Snippety: Beyond the Rules

…Wednesday

Beyond the Rules! I’ll head off on the right foot this time and mention right away that this book, along with the first in the series, is now widely available as an ebook. Hooray!

RULE #1: FAMILY COMES FIRST

RULE #2: IF YOU BELONG TO KIMMER REED’S FAMILY, IGNORE RULE #1

She’d never planned to see her so-called family again. But that didn’t help Hunter Agency operative Kimmer Reed when her brother showed up on her doorstep, men with guns just minutes behind. Seemed he’d gotten in over his head and had decided to give his former mob “business partners” a new target: Kimmer.

Not so fast. Because Kimmer is no longer a scared teen–she’s a highly trained covert agent wth things worth fighting for. A job she loves. A house that’s truly a home. A sexy man who loves her and believes that family is sacred…uh-oh. It’s time for…

RULE #3: WHEN YOUR LIFE, LOVE, AND MANGY BROTHER ARE AT STAKE, THERE ARE NO RULES…
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This cover? I got a huge kick out of it. They took the scene right out of the story, which is unusual for Silhouette–they go more for representational covers. But with Bombshell, they never really did figure out how to market them, and the various cover styles were part of that.

The best (ahem) thing about this cover is the car. In the book, it’s a clearly identified maroon Malibu. On the cover it’s…it’s…well, I asked a car afficianado friend of mine and he said (paraphrased!), “Hee! Hee hee hee! It’s a…hee! Frankencar!”

I suppose I should feel lucky it wasn’t a horse gone wrong. (I’ve yet to see a horse gone right on a category cover, I am sad and amused to say.)

From somewhere in the first chapter…

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Another glance showed Kimmer that the idiot had stayed with her, bouncing along the rough roads on spongy shocks–if anything, closing the distance between them. “He’s persistent enough. This isn’t casual.”

Rio glanced behind them. Kimmer knew that quiet tension in his body, the tall rangy strength he hid so well in his amiable nature. “The question is, is this about you or is this about me?”

“Your turf was overseas.” The Miata slewed back out onto the main road, a two-lane state route between Watkins Glen and Rock Stream. “And you’re ex-CIA.”

“Hey,” he said, wounded. “I’m good ex-CIA. I might have made an enemy or two. And it doesn’t make sense for it to be you–you don’t exactly work on your home turf.”

“Not if I can help it,” she grumbled, not bothering to point out the irony that she’d met him on a job she hadn’t wanted simply because it was too close to her childhood home.

Her long-buried, long-hated childhood.

She blew through a stop sign–not a significant risk on this particular stretch of road–with her eye on the upcoming turn, the one that started off with a decent paved road, turned abruptly to dirt, and even more abruptly came to an end, a service road made obsolete by underground utilities. She thumbed the switch to bring up the Miata’s barely open windows. “Check the glove box, will you?”

“God, is it safe?”Kimmer smiled. “Probably not.”

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