Neither is ready for true love,
but the nights in Las Vegas are long and lonely…
but the nights in Las Vegas are long and lonely…
FOREVER NIGHTS
A Girl's Night Out Novel
Eva Moore
Releasing June 27, 2017
One more
easy job, life coach and empath Jamie Donovan promises herself. Then she’ll
take a well-earned break from her booming business to properly grieve the loss
of her mother and pull herself together. When that job turns out to be an
ambush intervention for Las Vegas heiress Layla DeGrasso, all bets are off. But
Layla isn’t Jamie’s biggest problem on her new job. That honor goes to her
client’s hot as hell bodyguard, Axel. Damn those abs.
Axel
Frasier is finally free from the Army and is trying to make a name for his
fledgling network security firm. When he lands a promising contract at Lush,
Victor DeGrasso’s crown jewel on the Vegas strip, a few quiet weeks of system
analysis beckon. But a twist of events force him back into the role of
bodyguard, one he swore he’d never play again. It wouldn’t be so bad if he
could only keep his head on straight around his clients’ distracting life
coach.
Jamie needs
to move past the baggage her mother has saddled her with, while keeping Layla
on track. Axel can’t afford to be distracted by lust and doesn’t trust the lure
of more. Neither is ready for true love, but the nights in Las Vegas are long
and lonely…
Heat.
Movement. Escape. Jamie craved release. Her mind wouldn’t click off. Thoughts
of work and family plagued her, but not for long. The bright lights of Las
Vegas still illumined the darkness as she walked confidently into the club. The
first rays of dawn were not far away, but she would take what she needed before
they called her back to reality. Surveying the room, she chose her partner carefully.
She approached with confidence, and the chase began. After a slow build-up, she
was desperate for more. More heat. More movement. More quiet space in her head.
She chased what she craved with ruthless enthusiasm.
The pounding beat thudded through her
body, mirroring the racing of her heart. Heat built within, a hot flush burning
her skin. The rhythm was incessant, grinding. Jamie was caught. It’s not enough. It will never be enough.
She shut down the negative voice in her head and gave her body over to the
moment, the movement. It would be enough for now.
She
sprinted towards her release. Freedom beckoned. All she had to do was reach for
it. She bore down, racing for the finish. Muscles screaming, sweat streaming,
she panted for breath as she reached her peak, finally satisfied.
When
the treadmill kicked into cool down mode after her five-mile hills challenge,
she sucked a deep breath down into her heaving lungs. Keeping her legs moving,
she came back down from the high of that final sprint.
For
some, the gym was a chore, a duty, or an ego stroke. For Jamie, it was a
sanctuary. When she ran or lifted, she clicked her mind off. No duties, no
clients, no emotions or intuition. As a life coach, she was committed to being
available to her clients. As an empath, she required alone time to recharge her
emotional batteries. It was difficult to find balance between the two extremes.
Thanks to a few “real life makeover” segments on Ellen that had gone viral, she
was a household name. Fame made it even more difficult to find the time for
herself. The exhaustion a brutal workout provided helped her maintain control.
It
also helped her ignore her recent sexual drought. If she got herself tired
enough, she could almost forget that it had been a year since a man had touched
her without an ulterior motive. And a hell of a year it had been. Between her
skyrocketing fame and the death of her mother, she was reeling. She was ready
for a well-earned break, as soon as this last contract was finished.
She
wiped down her treadmill and turned to tackle the free weights when a startled
squeal escaped from her lips. He’d come in silently. She hadn’t noticed his
presence in the hotel gym, but he had to have seen her. There was no avoiding
him now. After a second glance, she wasn’t altogether sure she wanted to. She
might be okay with her drought, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate
watching a hot summer storm through the window.
He sat on the resistance machine,
gripping the foam covered handles back near his shoulders. Each outward press
caused the muscles in his chest to swell with exertion. His sweat-damp white
t-shirt did little to hide some serious pectorals. And his arms, good Lord, his
arms. They stretched the sleeves of that t-shirt to the breaking point. She had
the irrational desire to feel them wrapped around her.
Another press drew her gaze further.
The tendons in his hands and wrists clenched as he began to press the bars away
from his chest. Those hands sparked a thousand instant fantasies in Jamie’s sex
starved brain. He oozed danger, like a biker gripping the handlebars of a
Harley. His short-cropped black hair read military or prison, and the beard
spoke of rugged survival. Danger was the only clear thought Jamie could latch
onto, as she nodded a quick hello and spun away to the free weights. How long
had she been staring?
Tasty Q&A with Eva
Moore
If you had to title your own life,
what would it be, and why?
This honestly made me laugh. “And
Then She Moved” would be the title of my autobiography. I married an ambitious
man, and we have moved 12 times in the last 15 years, and that doesn’t include
the college years. I’ve had three children: one in Illinois, one in California,
and one in Singapore. While all that travel and relocating takes effort, it has
brought amazing people and experiences into my life. I wouldn’t trade them for
the world. And hey, I can write anywhere, right?
Have you ever come up with content on
vacation?
All
the time. With all of that moving and traveling, we have seen amazing places
and things. I always travel with a small journal to take notes of sights,
sounds, and scents because inevitably my characters end up there some day. Each
book in the Girls’ Night Out series is set in a place I’ve either lived or
visited. “Someone Special” is in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I wrote it the
year we moved here from Chicago. I was essentially a tourist in my new hometown.
“Second Chances” is set in Yolo County, CA and is based on the organic farm my
veggies come from and a festival I attended. “Three Strikes” is set in Bali,
where my husband surprised me with the best birthday trip ever during our
Singapore years. “Forever Nights” takes place in Las Vegas, because I was so
inspired by RT 2016 and my meeting with Cherry Adair that it all just fell into
place.
Are any of your characters based on
people in your real life?
My characters always have a healthy
dose of me in them, but they are also made up of borrowed traits from people I
love. While my best friend from college was reading “Three Strikes”, she called
me at 3 am from the other side of the world to ask, “Am I Stella? Because I am
TOTALLY Stella!”
How did you come up with the concept
and the characters for the story?
When I began the Girls’ Night Out
Series, I wanted my heroes and heroines to find love, obviously, but I also
wanted to celebrate female friendships. I would be lost without my girlfriends.
By the time I got to Jamie’s story in book 4, I had a pretty good idea who she
was. She’s the girlfriend who tells you what you need to hear, even if it’s not
what you want to hear. She’s also an empath, so she feels things more deeply
than most. I knew she was going to fall for a guy who absolutely did NOT want
to share his feelings with anyone. To get motivated, I joined Cherry Adair’s
Finish The Damn Book Contest. She graciously spent a half an hour with me in a
darkened Las Vegas Starbucks helping me talk through my plot and subplot and
conflict and EVERY LAST THING! It was amazing. The energy I took away from that
meeting spun into Forever Nights. When it actually ended up winning the
contest, I was floored. Literally. I sat on the floor of my bedroom trying to
breathe with my cell phone clutched in my hand. Life has been a whirlwind ever
since.
What do you like to do when you aren't
writing?
When I am not writing, my three
darling daughters keep me running! I am a former third grade teacher who is now
a stay-at-home mom. They are all off school for summer break, and my days are
full of swim lessons, play dates, and marathons of MasterChef Junior and Great
British Bakeoff. If I have any spare time (hah), I am reading either the
tattered old school romance in my purse or one of my many impulsive additions
to my digital TBR. I also spend far too much time on Facebook with the ladies
in the Old School Romance Book Club.
Do you have any advice to give to aspiring
writers?
Don’t quit. Keep writing, and keep
moving forward. I had a few false starts, including a historical romance set in
Venice that ran into history issues (Darn you, Napoleon) and a contemporary
about an elementary school teacher (a real stretch for me) that fizzled near
the end. I turned to writing again when I was home with a three year old and an
infant. I was slowly going insane not speaking to other adults, and I was too
tired to escape into a book by the end of the night. Solution: start talking to
characters in my head. They eventually got so mouthy, I had to put pen to paper
just to shut them up. I wrote “Someone Special” over the course of a year, one
morning a week at Peet’s coffee shop, while my oldest was in preschool and the then
baby was with a sitter. I haven’t looked back. I highly recommend joining the
RWA just to have access to their online classes and local chapters. I have
learned so much in the last 5 years, and my writing has changed so much. If I were
still beating my head against the plot wall in that historical disaster, none
of my girls would’ve seen the light of day. Instead, I let it go and moved on,
and now I have published four books. In four months.
Is there anything that you would like
to say to your readers and fans?
You all are fantastic. Your
enthusiasm is such an amazing gift, and I am delighted to be a part of
Romancelandia. I am one of you. When I find a book I love, I gush and share it
everywhere and stalk the author on Facebook just to say, “Thanks for breaking
my heart and putting it back together again!” The fact that people I don’t know
are leaving reviews for my books is still a bit surreal, but every time someone
tells me how much they loved it, I just light up inside. And then I funnel that
joy into the next one…
Can you tell us about your upcoming
book?
I am working on a Christmas novella
featuring two secondary characters from “Someone Special”, Seth and Brandy, in an
“It’s A Wonderful Life” adaptation. The novella also sets up my next series,
which centers on Seth’s cousins in a next-generation Fixer Upper spin-off set
in the crazy Silicon Valley real estate market. I can’t wait to share it with
you.
Winner
of Cherry Adair’s Finish The Damn Book Contest, Eva Moore writes sweet
and sexy contemporary romance, after leaving a career in the classroom to raise
her daughters. Forever Nights is the fourth and final book in her Girls’ Night
Out Series. Eva now lives in Silicon Valley, after moving around the world and
back, with her college sweetheart, her three gorgeous girls, and two Shih Tzus
who think they are cats. She can be found most nights hiding in her
closet/office, scribbling away, and loves to hear from the outside world.
Thank you for hosting!
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