Book excerpt for "Selkie's Song" by Clare Austin

Today the blog is a book excerpt tour stop for the contemporary romance novel, Selkie's Song (third book in the Fadó Trilogy) by Clare Austin.

Clare will be awarding a print (US only) or digital copies (international) of the first two books in the series, Butterfly and Angel's Share to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour. To be entered for a chance to win, leave a comment below. And to increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit other tour stops and leave comments there.

Blurb:

They call her Selkie. Muireann O'Malley often felt she was born of the sea but refuses to let sentimentality stand in the way of her crusade to protect the shore she has wandered since a small child. A patch of West Clare, Ireland, and a derelict building are all that stand between the cliffs she loves and the callous grip of progress.

Tynan Sloane should be content with success, but a dream beckons. O'Fallon's Pub in historic downtown Boston is for sale and Tynan wants to make it his. An unexpected inheritance of land in the west of Ireland could provide the financing he needs. He doesn't expect his quick trip to sell the land to rekindle youthful passion.

Fifteen years ago, they had an adolescent crush. Now disparate ambition and a legend as old as Ireland herself stand between them. Will love and myth collide to bring them together or tear them apart?

Excerpt:

“That was you. On the beach, below the cliffs.”

Naked, brazen, stunning.

Muireann handed him his tea, stretched like a lazy feline, and propped her bare feet up on an ottoman. “Of course it was,” she said, took a sip and grinned over the rim of her cup.

Tynan threw his head back and laughed with relief and a touch of embarrassment. He hadn’t dreamed her, she wasn’t some magical creature from the sea. This Muireann was flesh and bone, nicely arranged and within reach. He had seen those same tousled locks, not a mantle of water plants. Her long limbs were those of a woman and not a seal turned mortal.

“I’m not sure if I should be relieved or disappointed,” he said and admitted only to himself, she was no disappointment.

“Don’t tell me you thought I was a selkie? One of the Ó Conghaile ready to sing you out to sea and drown you?”

“It’s Ireland; stranger things have been known to happen when a man is caught off guard.” She could sing him straight to the gates of glory—or damnation—and he’d go with a grin on his face.

Muireann had shed her wet T-shirt and pulled on a high-necked polo and a loose Aran jumper. She’d changed her jeans for a long skirt. Other than her naked feet, nothing of her body was exposed, but Ty scanned her with imagination. The clothes dropped away and all he could see was her lithe contours and full breasts.

When he worked his way down to the triangle of dark hair at the apex of her slim thighs, there was no stopping the physical reaction she elicited in him. He tried with no success to stop thinking like a horny adolescent.

“Are you shocked by me?” she asked, reaching for a biscuit from the tray.

Ty sipped from his tea to wet the dry lump in his throat before he was able to speak. “I’m not sure ‘shocked’ is the right word for it. Surprised? Sure.” Part of him was shocked, surprised, and a little off balance.

“I’ve two sisters. I guess I’ve been really protective of them all these years. What you did…well, I think if you were my sister, I’d take you home and lock you away for good.”

Muireann curled into her chair, pulled her legs up and hugged her knees. She looked so deep into Tynan’s eyes he was tempted to turn away. His heart leapt into a gallop as she spurred his desire for her. In the silence, he was deafened by the blood coursing in his ears.

“I guess it’s a grand thing then,” she began, “that I’m not one of your sisters.”

Author bio and links:

A word about the author...

Clare Austin submitted her first manuscript to a publisher at the age of eight years. She wishes she still had that rejection letter.

Many years and not a few stories later, with characters knocking at the inside of her cranium and begging to be released, Clare’s romantic comedy, Butterfly, was published. There followed a suspenseful sequel, Angel’s Share, and Hot Flash, a women’s fiction/romance for mature women and the men who love them.

Clare lives in the beautiful Rocky Mountains and enjoys her horses, playing her violin, and traveling to Ireland every summer.

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