It's Friday! Which means I have an excerpt for you. Today, you get to read a bit of VICE RIDE from MJ Moores. This New Adult romance is now available!
“Damnit.”
She pushed the tote bags around the kitchen floor with her foot. Forgot milk. Amber leaned against the counter with outstretched hands and let her head hang toward her chest. Just one more thing she had to try and fit into an already busy night. She cursed again and pushed off, dragging herself back to the front hall. Yanking on her damp boots, she shrugged her jacket on and snatched the keys from the floor. The light her dad had on a timer already shone, a dull glow.
Back in the Mini, she yanked her driving gloves on and thanked the powers that be that reading week started on Monday. She needed a break. Amber headed for the convenience store just up the way. She was supposed to be going to a ski lodge with Kim and Nanci, but that fell through when she decided to move back home. Still, vegging out in the basement rec room was better than playing hide and seek with the crowd at school. Warmer, too, on both accounts.
As Amber turned onto Mercury Road, her lights glanced over a silver truck half-on, half-off the road on the opposite side of the street – at the walkway to the river. The driver’s door hung wide open and a blue dash light blinked.
What’s going on?
She pulled over just past the vehicle and tossed the Mini into park. She looked around, twisting this way and that to see behind her and off to the side.
No one.
Nothing.
Her stomach clenched, but not in fear. Nothing crazy ever happened in her neighbourhood. It was an older subdivision with a lot of young families and retired couples.
Worry compelled her to snatch her phone and check it out. She didn’t want to call 911 and have it be some drunk taking a piss in Mrs. Randall’s bushes. He’d be gone before they arrived. And if that was the case, it was probably Yellena’s Great Uncle. Amber’s old babysitter always had strange stories about her extended family. Amber clicked on her phone light as she walked past the truck and beyond the streetlamp onto the shadowed path.
She tracked her beam back and forth over the frost-tipped grass. The black cloak of the bushes guarded the way to the river and gave her the creeps.
Maybe I should just leave it alone.
Then her beam caught a flash of red just down the trail. Her heart jumped. She trained the light back on the bright splotch and just stood there, squinting, trying to decipher what her eyes were telling her.
“Holy shit.”
A body.
She nearly dropped her phone trying to dial the police. A ragged cough broke the quiet as air rasped down someone’s throat. The shoe attached to the leg, attached to the red jacket, shifted. Amber didn’t finish dialing. She ran to the person whose cough turned into a groan.
She dropped down beside them.
“Hey, are you okay?” She reached out to touch the coat. Another moan and the person rolled onto his back. Her hand hovered as his swollen and bloodied face came into view.
Josh.
“What the hell? Josh. Josh, can you hear me?” Amber dropped her phone and reached with both hands to hold his face, but didn’t. She didn’t want to hurt him more, even if he deserved it. He licked his lips.
“Caber?” he forced the word past a fat lip and dry throat. Amber shoved his shoulder.
“I told you not to call me that, asshole.”
Amber leaves a college scholarship when she discovers her father keeping secrets. But, instead of facing long-standing family issues, she agrees to help her ex-boyfriend with a crazy scheme. Josh has five days to “keep his legs” or his bookie comes collecting. The problem is, being trapped in a car together stirs up a murky past, and threatens to expose the lies they’ve both been running from.
MJ Moores returns with an all-new edition to her flawed attraction romance series of books – Vice Ride
Come jump in the back of the pick-up while we go for a ride in the Algonquin region of Ontario. Watch Amber and Josh rock and roll through penny-pinching adventures, odd jobs, and making every cent count!
MJ Moores is an avid reader and writer of speculative fiction. Her early career as a high school Drama & English teacher nourished her propensity to help others with their writing. MJ’s debut novel Time’s Tempest is the first book in The Chronicles of Xannia quartet, a sci-fi/fantasy crossover. Her latest releases are the steampunk superhero online serial, Shadow Phoenix, and book 2 in the Flawed Attraction Romances: Vice Ride.
In addition to her writing addiction, MJ gives workshops and coaches indie authors via her website Infinite Pathways. MJ is acquisitions editor for DAOwen Publications’ imprint Love Knot Books.
