GIVEAWAY: "A Time to Love" by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy

A Time To Love
by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Champagne Books
Time-Travel

Available at:
Amazon (Kindle Edition)
Barnes & Noble (Nook Book)
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Blurb:
Reclusive songwriter Samuel Baird lives on a remote Arkansas mountain in the Ouachita forest where he’s drinking his life away. The last thing he wants is a woman to complicate things but during a spectacular thunderstorm a woman arrives just in time to save his life. Annie says she’s from the late 1800’s and Samuel thinks she’s crazy. Even so, Annie manages to gain his attention and affection. In time she convinces him she did travel through time. To reach a happily ever after, Samuel and Annie must overcome several obstacles both past and present. Annie must reveal the secret she’s keeping and it’ll take a trip home to meet his family in Nashville to work out all the issues. The couple shares joy, tragedy, and family ties along the way.

Excerpt:
Her feet were at the edge of the sheer drop to the thick vegetation below and when she moved, she lost her balance and teetered. She struggled to gain solid footing but failed, going to her knees in an effort to keep from falling. Her hands flailed out with panic.

He grasped her beneath each arm and stayed her. She clung to him and he jerked her away from the brink. Without time to analyze his actions or emotions, he acted on instinct and gathered her to him. She trembled in his arms and he tightened his hold to reassure her.

“It’s all right now.” He made the phrase a mantra by repeating it three times. Her breath slowed as she stopped shaking. With the danger past, he felt an intense awareness of her body against his. Every pliable curve was a fit against his frame. He knew the cadence of her heartbeat and smelled the fragrance of her hair. His body quickened as she moved against him, verification that she felt it too, and the strange pull that could make strangers into lovers.

Annie put her mouth to his. He could not move for one long moment as he felt her warm, sweet mouth moving over his and he kissed her back. The act restored something that had been dormant within and he was the old Samuel, healed and unharmed. He was free of the dark animal lust that once carried him to strange beds, a man reborn and made whole.

No embrace had been so intimate since the early years of his marriage and his senses marked each nuance, each sweet facet of the kiss. His loins engorged and his soul ached to fill its hungering need. Before he lost his ability to stop, he checked himself. He took his lips from her mouth and pulled away, leaving her to stare at him with haunting pain.

“I can’t do this.” He choked out the sentence with anguish and shame. No words existed to explain to this woman that he did not dare risk his heart again. He could not tell her that he was a coward. That would require courage, which he lacked and so he withdrew.

“Let’s go.” When she didn’t move, he stalked past her. He waited until she was seated and pulled out, driving too fast on the twisting road. He did not speak and neither did she. Full dark had fallen by the time he parked the truck but he did not wait to walk her into the cabin. By the time she came in, he had downed his first glass of straight bourbon and poured a second. He gulped it, daring her to react but she ignored him.

Instead, she put away clean clothes and tidied the few dishes left in the sink. Although his eyes followed her, Samuel could not speak. His lips still tingled with the feel of her mouth on his and he drank with grim purpose to eradicate it without success. His mind raced in rapid circles as he struggled to understand his emotions. He felt caught, trapped by his history, and hopeless. All of it was more than he could face and he drank far into the night.

How to Enter:
Go HERE to enter. Winner will be selected via Random.org. Contest open internationally and ends midnight US EST January 26.

About the Author:
Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy is a full-time romance author. A native of the old historic city of St. Joseph, Missouri she now lives and writes in the beautiful Missouri Ozark region. Her romance novels include Wolfe’s Lady (December 2010 Evernight Publishing), The Love Covenant Series (Evernight Publishing), Love Never Fails (May 2011, Rebel Ink Press), Kinfolk (July 2011, Champagne Books), The Marriage Cure (Astraea Press) Witness Protection Program (Rebel Ink Press) and Sing We Now of Christmas (Rebel Ink Press). Upcoming in 2012 she has five more novels forthcoming from Rebel Ink Press.

Email: leeannwriter@att.net
Twitter: @leeannwriter
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