Lara Reynolds has a lot of things she wants to escape. An asshole of an ex-boyfriend and a stalker are just two of them. Becoming housekeeper to former Navy SEAL Nick Goldman—a man whose home is as filthy as his mind—is far from her dream job, but she's out of other options.
She tries to flee from her past, but when you have a weakness for high heels, there are bound to be a few stumbles along the way. Will Lara run out of luck or fall into love?
Gold Rush is a romantic suspense novel in the Blackwood Security series, but can be read as a standalone – no cliffhanger!
GOLD RUSH TRAILER
Excerpt 1 – The beginning…
There it was. That prickle at the back of my neck as somebody watched me.
I glanced at my reflection in store windows as I passed, trying to get a glimpse of who or what might be behind. There! What was that? A shadow flitting across the sidewalk? I whipped around, holding my breath, one hand on the can of pepper spray I carried in my jacket pocket.
My eyes darted from left to right, my gaze as jittery as a coffee addict looking for their mid-afternoon fix, then I sagged in relief. It was just a loose shop awning, flapping in the weak breeze that managed to find its way amongst the tightly packed jumble of crumbling apartments and the few stores that clung to life. The locals had christened this part of town “NoHo.”
No Hope.
As if by giving it a hip-sounding name they could stave off the need for a wrecking ball, which was the only way left of improving things. A solitary soul roamed the sidewalk—a woman on the corner, shoulders stooped as life weighed her down. Her harsh make-up and lack of clothing on an unseasonably chilly night told me what she was waiting for. I exhaled a thin stream of air then forced myself to breathe in and out, slowly, telling myself I was once again being ridiculous.
Paranoid.
Crazy.
Breathe in and out.
Breathe in and out.
Put one foot in front of the other, Lara. I started towards my apartment, just another girl returning home after a night out, trying to act casual. But my feet didn’t get the message and moved faster and faster, seemingly of their own accord.
More than once over the past couple of weeks, I’d given in to the urge to run and ended up pounding along the street. I must have looked like an escapee from the asylum as I was chased by an army of monsters invisible to everybody except me.
Tonight that wouldn’t happen. No, tonight I was going to stay calm. Except when I reached the bottom of the rickety stairs leading to the shabby walk-up I called home, I almost sobbed with relief. I abandoned my attempts to look unruffled and raced up the steps two at a time, feeling them wobble beneath my weight.
The key was already in my hand, and I stabbed it at the lock.
Missed.
Missed again.
Will you get in the freaking keyhole! I forced myself to pause and used my shaking left hand to help my equally tremulous right one to aim carefully. Twisted the key. Ran inside.
The slam of the door echoed in the shabby hallway, and I quickly shot home the two bolts I’d begged the landlord for weeks to install. He hadn’t, of course. In the end, I’d given up and asked the creep who lived two doors down to do it with the promise of a six-pack and thirty minutes in which to stare at my cleavage.
But for now, I was home.
Home.
I’d made it for another night, and I leaned against the door and slid slowly to the floor. How much longer could I keep this up?
Excerpt 2 – Nick…
A soft glow glimmered from the lounge windows, welcoming Nick back as he walked up the drive. That was an added feature of his custom security system—it switched the lights on and off at random times as well as opening and closing the drapes.
The first hint that something wasn’t right came when he turned to the alarm panel next to the front door. It blinked green. Why was the system unarmed? More to the point, where was the stack of boxes he usually had to lean over to reach it?
Who the hell had been in his house?
One of Nick’s new clients had gotten his house invaded by fraudsters while he was overseas recently, and the bastards had the gall to pass the property off as their own while trying to sell it cut-price. Nick pressed his lips together, trying to fight off the headache that had been threatening all evening. If his house had been broken into, the team paid to monitor his state-of-the-art system was getting fired first thing tomorrow morning.
As he crept through the hallways, his senses were on high alert, and it wasn’t long before he found what he was looking for. An intruder. When he saw the strange woman asleep on his couch, he did what came as naturally to him as breathing—drew his gun and pointed it at the T-line, that small area between the upper lip and the bottom of the nose. One round through there would hit the medulla oblongata—or the apricot, as his sniper colleagues called it—and turn the lights out instantly.
“Who the hell are you?”
She blinked a couple of times as she woke, then her eyes went wide as she focused on the semi-automatic. The scream she let out made his head pound, and he screwed his eyes up as fireworks exploded behind them.
“P-p-please don’t shoot!” As an afterthought, she flung her arms above her head.
“Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing here?”
She straightened, pulled back her shoulders, and narrowed her eyes, even though she was trembling worse than San Francisco during a 7.0 on the Richter scale. “I could ask you the same question, mister.”
“It’s my house, so back at you.”
“It’s not your house. It belongs to Mr. Goldman, and I’m his housekeeper.”
If he didn’t know better, he’d have believed her. “Try again.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t have a housekeeper.”
“You’re not Mr. Goldman either.”
Huh? “Yes, I am.”
DO YOU PREFER YOUR BOOKS A BIT CLEANER?
An alternate version of Gold Rush, minus the sex and the swearing, is now available 🙂 Join Nick, Lara, and Emmy on the same great adventure, only this time, Emmy has to mind her language!
Find more details HERE!