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The Magnates' Mail-Order Bride Giveaway and Excerpt!

3/16/2017

A mix-and-match mock engagement?

Ballerina Sofia Koslov’s career is on the line when she’s accosted at the airport by a rich, reckless playboy who thinks she’s his mail-order bride! But the playboy’s levelheaded brother, Quinn McNeill, solves the media snafu with a switcheroo. He’ll pretend to be her legitimate fiancé to protect her reputation—and to protect his family’s business deals from her father’s wrath. Sofia’s one condition: they’ll share the spotlight as a loving couple but won’t share a bed. But soon Quinn’s gentlemanly ways strike a chord, and Sofia’s dying to renege on that condition and have a real fling…

Did she realize how many complications would arise if they continued this fictional engagement? He’d really thought she would jump at the chance to say she’d turned down his proposal. But then again, he couldn’t deny a surge of desire at the prospect of seeing her again.

**EXCERPT**
“I’m willing to continue with the appearance of an engagement if that’s simpler for you.” He wanted to right the mess Cameron had made. And this time, it wasn’t for Cameron’s sake.

It was for Sofia’s.

“It would be easier for me.” She twisted some of her windblown blond hair behind her ear and he noticed a string of five tiny pearls outlining the curve. “Just for three more weeks. A month, at most, until the rumor mill in my company settles down. I
need to get through that important audition.”

She glanced his way for the first time in miles and caught him staring.

“Of course,” he agreed, mentally recalibrating his schedule to accommodate a woman in his life. He would damn well hand off the trip to Kiev to Cameron or Ian since Quinn would need to remain in New York. “In that case, maybe we should draw up a contract outlining the terms of the arrangement.”

With Vitaly Koslov threatening to block his business in Eastern Europe, Quinn needed to handle this as carefully as he would any complicated foreign acquisition.

“Is that wise?” Frowning, she withdrew a tin of mints from her leather satchel and fished a couple out, offering him one. “A paper trail makes it easier for someone to discover our secret.”

He took a mint, his eye drawn to her mouth as her lips parted. He found himself thinking about that kiss again. The way she’d tasted like mint then, too. And how an engagement would lead to more opportunities to touch her. The idea of a fake fiancée didn’t feel like an imposition when he looked at it that way. Far from it.

“Quinn?” Her head tipped sideways as she studied him, making him realize he’d never responded. “If you really think we need the protection of a legally binding contract—”

“Not necessarily.” He should keep this light. Friendly. Functional. “But we’ll want to be sure both of our interests are protected and that we know what we’re getting into.”

“A prenup for a false engagement.” She shook her head. “Only in New York.”

“Your father will want to ensure your reputation emerges unscathed,” he reminded her.

The limo driver hit the brakes suddenly, making them both lurch forward. On instinct, Quinn’s arm went out, restraining her. It was purely protective, until that moment when he became aware of his forearm pinned against her breasts, his hand anchored to her shoulder under the fall of silky hair.

A soft flush stole over her cheeks as he released her and they each settled back against their respective seat cushions. The awkward moment and the unwelcome heat seemed to mock his need to put the terms of this relationship in writing.

“That’s fine,” she agreed quickly, as if she couldn’t end the conversation fast enough. “If you want to draw up something, I will sign it and you can be sure I will not cause a fuss when we end the engagement.”

She wrapped her mohair cape more tightly around her slight figure, the action only reminding him of her graceful curves and the way she’d felt against him...

... Excerpt from The Magnate's Mail-Order Bride by Joanne Rock 2017

To pre-order Joanne's April release:

Amazon https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0373838409
BN http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-magnates-mail-order-bride-joanne-rock/1124690568
Kobo https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/the-magnate-s-mail-order-bride
iBooks https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-magnates-mail-order-bride/id1158788342?mt=11
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32336137-the-magnate-s-mail-order-bride

Enter to win a copy of of THE MAGNATE'S MAIL-ORDER BRIDE by answering the following question in the comments section below the post: Would you sign a prenup? Why or why not? Please include your email address with your answer. Share this blog post on FB or Twitter as additional entries to the GIVEAWAY. Shipping to US addresses only. Winner announced here on 3/23.

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His Last Defense Chapter One

3/11/2017

1 Comment

“Watch out on the bow!” Captain Nolee Arnauyq hollered into the mic of her crab-fishing boat, her heart beating every which way.

Below the wheelhouse, brightly clad deckhands scrambled for cover as gale-force winds whipped the Bering Sea, hurtling waves at the Pacific Sun. “Move it!” she yelled over the PA system.

The last man’s yellow slicker disappeared under the overhang just as another wave smashed the rail. It pummeled the wooden deck and metal gear, sweeping high across Nolee’s windows, obliterating her view of the black day.

Come on. Come on…

Her fingers tightened on the throttle as the vessel pitched in twenty-foot swells, buffeted by forty-five-knot winds. She peered through the streaming water. Despite the frigid late December temperature, the air inside the wheelhouse pressed, warm and humid. A trickle of sweat wound down her cheek. The weather maps hadn’t predicted the massive winter storm would jog this far west.

Focus.

Grab crab. Get your men home safe.

If the tempest dragged the deckhands overboard, she wouldn’t be able to locate them fast enough. Paralyzing hypothermia would take hold within minutes, death in five to ten.

“Everybody okay out there?” she called to the crew. One, two, three…four and five…six…she counted then recounted as they emerged, her nerves jangling.

“Rock and roll!” her barrel-chested deck boss, Everett, shouted, giving her a thumbs-up. After nine years of toiling alongside him, first as a deckhand and then as relief captain before her recent promotion, Nolee knew he never backed down from extreme weather challenges. And neither did she.

Despite everything, she couldn’t help but smile a bit at the amount of testosterone being thrown around—almost as much as the crab they’d caught. The undaunted gang took advantage of the momentary lull in the gale to bait another pot then drop it into the roiling sea. In a flash, the cage disappeared beneath the chop and its red marker and buoy grew indistinct as she steamed northwest on the edge of the unpredictable storm.

She slugged hot black coffee, burning her tongue, then jotted down the coordinates for this latest set on the string of pots and squinted into the gale. The tattered edges of her mast’s American flag whipped in the air.

The hairs on her arms rose. Pricked. Sometimes, she swore she could smell the ocean coming at her, a briny, deep-water scent that floated into her nose, her lungs, her blood. Sure enough, another wave rose; a roaring filled her ears.

“Off the rails,” she ordered. “That means you, blue,” she added to a staring, slack-jawed Tyler. She recalled her own growing pains as a teenage deckhand, how the numbing work back then had helped her heal her broken heart. Or form a scab over it, anyway. With relief, she watched Tyler stumble after the older men who’d been grinding all morning since dawn.

More water crested the port side, sweeping beneath the sixty crab pots left onboard. It lifted the sorting table in the middle of the boat and then slammed it down with a loud bang.

She winced. Was it damaged? Anxiety coiled inside her. She couldn’t afford the time to do a major repair. As a twenty-eight-year-old female rookie captain, she had a lot to prove.

She’d worked her tail off on fishing vessels ever since she was old enough to know she wasn’t cut out for the traditional lifestyle of her Inuit ancestors, and realize that if she wanted to help her single mom make ends meet, fishing the Bering Strait was the Alaskan version of the lottery. The stakes were high as hell, but the potential for payoff kicked butt. Most days, Nolee understood the sea, and the mentality it took to work it. Today? She and the sea were not on the same page. At all. Making her wonder what she’d been thinking to talk her commercial fishing company, Dunham Seafoods, into letting her captain a ship of her own.

A picture of her large Alutiiq family, taped beside her radar, caught her eye. Her aunts, uncles and cousins goofed around for the camera, while her mother stood slightly apart, frowning.

Would her critical parent be proud of her?

“What’s going on, Pete?” she called to her engineer.

The men had heaved the metal sorting table upright andPete squatted beside it. “Wheel’s broken.”

Suddenly the bow dipped, and her eyes widened as a three-story wall of water rose and rose and rose in front of them.

“Take cover!” she screamed into the mic.

In an instant, the Pacific Sun bashed through a rogue, tsunami-sized wave, cleaving forward, plowing just below the surface, the world water. A deep shudder rattled through her and her breath was knocked clean out of her.

Reacting on instinct, she advanced the throttle, giving the ship more horsepower. They needed to bust through the wave. Not dive. She kept her hand steady on the controls, pleading with the sea to release her and her crew, and then they broke the surface, the gear scattered, her men gone.

“I need to hear from everyone, now!” she thundered, barely able to hear over the blood pounding against her eardrums.

Tyler crawled from between a couple of pot stacks waving an arm overhead, while the rest of the men staggered from their positions, clapping each other on the back, punching the air.

“It’s getting squirrelly out there,” she announced when she trusted her voice not to betray her concern. Crab fishing and coddling didn’t mix. “Inside, guys.”

Her men shook their heads and disappeared from view into the galley below. Just then a piercing alarm shrilled. She shot to her feet. The high water sensor!

Pete appeared on deck and sloshed through the rolling water to throw open the hatch down to the keel, Everett fast on his heels. A sickening bile rose in her throat.

Stu, her relief captain, raced up the wheelhouse stairs.

“Leak?” he asked, his voice a gravelly smoker’s rasp.

She nodded, then flipped on the speaker to the engine room. “Pete. Tell me what’s going on.”

The sound of rushing water crashed through the speaker. There was static, and then Pete’s faint voice emerged. “We’ve cracked the cooling pipe. Nine to ten inches.” “How much pressure is coming through there?” A rush of air escaped from between her clenched teeth.

“It’s gushing.” His gruff words were like hands on both her arms, giving her a shake.

She cleared her clogged throat, twice, then asked, “Can we replace it?”

“Yeah. But not out here. We don’t have that piece.”

The boat dropped several feet, rolled. “Rubber wrap won’t hold it,” she mused out loud, her pulse skyrocketing. Clamping down her panic, she turned the boat slightly to keep it from pitching so much. “It’s our only shot,” came Pete’s grim voice.

“All right. Use baling and wire it up good. Stop that leak.”

“Roger.”

After several minutes of battling growing swells, more alarms blared on-screen. Failed bilge pumps. Engine power loss.

No.

She blinked at the words and a dark shadow pressed at the base of her skull, rising. The possibility of the ship sinking seeped into her consciousness. Squeezed. Nearly drew blood.

She pressed her eyes shut for a moment. Gathered herself. “Stu, I’m heading out. Keep us afloat.”

“Roger. Will do.”

Grabbing her gloves, she clattered downstairs and donned waterproof gear. She blasted by the remaining hard-faced crew and scowled when they rose to follow her. “Stay put,” she ordered, then listed, side to side, down the short hall to the portal and shoved down the latch.

Instantly, the wind snatched the door, swinging it wide and making her stumble, frigid spray buffeting her, knocking her sideways. Her boots skidded, and she crashed to one knee. Warm, iron-tasting blood washed across her bitten tongue.
She ignored the ache in her leg and pushed on, fighting her way to the engine room. Her breath came in short gasps that misted in the salty, water-logged air. After climbing down the wall ladder, she dropped into knee deep flooding.

Pete labored over the cracked pipe. She shoved through the brackish swirl toward Everett and spotted three mostly submerged bilge pumps. A dark ring scorched their tops.

They’d overheated. Beyond fixing. Her mouth vacuumed itself dry.

“Tell the guys to put on their life jackets if they’re not on already and bucket this out while you replace those.”
Everett frowned fiercely. “We’ve only got the one spare.”

She swore under her breath. Not enough. Not even close.

“Hook it up fast.”

Everett grunted, then clambered topside.

She thought quickly. Without enough operating bilge pumps to stop the rising water, and the pipe still spraying, the engines wouldn’t reboot, leaving the floundering Pacific Sun at the mercy of the relentless sea. Buckets wouldn’t do much.
Still. She wouldn’t quit. If she lost this eight million dollar boat on her first time at the wheel, she might never have another shot at captaining one and leading the independent life she’d worked hard to achieve.

But even more important, the safety of her men came first. They counted on her, as did their families. Even as another wave tilted the wet world sideways, sloshing frigid water past her knees, Nolee couldn’t help thinking about them. Everett had a newborn son. Pete had postponed his honeymoon until the opilio crab season, which they’d gotten special permission to fish early, ended. They all needed this run.

She wouldn’t let anything happen to them.

Back in the wheelhouse, she snatched up her radio, her eyes meeting Stu’s. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is the vessel Pacific Sun. We’re taking on water.” White noise crackled through the speaker. “Roger.

Pacific Sun, this is United States Coast Guard, Kodiak, Alaska, communication station. Over.”

She relayed rapid-fire specifics. “The seas are pounding us,” she concluded, her voice hoarse. “Not sure how long before we capsize.”

Speaking the words made it all the more real. She’d never been seasick a day in her life, but right now, she knew a whole lot about heartsick.

“Roger that. Jayhawk is on the way with ETA of twelve minutes. Swimmer and pumps will be deployed.”

Bittersweet relief washed through her as she left Stu at the helm and joined the bucket line. On one hand, she didn’t want to be rescued. Never had. But on her life’s balance sheet, the US Coast Guard owed her big-time for the life-gutting sacrifice she’d made to them nine years ago when she’d given up the person who mattered most to her. They could damn well pay up with some help today.

She passed heavy pails among her crew, fighting a losing battle against water that wouldn’t stop coming. Half the buckets spilled or sloshed most of their contents before making it over the rail, the deck pitching so fiercely below their feet they could barely maintain balance. She worked fiercely, doggedly, and thought she’d weep with relief when she finally glimpsed orange as the Jayhawk passed over the ship. Keeping her head down, she continued to pass slippery, frigid buckets until Tyler pointed out that the rescue swimmer was on his way down.

She stared up at the dangling rescue swimmer descending onto her bucking deck. The mountain-sized man, clad in a bright orange suit, unhooked himself and strode her way, his step sure and nimble despite the heaving boat.

She blinked, suddenly feeling more off-balance than ever, fooled into thinking she knew him. It was just the outfit. Just that cursed Coast Guard swagger. Yet there was something about the broad-shouldered shape, the assured step and the bone-deep confidence visible in the green eyes behind his clear mask as he drew closer. It couldn’t be.

“Dylan?”

He’d sworn never to come back to Alaska, had left without a goodbye. Her legs and arms went slack, and for a second she thought she might smack the ground.

The worst mistake of her life flipped up his visor. Spoke. “Hello, Nolee.”

Continue reading the rest of Chapter One HERE !

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The Magnates' Mail-Order Bride Giveaway and Excerpt!

His Last Defense Chapter One

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