THE DEBT
Karina Halle
Publisher: Metal Blonde Books
Publication Date: AUGUST 29, 2016
Her life changed in an
instant.
And he's the only one who
could have prevented it.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The
Pact and The Lie comes a new standalone contemporary romance about those
McGregor men.
Jessica Charles shouldn't
have even been in London when the unthinkable happened.
She should have been back
at home in Edinburgh, perhaps hanging with her boyfriend, having drinks with
her sister or doing yoga with her group of friends. She should have been going
on in her normal, dependable life as always.
But on that fateful day in
August, when a mentally-ill ex-soldier opened fire in public, Jessica's world
changed forever.
Now single and crippled
from the gunshot wounds, Jessica finds herself scared and alone, losing faith
in herself and humanity with each agonizing moment that passes.
That is until a stranger
enters her life. A stranger who makes her live again.
Keir McGregor has always
been the strong, silent type. Throw in tall, dark, and handsome and you've got
pretty much the perfect Scotsman.
Except Keir is anything
but perfect. He's got a past he's running away from and a guilty conscience he
can't seem to shed. But the more time he spends with Jessica, the more he falls
in love with her.
And the more his secret
threatens to tear them apart.
He may have been a
stranger to her.
But she’s never been a
stranger to him.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he says. “Sit. I’ll
get you another drink.”
“It’s getting late,” I say feebly but I sit down
anyway, my leg giving a protest of pain.
“You need something for that?” he says, noticing my
wince.
“The scotch will do fine,” I tell him quickly, not
wanting him to make a fuss. “But really, I should go.”
“Why?” he asks from the kitchen. I hear the top pop
off the bottle, the slosh of liquid in the glass. “Where do you have to be?”
I have to think about that for a moment. He comes
over and holds out the glass. “I won’t keep you here if you don’t want to be
here. But if you do want to be here, you don’t need to make any excuses.”
I take the glass from him, holding it delicately in
my fingers. He stands over me, a massive wall, waiting for some kind of
response.
“I just…” I begin. “I…” I take a sip for bravery.
Swallow. “I’m not very good at this.”
“Good at what?”
“At…this. Being with a man.”
When he doesn’t say anything to that, I look up at
him. He’s got a peculiar smile on his face, his brows raised. “You call this
being with a man?”
I clear my throat, feeling my cheeks grow hot. “I
mean. I’ve told you before –”
“Yes, how you don’t do relationships, how you don’t
do sex.”
“I never said I don’t do sex,” I remind him
quickly.
His eyes never stop searching my face. “Then what
is it? What are you afraid to say?”
I have the sudden urge to flee and I know it must
show because he suddenly points at me and says, “Don’t you dare say you have to
go again. I want you to go back to what you said, that you’re not good at this.
What is this? Us? You and me? There’s nothing mystifying about you and me,
Jessica. You know quite well how I feel.”
I stare at him in shock. I do? “How?”
He looks off with an air of impatience. “I invited
you to dinner, you turned me down.”
“But then you said just as friends.”
“And I meant it. But there are different types of
friends. It’s up to you to decide what kind we are.”
I put my drink down with a clunk. “Holy pressure.”
And now it’s not just my face going hot but my entire body, flushed from head
to toe.
“You’re on fire, little red,” he says, his gaze
skirting over my limbs in such a hungry way I can almost feel them on my skin.
“I have to say, I like this look on you. Hot and bothered.”
“Back with the innuendos again,” I comment but my
voice is weak.
“No, no innuendos this time. You came looking for
me tonight not because you wanted to confess but because you want something
from me. What is it? What do you want from me? What do you think I can give
you?”
Jesus. This is so utterly unnerving. His words
slice right through me, his eyes still peeling under the layers, trying to get
at something I’m not even sure of myself.
If I lie, he’ll know. I can only be honest with
him.
“I want…” I take in a deep breath, my eyes breaking
away. “I want…company.”
“Company?” He sounds surprised.
I nod. “That’s the truth. I’m lonely. And I’m
afraid. And I’m tired of being both those things. I want to be with someone who
makes me forget who I am. You make me feel fearless in a way I didn’t think
possible.”
There. That’s the truth. Most of it. It hangs in
the air, thickening the tension like flour to stock.
He sits down next to me, has a mouthful of Scotch.
“Wow,” he says, running his hand over the beard on his jaw. “And here I was
thinking you wanted my cock.”
I burst out laughing. So does he, a big wonderful
bellow. The tension in the room eases up a notch.
“Sorry,” I tell him when I catch my breath. “I
guess they can both mean the same thing.”
He sucks in his lip briefly, his eyes taking a
lustful turn. “If you want it to.” We stare at each other for a few heavy
beats. Then his focus trails back to my gaze and he says, “Why don’t you stay
over?”
And there I have it. The chance to know what those
full lips would feel like on mine, what his skin would taste like. I swallow
hard.
Karina
Halle is a former travel writer and music journalist and The New York Times,
Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author of The Pact, Racing the
Sun, Sins & Needles and over 25 other wild and romantic reads. She lives on
an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband and her rescue
pup, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails and devours a lot of
books.
Halle
is represented by the Waxman Leavell Agency and is both self-published and
published by Simon & Schuster and Hachette in North America and in the UK.
Hit her
up on Instagram at @authorHalle, on Twitter at @MetalBlonde and on Facebook.
You can also visit www.authorkarinahalle.com and sign up for the newsletter for
news, excerpts, previews, private book signing sales and more.
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