Hello lovely readers!

It's book release time! Or getting close, and Wolf has set up their always fun new release giveaway for Kiss or Dare's Debut on February 24th. Click here to enter for a chance to win one of five copies of book 3 in The Debutante Dares series. Kiss or Dare is also on pre-order this week, so snag your copy if you're not a KU reader.

I'm sooo tired this week, and not feeling chatty. Introversion kicking in hard these winter months. So I thought to let my characters do the chatting for me. Here's an excerpt from Kiss or Dare featuring Lillian, an inventor's daughter turned incomparable and a Lord Devon, a duke's second son and all around charmer.

***

Lillian swung from the mirror and shook the face from her mind. She stormed out the door and paused in the hallway. 

Was he here? Didn't matter. The only way to get to the carriage was down the stairs, past the workshop, and out the front door. If he was here, and if he heard her, he would comment on her. It was enough to send her screaming back into her room. 

No. She needed him to make her angry, to banish the fairy prince’s face, his face, a face that was no longer supposed to live in her mind. Or her dreams. Even though he appeared to be living in her parents’ house. She growled, straightened her shoulders, raised her chin. 

“You’re an incomparable, Lillian,” she told herself. “Everyone says so. And him…” She growled again. Well, she could compare him to many things. None of them were particularly nice. 

Unless, of course, one counted the fairy prince. Lillian did not. 

She sailed down the stairs safely. Why had her father not put his workshop elsewhere in the house? Outside would be best. 

The workshop door neared. She would not look at it. The ceiling was quite lovely. Though descending the steps without looking was terribly difficult.

“Out of the way!” a silken masculine voice bellowed from down below. “Everyone out of the way. Here comes the incomparable.” 

No. He was here. No use looking at the ceiling now and risking her neck in a fall. 

Lord Devon had spotted her. 

Slowly, she lowered her gaze and found him.

He bowed low.

He’d showed up at the beginning of the season, begging to apprentice under Lillian’s father for some reason or another. The proposition—a duke’s son apprenticing with an inventor—seemed unimaginable. Lillian’s father had loved it, welcomed the younger man with open arms, new tools, and a space all his own in the workshop.

Why her father had agreed to it, she knew well. He liked to be an original, to do the unexpected, and he chased social clout like some men chased skirts. 

But why Lord Devon had asked for such an arrangement she could not fathom, and he shared nothing but unwanted jokes with her.

He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. The man likely knew what that position did to his body—showed off his broad shoulders and trim waist, his powerful legs, the muscles of his arms bunched under linen. He wasn’t even wearing a jacket, an article of clothing forbidden in the workshop. 

She’d almost become immune to seeing him so, his bright yellow hair deliciously mussed, a scrape of stubble across his cheeks, his blue eyes glinting above a chiseled mouth, smirking. 

She descended the rest of the stairs. “Aren’t you supposed to be inventing something, Lord Devon?”

He smirked now. “I am. Inventing lots of things, actually. Important things. But”—a heavy, dramatic sigh—“I need a brain break.” 

She stood in the hall, imitating a lovely, elegant garden statue or ice sculpture. Something cold and cutting. “It won’t be enough, no matter how long you rest.” 

He clutched his chest, right above his heart. “You wound me, Miss Clarke. What are you being compared to, by the way?” 

Her brows knit together. She tilted her head and pulled on her earlobe. “Compared to… I do not take your meaning.” She knew very well his meaning, but that his mind alighted so swiftly in the same place her own mind had been mere moments ago flustered her. Better to play dumb.

“You’re an incomparable, no? What are you being compared to? A summer’s day? Are you more beautiful and more temperate or less so?” 

“I’m being compared to nothing. That’s the point. There is nothing that compares to me.” 

He whistled. “I see your head’s been turned all the way around by the moniker. Not a”—he waved his hand in the air—“flower?”

“No.”

“Missed opportunity, if you ask me, your name being Lillian and all. What about a jewel?” 

“No.”

He scratched his chin. “Aren’t you like called diamonds of the first water or some such? Tricky that, calling you a diamond but saying you can’t be compared to anything. Not sure it’s sound logic.” 

“It’s not a comparison. It’s a metaphor. You know that. Don’t pretend otherwise. Oh, bother. I’m late. I have not the time for your musings.” She strode down the hall like a queen. She hoped. That’s what she was going for, at the very least.

She felt his eyes on her. Those unholy ice-blue eyes shining above gaunt cheeks that lately looked so tired. A fairy prince with a besieged kingdom. 

As if pulled by an invisible hand, his invisible hand, she swung around. “Are you attending the ball tonight? You have worked hard these last weeks. A break would be beneficial. You have the right of it. Do you not think the exhilaration of dancing and conversation of a ball would prove even more beneficial than loitering in the hallway?” 

Sympathy for the beast. She should not indulge. 

She could not seem to help it.

Lord Devon leaned against the doorframe. “I’ve not planned on it. Would you like me to attend?” 

She waved her hand in the air. “I care not what you do, Lord Devon.” 

“Have we ever danced together?” 

“Ha!” Could he hear the disappointment, the cynicism in that bark of laughter? She felt it in her very gut. He could not even remember the one dance they’d shared. Why would he? A duke’s brother with the admiration of the entire town. He could have anyone who wanted him. He could have had her once upon a time. 

No more. 

***

They like to like to annoy one another, but we all know where that leads, yes? Yes! To FUN TIMES. 🥳

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Do you love binging an entire series? Me too! Here are some box sets to help you do so.

I hope you all are well and feeling inundated with energy these days. The sun is out in my neck of the woods, and I love it. I hope wherever you're curled up with a book, the weather's doing your favorite thing.

Happy reading,

Charlie Lane