Blog Stop: The Antique Love
Author Helena Fairfax’s newest novel, The Antique Love has recently been released by MuseItUp Publishing. The description sounds intriguing, and I’m enamored with the cover. I haven’t had a chance to read this yet, but it’s in my lineup. Keep an eye out for my review! Enjoy the excerpt below, then get yourself a copy.
Helena Fairfax
The Antique Love
A sweet contemporary romance
The Antique Love Blurb
One rainy day in London, Wyoming man Kurt Bold walks into an antique shop off the King’s Road, looking every inch the romantic hero. The shop’s owner, Penny Rosas, takes this handsome stranger for a cowboy straight from the pages of a book… but Kurt soon brings Penny’s dreams to earth with a thump. He’s no romantic cowboy—his job is in the City, in the logical world of finance—and as far as Kurt is concerned, love and romance are just for dreamers. Events in his childhood have scarred his heart, showing him just how destructive passionate love can be. Now he’s looking for a wife, but wants a marriage based on logic and rational decisions. Penny is a firm believer in true love. She’s not the sensible wife Kurt’s looking for. But when he hires Penny to help refurbish his Victorian house near Richmond Park, it’s not long before he starts to realise it’s not just his home she’s breathing new life into. The logical heart he has guarded so carefully all these years is opening up to new emotions, in a most disturbing way…
The Antique Love Excerpt
Kurt by name and curt by nature. Penny was suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to giggle. The fresh air in the street outside was doing terrible things with the cocktails inside her head.
“I don’t need a taxi,” she said, trying to tug her arm out of Kurt’s grip as he manoeuvred her along the pavement. She wasn’t happy with the way he’d propelled her out of the bar, and suddenly, it was vital to assert her independence. “I’m quite happy getting the tube. The station’s just round the corner.”
“Yeah? And how about when you get off the tube? I bet it’s a dark walk to your home.”
Penny didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to admit it, but the walk from her tube stop to her front door always made her a little apprehensive at night. It was a quiet residential area, and the lack of nightlife made the leafy streets particularly creepy. Kurt was right to look for a taxi for her, and her silence told him so.
“See? You need to get yourself a cab. And besides, I’m not about to let you freeze to death on the sidewalk.”
“Pavement,” she muttered.
“What?”
“I said pavement. We’re in London not New York. It’s pavement.”
“Whatever,” said Kurt, his eyes scanning the street.
“I say tom-ah-toes, and you say tom-ay-toes….” Penny started singing in a gently mocking, tuneful way that she was quite proud of until Kurt swung her round to face him.
“Are you drunk?”
She raised her eyebrows and swayed a little. “Kurt, shall we just call the whole thing off?”
“You’re drunk. Hell, if you were my kid sister, I’d be giving you one hell of a scolding right now.”
His words had the sobering effect of a bucket of cold water. There was a momentary frigid silence before Penny brought her face up close to his. “Well I’m not your kid sister. Alex doesn’t talk to me as though I’m a stupid kid sister. So stop going on about it.”
“I know damn well how Alex was talking to you. Why do you think I got you out of there?”
“You got me out?” Her eyes blazed, and she edged dangerously closer. “I was leaving anyway. I might have had a couple of drinks, but I know how to look after myself. So stop treating me like your kid sister, because I’m not.”
Penny’s eyes glittered with anger and something that looked suspiciously like tears. Kurt stared into her face.
“Okay, okay.” He caught hold of her, and she flinched beneath his touch. “It’s just I know how Alex is with women. We go back a long way. He’s my friend, and when I saw you with him, I felt responsible. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry if I seemed high-handed.”
Penny’s breathing was still shallow and coming in rapid breaths, her chest rising and falling beneath the thin fabric of her dress. With his back to the streetlight, Kurt’s face was in shadow. She could make out only his eyes, which gleamed with sudden heat in the dark mask of his face. His hands tightened on her shoulders, and she felt the warmth of his breath flutter across her lips. She began to tremble, and he pulled her into his arms.
Author Bio:
Helena Fairfax was born in Uganda and came to England as a child. She’s grown used to the cold now and that’s just as well, because nowadays she lives in an old Victorian mill town in Yorkshire, right next door to windswept Brontë country. She has an affectionate, if half-crazed, rescue dog and together they tramp the moors every day—one of them wishing she were Emily Brontë, the other vainly chasing pheasants. When she’s not out on the moors you’ll find Helena either creating romantic heroes and heroines of her own or else with her nose firmly buried in a book, enjoying someone else’s stories. Her patient husband and her brilliant children support her in her daydreams and are the loves of her life.
You can find Helena on her blog: www.helenafairfax.com
on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7082986.Helena_Fairfax
on Facebook www.facebook.com/HelenaFairfax, or on Twitter @helenafairfax
Buy links
The Antique Love is available in e-format from most major e-tailers, including:
Apple iBooks
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