Spotlight & #Giveaway – First Time with a Highlander by Gwyn Cready #exclusiveexcerpt @GwynCready @SourcebooksCasa
Title: First Time with a Highlander
Author: Gwyn Cready
Series: Sirens of the Scottish, #2
Pubdate: October 6th, 2015
ISBN: 9781492601968
Synopsis
From the “master of time travel romance”, award-winning author Gwyn Cready continues her steamy Sirens of the Scottish Borderlands series.
She needs a man—but only for a night
What do you get when you imbibe centuries-old whiskey—besides a hangover the size of the Highlands? If you’re twenty-first century ad exec Gerard Innes, you get swept back to 18th-century Edinburgh and into the bed of a gorgeous, fiery redhead. Gerard has only a foggy idea what he and the lady have been up to…but what he does remember draws him into the most dangerous and exhilarating campaign of his life.
Be careful what you wish for…
Serafina Seonag Fallon’s scoundrel of a fiancé has left her with nothing, and she’s determined to turn the tables. If she can come up with a ringer, she can claim the cargo he stole from her. But the dashing man she summons from the future demands more than a night, and Serafina finds it easier to command the seas under her feet than the crashing waves he unleashes in her heart.
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Exclusive Excerpt
When you write a romance, you want a lot of sexual tension between your hero and heroine, as soon as possible and as much as you can get. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your tastes, one way to do that is have the hero and heroine be at cross purposes. This is practically a given in a time travel romance since the non-time-traveling person usually wants the time traveler to stay and the time traveler wants nothing more than to return to the safety and comfort of his/her home.
In this scene, we’re in Serafina’s head. Serafina is my heroine, the down-on-her-luck eighteenth-century owner of a small shipping concern, and Gerard is my ad man hero from the twenty-first century. Serafina has to explain to her spell-caster friend, Undine, from whom she, er, borrowed magical herbs to summon a man to help her claim some cargo. The spell-caster is resting in bed after having a bit of misadventure of her own, and Gerard is still trying to figure out how he woke up in bed with a beautiful woman in the eighteenth century and why he can only remember the less interesting parts of the night they’ve apparently spent together.
***
Undine waved away her concern. “I am assuming you ignored what you knew to be my wishes and mixed your own potion.”
Serafina lowered her head. “I did, aye.”
Undine pushed the inkwell and paper to the side of the lap desk and made a short, unhappy noise. “Bring me the herbs. I need to see what you’ve done.”
Serafina slowly lifted her head. “What do ye mean?”
“You used the herbs, did ye not? Bring me the whiskey and what’s left of the herbs, so I can estimate the potency.”
A tiny muscle under Serafina’s eye began to twitch. “I used them all.”
The desk overbalanced and the inkwell crashed to the floor. “You did what?”
“All of it. The whole packet.”
“Gods in heaven. How did you eat so much?”
“I didn’t eat it. I drank it. In whiskey.”
“In whiskey!”
“You said to.”
“I said I recommended putting my marigold tisane in whiskey. I said nothing about the mixture I gave you. Well, I hope you two enjoyed your little liaison. I’m surprised either of you can walk…or talk…or”—she looked at Gerard’s midlands with such naked curiosity he took a step backward, tripping over the threshold and only barely catching himself with the back of the settee—“or anything, frankly. Did you drink it too?”
Gerard hesitated. “I drank whiskey, yes. In the twenty-first century though. Not here.”
Serafina, who’d swept the pieces of broken inkwell onto a sheet of writing paper, dropped them with another crash. “You’re from the twenty-first century?!”
Undine collapsed back on her pillows. “Oh, this is recuperative.”
“That’s three hundred years from now!”
“There’s no slipping anything past you.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Why didn’t you say you summoned me with magic?”
“Stop!” Undine cried. “Both of you. Fortunately for us, ’tis very little trouble to reverse a love potion.”
“It wasn’t a love potion!” they said simultaneously.
Undine rolled her eyes. “Call it what you like. The mixture of invocation and fornication you gave form to could have powered Paris and his kinsmen throughout the entire Trojan War.”
Gerard grinned. “Trojan. Heh.”
Undine pointed to large jar on the chest, which Serafina retrieved instantly. Undine shook the gray, powdery substance into her palm. “To summarize, we have a man from the future summoned to the past for a single night of passion. You didn’t leave these rooms except to find me, and you didn’t talk to anyone else. Is that the sum of it?”
Gerard looked at Serafina; Serafina looked at the floor.
“We didn’t make love,” Serafina said, busying herself with the glass.
“Except we did,” Gerard said. “And I think a lot else happened too.” He cleared his throat. “Quite a lot.”
Undine flung the powder back into the jar and brushed off her hands. “What exactly? I have to know everything.”
“Everything?” Serafina said.
“Everything.”
About the Author
Gwyn Cready is a writer of contemporary, Scottish, and time travel romance. She’s been called “the master of time travel romance” and is the winner of the RITA Award, the most prestigious award given in romance writing. She has been profiled in Real Simple and USA Today, among others. Before becoming a novelist, she spent 25 years in brand management. She has two grown children and lives with her husband on a hill overlooking the magical kingdom of Pittsburgh.
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Giveaway
Print copy of Just in Time for a Highlander which is the first book in this series. Open to US residents only please
Synopsis
It’s tough being a woman in a man’s profession, especially for Abby Kerr, the unexpected chieftess of Clan Kerr. Loathe to marry but in need of a strong arm, Abby wishes for a Scots warrior and gets . . . Duncan, the historical reenactment hobbyist.
Wall Street Impresario Duncan MacHarg isn’t bad with a fencing foil, but he’s no Highlander. When a misdirected spell plucks him from the 21st century, he lands in 1705 Scotland at the feet of the fiercest woman he’s ever laid eyes on…
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