Perfect Touch: A
Novel
By: Elizabeth Lowell
Releasing July 28, 2015
William Morrow
Blurb
Sara Medina is a
designer and art dealer from San Francisco. She matches her
clients desires with fine and folk art from the world over--living up to her
thriving business named Perfect Touch. She still remembers her rural childhood
of hard work and poverty on the family dairy farm, but she keeps it firmly in
the past as she searches out new artwork and artists that are on the breaking
edge of acclaim. After she experienced the cultural riches San Francisco had to offer, she
decided her life would be that of an urban career woman rather than a working
mom commuting from the suburbs. With the intensive hours and travel required to
grow her business to the next level, she has no time or energy left for
romantic or family entanglements.
Jay Vermillion
recently inherited Vermillion Sky, a ranch that nestles up to Wyoming’s Grand Teton Mountains--and the estates
of the rich and restless. As a returned veteran of numerous deployments over
the course of two wars, he finds himself wrestling with the demands of a ranch
that has been run down during his father’s long illness. Between the urgent
need to modernize and revitalize the Vermillion Sky, as well as an unexpected
and vicious fight with his former stepmother over the custody of now-valuable
paintings that were part of his father’s estate, Jay has no time for finding a
wife and creating a sixth generation of Vermillions to ensure the family legacy
continues.
When Jay hires Sara
to appraise and market his father’s cache of paintings by Harris “Custer”
Armstrong, neither one expects the explosive results of their eventual meeting
in Jackson, Wyoming. In addition to a
mutually inconvenient attraction, they a discover double murder at the edge of
the ranch lands and a potential betrayal even closer to home. All trails lead
to Custer’s artworks as valuable enough to kill for, especially an unknown
painted rumored to be called The Muse.
As Sara and Jay
unravel the motive for the killings, they both discover that love, like murder,
doesn’t wait for a convenient time. On the heels of that soul-shattering
realization, Sara is targeted for murder. Suddenly, the war-weary soldier finds
something he is once again willing to die for…
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24871110-perfect-touch?ac=1
Excerpt
A glance at her
watch told her she was out of time. Soon, a different stranger would be
deciding the fate of her career in a Jackson
courthouse. With a silent curse, she hurried to the front desk.
“I’m in room 101,”
Sara told the woman who answered. “My room has been robbed. Computer and coat
missing. Tell the sheriff or whoever cares that I’ll be at the courthouse.”
Leaving the woman
stuttering questions behind her, Sara strode out the front entrance into the
chill streets of Jackson
in the spring. Within ten steps she was regretting the loss of her coat.
And she had
forgotten her coffee.
Quickly she walked
down what had to be the coldest sidewalk in town. The wind rolled straight off
the snow of the Tetons through the streets. The chill was made worse by the
fact that the sun was shining bright and hard enough to look like summer.
An archway leading
into a small park caught her eye. At first she thought the arch was made of the
bones of cattle that she’d seen as a child. But these were different. They were
more elegant and pointed, tapering out. They didn’t feel like the finality of
death, but more a symbol of life cycling through change.
Antlers, she
realized. Grown and shed each year in a cycle that isn’t birth or
death, but simply another way to be. Like Custer’s paintings, a beautiful and
eerie reminder that wilderness—wildness—isn’t all that far away.
Shivering, she
hurried on.
I should be back
in San Francisco,
holding hot coffee from Murray
Cafe as I head up to the offices of Perfect Touch.
But then all I’d
know about my mystery man is his voice.
So what? The
practical part of her mind pointed out. The last thing I need is a man.
Sara liked living
her life on her own terms, doing what she wanted whenever she wanted. As the
only girl out of seven children, she’d had more than enough diapers, house
work, and babysitting to last her a lifetime.
Wind with icy
teeth bit at her black slacks and tugged at her red pullover sweater. The only
thing that kept the wind from billowing up her sweater was the sleek black
leather belt snugged at her waist. But it wasn’t enough to keep her warm.
Damn that thief.
Then she reminded
herself that it could be worse in so many ways. She could be back home on the
dairy farm—a plain, rebellious teen hauling a feed cart through damp, drafty
barns, then making the return trip leading a stubborn Holstein.
At least there
aren’t any holes in my boots forcing me to get up close and personal with fresh
cow flops.
The phone in her
pants pocket rang.
If it’s the
sheriff, he can wait.
Author Info
Elizabeth
Lowell’s exciting novels of romantic suspense include New York Times
Bestsellers: Dangerous Refuge, Beautiful Sacrifice, Death Echo, The Wrong
Hostage, Amber Beach, Jade Island,
Pearl Cove, and Midnight in Ruby Bayou. She has also written NYT
best-selling historical series set in the American West and Medieval Britain.
She has more than 80 titles published to date, with over 24 million copies of
her books in print. She lives in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with her husband, with whom she writes novels under a pseudonym.
Her favorite activity is exploring the Western United States
to find the landscapes that speak to her soul and inspire her writing.
Giveaway
(a print copy of NIGHT DIVER by Elizabeth Lowell)
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