Can I just say the success of this series supports my love of the good guy, especially the complex, tortured good guy? (Please refer back to my obsession last year with North and South. Richard Armitage. O.M.G. I even have fan fiction on Wattpad for that one.) I know that bad boys are somewhat the rage right now with their tats and their pasts completely devoid of love and understanding. But I like me a sexy nice guy.

I’m releasing one to you almost as we speak. In one week, Rhyolite Drifts: Yellowblown™ Book Two will be released with the continuing story of Violet and her slice of heaven, Boone, all on preorder for 99 cents. So grab yourself a handful of Hotness.

Sitting in the truck on the prairie, the night sky blocked by ash, was like sitting in a closed refrigerator, minus the threat of suffocation. Boone reclined in the passenger seat, gingerly exploring the cut and bruise over his eye. At least the lid wasn’t swollen shut anymore. Sneaking over the train trestle bridge with fifty-percent vision hadn’t been the wisest journey he’d ever made. Violet wouldn’t call him Dudley Do Right when she heard about that.

If.

Distance was supposed to break the bond. That’s what had happened with his high school girlfriend, and with Twyla. He’d gone on to the next phase of his life and they’d receded. He wasn’t so cold that he hadn’t worried about their hurt feelings, but he hadn’t been broken. He hadn’t shuddered with guilt in the daylight and woken at night filled with longing.

He’d been alone—solidly alone, without even a friendly conversation at a gas station—for a little more than two weeks and learned he wasn’t very good at it. Especially now, when time and distance weren’t working in his favor.

Leaving Violet hadn’t been a real choice. He’d had to go. He had to find his parents.

A girl he’d only been with a couple of months couldn’t tag along, even if she asked fervently enough to squeeze his heart. This wasn’t a trip to the county fair, after all.

But the damned bond wasn’t breaking the way it should. It wasn’t even weakening.

Rhyolite Drifts on Amazon

If you need to start at the beginning, Eruption is also on sale. You can find the purchase links here.

Make sure to visit other people on the hop by using the Click Here link below.

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Click here to find the other authors on the Book Hooks hop.

As services are disrupted, Violet Perch uses her bike to deliver mail to her rural neighbors and steal some alone-time for her sanity. She sees the flag up on the mailbox at a house she’s never stopped at before, and is pretty sure the note in the box requesting she come to the slightly creepy house to get a message is just a ploy to lure her into the clutches of serial killer.

I left my bike by the road as a signal that Violet had been here. That way if the cell towers were down and my phone’s GPS failed, the homicide detectives might know where to find the blood spatter with their black lights. Were forensic scientists still employed? I wondered this as I shuffled through the dead leaves in the driveway. It would actually be a great way to evaluate careers. How would such a proficiency test question be worded? “Is it important to you your career remain viable through an apocalyptic event?” Perhaps if I survived the next quarter hour, or the next year, I would take a serious look at who still had jobs and then go get training for whatever they were doing.

As I mentioned above, books one and two are both on sale for 99 cents, so it’s a great time to get started with the Yellowblown™ series. Eruption: Yellowblown™ Book One is highly recommended to be read first, and was a BTS eMag Red Carpet finalist in 2014.

You can find Eruption: Yellowblown™ Book One here:

Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MRHAIRO

Barnes and Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eruption-j-hughey/1120343037?ean=9781500866051

Kobo https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/eruption-3

iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/eruption/id977183578?mt=11&uo=4

Rhyolite Drifts: Yellowblown™ Book Two is available for preorder at Amazon and will be on other vendors on or around May 5, 2015.

Here’s a blurb:

Abandoned by Hotness.

Held hostage by the Yellowstone eruption, I’m stuck at home instead of loving life at college.

Sanity is restored when my college roommate arrives, but I’m still trapped in my hometown with a bunch of people just trying to survive. Some of them are surprisingly interesting, like the HAM radio opera singer lady. Or the pop star who crushes on me while waiting for an air filter for his tour bus.

Unfortunately there’s also my roommate’s gangster little brother who pushes Grandma to her conservative edge, and the local entrepreneurs determined to capitalize on hard times. They tick me off.

Despite all this I’m determined to find a path to the fabled land of Adulthood even if my heart is broken and all the roads are ash covered.

And where the heck did that Nebraskan cattle rancher go, anyway?

Everything is changing but my heart and my hopes don’t want to change with it.

Admit it, you’re hooked. Give the first book a try for 99 cents.

Also, visit the other authors on todays Book Hooks blog tour by using the Click here link below.

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Here’s the snippet where Boone makes Violet weak in the knees…again:

I kissed the center of his chest. “You don’t want a helpless girl to go limp in your arms?”

“As long as it’s you, I’ll take it. You can go limp, grab me, lie down, stand up, do whatever you want as long as I’m the man you’re doing it with. Tell me how you want it and I’ll do it. Fast, slow, noisy, quiet, dirty, polite, outside, inside….”

He continued his list while I cracked up. “So, now you’re my sex slave?”

“Yes,” he answered without thought. “Absolutely yes. Or maybe we can take turns.”

As I said, this is from Rhylite Drifts: Yellowblown™ Book Two, which is in the editing phase now, and will soon be released, but get yourself some Hotness by reading Eruption!

For more swoon-worthy lines, click the froggy to find the other authors in this weeks hop. Thanks for visiting!

In this scene from Eruption: Yellowblown™ Book One, Boone, the Geology TA who is also Violet’s freshman-crush-starting-to-turn-into-sophomore-boyfriend, first breaks the news. Neither of them fully understand the potential impacts, though Boone has a better idea than Violet.

EXCERPT

“You’re starting to freak me out,” I said. He looked like he was going to tell me someone had died, but he didn’t know anyone in my family, and surely the Dean of Students would not give him the responsibility of passing on bad news after three weeks of talking.

“Sorry,” he said. “I can’t decide if I’m freaked out or not.” He took a deep breath. “Yellowstone is erupting.”

I stared at him, not a flicker of comprehension illuminating my dim-bulb mind. Nothing. “Yellowstone? The place with the, umm, geysers?” Obviously I’d heard of Yellowstone, never been there, not sure I could place it on a map in the murky part of the U.S. between where I lived and Hollywood.

“Yeah. Yellowstone sits over a hotspot that’s been around for millions of years.”

“Instead of steaming it’s now erupting? As in lava erupting?” We’d covered igneous rocks in a very general way already so I knew hot liquefied rock below the ground was called magma and, when it erupted, became lava.

“Dr. Potter says nobody knows what it’s doing. It blew this morning. I mean explosively blew. All the local sensors went offline. Satellite pictures show a big brown cloud of dust. Like two hundred miles across.”

Boone’s voice shook a fraction. I put my hand on his forearm. He sat back so he could hold it in his.

I asked, “Do you have friends out there, or family?”

“Not close. Dr. Potter knows I’m from Nebraska. He asked me where—made me point to it on a map. He said my family might want to stockpile supplies, or better yet, leave.” He paused, prompting me to scoot to the edge of my seat. “My house is nine hundred miles away from Yellowstone, Violet.”

END OF EXCERPT

I’ve incorporated little science tidbits throughout the book, but especially in the next scene after this excerpt, to give the average reader a respectable understanding of Yellowstone and some geological concepts. If you’d like to know more about the science, I’m in the middle of a series of blog posts about it, starting with I’m a Geek about Yellowstone, some low-key talking points to impress your friends that I then expand upon in subsequent posts.

BLURB for Eruption: Yellowblown Book One.

I’m in the middle of the perfect college semester, hundreds of miles from Mom, with an awesome roomie and my freshman crush finally becoming a sophomore reality—Hotness! I’m figuring out calculus, I’ve got both hands on the handlebars and the wind of freedom in my hair. What on earth could slow my roll?

How about if the Yellowstone volcano erupts for the first time in 630,000 years, spewing a continuous load of ash (crap) all over North America? Think that’ll put a kink in my bicycle chain?

Make that kinks, plural, because here’s a scientific fact I’ll bet you didn’t know. Nothing ruins the perfect semester like a super caldera. Now that I’ve made you smarter today, maybe you can tell me how to keep my life cruising in the right direction—no to Mom, yes to roomie, double yes to Hotness!—during a global disaster?

My lame name is Violet and, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m not hanging from the side of a cinder cone on the last page of this trauma, but there’s definitely more to come. Unless, of course, humans become extinct and then there’s not. Duh.

Buy it now  on Amazon

Eruption is book one in the Yellowblown™ Series and is a BTS eMag Red Carpet Finalist.

Don’t forget to visit the other Book Hooks bloggers this week by clicking where it says “Click here” below.

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EXCERPT

He panted in even, deliberate puffs by the time we reached the edge of campus, but he hadn’t given up. He’d stayed on my back wheel. I did a cool down loop on the local streets before guiding us to the dorm.

I stepped off my bike and reluctantly removed my helmet. My stubby ponytail was mostly intact, though much of the front section of my hair slipped from the skinny hairband. I did my best to tuck the errant strands behind my ears.

He arranged his own gear then looked at me with the green stare again, more intense than before. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

“I’m sure we freshman all look alike.” I extended my hand. “Violet Perch.”

“Boone Ramer.” He took my hand and, though our palms were hot and sweaty, he continued to hold it, lighting a fuse of attraction that sparked up my wrist and past my elbow. “Violet. Unusual name. I’ll remember it now.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a curse,” I said as the heat passed my shoulder to go straight to my skort.

“I didn’t mean unusual bad. It’s nice. Feminine.” He released my hand while his eyes touched me, sliding down my pink jersey and along legs I knew weren’t particularly long but had hints of muscle definition.

I knew what I was. In our world of breast enhancements and thigh gaps, I didn’t have the right dimensions to attract a guy in Boone’s league, especially with my sports bra smashing my itty bitty titties down to nothing. Helmet hair, sweat stained armpits, padded bottoms, and black sturdy shoes completed the non-seductive, flat-chested ensemble. I was all in.

His face sharpened in a way that suggested he might like what he saw. My nostrils flared in immediate, misguided response. God, he was magnetic.

“You’re in good shape,” he said appreciatively. “I bonked on the last hill but you pulled me up.” He waggled his brows at me. “Couldn’t let you make me look bad.”

My face flushed beyond exercise-induced red. “You did good.” We wheeled our bikes toward the door and I’d almost worked up the courage to ask if he’d like to ride together again when a trilling voice called his name.

Twyla Blakelock, who’d ignored me at a rush party last week, bounced up to press her glossy lips against his mouth. Her nose wrinkled. “Ewww, you’re all sweaty,” she said.

What kind of moron touches him and says Ewww, I thought. You’re ewww, Twyla.

“Hey, I’ll see you later,” I said out loud, eternally grateful for the guy who came out the door at the right time to hold it for me.

END OF EXCERPT

Eruption probably isn’t as spicy as some of the books in this hop, and the payoff takes awhile due to an apocalyptic eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, but Boone and Violet are worth the wait. Especially Boone.

BLURB

I’m in the middle of the perfect college semester, hundreds of miles from Mom, with an awesome roomie and my freshman crush finally becoming a sophomore reality—Hotness! I’m figuring out calculus, I’ve got both hands on the handlebars and the wind of freedom in my hair. What on earth could slow my roll?

How about if the Yellowstone volcano erupts for the first time in 630,000 years, spewing a continuous load of ash (crap) all over North America? Think that’ll put a kink in my bicycle chain?

Make that kinks, plural, because here’s a scientific fact I’ll bet you didn’t know. Nothing ruins the perfect semester like a super caldera. Now that I’ve made you smarter today, maybe you can tell me how to keep my life cruising in the right direction—no to Mom, yes to roomie, double yes to Hotness!—during a global disaster?

My lame name is Violet and, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m not hanging from the side of a cinder cone on the last page of this trauma, but there’s definitely more to come. Unless, of course, humans become extinct and then there’s not. Duh.

Eruption: Yellowblown Book One is available at Amazon.

Make sure to visit all the other tension scenes on this Hot for Friday hop this week!

Or join the fun at http://www.bookboyfriendscafe.com/2015/02/hot-for-friday-hot-and-bothered.html

I was logging onto my Yahoo account, minding my own business, when an article about Yellowstone caught my eye. Since my current writing project centers around an eruption of Yellowstone, obviously I had a professional obligation to read said article. And then read every article linked within said article. I even understood most of it, though the unit “microstrain” must have been invented since I graduated with my geology degree in 1989.

Many folks, when I mention Yellowstone, say something like “Oh, it’s so beautiful there, I can’t wait to go back,” or “Visiting Yellowstone is on my bucket list.” The eruption concept of my series fuels a few to admit worry about impending volcanic activity at the USA’s first national park. (They get an A for even knowing about the possibility. I recently had a reviewer who actually asked in the middle of the review if Yellowstone was really a volcano. As if I would invent that plot twist, and as if he/she couldn’t have answered that question with a five-second online search. Definitely not a geek.) For those of you now scratching your heads, here is a list of key talking points about Yellowstone. If you have geek-like tendencies, you might want to know more, which is why I’ll tackle some of these as single topics in 2015.

1. Yellowstone is, at its essence, a volcanic caldera. That’s why it’s hot and steamy, like a great romance hero.

2. The potential of Yellowstone is massive. It is part of an elite club known by commoners like us as super-calderas. There is no firm definition of what constitutes a super-caldera, but to even apply to the club, a volcano must have emitted in a single eruption at least three hundred cubic kilometers of stuff. (Picture a solid block with each edge long enough to reach from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland.) Some scientists hold the bar quite a bit higher, at one thousand cubic kilometers. Yellowstone has done all that and more, so it’s a gold card carrying member.

3. Volcanoes are just local events, right? Wrong. Remember the volcano in Iceland that screwed up air travel in Europe for several weeks in 2010? During it’s troubling second phase, it ejected one quarter of one cubic kilometers of stuff, or a cube with edges equal to something like the long side of a city block in Manhattan. That is a trifling sneeze compared to a super-caldera (see point 2.)

4. Yellowstone will probably not erupt, and is much more likely to do so in a small way, like a tiny garden wedding as opposed to the mass weddings of the Unification Church.

5. Though even Yellowstone isn’t monitored as overwhelmingly as curious scientists would like, we’ll probably have warning signs of a massive eruption, so as long as you have a go-bag for the southern hemisphere, you’ll be fine. Or you’ll at least survive longer than the rest of us.

6. Of course, Yellowstone isn’t the only super-caldera to worry about.  There are at least six known on Earth. If any one of them cuts loose in your lifetime, buckle up.

Curious enough to dash down the path of geekdom? Here’s the article that got me meandering into this blog post in the first place, or you can follow my blog so you know when I post the next fact-filled blast.

And here’s a link to my Pinterest board where I collected images for my series. There are some really impressive photos of volcanic eruptions! I definitely want to see an active volcano in person some day, though I hope it is one that is sort of gurgling along, like Kilauea, not a super-caldera with the potential to end life as we know it.

SETUP OF THE SCENE

Lily is a college freshman giving swimming lessons to kids when she sees a very handsome guy watching in the stands. She’s so unsettled by his good looks and his focus on her that she even lets one of her students, Andy, slip underwater for a second.

EXCERPT

“There he is,” Andy said, pointing down the hall.

My mind was barely processing the “he” instead of “she” when it went into free fall as I watched the guy in the Bribury polo move down the hall toward us, his eyes on Andy.

And then they turned to me.

He was even more gorgeous up close, and as he moved closer still, I felt that hitch again—like I’d gone underwater without first holding my breath.

“That’s my brother, Lucas. He’s picking me up today, because my mom…” Andy was saying. I got the vitals: Lucas—brother. Andy might have said more, but by then the guy—Lucas—had reached us.

“You looked great out there, A. Really comfortable in the water. How’d it feel?”

Andy’s little chest puffed up. “Good. Better.”

Better? Had there been a problem before? Sheesh, some instructor I was.

“That’s good. That’s really good. See, I told you it would get better.”

Andy was nodding, his fair hair wet and shaggy, droplets falling onto the back of his sweatshirt. Freddy never did help the boys with stuff like their hair in the locker room.

“Did you see me go under?” Andy asked, pride in his voice. Like it wasn’t me who’d let him slip out of my hands.

“I did. Very brave. Way to conquer, my man,” Lucas said. He wasn’t looking at Andy now, but at me. With a look that said he knew exactly how Andy’s fear had been conquered.

“Yeah, you were right, Lucas. Nothin’ I couldn’t handle.” The words were spoken in such a way that I knew that was how they’d been sold to Andy.

“This is Lily. My teacher.”

I held my hand out, but Lucas had just put his hand-shaking hand on Andy’s shoulder. He just nodded in my direction. “Lily,” he said slowly. “Thanks for taking such good care of my guy.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice.

Andy was puffing up again—obviously loving that he was Lucas’s “guy.” But I barely noticed; my brain had gone semi-dead when Lucas said my name. His voice was smooth and deep. And dark. So, so dark.

In high school, I snuck into the school pool really late at night, had the place to myself. I did that from time to time, just to get away. I never swam, though—I was too much of a goodie-goodie to break that much of a rule. Plus the whole safety thing stopped me. But one night, after a particularly galling scene of listening to my father berate some poor flunky on the phone, I did go in.

I dove from the high board in just my bra and panties. No lights were on, and when the water swallowed me up I was cocooned in deep, wet darkness. It was disorienting, scary, and exhilarating all at the same time.

That’s what it felt like when Lucas said my name.

“I’m supposed to get some information from you?” he asked me. “Like how he’s doing? Stuff to work on?”

There was a tiny bit of vulnerability in his voice, which was in contrast to the sheer physical confidence he seemed to exude.

His eyes—brown, a deep, lovely shade of brown—darted between Andy and myself, and I realized he was uncertain.

“Yes,” I said, summoning all my father’s bullshitting skills. “Andy is indeed becoming more comfortable in the water, and that is leading to increased confidence in his abilities. I think that our next session will show even more improvement.”

Lucas was nodding, but his eyes—so expressive, those brown pools, when the rest of his face was impassive—sparked with skepticism.

Yeah, people always knew when my father was bullshitting them, too.

“In the meantime,” I pushed on (sadly, my father’s daughter), “you could work with Andy on his floating. Easy to do in the tub. A few minutes on his back, then a few on his front, with his face to the side to breathe.”

“We don’t have a bathtub,” Andy said.

I saw Lucas clench the hand that wasn’t resting on Andy’s shoulder.

“We’ll figure something out, buddy,” Lucas said. Andy looked up—way up; Lucas had to be six-three—and grinned at his older brother. That grin said Andy truly believed that Lucas was capable of creating a bathtub where none existed.

Hell, maybe he was.

“We need to get going, buddy,” Lucas said, turning Andy toward the exit. They started walking away. After a couple of feet, Andy turned and said with his lopsided smile, “Thanks, Lily, see you next time.” He waved his little hand, his sweatshirt too large for him, the sleeve almost swallowing him up.

“You bet, Andy,” I said. My hand was still raised in a wave when Lucas turned around. His gaze was intense again. My hand froze where it was—midair, mid-wave.

“Thank you,” Lucas said so softly I wasn’t sure if he’d actually spoken the words or mouthed them. “Lily,” he added.

That word I heard. All the way through my body.

END OF EXCERPT

Oh yeah, she is definitely hoping to see more of Lucas and so are you. You can find In Too Deep at the following vendors.

Amazon                       iTunes                    Kobo                     Google Play                Barnes and Noble

To keep in touch with Mara, visit her website at www.marajacobs.com and her Facebook Page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mara-Jacobs-Author/141802575897824.

Mara and I welcome your questions and comments. Stop by next week for another first meeting excerpt on First Sight Saturday.

SETUP

After being kidnapped while on assignment in Afghanistan and forced on sabbatical, war correspondent Beckett Reid follows his friend into a Paris apartment for a party. The noise is too much for Beckett, so he climbs up to the roof where he meets Everly, an American heiress with demons of her own.

EXCERPT

“You want to get out of here?” I’m not sure why I bother. She doesn’t trust me enough to even share her name.

Her shoulders shake in a small shiver and her feet stop swinging. She breaks our staring match to gaze back out over the city.

Around us, life continues. Things move forward. But the two of us are suspended, waiting.

“I wonder what it would be like to fly,” she whispers. She doesn’t say any more, doesn’t answer me. She just throws out a question like that and lets it sink into the darkness between us with its uncomfortable heaviness. Her hands grip the ledge and she bends forward, her weight resting on her thin arms. She looks as if she might push off and test her question, like she believes for a minute she has wings.

“What would your last thought be if you fell?” She nods toward the street below, suggesting a fall from this building—a fatal fall.

Her face is a mask of peacefulness, but I know the truth. I’ve spent too many years reading people. Too many years deflecting other’s opinions of me and my circumstances. The boy with the sad story.

“There wouldn’t be time,” I say. “It would be over before it even began.”

“It wouldn’t have just begun.” She faces me, the corner of her mouth tipped up in a smug smile. Her fingers run through her hair, tussling it until I smell her perfume—pears and vanilla. “Sure, I’ll go for a walk.”

I don’t want to leave with her anymore but I don’t think I should leave her alone either. Her question still rings in my mind and the damnedest thing is that I can’t think of an answer.

I pull out my phone to text Ollie that I’m bailing when she grabs it away.

“What are you doing?

My hand flexes as I push down my temper. “Texting a friend.”

As I soon as I explain, she shakes her head, a dry laugh pushing over her lips. “Of course.” She waves me off, then hands it back to me. “Sorry.”

Obviously she’s a bit skittish. And untrusting. I should head out without her, but I can’t when she looks at me again. There’s too much about her I don’t know. She spins around, crouching on her haunches, nothing behind her except a yawning distance between this building and the next. And the street far below.

I wait, stuffing my hands into my pockets, fighting back the urge to hand her down from the ledge. She’s not the type to want help. I’m not the type to offer. Usually.

But when she swings her legs out to step down, her knees graze the brick. The knobby curve of one beads with blood, her skin scraped raw.

She’s quiet, staring at her knee as if she can will it from bleeding. I’m not sure why I do it or why I care, but I step forward and lift up the edge of my T-shirt and press it against her knee, soaking up the blood. She keeps her head tucked down and her hands at her side as I inch closer. My free hand settles by her hip, her hair brushes against my arm.

“What’s your name, pet?” My words are barely a whisper.

Her fingers hover above my hands on her knee. I keep my eyes anchored there as she slowly entwines them with mine. That spark people talk about when two people touch—apparently it’s not a heap of shite because it happens and I don’t know what to do when it does. I don’t know anything. Why I’m here with her. Why we’re not kissing. My name.

“Everly.”

Buy Links: (Everly After is available for pre-order and will be released on October 21.)

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Rebecca and I look forward to your questions and comments. Come back every week for a new first meeting excerpt from a fresh author on First Sight Saturday.

I wish I’d experienced a true college romance. I had a couple of boyfriends but always seemed to start the relationship about a month before the end of spring semester and by fall the long distance killed the spark. For the guy, not me, which meant I’d wasted my whole summer pining for a boy who lost interest by July 4th.

What’s special about a college romance? I picture sitting together at football games, studying on a dorm bed, holding hands as you walk across the leaf-strewn quad. Something about being part of the student population but also having that one special flame burning, that one face you really hope you see as you walk into the food court/library/post office.

As a consolation, I’ve started the ideal college romance in my newest release Eruption. Violet, the main character, experiences many of the benefits of an autumn boyfriend. Until the Yellowstone volcano erupts. And that interrupts her love story in a whole different way than summer break.

You can learn more about Violet here, and if you want a chance to win your choice of some Eruption swag, sign up for my newsletter at www.jillhughey.com/contact before September 27.

Hope you continue to enjoy the Fall Into Romance blog hop. Don’t forget to enter the Rafflecopter for a chance to win a $75 Amazon gift card.
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To find all the authors on the Fall Into Romance hop, visit www.hopswithheart.blogspot.com

EXCERPT

I glanced around the room again, in the midst of a minor panic attack and, seeing my bike, remembered the first time I’d ever talked to Boone, for real. Last September, on a gorgeous Saturday evening, I’d taken my old bike—a heavy blue Neanderthal compared to my Giant—for a quick spin to escape the freshman roommate from hell who’d gotten high, or drunk, or both—in the middle of the afternoon, no less—and drained her cell phone battery with sobs to her hometown boyfriend. When I tried to be sympathetic, her wordless snarl told me she didn’t want my support, though I’d tattled to our RA on my way down the hall. I really didn’t want to return from biking to find my cray cray roomie dead from an overdose.

After my responsible escape, I’d ridden four or five miles out of town then looped back on the country roads. At the first stoplight, a biker came toward me on the perpendicular street. He nodded at me and looked away then looked back at about the same time I recognized him. Boone freakin’ Ramer. The unexpectedness both jazzed and horrified me. Hotness, all to myself, yes, but he was seeing me in a helmet, sports sunglasses and a water bladder backpack.

“Hey,” I said.

He wore sunglasses, too. The reflective orange lenses hid his eyes, but not his frown. “Aren’t you a freshman at Western Case?” he asked. His voice was nice, not crazy deep but definitely masculine, and he spoke with a slow cadence, in no hurry at all.

“Yeah,” I said. Scintillating. Brilliant.

“What’d you think of the game?”

“What game?” I scooted my bike farther onto the shoulder of the road as a car cruised past.

“The football game. Today. At home.”

“I don’t follow sports much. Was it good?” Those maddening mirrored glasses hid everything. His extended silence couldn’t be a positive sign.

“Are you lost?” he finally asked.

I glanced around. “I don’t think so. Do I look lost?”

His self-deprecating smile thinned his lips but showed no teeth. “No, sorry, most students only ride far enough to find beer.” He moved his head in a way that suggested he was checking out my gear. “I should’ve noticed you weren’t dressed for a grocery run.”

“I only did about ten miles,” I said with a shrug.

“Twice what I can do on these hills.” He grimaced.

I slid my sunglasses off my sweaty nose. I didn’t like not seeing his eyes and hoped he’d show me his if I showed him mine. I used the maneuver as an excuse to check out the rest of him. His biking shorts were loose, like gym shorts, accentuating awesome, tight calves. The top half of him didn’t disappoint, either, with the thin fabric of his shirt plastered over his pecs. He was respectably muscled, not over-juiced like Bodacious.

Hot. Ness.

“New to biking?” I asked.

“Rehabbing my knee.”

“That sucks.”

“Yep.” He finally removed his sunglasses to wipe his forearm over his ruddy face.

“What happened?” I indicated his leg with the tip of my chin.

His quick glance registered surprise before he gave the same odd little smile. “Oh. I was a quarterback for the football team. Took a low hit at the end of last season.”

I squinted at his leg. “Wow, those scars are tiny.”

He prodded at a shiny pink dot on his hairy skin. “The doctors in Pittsburgh are some of the best.” He sounded tired, or sort of downcast.

In an unusual moment of insight, I said, “Was today the first game since?”

“Yep.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t play?”

He looked down the street, away from me, then at the road cinders at our feet. “This is the first fall I haven’t played ball since I was six.”

“Wow. I can’t think of anything other than, you know, the basics like breathing I’ve been doing for that long.”

He smirked.

“Docs wouldn’t clear you?”

“They did. I didn’t.” He picked up the front of his bike by the handlebars then set it back down. “When the mom who drove you forty miles round trip for midget practices and the dad who wrecked his shoulder passing the ball back to you both say it’s time to quit….”

“Sounds like your parents are good at mind-jobs, like mine.”

He smiled a little more cheerfully and I smiled back, glad because he’d been cruising toward miserable. Just the image I wanted to create—here’s the sports ignoramus who can totally bum you out in thirty seconds flat.

“They let it up to me in the end. I made the right decision. It’s not like I have a chance to go pro. I’ll be able to walk when I’m forty, maybe throw the ball with my own kid.” A shrug bunched the muscles at his shoulders. Another shadow of doubt passed over his face.

“The bike’ll be good for you.” Again with the brilliance, as if some millionaire orthopedist hadn’t already told him about biking. Duh.

“I can go farther in Nebraska. Fewer hills,” he said. He reached for the water bottle attached to the down tube of his bike, and I could almost see him shaking off the blues. “Where are you from?” His green eyes bored into me with unanticipated curiosity.

“Indiana. We have hills but not like this.”

“Why do you ride?” he asked after he’d finished taking a deep drink from the Copperheads Football bottle.

“Um, mostly ’cuz it feels good. I mean, it helps me to clear my head.” It feels good? Really, did I say that out loud?

“Endorphins,” he said. “Though I could do without the bugs smacking me in the face.” He tucked the bottle in the cage and pushed his sunglasses back on. “Wanna head back?”

“Sure.” I slid my own glasses on and clipped one foot into a pedal.

We stood on the corner, ready to launch, each waiting for the other to lead.

“You go ahead,” he finally said with a chuckle.

“Is this a test to make sure I’m not lost?”

“No.” He grinned. “My mama taught me ladies go first.”

I rolled my eyes, checked traffic and pushed off, thanking God my other biking shoe clicked neatly into its bracket.

“Clips,” he said from over my left shoulder. “You’re brave.”

“Power on the upstroke and downstroke,” I said.

“Or instant death the first time I tried to stop.”

I laughed. “I practiced in my front yard for awhile. If I can do it, anyone can.” I shifted into a lower gear for the gentle climb. The real bitch of a hill would come at the end.

“Don’t baby me, now,” he said.

I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Have it your way.”

He panted in even, deliberate puffs by the time we reached the edge of campus, but he hadn’t given up. He’d stayed on my back wheel. I did a cool down loop on the local streets before guiding us to the dorm.

I stepped off my bike and reluctantly removed my helmet. My stubby ponytail was mostly intact, though much of the front section of my hair slipped from the skinny hairband. I did my best to tuck the errant strands behind my ears.

He arranged his own gear then looked at me with the green stare again, more intense than before. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

“I’m sure we freshman all look alike.” I extended my hand. “Violet Perch.”

“Boone Ramer.” He took my hand and, though our palms were hot and sweaty, he continued to hold it, lighting a fuse of attraction that sparked up my wrist and past my elbow. “Violet. Unusual name. I’ll remember it now.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a curse,” I said as the heat passed my shoulder to go straight to my skort.

“I didn’t mean unusual bad. It’s nice. Feminine.” He released my hand while his eyes touched me, sliding down my pink jersey and along legs I knew weren’t particularly long but had hints of muscle definition.

I knew what I was. In our world of breast enhancements and thigh gaps, I didn’t have the right dimensions to attract a guy in Boone’s league, especially with my sports bra smashing my itty bitty titties down to nothing. Helmet hair, sweat stained armpits, padded bottoms, and black sturdy shoes completed the non-seductive, flat-chested ensemble. I was all in.

His face sharpened in a way that suggested he might like what he saw. My nostrils flared in immediate, misguided response. God, he was magnetic.

“You’re in good shape,” he said appreciatively. “I bonked on the last hill but you pulled me up.” He waggled his brows at me. “Couldn’t let you make me look bad.”

My face flushed beyond exercise-induced red. “You did good.” We wheeled our bikes toward the door and I’d almost worked up the courage to ask if he’d like to ride together again when a trilling voice called his name.

Twyla Blakelock, who’d ignored me at a rush party last week, bounced up to press her glossy lips against his mouth. Her nose wrinkled. “Ewww, you’re all sweaty,” she said.

What kind of moron touches him and says Ewww, I thought. You’re ewww, Twyla.

“Hey, I’ll see you later,” I said out loud, eternally grateful for the guy who came out the door at the right time to hold it for me.

END OF EXCERPT

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