Literary Misfit: Excerpt Reveal: Blue Ink by Tess Thompson

Monday, January 14, 2019

Excerpt Reveal: Blue Ink by Tess Thompson

Ardan & Charlotte will stick with you forever! Blue Ink from USA Today bestselling author Tess Thompson is coming on January 21st. KEEP READING FOR AN INCREDIBLE EXCERPT!!!

BUT FIRST - RESERVE A COPY TODAY: Amazon → https://amzn.to/2QFr1Mc Apple → https://apple.co/2zCnfch Kobo → http://bit.ly/2PckyCR Nook → http://bit.ly/2recZlT

BLURB:

From USA Today bestselling author Tess Thompson, visit Blue Mountain yet again in this standalone tale that celebrates underdogs, family secrets, and forbidden love. Charlotte Wilde’s life is a flop. She gives her heart to the wrong men, her first published book is a failure, and now she’s dead broke too. Desperate to pay the bills, she takes a job caring for an elderly woman who is recovering from a broken hip, hopeful the position will leave her with plenty of time to focus on her writing. Yet as Charlotte gets to work, dutifully helping Mrs. Lanigan sort through a box of old letters, distractions abound. For one thing, both women immediately become consumed with a mystery unfolding in the correspondence. And to complicate matters further, Charlotte finds herself hopelessly attracted to her charge’s son, Ardan, a quiet and bookishly handsome man. In the third volume of the Blue Mountain Series, USA Today bestselling author Tess Thompson reunites us with the Lanigan brothers, their cranky mother, and the feisty Heywood sisters. This standalone story of forbidden love and hundred-year old mystery will keep you turning pages way past your bedtime.

DARE YOU NOT TO SWOON:

A little before closing time, we walked to the car. The moon was a sliver in the sky, not even big enough to count as a crescent. Billions of stars lit the black night.

She waited as I unlocked the car door, shivering in the chilly spring night. I grabbed my phone from my jacket and slipped it into my back pocket, then draped my jacket around her shoulders. “Better?” I asked. “Yes.” She pulled the jacked tight against her chest as she looked up at the sky. “The stars. Oh, how are there so many?” “They’re always there. You just can’t see them in the city.” Her words seemed to stretch with wonder. “I’ve never seen a sky like this, yet the whole time it existed, hidden from me. How do the stars shine this brightly? And why? Why are they here?” “They light the sky to remind us that love exists even in the darkest of times. You need only look up to the heavens to remember why we’re here—to love.” She inhaled a sharp breath. “Yes.” “Do you think you could be happy here?” I asked. “I already am.” She answered fast, like she didn’t even have to think about it. “Life is quiet here.” “You said it’s easier to connect to your spirit in the quiet.” She wriggled her way under my arm. I held her tightly against my side. “I can think here.” “That’s what Effie says too.” “I’ve been able to write here. I feel useful.” “Is that the place or the people?” I asked. “Maybe there’s no difference. When it’s where you’re meant to be, the place and the people come together at the same time.” I squeezed her tighter. She fit effortlessly under the crook of my arm. I would tell her some other time that God had made her to fit perfectly against my side. “This jacket smells like you.” Her words were more an exhalation of breath than a sentence. She tilted her face to look up at me. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever smelled. I never want to take it off.” “Keep it. Forever, if you want.” “Ardan?” “Yes?” “Did you really say I was the girl of your dreams? Or did I imagine it?” The sparkle from her eyes mimicked the stars. “I said it. I’ll say it the rest of my life if you’ll let me.” “How can you be sure?” “Our brains, our conscious selves can never be sure. But our souls? They know.” Our gazes locked and held. I fell into the warmth of her brown eyes, oblivious to anything but her. This was a world that belonged only to us, undefined by time or space or even memory. The world of us. “Kiss me?” she asked. “So the stars can see why they shine?” I held her precious face in my hands and kissed her gently. I’ve done this before. I’ve kissed her before under this same sky. Our bodies may have changed. But the sky and our souls remained the same. “I’ve known from the first moment,” I said. “It’s you. It was you all along. I didn’t know where you were.” “Like this sky,” she said. “I couldn’t see you, but you were here just the same.”

About Tess

Like most of her characters, Tess Thompson hails from a small town and will always feel like a small town girl, despite the fact she’s lived in Seattle for over twenty-five years. She loves music and dancing, books and bubble baths, cooking and wine, movies and snuggling. She cries at sappy commercials and thinks kissing in the rain should be done whenever possible. Although she tries to act like a lady, there may or may not have been a few times in the last several years when she’s gotten slightly carried away watching the Seattle Seahawks play, but that could also just be a nasty rumor. She currently lives in a suburb of Seattle, Washington with her brand new husband, the hero of her own love story, and their Brady Bunch clan of two sons, two daughters and five cats, all of whom keep her too busy, often confused, but always amazed. Yes, that’s four kids and five cats. Pray for her.