Welcome to my stop on the Undertow blog tour. To follow along with the rest of the tour, just click on the banner above.
Title:
Undertow
Author:
Elizabeth O’Roark
Release
date: August 21st, 2013
Genre:
New Adult, Romance
Tour:
Irresistible Reads Book Tours
Maura Pierce seems to
have everything – a bright future, a trust fund and a boyfriend who can’t wait
to settle down.
It almost seems like
enough until Nate Sullivan comes home. Nate – her childhood best friend, her
first love. The boy who left without a trace one night and broke her heart.
When their attraction threatens the future she and her parents have so
carefully crafted, loyalties will be tested and secrets will be uncovered.
Giving in may cost her
everything. But how do you resist the only thing you’ve ever really wanted?
Book Excerpt
Ethan pulls me in for a particularly lingering,
public kiss, his fingers “accidentally” grazing my breast as I push away. “I can’t go through a whole summer of this,”
he says. “I will literally combust if I
have to spend an entire summer at second base with you dressed like that.”
“I think second base is optimistic,” I
giggle.
“I don’t care if grandma is sitting a foot away
and we’re in church, I’m at least hitting second base,” he groans.
He walks me back to the house, refusing to let
me carry my towel and backpack though it gets sand all over his suit.
I turn on the faucet to rinse off and he grabs
the hose from me. “What are you doing?” I ask warily.
“Just being a gentleman, helping you hose off,”
he says, all too innocently. He gently
sprays my feet. “See?”
But then the hose rises. “Your ankles are sandy, too,” he says.
“Ethan,” I warn.
“And your calves.” The hose goes higher, and his
smile grows devious.
“Enough.”
“And your thighs.”
“Okay, seriously, if my grandma’s watching you
are never going to be welcome here again.”
“Your grandma loves me. Turn around.”
It seems safer, so I turn.
“God you’ve got a great ass, Maura.”
Before I can even yell at him, I hear it. The low thump of a car pulling into the
driveway behind the house. I turn, too
quickly, and Ethan hits my stomach with the water. I can’t even feel it, because I’m looking at
Nate Sullivan for the first time in five years.
He has been the principal figure in every single
fantasy I’ve had for my entire life, no matter how often I’ve tried to replace
his face with someone else’s. I thought
when I saw him in person he’d finally lose some of that searing perfection he
held in my mind. But he doesn’t. He is everything I remember, and more, and I
stand stunned and frozen by it as our eyes meet.
He looks the same in some ways, radically different
in others. He has those same cloudy gray eyes, that same smudge of dark lashes,
that same mouth – his upper lip just full enough that it draws your eye.
And yet he’s so different. The last time I saw him, he was a lanky
19-year-old, with a sweet smile that crept over his face without hesitation,
with adoring eyes that looked into mine like he knew things about us that no
one else knew. Which I guess he
did.
He’s an adult now, broader, his body a solid
wall of muscle, but the most important difference is difficult to
pinpoint. The sweetness of his eyes, his
smile – it’s gone, replaced with something that falls between anger and
calculation. What was once mischievous is
now deadly serious, perhaps even a little dangerous. I know what kind of person he is, and all the
things I loved about him are gone, so I can’t account for the fact that I feel
my chest dropping into my stomach at the sight of him, that my legs are
rubbery. That the things I always felt for
him haven’t just lingered – they’ve doubled down. Seeing him should fill me with rage, but
instead it leaves me weak with thirst.
He says nothing to either of us. Ethan never even looks over at him. And then he turns and walks away.
He is not the person I remember at all, so why
am I leaning against the wall for support, letting Ethan spray my breasts
without murmuring the slightest objection?
About
the Author:
Elizabeth O’Roark lives
in Washington, DC with her 3 children. After many years spent writing
scintillating brochures about amniocentesis and heart surgery, she is thrilled
to have found a job that allows her to just make s*** up.
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