How I Started Reading Romance

by Bronwyn Jameson

Do you remember your first?

We're talking romance reading here, just to be clear, and it's a question asked and answered time and again amongst the devoted.  Many -- most? -- readers can recite that first book's title, the author, the year, where they read it, the impression it left and the addiction it started.  You know that old saying, "you never forget your first."

Well, I have forgotten...or perhaps, more accurately, I never took in the title and author but simply fastened onto the words and the story.  I don't even recall my age at the time, but I'm guessing early teens.  My mum bought the Woman's Weekly -- the UK one -- for the recipes and the knitting (and probably the royal/celeb gossip, if they did that back then) and I must have been choking for something to read one weekend and discovered the fiction section.  They used to publish abridged versions of, I think, Mills & Boon.  Definitely classic romance, definitely of the category style, definitely serialised.

I remember the serialised part because of the painfully long wait from week to week to get the next instalment.  I recall calling into the newsagent in the mornings on my way to school to check if the new magazine was in, ahead of my mother in the afternoon.  Because I HAD TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!!!

Fair to say I was a teensy bit obsessed.

This topic has been on my mind, and turned into this blog post, as I've just completed an online course with Romance Writers of Australia on Branding, with the always-brilliant Nikki Logan.  One of the questions I found enormously difficult to answer: what is unique about YOUR stories?  In mulling this over -- and over and over, from this angle and that perspective -- I went back to the start.

Why did I start writing romance?  Why did I start reading romance?  And, yes, I loved and still love the optimism of these stories, and the female point of view, and the treatment of real, true, genuine family/human problems, the emotional highs and lows, and the happy endings brought about by character growth and change.

But I also loved and still love the armchair journey into another world.  As a 13 year old girl who'd never been further from the farm than an occasional South Coast family holiday, every book-world was exotic and exciting. A quaintly-named Cotswold village, the Australian outback, a penthouse overlooking Sydney Harbour, a Texan ranch,  a New Zealand hunting lodge, a Scottish castle, a villa in the south of France...  

These were the worlds I visited through my early romance reading and, I realised, my love of armchair travel has carried through to my writing.  Each time I start a new story I take off to a new place and experience that world through the eyes of my characters.  I trust I am also taking my readers along on the journey to a new and wonderful place.

Do you remember when you first started reading romance?  What did you love most about the stories at that time in your life?

Favourites Category Books of 2013

I did a post about a month ago about my favourite single title romances of 2013, and at the time I said I'd be doing a post about my favourite category books soon. Well, this is that post! :)

When I started looking through my bookshelves to see what I'd read in 2013, I realised I hadn't read as many category books as I usually do. Which means I'd like to read a heap more in 2014, so please, give me your recommendations in the comments to start me off!

As with the last post, this list isn't limited to books published in 2013, just ones I read last year.

1. Last Chance Proposal, by Barbara DeLeo
The hero of this book, Cy, is all that's good about heroes, and his little boy, Jonty is adorable and heart-breaking. The setting is strongly New Zealand, which added gorgeously to the story's flavour. This book made me happy-sigh.

2. Doukakis's Apprentice, by Sarah Morgan
 This book came with a lot of buzz, so I was a bit wary, but I loved it. The heroine was quirky, fun and brave, and she helped the hero change his life for the better. I can see why it won a Rita!

3. Flirting With Danger, by Claire Baxter
Loved that the hero and heroine were both firefighters. Loved the journey they both took. Loved the flirty dialogue. Loved it so much, in fact, that I gave it a cover quote. :)
 

4. The Billionaire's Bridal Bid, by Emily McKay
This book came out in 2011, but I only got around to reading it this year. It's a reunion story where the hero is a geek (how cool is that?) and the heroine runs a diner. Can't tell you how much I loved this book!

5. How To Mend A Broken Heart, by Amy Andrews
It came out in 2o12, but I was lucky enough to grab a copy at a book signing a bit later. I love that the hero and heroine in this book are a bit older than average romance characters - they tried marriage once and it ended in tragedy. Their journey of healing and finding each other again is incredibly intense.

Bonus Book: I'd just started Nikki Logan's Slow Dance With The Sheriff when my Rita judging package arrived, so I haven't finished it yet, but I can't wait to get back to it!

So tell me, what other good category books did you read in 2013? I'm ready and waiting for recommendations!

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!

Today we have a smooch from Their Miracle Twins by Nikki Logan, but first ...

the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- Claire Scott!

Congratulations, Claire! Please contact Sue MacKay at slmackay @ ts . co . nz (minus the spaces) and she'll send you a copy of Surgeon in a Wedding Dress.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Their Miracle Twins by Nikki Logan ...



Love...
Work has always been a refuge for Dr Sarah Livingstone - no more so than now! As a bride on the run from her hastily cancelled wedding, a new challenge as temporary surgeon in the coastal town of Port Weston should be the perfect cure for heartache... Except the hunky town doctor, brooding Daniel Riley, wants to get up close and personal! But living with Dan and his adorable four-year-old daughter has workaholic Sarah dreaming dreams that, for her, are impossible fantasies…
Marriage…?
This baby offers Flynn his only hope of redemption, and he'll do anything towin custody…even propose marriage! It's an extreme solution, and yet Belinda must admit her convenienthusband-to-be is inconveniently gorgeous. But then comes not one but…two babies in the baby carriage!

[Setup: Rochester and Flynn Bradley are on opposite sides of a ground-breaking court-case in London regarding the custody of the babies she is carrying. But half-a-world away in the Australian highlands, and after spending weeks with Flynn and his family, it’s easy to forget exactly why she’s standing in a spectacular cave putting his ring on her finger. And why she cannot let herself fall for younger brother of the man whose babies she’s carrying…]

And so, in the presence of your family and of each other, it is done. You are husband and wife.

For a moment, the celebrant looked at a loss. Denise and Alice burst into excited applause and, under the screen of their excitement, he quietly hinted to them, ‘You may kiss.’

Kiss? Bel flicked her focus urgently between the celebrant and Flynn. ‘Uh... Is it still...’ She whispered. ‘Can it be legal without...?’

A deep frown cut the celebrant-guide’s moderate face. ‘It’s legal, yes...but—’

‘She’s kidding,’ Flynn cut in, glaring at her meaningfully the moment the celebrant looked down at his folder. ‘And shy.’

‘Of course,’ the man said. ‘How about I just prepare the certificate...’

And then he was off, leaving just the two of them perched high in the opening of the earth, with his family and all her lies on one side and a two hundred foot drop to an ancient, frigid crater on the other. And a belly-ful of babies which meant there was really only one way she could go.

‘It’s just a kiss, Bel.’

Panic surged through her on painful pulses. ‘I don’t... We don’t... Your family’s watching...’

‘Exactly. How will that look? We’re supposed to have made children together and you won’t even kiss me?’

I don’t care how it will look. Icare about how it will feel. How I will feel... Her heart hammered furiously. ‘You said you don’t kiss in public.’

‘This is going to have to be an exception.’ He slipped his hands from hers and slid them up to frame her face. ‘They’re all waiting.’

Oh God...

Flynn inched closer, towering over her and the excited chatter from his family warped into a high pitched drone in her ears. She could feel his pulse beating as powerfully as hers into her lower lip as he dragged his thumb gently over it, learning its shape.

The tingles she usually felt on contact with him had dressed up for the occasion, too. They zinged, live and sharp as electric current down into her body and caused what little air remained in her lungs to escape on a shocked breath.

His eyes flicked down briefly as her mouth fell open, but then here turned them to hers, studying her for the slightest reaction, his own lips parting as he lowered his head. And then their lips touched: his, warm and soft and encouraging; hers cool and startled and non-participatory.

She physically jerked at the first touch, but the fingers curled aroundthe base of her skull meant she couldn’t go far. He lingered for a heartbeat before shuffling half a step closer and tilting her face for a better angle.They pressed more firmly against her and his breath warmed the deathly cool of her flesh while her head swam with the earthy scent of him. It felt like he was stealing her soul through her frigid lips and he slid one hand down around her middle to keep her upright. That brought her hard up against his torso and triggered an uprising in her already struggling heartbeat. It surged so forcefully through her veins...he’d have to feel it pulsing in her lips.

She broke the contact long enough to suck in a breath and that would have been the time to step back, to end the kiss and this farce of a wedding. But those full, sweet lips were only millimetres from hers and still so warm and inviting, and the body held against hers was so intriguingly masculine, and all the rogue thoughts from Alice’s bedroom came flooding back. Wondering what it would be like to touch Flynn for real, imagining him pressed down on top ofher, buried in her kiss, buried in her...

Even though that was a bad, bad, bad idea.

Her fingers closed around his jacket. Escape was just a gentle push away.

But escape was in the other direction, and Bel’s body stretched back up to close the distance between them. Flynn’s eyes flared briefly as she pressed her mouth back against his but the shock didn’t slow him for long. He forked his free hand around beneath the complicated twists of braids in her hair and realigned his mouth to fully seal them together.

A proper kiss. A killer kiss.

His lips nudged hers into movement, opening them wider and dragging back and forth across them. And then his tongue joined the party and Bel was lost in the hot, wet, hormonal haze. Her chest squeezed for lack of air and when she finally breathed in it was mostly Flynn’s exhaled breath.

He pulled her up harder against him. Hips to hips. Hard to soft. She clung to him, hopelessly, as the bowels of the earth spun madly around them.

Behind them, someone cleared their throat tactfully and Bel came screaming back to reality. She tore her lips from Flynn’s and fought to focus her cloudy gaze on the politely averted eyes of his family.

Drew’s family. He should have been here, too.

Flynn stiffened up immediately.

He didn’t release her far, but he tucked his lips down to her ear and whispered thickly, darkly. ‘Wrong brother, Princess.’

Their Miracle Twins is out in January in the UK, February in the US and March in Australia/NewZealand.


To win yourself an advance copy, just leave a comment about Bel and Flynn’s sizzling, subterranean smooch!


For more information on Nikki Logan and her books, visit here!


Come back next Sunday for a special LoveCats Christmas message.

Sunday Smooch

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!


Today we have a tantalising smooch from A Kiss To Seal The Deal by Nikki Logan, but first ...


the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- Helen!


Congratulations, Helen! Can you please contact Mel at

melteshco (at) yahoo (dot) com (dot) au

and she'll send you a copy of Stone-Cold Lover or a book of your choice from her Ellora's Cave back-list.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from A Kiss To Seal The Deal by Nikki Logan ...



Is it true love is an endangered species?

When city lawyer Grand McMurtrie is forced to return to his coastal hometown, he discovers that conservationists plan to carve up the family farm! He furiously confronts the woman in charge—seal researcher Kate Dickson.

Used to half-truths after years of making empty city deals, he finds Kate’s passion for her precious seals mystifying, but slowly begins to trust this courageous, determined woman. For the first time, Grant’s heart is touched and he wants to make a wholly personal contract.
 
Will cautious Kate agree to his final clause—to be together forever?

[Set-up: After a confrontational and difficult meeting in town, Kate discovers the devastating truth about the death of her friend, Grant’s father. For the first time she lets down her barriers in front of him and cries for the man she had grown quite attached to.  Kate’s tears wiggle under Grant’s carefully erected barriers and he finds himself comforting her in the crowded front seat of his jeep. Fuelled by frustrating weeks of emotional strain, comforting turns to something entirely else…]


Kate’s head spun a lurching figure eight at Grant’s closeness. His strong, distinctive cologne which seemed to shimmy around her like scent released from the heat of a candle. She held herself suspended—lips gently parted against his first touch, assessing—and then leaned infinitesimally toward him, gently increasing the pressure of their kiss. Heat burst through her and crackled out to lick at the place their lips joined. Her mouth slid across his; tasting, breathing his air, melding perfectly.

He nipped and nibbled, sucking her bottom lip between his then releasing it to slide across the neglected top lip. His big hands forked up through the waves of her hair, messing it around her face until it hung wild and natural like it sometimes did at the end of a long day on the rock-shelf. 

She pulled back to gaze into eyes darkened with green heat. His thumbs learned the delicate line of her cheekbones and rubbed the last of the tears from her damp lashes.

She sucked in a breath to speak. But he slid one thumb down to silence her lips, closing the gap between them and taking her mouth with his again. It blazed against hers, his tongue hot and confident and branding its possession. Her skin burned wherever it rubbed against his which, squeezed as they were in the front of his car, was just about everywhere. 

Her breath grew thin and desperate deep in her chest but freeing herself for air was the last thing on her mind. Grant’s hands slid down over her shoulders and found their way to the sides of her ribs and under her arms. Then he pulled her more comfortably against him, sliding himself sideways to give her more room. Freeing her to climb that masculine chest and latch on more firmly to his talented lips.

Heavy eyes simmered into hers and Kate suddenly grew shy, uncertain. His large, work-roughed hand stroked up her throat to rest under her chin and encourage her gaze back to his.

‘You will always look like this to me,’ he murmured thickly, kissing her brow, her jaw, her lips. Making her lashes fall to her cheeks. ‘Wild. Hot.’

Kate let her head fall back and Grant mouthed his way up her throat. Just as well she was lying half across him because there was no way she could have kept standing as feelings she’d began to think she’d forfeited for life came surging forth in sharp, exquisite lances deep in her body. Her fists clenched high on his open-necked sweater, giving her strength, but letting her fingers spread to tangle in the scattered hair there, against the furnace that was his flesh. The forbidden feeling of the skin she’d tried not to ogle that first day made her smile and Grant’s lips moved instantly to the deep dimple that formed on her left cheek.

His tongue dipped in and out, his smooth teeth sliding against her cheek as he matched her smile. ‘I’ve wanted to touch those since I first saw you.’

Not that she wasn’t unexpectedly thrilled to hear such sentiments, but, while she was busy making sense of words, she wasn’t drowning in the pleasure sensations of his body moving against hers. His mouth feasting on hers. She speared her fingers up into his short hair and forced his head back so she could glare into his eyes meaningfully. ‘That’s lovely, but do you want to talk or do you want to kiss?’

His answer was practically a growl. 

Nikki has a signed copy of A Kiss To Seal The Deal to giveaway. To be in the draw, simply answer her question!

"In A Kiss to Seal the Deal, Kate Dickson is super-passionate about her seals and can get one-eyed at times. What do you get worked up about? How do you express your passion?"


Come back next Sunday, when the winner of today's giveaway will be announced -- and a smooch from The Cattleman, The Baby And Me by Michelle Douglas will be posted!

Sunday Smooch

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!


Today we have a smooch from Rapunzel in New York by Nikki Logan, but first ...

the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- Scarlet Wilson!


Congratulations, Scarlet! Can you please contact Zana at

zanabell (at) xtra (dot) co (dot) nz

and she'll send you a copy of A Risk Worth Taking.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Rapunzel In New York by Nikki Logan...

Once upon a New York minute…a Knight-in-shining-pinstripe rushed to the aid of a beautiful Maiden. Galloping up a crumbling tower block, he crashed into the chamber where she was imprisoned! The Maiden gasped and said … that she was perfectly happy, thank you very much, and certainly didn’t need saving, especially by a smug, designer-suited billionaire, and why had he just kicked in her front door?

It’s sometimes hard for a modern damsel in distress to admit she needs rescuing – but at least this heroine plans to rescue her hero right back!


Setup: Nathan and Tori have just enjoyed a sensual feast on the roof of her building—it’s not a date, it’s not!—and too much margarita leads to too much truth between them and Tori ends up wrapped in his coat…and his arms.)

Time to move.

But no sooner did her body warn her to withdraw, than those strong arms tightened. Keeping her close. One hand slid around to her back and recommenced its hypnotic circling there. Tori fought the insane desire just to melt into Nathan. To surrender…everything…for a moment and let someone else take all the weight.

For a few heavenly moments.

She leaned more closely into his hard body and added a fistful of his sweater into her tight clutch to keep them close. Her eyes drifted shut. Somewhere a thousand miles off, music tumbled out of a window, the ballad drifting up to them on the night air. He leaned a fraction to his left and she followed him, loath to lose his warmth and the connection so soon. Then he moved back slightly to the right, that magic hand going around and around against her spine the whole time. And she followed.

Step, after step. Swaying left then right.

The rocking motion soothed as much as it serrated her body against his in a delicious, subtle, unfamiliar friction.

‘Tori…’ he mumbled, after a lifetime of gentle movement ‘…are we dancing?’

She didn’t lift her lashes. The real world wasn’t welcome back just yet. She mumbled a no. ‘We’re shuffling.’

She felt him smile against her forehead. ‘Okay then.’

They swayed in silence for the rest of the song. Nathan gathered her more firmly to him and she burrowed happily into his hold. Eventually their feet slowed to a halt and he rubbed his face down hers, nudging it out and up, while his hands stayed tightly locked around her body. The seductive graze of his prickled jaw against hers, the blazing tangle of his breath and the hammer of his chest against hers… All whipped her heartbeat into riot and sent her senses skittering wildly around them like a mini dervish. A tonne-weight pressed in on her chest.

Oh god, he was going to kiss her…

And if he didn’t, she was going to kiss him.

Or possibly die from oxygen deficiency.

She lifted her heavy lids and glanced at him. This close, his blue eyes were as clear and deep as any glacial lake but fringed by dark, soft lashes and blazing the icy fire of a question unasked. Somewhere in their depths a cautious uncertainty did a lazy backstroke but it was overwhelmed by the bubbling energy and focus of the last thing she’d ever expected to see from him.

Desire.

The moment their gazes met, all the reasons this was a bad idea—how unprofessional it was, why she didn’t deserve a moment like this and why he was totally unsuitable and unsafe for her—dissolved just like her caution when she was facing a new mountain for the first time. Something other than sense was ruling play here, surging through her bloodstream and setting fire to every cell it passed. Bringing them scorching to vivid life.

Baying for more.

Tori let her mouth follow her eyes and turned her head naturally into the heat of his, dropping her lips slightly open.

His focus flicked down to them a bare moment before he closed the gap on a whispered groan.

The moment her lips met Nathan’s soft, warm ones, she lurched with the involuntary gasp of air that rushed in. He captured her parted mouth with his again. He tasted of tangy citrus and chili and something rarer, something indefinable. Something she’d never experienced but wanted, in that moment, to keep forever. Her blood pounded everywhere it came close to the surface and robbed her of strength. Her mouth slid against his—tasting, exploring, feeding—and her hands curled more tightly into his sweater to keep him close. His shifted one hand lower, to press her hips into him and the other, higher, tangling in her hair and taking the weight of her head as she let it fall back to give him more access.


To be in the draw to win a signed copy of Rapunzel in New York, simply leave a comment!

As Nikki Logan’s fabulous New York kiss hits the interweb she’s en-route to that very city herself, heading for the Romance Writers of America national conference in Manhattan. Nikki will check in from Times Square to pick one lucky commenter to win a copy of Rapunzel in New York.

Come back next Sunday, when the winner of today's giveaway will be announced -- and a smooch from Dating And Other Dangers by Natalie Anderson will be posted!

Sunday Smooch

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!

Today we have a 'classic' smooch from Nikki Logan's Their Newborn Gift (2010), but first ...

the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- Kaelee!

Congratulations, Kaelee! Can you please contact Jules at

authorjules (at) gmail (dot) com

and she'll send you a copy of Her Innocence, His Conquest.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Their Newborn Gift by Nikki Logan ...

One big secret… 

When Lea became accidentally pregnant she decided that she would go it alone. Rodeo star Reilly wasn't the sort of man who'd want to be tied down. But five years later she needs to tell him her secret...

One tiny blessing… 

Learning he's a daddy is bittersweet for Reilly, because his little girl is fighting to survive. Her only hope is a new brother or sister. Can he and Lea create a newborn miracle--and a future together?

The setup:

Lea Curran had a hot, unforgettable one-night stand six years ago when she was weak and vulnerable, and she came away pregnant. She made the decision never to tell the father, Reilly Martin, the King of the Suicide Ride rodeo champion of north-west Australia. But her daughter is five years old now and wracked with Aplastic Anaemia and all treatments have failed--the only thing that can help her now is a stem-cell transfer from the umbilical cord of a sibling. A full sibling.

So Reilly's back in her life, not at all happy about being blackmailed into fathering a second child but just as determined to do what he can to save the little girl he never knew he had.  Lea and Molly are staying with him out on his enormous, lush property so that she has more immediate emergency care in case anything happens to her on her remote one.

They find themselves in the kitchen...talking....and then somehow the conversation turns to the subject of whether a good kiss is about sex or romance.  Poor Reilly isn't taking the pressure well...

Their entire conversation since she’d unwittingly stumbled on him in the kitchen was leading to this moment. And they both knew it.

‘If a kiss was just about sex,’ Lea breathed the words against his lips, tipping her face so that her forehead almost rested against his, a sweet, trusting little move that roused every primal instinct lurking deep in his body, ‘then we’d be kissing now.’

Reilly snatched forward with his lips to prove his point. She avoided him with a quick twist that put her mouth perilously close to his throat. His ear. Awareness shivered down his neck as her hot breath danced around him. Her hair brushed against his hypersensitive flesh.

‘But what makes a kiss romantic, about so much more than sex,’ she drew his face like a magnet, curling towards those pink, ripe lips, ‘is the question mark. How will it taste?’ She rubbed his stubbled cheek with her own soft one, dragging the corner of that delicious mouth closer to his. ‘How will it feel?’

His eyes fluttered shut as she traced their lids lightly with her lips.

God above, she was going to kill him. Five year old memories surged around the room practically crashing into the furniture. His mouth was at once dry with anticipation and wet with desire as her lips returned to hover just millimetres from his.

‘And most importantly…’ she raised smoky eyes, a tiny smile shaping her mouth. Her hands were braced either side of his hips on the kitchen table and he closed his eyes as she leaned that final inch forward. Thank God. ‘…how will I possibly survive never knowing?’

She pushed herself to her feet and away from him and crossed back to the hob to see to the bubbling kettle. His eyes opened in disbelief, his body screaming with the denial. Never knowing was no longer an option.

And it had nothing to do with romance.

Lea gasped as strong, masculine hands spun her back just as the simmering kettle started to sing. Its mounting pitch matched her fever exactly. Reilly folded her into strong arms and tipped her half off her feet before she could even suck in a breath to protest. Her hard, pregnant midsection pressed against his hard un-pregnant one.

His blazing mouth—soft and powerful, familiar and new—slid over hers, demanding a response she was gasping to give. Hot and wet and urgent. Exactly as she’d remembered in her dreams. Her little lesson in romance had sapped her of resistance, and she literally panted for a kissing lesson from someone she was fast considering the sexiest man alive.

Never mind that he held such a low opinion of her, he kissed like a God. Her breath ached in her tight, trembling chest.

He consumed her; feasting on her lips and pressing her body perfectly into his hard one, his tongue burning the inner reaches of the mouth she helplessly opened to him. The heady lip-work seemed to strengthen him everywhere she was weakening and he held her up as her legs gave out.

The oxygen that should have been surging through her body pooled into her core, prioritising her vital organs as though her life was in danger.

Of being kissed out of her perhaps.

The kettle was piping now, spewing steam out of its angry top, and forming a layer of sweat on the overhead cabinets that rivalled the rapidly forming dampness on her own skin. Some desperate, distant part of her consciousness ordered her hands to remain clenched, not to join the fray. But the roaring thunder of her blood drowned out the request, and her hands did what she suddenly realised she’d been wanting to do since that first day at Yurraji. They fought their way under the layers of his clothing and spread out against the furnace of his muscular back.

She knew those muscles like Braille. Every dip. Every rise. Every sinew.

God, how she’d missed them.

Her mind screamed a protest at her body but it came out as a choked mix of fury, frustration and desire. Reilly must have felt it more than heard it over the protesting kettle, but he righted her up onto her feet and let his hands slip up into her hair. Her shirt rode up against him as she swayed to her feet, and she realised she was stretching up to prevent their lips from breaking apart.

She was kissing him.

He closed his fists in her hair and gentled his mouth. Slower, wetter, more rubbing, more heavy breathing. Lea rubbed her body against his as the kettle kept up its piercing aria.

Undeniable, 100-proof sex. The man had made his point.

She pushed away, gasping and dragging her wrist across her throbbing mouth. With trembling hands she turned and put the kettle out of its misery and the ear-splitting crescendo died instantly away.

In the new silence, her chest heaved. His chest heaved. Tortured breathing filled the air. It was a tiny comfort that Reilly looked as stunned as she felt. His molten eyes assessed her warily as she backed toward the door. But he didn’t stop her leaving.

‘I’m just… I think I’ll… bed.’ Words just would not form on her swollen lips. ‘Alone.’ she added hastily as a dangerous gleam sparked in his eyes.

Again, silence.

She turned and wobbled to the doorway on jelly legs. But as she disappeared through it she heard Reilly’s voice as he cursed, thick and low.

Their Newborn Gift is available right now as a free e-book from Mills & Boon's www.everyonesreading.com and so EVERYONE GETS A FREE PRIZE!!! Woo hoo.  Look for the baby on the cover.

Come back next Sunday, when we'll feature a smooch from The Bought-And-Paid-For Wife by Bronwyn Jameson!

Sunday Smooch

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!


Today we have a smooch from Shipwrecked With Mr Wrong by Nikki Logan, but first ...


the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- Danielle J!


Congratulations, Danielle! Can you please contact Natalie Anderson at

natalie (at) natalie-anderson (dot) com

and she'll send you a copy of The End of Faking It.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Shipwrecked With Mr Wrong by Nikki Logan...


Being marooned in paradise with a stunning woman should be the perfect way for a playboy to get shipwrecked. However, Rob Dalton would have chosen a slightly friendlier companion!

Prickly marine conservationist Honor Brier clearly just wants to be left alone with her birds and turtles. Physically and emotionally scarred, Honor has no time for infuriatingly attractive accidental tourists. yet, tought she won't admit it, Rob's passion for life--and for her--is reawakening her: body, mind and soul....


The Setup ... Biologist Honor Brier has been living in isolation on remote Pulu Keeling National Park since a tragedy ripped her family away from her and left her permanently scarred down her left side. One day the gods deliver her a gorgeous, bright, vital man in the form of shipwreck hunter Rob Dalton who damages his work-boat on the coral atol surrounding the island and has to come ashore to await a shepherd back to safe harbour. Alone on the island it takes a few days before hostilties between them ease. Rob charms her in a hundred ways--even when he's not trying to.

In this scene he's just witnessed the first midnight turtle-hatching of the season where one hundred leathery little turtles swarm out of an under-sand nest and scramble for the waterline.

Honor is bound by her scientific ethics not to intervene, even when giant frigate birds line the shore plucking the innocent little turtles off one-by-one. But Rob decides he's in no way bound and he rescues six little turtles that were running into the path of danger and sees them safely to the waters edge. Honor's final resistance to him melts under the tropical moonlight.

He offers her a deal - one kiss for every turtle saved.




 
‘You don’t want to kiss me.’ Honor knew the impact her scars had on people. She wasn’t hung-up about it but she was also a realist.

‘Correction, I’ve wanted to kiss you from the moment I saw you.’ Sincerity was live in his eyes but still she doubted. Maybe a kiss wasn’t such a big deal where he came from, just a bit of fun? He couldn’t know that she’d only been kissed by two men in her whole life; her first kiss when she was fourteen and then her husband. Rob would make three.

If she was entertaining the suggestion.

She swallowed. Her heart thumped an SOS in her chest but her body wasn’t listening. How good would it be to give in to her yearning, to taste him just for a moment? She imagined how his lips would feel against hers but, more than anything, she wanted to nibble her way along that spectacular jaw line. She could almost reach it from here…

In her dreams. This was just a bit of fun for Rob, gentle flirting. He was probably bored. And the best way to handle a flirt? Call them on it.

‘Fine, one kiss.’

His pupils flared and he bent his head toward her.

‘One small kiss.’

‘One small kiss,’ he nodded ‘for each turtle?’

A crazy part of her was enjoying the verbal foreplay. He was waking nerve endings she hadn’t used in a long, long time. ‘Turtles hatched, or turtles saved?’

He smiled, caught out. ‘Okay, saved.’

Six small kisses. Just kisses. Every part of her wanted to say yes and that alone rang alarm bells. He was perfection in deck shoes, funny and gentle, and all of this probably meant nothing to him. Just a bit of casual sport. It was what he did, after all.

He played.

‘Deal.’

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. ‘Where would you like the first one?’

A wild streak she’d virtually forgotten she had surged forward. She stood straighter and looked at him fearlessly. ‘Cheek.’

He smiled, leaned in excruciatingly slowly and brushed gentle lips across one flushed cheek. They were cool and soft against her flaming skin. He smelled of sea-salt and moonlight. She could survive this…

‘Next?’

‘Other cheek. That’s two.’

‘Thank you, I can count.’ He leaned to her other side and moved his mouth slightly against her other cheek. Lingering. The scent of warm man eddied around her. It was like a natural stimulant.

‘Three and four?’

Honor took a deep breath. Only two chaste kisses and her heart was ready to beat right out of its cavity. She closed her eyes and every other sense kicked into overdrive. She felt him lean in, the air around her humming at his approach. His lips touched one eyelid and then the other. Soft, slow and delightful.

She’d felt his smile against her first eyelid but when they fluttered open, he wasn’t smiling any more. And he’d shifted closer, almost touching her chest with his.

Mustn’t lean forward… She’d never felt such a burning desire to close a gap in her life. She raised her hands up to his chest to stop herself from doing precisely that but feeling the hard heat of his chest through his shirt only reminded her how long it had been since she’d felt a man’s heartbeat under her fingers. Her lips.

Five.

He didn’t need to say it. Wordless, she tipped her head sideways, exposing the long length of her neck. The good side. She pointed to a spot just next to where her pulse beat its fevered tattoo.

He leaned in closer and held her steady with one large hand on each arm. Then he slowly moved toward the place she’d identified. Honor let her heavy eyelids close again, breathless with anticipation, then felt him pull away. Disappointment ached in her throat. When she opened her eyes, his were glittering with desire and something else.

Speculation.

Before she could react, he twisted and narrowed the space between them and then pressed his mouth against the other side of her neck. Right on the leathery patchwork of her scars.

Shock stiffened her body and sensation assaulted her. She pushed away instinctively, but he held fast. Surgery had done nothing to reduce sensation where the grafts had been applied. If anything, the still-healing skin was hyper-sensitive. Electric currents shot out from the warmth of his mouth as he lazily kissed his way over her damaged skin. A lifetime of emotions surged through her—panic, desire, confusion, sorrow—but when his tongue got in on the act, her legs gave completely away.




Shipwrecked With Mr Wrong is an April 2011 release for the RIVA line (UK), and a June 2011 release for Sweet (Aust/NZ). Have you ever been to an island (secluded or otherwise)? Nikki has a copy of Shipwrecked With Mr Wrong to give away to a lucky commenter.


Come back next Sunday, when the winner of today's giveaway will be announced -- and a smooch from Her Innocence, His Conquest by international guest Jules Bennett will be posted!

Sunday Smooch

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!


Today we have a smooch from Friends to Forever by Nikki Logan, but first ...

the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- Nas Dean!


Congratulations, Nas! Can you please contact Anna Hackett at

anna (at) annahackettbooks (dot) com

and she'll send you a free download of One Night with the Wolf.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Friends to Forever by Nikki Logan! For the first time, we'll be using one of our nifty new 'content' icons...

She was the high-school princess – he was the high-school nobody…

Marc Duncannon and Beth Hughes were the best of friends – until a heated kiss exposed secrets and ruined everything.
Ten years later, Beth seeks out Marc and finds him battling to save a stranded whale. Together on a lonely Australian beach they face exhaustion, the elements and their own personal demons. They discover that their friendship is worth fighting for, because they share something even stronger – a love that
could last a lifetime.


***


Set-up: Everything changed between inseparable friends Beth Hughes and Marc Duncannon when they hit puberty and life got complicated. Beth has always blamed herself for the horrible way their friendship ended and has tracked grown-up Marc down to set things right as part of her management of her alcohol addiction. But instead of saying her piece and driving back into the sunset, she finds herself alone on a remote beach, thigh-deep in freezing water, with the man who has so much reason to hate her. But once the euphoria of freeing the stranded whale drains from their systems, Beth and Marc are left weak and exhausted, clinging together in the icy, midnight shallows with the turbulent echoes of that day floating around them… As she sags, broken and emotionally battered against him in the surf, Beth asks Marc what he’d do differently about that last day they were together if they could go back in time…

‘It matters to me, Beth.’ Marc said. ‘Whether you hated it. Whether I damaged our friendship, too.’

Too. Misery came surging back in at the reminder that she’d said the words that destroyed their friendship. Even if she hadn’t set out to. She was only going to ask him to back off for a while. But he’d kissed her and she panicked. Those angry lips pressing against hers, forcing hers wider. The hands that had plunged into her hair to hold her captive sent electric sparks through her body and threw her into confusion. The press of his eager body into hers made her want things she shouldn’t want. The desperate, intense pain in his eyes echoing hers. The thick smoke-like energy he’d been pumping out all around them.

Did she like it?

Enough to rip his heart out with her reflexive over-reaction.

She took a breath. Held his eyes. Held her breath. ‘I didn’t hate it.’

This is where he’d kiss her in a movie. The water. The cold. The intimacy. And her admission practically cried out for his mouth on hers.

Instead he nudged her head back down to his shoulder and rested his cheek against her wet hair. A particularly full wave washed over them and buffeted Beth against him with its chilly brush. Her heart squeezed hard. Had she been so starved for affection in her loveless marriage that she was finding it now in impossible places? Marc was just moved by their circumstance and harking back to better times. That was all. Waiting for a kiss was stupidly naïve and impossibly romantic.

Since there was to be no kissing, she needed—really badly—to get off him. But her body had practically seized up in the foetal position and straightening her limbs was a new kind of agony. Just when she thought she’d already met all the cousins in the Pain family.

‘Easy, Beth. You need to walk off the ache. Your muscles will be eating themselves.’

Pretty apt, really. Starting with the giant, thumping one in her chest cavity. Crawling into Marc’s lap had not been part of her plan as she drove up the coastal highway this morning, but now that she had it was hard to imagine ever getting the sensation out of her mind. Her heart.

But she had to.

Her back screamed as she pushed against his chest and twisted up onto her knees, between his. She gave herself a moment to adjust.

‘Just one more thing…’ Marc murmured, before she could rise much further. Those powerful abdominal muscles she’d spied before he zipped them up beneath his wetsuit did their job and pulled his torso up out of the splash and hard into hers. His lips slid warmly, firmly against her mouth and he took advantage of her shocked gasp to work them open, hot and blazing against her numb flesh. Her lips drank heat from him and came tingling back to life, startled and wary. His hands forked up into her wet hair and held her face while he teased and taunted her blissfully with his tongue, letting her breathe his air as though he were giving her the kiss of life.

Which, in a way, he was.

Relief and a decade of desire surged through her. Forgiveness tasted an awful lot like this.

He lifted his face and stared into her glassy eyes. ‘This is how I would do it if I had my time over,’ he said softly and then lowered his mouth again.


Nikki has a signed copy of Friends to Forever to give away to one lucky commenter. Just tell her whether you have a best friend of the opposite sex from your past that you let go due to social expectation or peer pressure. Do you ever wonder what happened to them? Or have you kept track all these years? Or did you end up turning your friendship to forever?


Come back next Sunday, when the winner of today's giveaway will be announced -- and a smooch from our international guest Liz Fielding will be posted!

A Gaggle of Romance Writers

by Emily May


Reading: The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer

Listening to: Twinset

Watching: Pride and Prejudice (BBC miniseries)

Making me smile: a visit to Wellington, the most wonderful city in the world!



Conference registrations have just opened for the 2011 Romance Writers of Australia Conference and I've been trying to decide what the collective noun is for romance writers. A pack? A swarm? A gaggle? A clutch? A mob? All in all, I think I like gaggle best -- to me it comes closest to implying all the noise and excitement and energy of a romance writers' conference -- but the word 'gaggle' isn't quite BIG enough, because there's A LOT of noise and excitement and energy at a Romance Writers conference!


The annual Romance Writers of Australia conference is always something to look forward to, but this year's conference is more exciting for me than usual. Not only because it's RWAustralia's 20th conference, but also because ... the LoveCats have put together a panel! It's called The Learning Curve, and we'll be talking about what we've learned about the craft of writing and the business of writing since selling to Harlequin Mills & Boon.

The very first Romance Writers conference I ever went to was back in 2003 on the Gold Coast, when I'd just started writing seriously again. That conference was just The Most Amazing Experience -- the energy, the wealth of information, and the sheer marvellousness of being around so many other people who had the same dream as me was intoxicating. I went there knowing absolutely no one (and rather terrified actually) and utterly clueless about the romance writing industry. I came back filled to the brim with information -- and knowing that one day I would achieve my dream of being published.

I have many wonderful memories of that conference -- and one of them is of listening to a panel of newly published authors talk about their path to publication and what they'd learned since publishing. I did more than listen -- I drank up every word they said!

Last year, when the call for conference proposals went out, I remembered that very first conference and I realised that the LoveCats are in the perfect position to give that panel back to other conference attendees! The upshot was the Learning Curve panel on Saturday afternoon, where seven LoveCats, writing for seven different lines, will talk about what we've learned since selling and answer any questions people may have. I hope those attendees who choose to come to our panel will find it as valuable as the panel I heard way back in 2003!

Those of us taking part in the panel are:

Rachel Bailey (Desire)
Zana Bell (Superromance/MIRA)
Michelle Douglas (Sweet)
Robyn Grady (Desire/Sexy Sensation)
Nikki Logan (Sweet)
Sue McKay (Medical)
Emily May (Historical)

and our super duper moderator is Barbara Jeffcott Geris!






The Learning Curve panel is featured on the Romance Writers of Australia blog tomorrow (March 10th), so come along to find out more about what we have planned for our session -- and also check out the other workshops and sessions on the conference pages on the RWA website. I guarantee you'll want to register once you've seen the line-up!

I'm just as excited about this year's conference as I was about my very first Romance Writers conference in 2003. (And just as terrified, too -- I've never presented anything before. EEK!) I hope I see some of you there!

So tell us ... are you going to any conferences this year, Romance Writers or otherwise? Will we perhaps see you at the 2011 RWA conference in Melbourne??? I hope so!

(And can anyone tell me what the proper collective noun for a loud and enthusiastic group of romance writers is?)

Sunday Smooch

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!


Today we have a smooch from The Soldier's Untamed Heart by Nikki Logan, but first ...

the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- CATSLADY.


Congratulations, catslady! Can you please contact Emily May at

emilywritesregencies (at) gmail (dot) com

and she'll send you a signed copy of the Summer Blockbuster containing The Unmasking of a Lady.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from The Soldier's Untamed Heart by Nikki Logan...

Brooding ex-soldier Clint McLeish isolates himself in the outback. He trusts no-one, but his wildlife park needs a security coordinator--someone as tough as him, as intuitive as him. Someone with luscious curves, eyes to drown in and an enticing tattoo peeking out from under her tank top...?

Romy Carvell is no man's fool! She can see there's something missing in rugged Clint's life, and if she can overcome her inhibitions, she may be the woman to finally tame his heart.

In The Soldier's Untamed Heart (out this month in bookstores as Harlequin Romance in North America and Mills & Boon Sweet in Australia/NZ) Romy Carvell has been working for a few weeks for brooding, ex-military Clint and avoiding him like the plague. She grew up with a military father and doesn't like 'the system'. But tonight is a work function and they've attended together. The more Romy avoids Clint the surlier he gets until she finds him tucked away in an alcove behind the building. She realises his aloof silence is not becuase he's so bad-ass, it's becuase he's so bad-with-crowds. Romy is about to leave him to his misery when his hands snake around her waist, steal her breath and he pulls her gently against him back into the sheltered alley alcove....

‘We never got to finish our dance,’ he said.

Walk away, Romy.

What had happened to the smart, savvy woman who raised a child, protected a family and sacrificed everything for her son? She fled completely in the face of the blatant desire pulsing from the over-sized testosterone bomb in front of her.

A surge of want answered deep in her body. The primal creature hungering for satisfaction. How bad could it be to give Cinderella one last dance with the Prince? Clint sensed her acquiescence and pulled her gently into his arms. She let herself lean into his solid frame, tucked in closer than she needed to be even in the close confines of the doorway, and pressed her cheek to his shoulder. He gathered her up against him. Their feet started moving in time with the distant music but it was automatic. Romy couldn't hear a thing over the march of his heart under her ear. It took only seconds for her own to fall into synch.

Thrum…thrum…thrum…

Her hands slipped around behind him, spread across his massive back, splayed and sure. He cocooned her until her face buried in the crook of his neck, comfortably, snugly. Like the safe harbour of her fantasies.

Nothing could harm her while she was in these arms.

They shuffled left and right, barely moving in the evening breeze. Seasons came and went, ages passed, continents drifted and still they pressed together, swaying.

Clock’s ticking, Cinders.

It felt entirely natural to tilt her face and nuzzle the place below Clint's jaw. To breathe in the scent of him. To press her mouth into the heavy, thumping pulse there. To taste smooth, male skin for the first time. Her lips roamed his throat, her breasts lifting and falling against his chest, and she pushed onto her toes so she could reach his ear to take one perfect lobe softly between her teeth. It took an eternity.

The rumble in her ears sounded like thunder, but it came from deep inside Clint. The primitive growl excited the blood in her veins as his hands slid up to pull her harder against his straining body. She pulled one hand free and shoved it roughly through his hair, anchoring herself there and using it to hoist herself upwards so she could feast on the heady taste of him. She sank into his throat like a vampire starving for blood.

‘God...’ It was more choke than word. Male and raw. ‘Romy…’

Her breasts strained against the bodice of her dress, almost coming entirely free as she stretched toward him. His hands found the bare, hot skin of her shoulders. The soft, sensitive flesh of her nape. The wild, flushed heat of her cheeks. They braced her jaw, tore her away from her decadent feeding and tilted her gaze upwards. She had just enough seconds to suck in a breath before those magnificent, sinful lips dropped decisively onto hers.

The Soldier's Untamed Heart is out this month in bookstores North America and Australia/NZ. Nikki has one copy to give away to a lucky commenter! No specific question, just let Nikki know whether this is a kiss you'd like to see moreof. *fans self*

Come back next Sunday, when the winner of today's giveaway will be announced -- and a smooch from Death's Sweet Embrace by Tracey O'Hara will be posted!