Into The Breach, Meatbags...

 
Happy Launch Day, everyone!  All That Glitters is now available for purchase on Amazon, as well as in multiple formats on Smashwords.  

Thank you all for your love and support.  I can honestly say I couldn't have done this without you!  Enjoy!

Ava Faraday has spent her life running- from love, from her past, from herself. Now she has only one place left to go: home.  She arrives in Nome, Alaska determined to make a fresh start.  With no other options available, she joins the crew of her estranged father's dredge, and does her best to learn her new- and dangerous- job before she dies trying.  The last thing she needs is to fall in love.

Gold dredger Ethan Calhoun has struggled to put the ghosts of his own troubled past to rest.  After five long years as an outsider in Nome, he's finally made good.   When Ava comes to town, she stirs up feelings in him he can't control, and isn't sure he wants to.  The closer they become, the more Ethan wonders: will those feelings destroy everything he's worked for? 

In Nome's dredging community, loyalties change, and trust is anything but guaranteed. When they are faced with a common threat, Ethan and Ava realize they must work together to survive.  Can two lifelong runners trust each other?  Can they convince each other- and themselves- that love is worth the risk?

Excerpt from All That Glitters

Even her suitcase was conspiring to make her life hell.

Ava Faraday stared down at the jumbled mess of clothes at her feet.  Then she glared at the now-useless latch on her weathered carry-on.  Who had ever heard of a suitcase lock springing open like that?

She fought back the hysterical, helpless laughter that threatened to bubble out of her.  She hadn’t even been back in Nome for a full day, and already things were going sideways.  Flashing her underwear collection to half the town’s male population was hardly the homecoming she’d had in mind.

With as much dignity as she could muster, Ava began collecting her clothes.  It was all she could do to ignore the wagging eyebrows and not-so-subtle whistles from the men working the docks around her.  What the hell was she doing here?  It had been years since she’d considered coming back.  She’d convinced herself there was no point; everything she wanted lay in front of her, not behind.

Ava swiped a strand of black hair from her eyes.  It was that damn letter.

She hadn’t been surprised to find out her father was in trouble.  She couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t needed to borrow money from someone or the other.  And she hadn’t really cared.  Lord knew she didn’t owe him anything.

Yet here she was, in a place she didn’t know anymore, looking for a man she wasn’t even sure she’d recognize.  Something about that letter had drawn her back.  Maybe it was the tone.  Maybe it was the memories it conjured up.  Not all of them were bad.

Then again, maybe she was just out of places to run to.

Ava straightened and looked around her.  The piercing blue of the water in the harbor bled into the horizon.  The sky was nearly black with guillemots, their blood red feet flashing as they looped and dove.  She’d never quite gotten over leaving this place.  She carried it all with her, in the faintly native shadows of her face, in the darker recesses of her soul.  She’d left too suddenly, and she’d always felt like there was a piece of her inadvertently left behind.

Now was her chance to find it.  When she did, she'd finally be able to leave Nome for good.

Ava shoved the last of her possessions back into her suitcase and took a brief visual inventory.  It looked like everything was-

Wait.

Her cheeks reddened.  She tried to seem nonchalant as she looked around.  Of all the things to be missing…

“Lose something?”

Ava froze.  The deep, honeyed drawl reverberated through her.  She hadn’t known it was possible to actually feel someone’s voice.  Her nerve endings hummed.  She stood, and found herself eye level with the finest chest she’d ever seen.  She swallowed hard against the irritating flutter in her stomach, and looked up.  A pair of bright gray eyes twinkled back down at her.

The man was built like someone who worked for a living, broad and strong.  Under his weathered baseball cap, his sandy blond hair was slightly shaggier than was strictly respectable.  His face looked like it had been chiseled out of the same granite as the breakers in the harbor, and his lips-

Ava tore her gaze away from his lips, but not before she caught the edges twitch.  Heat flooded her face.  She opened her mouth to speak, when a flash of red caught her eye.

Dangling from one of the man’s long, perfect fingers was a pair of red lace panties.

“I’m afraid these aren’t really my color.”

### 

Available for purchase on Smashwords and Amazon