DeLuca Family Collection
A
Suspenseful Romance Collection
Coming
December 12th 2014
from Musa Publishing
from Musa Publishing
Love
makes your heart race, but passion can kill.
Three
strong, captivating women.
Three
intense, driven men.
One
family devoted to justice.
Come
journey with the DeLuca Family from the tumultuous streets of Chicago
to the majestic peaks of Glacier National Park in these three
intriguing full-length novels loaded with passion, suspense…and
danger.
Heartbeats (Book 1)
Dressed in her nightgown, Elizabeth
cracked open the door of the bedroom and peered out, just to make
sure the coast was clear. Verifying that the door from the living
room to the bathroom was closed, she tiptoed into the room. The aroma
of fresh-brewed coffee drew her to the table where a steaming carafe
sat, along with a basket of blueberry muffins and two cartons of
yogurt. The man was an angel, she mused — well, maybe not.
Biting into a muffin, she relished the
sweet taste of the blueberries against her palate, then ravenously
took another bite and poured herself a cup of coffee. She was about
to take her stash into the bedroom when the bathroom door flew open.
Drake stepped out, a towel wrapped dangerously low around his loins.
He stopped in mid-stride. His eyes locked onto hers. He appeared as
shocked as she to find her standing there.
Elizabeth stood there, transfixed,
staring at him for a full ten seconds with her coffee cup in one
hand, the muffin and napkin in the other. He stood stock-still, too,
while water dripped from his forehead and into his eyes. His hair was
matted forward. The dripping water drew Elizabeth’s gaze downward.
Her eyes traveled to his chest where a patch of dark hair glistened
across his pectoral muscles, then down along the line that led to the
six-pack of hard muscles that molded his abdomen. Her gaze traveled
lower, to the edge of the towel where his hand was clamped around the
towel’s ends, barely holding it in place at the top of his right
hipbone. The knowledge of what lay beneath that towel brought a burn
to her cheeks.
Quickly she drew her gaze back up to
his chest, noting the scar to the lower left of his collarbone. An
old scar, she judged, grown white with time. She wondered where the
new scar was — the scar from the bullet he’d taken in the Virgin
Islands. In his back? Beneath the towel? Now that was a scary
thought. What a tragic loss to womanhood if he was damaged goods.
Elizabeth, get a grip! she
scolded herself. Then another thought assailed her. She realized that
if he had been hit there, beneath the towel, he might have come very
close to death. There were umpteen blood vessels and arteries in the
lower abdomen. Tearing through any one of them could be fatal. The
possibility of that brought her eyes sliding quickly back up to his
with a touch of panic that unnerved her.
But his eyes did not meet hers, for
they were enjoying their own delicious feast…She knew she should
move, but found she couldn’t. It was as if she was being held under
some ancient power. Finally, his gaze moved up again, pausing at her
swollen breasts once more, before returning to her face.
“Oh!” she said. The mixture of
surprise and passion she saw in his eyes threatened to make the
coffee cup slide from her hand. Her heart thudded wildly against her
ribs. She swallowed hard, trying to get control of herself. His eyes
narrowed on her.
“I forgot my shaving kit,” he
explained, then tore his gaze from hers and crossed to the sofa to
rummage through his suitcase with one hand while the other stayed
clamped to the towel.
“Yes,” she responded inanely, still
unable to get her feet to move. She eyed his strong legs where the
towel barely covered his thighs, noted the muscles that rippled along
his back when he turned away. Noted, also, that t
there was no fresh scar on his back.
He turned to her again and she finally
managed to tear her eyes away from him, embarrassed now that he had
discovered her examining him.
“I’ll just take this into the
bedroom,” she said and quickly made her escape.
ICE Blue (Book 2)
Morning
light peeked around the edges of her window blinds when next she
opened her eyes. With a start, she realized she must have drifted off
to sleep again. Glancing at her bedside clock, she feared the
worst—the sun didn’t rise in mid-January in Chicago until almost
eight.
The
digital clock glared seven forty-five.
She’d
planned to be at the clinic by seven to make sure everything was set
for the first patients. She must have turned off the alarm in her
sleep. It was crazy how the tone alarm at the station could have her
jumping out of bed, but at home she slept right through her own
alarm. The puppy was yelping again, quite frantically this time.
“Okay,
little pup!” she called as she stumbled out of bed. “Hold on. I’m
coming!” But as she took a step toward the doorway, she stubbed her
toe on one of the boots she’d kicked off the night before.
“Damn,”
she swore. Tell yourself again
what a great idea accepting the puppy was.
In
the kitchen, the puppy’s frenzied state had him scratching at his
grate. “Shush,” she scolded him. “Settle down or you’ll wake
the neighbors, if there could possibly be any still asleep.”
Bending
to open his crate, she reached in to grab him, but he scooted past
her, making a beeline for the back door of the condo. She hurried
after him…
“Settle
down, little pup!” she scolded. She really should come up with a
name for him, she couldn’t call him little pup forever. She caught
up with him at the door and scooped him up, but not before noticing
the little puddle he’d left on the wooden floorboards in his
excitement to get out.
“Seriously?
Could you give me a break here?”
She
tried to be mad at him, but when he looked at her with those soulful
little black eyes, she just couldn’t. Pulling him up against her,
she rubbed his fur against her cheek and smiled.
“You’re
going to be the death of me yet,” she said, not unkindly. She
turned to grab a paper towel from the kitchen, but the puppy still
wouldn’t settle in her arms. He kept turning his head to yap at the
door. “Shush,” she admonished him again.
At
last he quieted. It was then that she heard it—the tiniest little
mewing coming from the other side of the door.
“What
in the world...? Is that what has you so excited?”
Turning
once more to the door, she placed a hand over the puppy’s muzzle
and listened more closely. Sure enough, the mewing came again.
She
slid a couple of slats of the blinds aside, squinting at the beam of
sunlight that streamed in from where it peeked over the low buildings
behind hers, and scanned the rear area. Her gaze moved over the back
porch, to the stair area, and then below it to the asphalt pavement
of the courtyard below. Nothing moved.
The
mewing stopped and then started up again. Angela frowned. The raspy
mewing sounded suspiciously like a cat.
“Great.”
She sighed. “Just what I need, a cat to go along with the dog!”
Tucking
the puppy under one arm, she unlocked the door, opened it a crack,
and looked down.
A
cardboard box lay against the threshold. The muffled mewing came from
inside it. She opened the door more fully, ignoring the cold blast of
air that slammed against her skin, and knelt to explore the box.
“Well,
little pup, what do we have here, do you think?”
Now
that she’d discovered the box, he’d settled down and seemed just
as curious as she to find out what lay inside. Carefully, she lifted
the flaps, expecting at any moment for the cat to jump out at her.
But
what lay inside barely moved, except for the tiny mouth in the small
round face where it once more emitted the most pitiful gaspy mewing
sound.
Angela’s
heart rate jumped several beats. Grasping the puppy tighter, she
stared into the box and emitted her own startled cry.
“Oh...My...God!”
TRUE Blue (Book 3)
Lieutenant Detective
Joseph Anthony DeLuca Jr. of the Chicago Police Department knelt
beside the victim and lifted the edge of the plastic sheet to expose
the bloodied head and lifeless torso. His gut clenched. This never
got easier, but this guy was a cop, a detective under his own watch,
and that fact irked him even more.
“How the hell did
this happen?” he asked Sergeant Davis, the slain detective’s
immediate supervisor.
Oh, yes, he’d had the
quick initial briefing when he’d arrived on scene. A convenience
store robbery in progress. Shots fired. Officers responding, but
before backup could arrive, more shots fired, and then a car
screaming down the street and Detective Mark Beattie, pursuing on
foot, struck down, his body flying through the air on impact, his
head smashing against the pavement when he landed.
“Why was he here in
the first place?” Lieutenant DeLuca added, ignoring the sweat that
beaded on his brow. The late afternoon heat was stifling. The August
sun’s hot rays radiated off the pavement. It didn’t help the sick
feeling in his gut.
“He was following up
on a lead on a previous robbery attempt,” Sergeant Davis said,
“questioning a woman in the apartment across the street. As near as
we can tell, he must have heard the first gunshots and he ran outside
to check it out.
“We got the call at
3:47 for shots fired. According to witnesses, right after the first
shots were fired, a man wearing a ski mask ran out of the store and
took off on foot. Seconds later, another guy comes running out of the
store, again wearing a ski mask. From what we’ve put together so
far, when the second suspect came out of the store, Beattie called
out that he was a police officer and told him to stop. About the same
time, a car pulled up in the parking lot and a woman started to get
out.
“The suspect began
shooting toward Beattie, and Beattie returned fire, but then the
suspect ran toward the woman’s car. He grabbed the woman and threw
her aside so he could get into the car. That’s when Beattie took
off after him on foot, right about the time another car came racing
down the street. The car slammed into him. Beattie didn’t have a
chance. Near as we can figure, it was the getaway car.
“The woman’s
sitting in one of the patrol cars. She’s pretty shook up. Her
eleven-month-old baby was in a car seat in the back. Both are okay.
The suspect never made it out of the parking lot. It seems Detective
Beattie got off a fatal shot before he was struck by the car. CSU is
still working over the perp.”
Lieutenant DeLuca’s
jaw clenched as his eyes focused on the bloodied features of his
detective. Beattie was a good man, one of his best. He’d left a
wife and two children, middle school age. Just last week, the man was
telling him about a trip he was planning to take with his family to
the Wisconsin Dells. He remembered the light in Beattie’s eyes as
he talked about how excited the kids were.
“EMS worked on him
for a full twenty minutes before calling it,” Davis continued. “CSU
found a bullet hole in his neck and one in his chest. Not sure what
really killed him—the impact, the gunshots, or smacking his head on
the pavement. Take your pick.”
“What about the owner
of the convenience store?” DeLuca asked.
“Deceased.”
Lieutenant DeLuca shook
his head. “Are they done here?” He nodded down at Beattie.
“Just finished up,
for now.”
The lieutenant eased
the edge of the sheet down and said a silent prayer for his detective
before looking up again at Davis. “Then let’s get him the hell
off the street.”
What
the critics are saying about Susan Rae’s books
Heartbeats:
“A terrific tale of romantic intrigue, with characters who are
intelligent, skilled professionals and to whom we can easily
relate.”—Marilyn
Weigel, RTM
ICE
blue: “With her well-developed characters, Susan keeps you glued to
the pages.” —Susan
Peck, My Cozie Corner
“…this
romance, thriller was something that took hold of your heart as you
read.” — Beth
Cutwright, Beth Art From
The Heart
TRUE
blue: “The writing was terrific and the plot was intriguing and
suspenseful. Rae masterfully deceives the reader into thinking that
she knows who-dunnit but the reader will be deliciously surprised at
the end.” —Cindi,
Mammasez
Susan
grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and received her Bachelor of Arts
Degree from Columbia College, Missouri with an emphasis in creative
writing.She penned her first melodrama in fifth grade for a Girl
Scout Drama badge. Complete with hero, heroine, and dastardly
villain, it wasn’t so very different, really, than the romantic
suspense she writes now.
“I
love writing romantic suspense because it allows me to combine a
sexy, passionate love story with a gritty suspense tale—in my
opinion, the best of both worlds.It also allows me to express my
appreciation for the outdoors in the setting that I recreate on the
page.”
When
she is not sketching characters, you might find Susan on the golf
course working on her handicap, or traveling around the country
seeking out new settings for her novels with her husband and empty
nest puppies, Ginger and Nikute. To read more about Susan’s novels
and the writing life, please visit her website/blog at
www.susanrae.com
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