Six Sentence Sunday: Before The Morning #6

Hey beautiful people!

Winter is definitely here, so all I wanna do is curl up under a comfy afghan, with my feet in fuzzy socks, and a cup of coffee+cocoa in my hands (one of my own inventions; might share the recipe one day!)... and I want good stuff to read! Anything to take my mind off the cold and super-lashing rain beating down my window panes. Just as well it's time for Six Sentence Sunday, innit?

Speaking of SSS, this week's excerpt should answer the questions that arose in previous weeks' snippets. (And check out the gorgeous cover Fiona Jayde, the Noble Romance cover artist, did for me! That's Rayne on there, in a pose that totally sums the tone of her characterisation in the book. The lower part of the cover is an image of a sunrise over Charles Bridge, in the center of Prague, where a pivotal part of the book takes place. Anyhow...)

Remember - Ash, the paramedic, has been called to attend to the victims of a drunken brawl. While there, he witnesses a man hit a woman right in front of everyone. Always the knight in shining armour, Ash jumps to her defense... only to find a strange, uncanny resemblance between this girl, Irina, and his childhood best friend, Rayne, whom he hasn't seen in 17 years.

Who is Irina, really?


'...

From the front-facing window on the second floor of the Shepherd's Close freehold, Corpus secret agent Rayne Cheltham watched the ambulance pull away from the curb.

Shivers crept up her arms, and she hugged herself tight to ward them off—Get a grip!

She was a professional on an assignment, an elite, trained operative from a clandestine agency that handled operations for governments and international forces as a stealthy left hand—her agency entrusted her with the most important missions; nothing should faze her.

Before today, she would've said that nothing could affect her when she had her eyes on a goal.

But she wasn't sure anymore—she'd never had her past collide with her present like a few moments ago, in the form of her childhood best friend.

Ashford Gilfoy, better known as Ash; the boy who had been there to catch her when, at six, she had slipped while climbing the chestnut tree that sat right on the border between their two houses in Hastings, two days after her family moved there from Salisbury; the boy who had taught her how to ride a bicycle without the training wheels on the long and winding, gravel-covered lane leading to her parents' mansion; the teenager who had smashed the nose of the first lad who had broken her heart, at thirteen, during recess in the schoolyard; the young man she had left seventeen years ago on a platform at London Waterloo, on the day she bid her old life goodbye. ...'

Catch the rest of the SSS posse over at the official list - and don't forget to check out the surefire goodies to be found at the blogs of Jessica E. Subject, Siobhan Muir, Lorraine Paton, Wildcat's Wife, JM Blackman, Elin Gregory, Angela Quarles, & Sue of Sassyspeaks, among many others!

Hope you're having lovely (& warm!) weekend. I'm all abuzz here because Before The Morning (Corpus Brides: Book 2) is scheduled for release tomorrow, May 7... if everything goes as planned *touch wood*

Thanks for dropping by today; double thanks + XOXO if you leave a comment.

From Mauritius with love,

Zee