Excerpt & #Giveaway – The Girl in the Moss by Loreth Anne White @Loreth #MontlakeRomance
Title: The Girl in the Moss
Author: Loreth Anne White
Release Date: June 12, 2018
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Synopsis
Disgraced ex-cop Angie Pallorino is determined to make a new start for herself as a private investigator. But first, she and her lover, newly promoted homicide detective James Maddocks, attempt a quiet getaway to rekindle a romance struggling in the shadows of their careers. The peace doesn’t last long when human skeletal remains are found in a nearby mossy grove.
This decades-old mystery is just what Angie needs to establish her new career—even as it thrusts her and Maddocks back into the media spotlight, once again endangering their tenuous relationship.
Then, when Angie’s inquiry into the old crime intersects with a cold case from her own policing past—one that a detective on Maddocks’s new team is working—the investigation takes a startling twist. It puts more than Angie’s last shot at redemption and a future with Maddocks at risk. The mystery of the girl in the moss could kill her.
Excerpt
“It was supposed to go down differently,” he said.
“What was?”
“This trip. Tonight.” He hesitated, then thought, What the hell. If this all blows up in my face, it’s better I know now rather than later. He reached into the inside pocket of his down jacket, and his fingers touched the slim fly box he’d been keeping there. It was warm against his body, under the down, near his heart. He took out the box and inhaled deeply, nerves suddenly fierce. “I . . . wanted to make it official.”
Her gaze dropped to the little tackle box. She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
He opened the fly box. Nestled in foam that would ordinarily hold flies with hooks was a simple blue-white solitaire diamond set in platinum. The stone glinted in the firelight.
Her jaw dropped. Her gaze shot up to his face. Shock registered in her eyes.
“Marry me, Angie Pallorino.”
“You . . . I . . . you already asked me.”
“And you said you’d think about it. I don’t recall a proper hard-and-fast yes.” He sucked in another deep breath. “We’ve both been so busy we haven’t really managed to discuss it or make plans. That’s why I wanted some time away with you. I wanted to make it special, Ange. Official. With a ring. Set a wedding date.” He gave a soft snort. “I asked the chef at the lodge to prep a special dinner for us on this last night, to be served with that French wine you like. A fire was to be lit in our room, hot tub bubbling on the deck. Some real lodge luxury after three nights of riverside camping. But here we are instead, guarding a decaying corpse.” He smiled. “Typical, eh?”
She stared at the diamond nestled in the foam. Emotion glittered into her eyes. Wind gusted, fluttering the strips of flagging tape they’d secured to the cordon around the grave site.
“I . . . don’t know what to say.”
Disquiet feathered into him. He remained silent as he watched her study the ring without touching it. Tension tightened her features, and her lips pressed into a thin line as though she was struggling to keep her emotions in check, battling with what to say next. And all over again he felt he was going to lose her. He felt vulnerable, laid bare, raw to the wind.
Afraid.
You could say yes.
He cleared his throat and said slowly, “You wanted this trip, right? Some romantic time together?”
“Yes, yes, of course. Something romantic, but . . . I . . . I didn’t know you had this in mind.”
“I’ve upset you.”
She swallowed, her nose going pink. She wiped her hand across her mouth.
“Look at me, Angie. Talk to me.”
Carefully, she raised her eyes. What he saw in them clutched at his heart.
“Maybe we should wait, Maddocks,” she said. “Until I’ve got enough supervised hours under my belt, until I start my own PI agency.”
“Why? Why wait?”
Silence.
“Angie?”
“Once I’ve got it all squared away, you know? I’ll be in a better place to plan for this. Once—”
“You’re running,” he said. “You’ve been avoiding me ever since I first posed the question, avoiding talking about this, us, setting a date. Wedding plans. You’ve been using all that shit about hours, needing to work around the clock, seven days a week, no weekends, as a—”
“I told you! I hate what I’m doing right now, sneaking around in the dead of night, hanging out in cheap clubs and motels tailing couples indulging in sordid affairs, trying to catch them in flagrante to prove their infidelity to a sad and jealous spouse who then detests me”—she jabbed her fingers against her chest—“for rubbing their noses in the photographic proof.” She swore softly. “But I need to accrue those hours as fast as possible so I can get out from under that Brixton’s control and go out on my own. I—”
“Don’t. Do not mess with me, Angie,” he said firmly. “This has less to do with Jock Brixton than what I asked you in the car on the drive up. I saw your reaction. That question set the tone for the weekend. It goes right to the heart of this, of us, doesn’t it?”
She turned her face away from him, away from the diamond ring in the box he was still holding, the ring she had not touched. She glared into the flames. He watched her carotid pulse at her neck.
“It was just a simple question about whether you’d ever thought about having kids, Angie.”
She swung to face him. “Listen—”
“No, you listen to me. I don’t care about having children if you don’t want them. I have Ginny—I’ve been there. I don’t need to start parenting all over again. I just wanted to know what you want. Because I care about understanding what’s going on inside the woman I love, the woman in my life. The woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. It’s a normal question, one of the things normal people discuss when they’re going to spend the rest of their lives together.”
A tear escaped her eye and leaked down her cheek.
Maddocks cursed inwardly. Wrong thing to say. How could Angie Pallorino be “normal”? Her childhood, her past, was violent and bloody and abusive. She was a textbook case for some victim psych study. And yeah, a true crime book on her life story would be out soon, written by forensic shrink Dr. Reinhold Grablowski against Angie’s wishes and without her cooperation. It was a miracle she was even functional.
“I miss it,” she said eventually, still not meeting his gaze. “The job. Sex crimes. Homicide. Being a cop. Carrying a gun. Having some authority around a crime scene. Running an investigation.”
“I know.” She turned sharply to face him, her features raw. “I’m struggling. I don’t know how not to be a cop, Maddocks. I feel like I’m something . . . less. And making such a big life commitment at a time when I can’t even figure out who I am, who I want to be—I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do.” Her gaze bored into his. “Because most of all, I never want to disappoint you. I don’t want to let you down and have you think one day down that road that you made a terrible mistake.”
“This was a mistake,” he said, closing the lid on the box and shutting the diamond away from the light. “My mistake.”
About the Author
Loreth Anne White is an award-winning, bestselling author of romantic suspense, thrillers, and mysteries, including The Drowned Girls and The Lullaby Girl, the first two books in the Angie Pallorino series. Winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mainstream Mystery/Suspense, Loreth is also a three-time RITA finalist, plus a recipient of the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the National Readers’ Choice Award, the Romantic Crown for Best Romantic Suspense and Best Book Overall, and a Booksellers’ Best finalist. A former journalist who has worked in both South Africa and Canada, she now resides in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest with her family. When not writing, she skis, bikes, and hikes the trails with her dog, doing her best to avoid the bears (albeit unsuccessfully).
