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Albert Camus

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Excerpt and Giveaway: Dust and Ends (Holding Ransom #2) by Denise Mathew

Description:

Everyone has them, skeletons hidden away just waiting to be discovered. Dark secrets that will be our undoing. And no matter how carefully we bury them, they never stay where they’re put. Those things that we want to hide always rise up when we least expect it, revealing all the truths that we wished never saw the light of day. Spilling and scattering like a broken string of pearls. What they leave in their wake is Dust and Ends.

Charged for a crime that he didn’t commit, twenty-three-year old Ransom Sanders is racing against time, searching for something that will prove his innocence, but with his sadistic father working against him at every turn, Ransom is out of luck, and time.

Lies have a way of tangling up your life, intertwining with reality until you don’t know what’s true and what’s false anymore. They also have a way of coming back to haunt you, to ruin your life, to snatch away everything that you cherished. Nobody knows that better than twenty-year-old Lexie Adams, because her deceptions cost her the one good thing in her life, Ransom Sanders.

Desperate to get Ransom back, Lexie goes to extreme lengths to prove that the past doesn’t equal the present. In her quest to reignite the flame that was extinguished, she puts everything on the line, throwing her heart and soul into helping find the proof that Ransom needs to be vindicated. But to find the truth Ransom and Lexie must work together, something Ransom isn’t too keen on doing. With time running out and nothing to hang on to but a few flimsy shreds of possibilities, Ransom and Lexie must sift through Ransom’s past if they have any chance at all to save his future.

One bad decision...a tragedy that can never be undone...and upon the ruins of devastation love grows...

No one knows as well as Lexie Adams how your whole world can change in a fraction of a second, she's lived with that reality ever since a horrible event stole her future. But worse than what happened after, is living with the concept that she's to blame for it all.

From as far back as Ransom Sanders can remember, his days have been an endless string of venues, hotel rooms, cheap diner food, and nothing to call his own. He knows he's good for two things, pleasing everyone but himself and taking care of his younger brother Gabriel, a celebrity faith healer and medium.

When fate pushes Lexie and Ransom's paths together they develop a relationship based on mutual necessity, where they use each other to get what they need.
Yet what begins as a Pandora's box of secrets and ulterior motives, soon becomes something so much more than either Ransom or Lexie thought they could have. A chance for something that is uniquely their own, a safe place to fall where their broken spirits can be healed, and where love isn't just a word it's a reality.

Excerpt:

Everything that I was doing went against the oath that I had made, the one that said that I wouldn’t do this to Lexie again, because it wasn’t right to make her believe that things between us would somehow work out.

“And I need to do this one last time, to seal the promise,” I said.

I caught her mouth in mine. It was the kiss that I shouldn’t have taken, but did all the same. It was everything that I had expected, the sweetest treat in the bakery store showcase, the moment of pleasure you felt when you were airborne, falling to the earth in a skydive, a time when if you let your mind forget where you were, you might imagine that you could actually fly.

But with every jump there was also a landing, a time when the ground suddenly looked ominous, when your whole life was dependent on a flimsy piece of material that may or may not release and take you safely to the ground. This was that time, the second before I tugged the ripcord, so the air caught beneath fabric, guiding me back to reality. Of course there was also another scenario that might happen just as easily, the parachute would fail and I would be dead.

I prayed my parachute would open in Miracle like Gabriel had said it would, but somehow I wasn’t sure it would.

About the author:
Denise Mathew loves good chocolate, lots of coffee, her kids and husband, when they behave, and of course writing stories. She believes that housework should be banned and wishes that potato chips were the most healthy and nutritious food on the planet. She worked as a pediatric nurse for eleven years, once owned an online jewelry business and even taught English in Thailand. She plans on writing until the stories run out, something she hopes never happens.

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