This Summer Read Won't Cool You Down

by Madelle Morgan

Summer Heat Warning: certain scenes are hot enough to heat up the Arctic!

Diamond Hunter, my geologist-in-peril romantic suspense, is set at a fly-in-only diamond mine in Canada's far north in July.

I decided to post an excerpt to bring it to the attention of Kindle Unlimited subscribers who are keen to try a new author.

Petra Paris has agreed to share her mine camp bedroom in exchange for bodyguard services from Seth Cooper, an undercover cop with the Diamond Protection unit.

In this scene, they share a bed for the first time.

“I won’t touch a hair on your pretty head. I’ll lie on top of the blankets.” When she began to protest further, Seth admitted, “My back will give out if I sleep in an awkward position.”

Sympathy dimmed the agitated lights sparking her irises. “Back pain is the worst. I’m not keen to sleep sitting up myself.” Petra made a decision. “Very well. We’ll share the bed for tonight only, due to the extenuating circumstances. Tomorrow night we’ll alternate.”

There wouldn’t be another night, but he didn’t want to rile her. Regret tugged briefly that he’d never see her again after placing her on a commercial flight the next day. His line of work meant personal relationships warranted no place in his life.

Too bad, though, in this instance. Petra, spirited and unaffectedly beautiful, lit an explosive chemical mix in his mind and belly that excited and occasionally frightened him. An undercover detective had no business allowing sexual attraction to interfere with his assignment. Petra’s safety, not her curvy body, rated his attention. End of story.

Petra extracted one of the pillows and plumped it into place on his side of the double bed. After shucking his boots and jacket, he purposely ignored her deliberate effort to create distance and instead dropped heavily into a comfortable position on his back, shoulder to shoulder. As he anticipated, Petra squirmed away from the light contact.

He deliberately readjusted his upper body, forcing her to withdraw to the very edge of the mattress where she remained rigidly quiet. To his pleased surprise she didn’t insist he move over. It reassured him to feel her safe and close. Perhaps she experienced a similar comfort.

After several minutes, a slight smile playing on his lips, he closed his eyes and relaxed in anticipation of a restful night.

“Who is Kate?”

The verbal jab convulsed his abdominal muscles. He’d never mentioned his ex-wife to anyone up north. His friends and co-workers back in British Columbia considered the divorce forbidden territory. No one dared raise the subject in his presence for fear of lighting a very short fuse. “What are you talking about?” he managed.

“Last night you called me Kate. Your exact words were, ‘Kate, come to bed.’”

“I must have been dreaming.” His firm statement broadcast a desire to end the discussion.

“Are you married?”

Dammit. He rolled onto his side away from her. “No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“No. Go to sleep.”

A small hand seared the flesh on his forearm. “Seth, in spite of my, ah, participation in this little romantic show we’re staging, your girlfriend has nothing to worry about. A few kisses for appearances doesn’t make you unfaithful.”

Seth gripped the side of the mattress and ground out, “I’m not unfaithful. There is no girlfriend. Leave it alone, will you?”

“That’s a relief. Men gossip, you know. Eventually word spreads to the—”

Seth reversed his body to pin Petra’s chest with his. “I’m a single man. Got it? Kate is my ex-wife. We divorced two years ago. Three paroled drug smugglers I’d put away attempted to kidnap her. I couldn’t guarantee her future safety, so she left. Satisfied?”

The tightly controlled admission belied the ugly truth. He’d failed at the most important job a man had—to protect his woman. He’d given her the divorce she’d asked for and thrown in the house and the car, but guilt ate a hole in his heart he refused to ever let another woman fill.

“But they didn’t kidnap her, did they?” Petra persisted softly.

“No thanks to me.” Bitterness shook his voice. “She escaped when their car stalled.” He began to pull away. “She’s alive today because the perps forgot to fill the gas tank.”

“Wimp.”

The insult stung like a slap. “Excuse me?”

“A woman who’d dump the man she loved due to an attempted kidnapping is a wimp. Marriage is a partnership.”

“Our marriage put her life in danger. She did the smart thing by leaving.”

“Cluck. Cluck. Cluck.”

Dammit all to hell. He raised his upper body on one arm, rigid with a fierce anger that erupted from a dark place in his soul that didn’t bear visiting. The woman insisted on pushing his buttons.

Careful to rein in his temper, he replied evenly, “Any sane person in Kate’s place would have done the same thing. I didn’t protect her. Yes, she was scared. She had every right to be.”

“I would have stayed.”

The stalwart declaration speared his solar plexus like a needle into a balloon, allowing the anger to escape. A sheen of moisture glistened on serious burnt gold eyes staring up into his. She meant it.

He didn’t know what to say.

***

Have a wonderful July!

Madelle

About Madelle Morgan

Madelle Morgan is a Canadian author who writes romance with heat, heart and humor. Her new release, Caught on Camera, is a Hollywood wedding romance set in Muskoka, Canada—summer playground of the rich and famous.

Subscribe to her blog at MadelleMorgan.com and follow her on  Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Pinterest, and Wattpad. 

Diamond Hunter 99 cent Deal, April 13-19, 2015

by Madelle Morgan

Perilous, real life incidents in Canada's far north inspired events in Diamond Hunter, my romantic suspense available for $0.99 on Amazon.com and for £0.99 on Amazon.co.uk this week.

The RTG theme for April is hope. I had my share of nerve-wracking and downright terrifying moments as a passenger in bush planes when I was a junior project engineer based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories in the early 1980s. However, a planeload of men I worked with endured hours of terror. Their tale illuminates how keeping one's cool and holding on to hope in a life or death situation is all that separates the brave from the... well, not so lucky.

I took notes thirty years ago when two middle-aged consulting engineers described their traumatic experience to me. Here's their story. 

The territorial department of Public Works had hired Montreal-based engineering consultants to design fuel storage facilities in the Arctic. One afternoon the two engineers and a construction contractor boarded a twin engine plane in Baker Lake to fly to Yellowknife, a distance of about 600 miles west as the goose flies. The Twin Otter was loaded with nine passengers and a lot of construction gear. The pilot had been flying since six a.m. and was tired when they took off.

There was no GPS satellite navigation back then. The magnetic north affects compasses. Pilots relied on visual identification of landmarks and radio, if and when in range. It's important to understand that there were no communities, no airports, no roads, not even a mine landing strip between Baker Lake and Yellowknife. 

The pilot and copilot flew over endless miles of tundra and water battling heavy crosswinds. At some point they lost their bearings and strayed from the flight path. They were lost.

People who've traveled extensively in small planes over long distances know very well how long a particular type of plane can fly before refueling. Four or five passengers realized one hour beforehand that the plane would run out of fuel before they reached Yellowknife. Darkness closed in.

Eventually an engine cut out and the plane's nose dropped. One consultant grabbed his partner's arm in a vice grip. Even those two city boys knew they were in terrible trouble.

The pilots took the plane up to 15,000 feet on a single engine. Twin Otter cabins are not pressurized. As the minutes ticked by, the plane steadily lost altitude. Ten miles out of Yellowknife the second engine sputtered and died. 

Yellowknife in the distance
Photo credit: Clayton Whitman

Yellowknife is built on granite and surrounded by water. There were no paved roads or streetlights beyond the town of 12,000. Everyone on the silent plane held their collective breath as the plane glided down in the pitch dark towards a terrain unforgiving to dead stick landings.

Then the pilots spied tiny lights on top of hydro towers and adjusted the heading to aim for them. The pilot had radio contact with the Yellowknife airport tower by this time, but he'd no hope of making it as far as the runway. Yet he kept his cool and didn't give up.

Orienting himself by the lights atop a string of towers, and by memory more than anything, the pilot prepared to land the plane without power. The copilot later admitted he didn't see the dirt road until two or three seconds before the wheels touched down.

Miraculously, the plane landed safely, although it ended up in a ditch. No one was hurt. Everyone jumped out and shook hands.

A pickup truck happened to come along and pulled up. A man got out and approached. "I usually have a case of beer for situations like this," he said.

The RCMP arrived. "I don't have a form for this situation," an officer admitted.

I have no idea what happened between the time the plane landed and the next day in my office. However, I strongly suspect the passengers headed straight for a bar and drank to that pilot's skills and courage.

Is her life worth a fortune in diamonds?

Geologist Petra Paris, on a mission to clear her father's name, disrupts a smuggling op at a Canadian diamond mine in the arctic. When escape by air is cut off, desperate smugglers escalate to murder. RCMP cop Seth Cooper, undercover as a bush plane pilot, needs to capture them before Petra becomes the next victim.

Seth sank onto the double bed, shock crowding disbelief. Why the hell couldn't the woman stay rescued?

Diamond Hunter is only $0.99 on Amazon the week of April 13-19. To be reminded of this and future Kindle deals, "Like" my Facebook page or subscribe to news and deals on my website.