Hi, everyone!  Today, DEADLY LIES is out in the wild! DEADLY LIES is the third installment of my Deadly romantic suspense series, and this book focuses on SSD Agent Samantha Kennedy:

She wants to hide the past…

FBI Special Agent Samantha Kennedy is haunted by memories of the serial killer who abducted her. To keep the darkness at bay, she pretends to be a different, more confident woman. This Samantha doesn’t fear every unknown face. So she throws caution to the wind and shares a night of unbridled passion with a handsome stranger.

He needs to uncover the truth…

One night isn’t enough for successful entrepreneur Max Ridgeway. He wants more of the sexy, smart, mysterious woman who slipped away before dawn. When they meet again, their attraction is undeniable—until his stepbrother goes missing, and Max realizes that Samantha isn’t who she seems. But they must trust each other to trap a ring of blood-thirsty kidnappers before the nightmares that terrorize Sam become irrevocably real.

As a merciless criminal spins a web of . . .DEADLY LIES

You can read an excerpt from DEADLY LIES here.

And here are a few review excerpts to try and tempt you so that you’ll buy the book:

(Tempt, tempt!)

“The heart-pounding sequel to Deadly Fear and Deadly Heat offers surprise and sexy romance at every turn.”–Publishers Weekly

“…sexual chemistry is fiery, their conflict strong and the plot turns twisted. Readers will race through the final pages to see if the characters—and love—can survive.”–Bookpage

Have a great day! Happy reading!

In just a few days (on February 22!), DEADLY LIES will be shipping from your favorite online book retailer or available in your local bookstore. (The e-version of the book will be available on the *official* release date of 3/1.)  So to get ready for the coming release, I thought I’d share the DEADLY LIES prologue with you. And,  yes, warning! There is adult language in this prologue.

Prologue

“I thought you’d be worth more.”  The voice came to him, low and taunting.  “After all of your blustering and bullshit, I really thought you’d be worth more.”

Jeremy Briar jerked in the chair, but there was nowhere for him to go. His hands were bound to the armrests, the duct tape was far too tight, cutting into his wrists, and his legs were taped to the legs of the chair.  A blindfold covered his eyes, casting him in darkness, and the scent of cigarettes burned his nose.

“L-let me go…” His voice rasped out. They hadn’t given him anything to drink or to eat, in Christ, how many hours?  “M-my family…th-they’ll pay any-anything…” Just to get me back.

Laughter. Dark and mean.  “No, they won’t pay a fucking dime.”

The ice in his chest froze his heart. “No!” The tape bit into him. “M-my father is—”

“An idiot.” The voice was still low, drifting through the darkness.  “I gave him instructions, but the thing is, Jeremy boy, the asshole just couldn’t follow them.”

Bile rose in his throat. “N-no…”

“Not like I asked for that much.  Just four million for you. Four damn million.” The shuffle of footsteps.  More than one set. Someone else was here. Wherever the hell here was.  He didn’t know. The last thing he remembered was drinking at The Court, then he’d woken up in hell.

“The bastard has that much in change.”  Anger simmered in that tense whisper.

Jeremy licked his lips and knew that the voice was right. His father owned half the city. He had that much money in the bank, easy.  What the fuck? Jeremy’s mouth was so dry. He’d screamed and he’d screamed before, but no one had come for him.

No one had helped him.

“Your father thinks it’s a joke.”  Jeremy jerked when he felt a touch on his shoulder.  Sharp. Light. Fingernail?

The point pressed into his flesh.

Jesus. A knife. A whimper broke from his lips. “L-Let me talk to him…I’ll make him see—”

No fucking joke.

“I told him what to do,” the whisper blew against his ear, and Jeremy shuddered. “Told him when to make the drop.  Told him where to put the money. Told him everything, and if he’d just followed my instructions, you would’ve been home by now.”

The blade sliced into his shoulder.

Jeremy pissed his pants.  “Pl-please…”

“Rich boy, is this the first time you’ve begged?”

His head jerked in a nod.  He knew tears streamed from beneath the blindfold. He couldn’t stop them.  Fear ate at his gut, and he knew, he knew that his father had left him to die.

Always disappointing me, boy. Not going to dig your ass out of another mess.  You’re on your own.

Those had been the last words that his father spoke to him. So he’d screwed up and gotten busted with pot.  Did he deserve this?

Don’t let me die.

“Beg some more.” The blade sank into his shoulder.

And Jeremy begged. Begged and pleaded and promised anything because he wanted the fire in his shoulder to ease. He wanted the pain to stop.  He wanted to go home.

Bad dream. Just a bad dream. I’ll wake up, I’ll—

The knife pulled from his flesh with a thick slush of sound.  Jeremy cried out, sagging back, but the blade followed him.  The tip grazed over his jaw, traveled up his cheek, and then slipped right under the edge of the blindfold.

“You’re going to send your old man a message for me.”

Hope shot through him.  Yes, yes! If he could just talk to his dad, he could make him understand. Not a joke. Hell, no. His dad would understand. The bastards would get their money, and Jeremy would be free. “I’ll tell him anything, I’ll say—”

The blade sliced the blindfold away.

He blinked against the flood of light.  So bright.

“You don’t have to say a damn thing.”

The voice, not a whisper anymore, stopped his heart.

The man crouched over him with the weapon. Jeremy could see the others, too, as they came forward into the light.

Jeremy shook his head, “Don’t—”

The knife sank into his upper arm. It sliced down, and the bastard jerked the blade, cutting through flesh and muscle in one long stroke as he opened the arm from shoulder to wrist.

Jeremy screamed.

“Let’s send him a message.” The figure moved around him and stared down with a smile that twisted his lips and never touched his eyes.  “Let’s see what the asshole has to say when he finds what’s left of you.”

Hi, everyone!  Today I will be going through all of the My Deadly Valentine posts–if any prizes have not been awarded, winners will be selected.  (I apologize for the delay–sickness hit my house this week–bah!)

Hope you have a great day!

Thank you all so much for participating in the My Deadly Valentine event. I hope you enjoyed the guest posts and author visits.  (I have now added so many books to my TBR pile!)

I also hope that you are getting ready to have a fabulous Valentine’s Day event.  May your sweetie bring you lots of delicious chocolates! Oh, that chocolate goodness…

And if you happen to be looking for more giveaway fun, well, I’ve got the scoop for you.  Forever Romance will be sponsoring a fun Valentine’s Day party on Twitter today. Giveaways, ahoy!

Happy Valentine’s Day to you.  Take some today to relax. Pamper yourself. Read a good book. Eat some good chocolate.

Update: Margaret’s winner is…Krystean!  Congrats!

My last Deadly Valentine guest (where has the time gone?!) is the fabulous Margaret Rowe. Margaret writes sexy historical romances that you don’t want to miss. Margaret, thank you for joining me and indulging in some Valentine’s fun!

***

Thanks so much to Cynthia for including me in her Deadly Valentine line-up! As Margaret Rowe, I don’t write romantic suspense, although I have had a few bodies turn up here and there in my erotic historicals that I carefully step over. My next release, Any Wicked Thing, has no dead people, but there was potential. You see, my hero and heroine like to fight each other. With swords. Yes, I’ve got a fencing heroine, Frederica Wells, who is fearsome and feisty. Smart, too, a medieval scholar. She writes history books and lives in a crumbling castle with a deliciously decadent duke and is one of my favorite heroines to date. And the hero Sebastian? Yum, if I do say so myself.

I worked in a library while I wrote the book. One of the things I found most difficult about the job was the yearly weeding process—we removed books from the collection that were outdated, years-untouched or sometimes downright disgusting with mold, mildew and other unsavory ingredients. But imagine my delight when Castello’s The Theory and Practice of Fencing was destined for the discard pile. I had an arrangement with the head librarian to take what interested me before it went to Book Heaven, so I’ve wound up with some great old volumes. While they make me sneeze and itch, they’ve been invaluable for research, and have shown me how much books have changed. I’ve got a copy of A School History of England, c. 1904 that I know would put school kids in a coma if they were reading it today.

I discovered lots of interesting things as I wrote AWT. The weirdest? During a siege in France, some enterprising fellows decided to enter the castle through the garderobe. That’s right, basically they climbed up a smelly sewer pipe. Yikes, talk about determination. Yes, I surrender. Now will you please take a bath?

For my last Margaret Rowe book, Tempting Eden (no relation to Cynthia, LOL), I discovered women shaved off their eyebrows and glued on mouse skin. Yikes again.

I’ve got a copy of Any Wicked Thing (Berkley Heat, March 2011) for one commenter who tells me the strangest fact they’ve come across in their reading. For excerpts, please visit my website and that of my alter ego Maggie Robinson. Thanks so much, and party on!