Amazon UK ~ Decadent Publishing ~ Barnes & Noble (Nook) ~ AllRomance Ebooks ~ Smashwords
~~~~~
From Mauritius with love,
Zee
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