The Gift Of Love - Delaney Cameron (#RomBooks4Chris19)
On Tour with Prism Book Tours
The
Gift of Love
(Finding Love #9)
By Delaney Cameron
Sweet Contemporary Romance
(Finding Love #9)
By Delaney Cameron
Sweet Contemporary Romance
ebook, 203 Pages
April 6th 2018
First or even second impressions
aren't always right.
Leah didn’t plan to still be
searching for love so late in her twenties. Her looks almost guarantee her
success with the opposite sex, but quantity doesn’t mean quality. Good thing
she’s got a great career to fall back on. The only dark cloud on that
particular horizon is the enigmatic Dr. Levy, the man she’s come to think of as
a permanent thorn in her side. Brilliant and handsome he most certainly is, but
that doesn’t make up for the fact that he’s also stern, impatient, and
bad-tempered. Oddly enough, it isn’t their mostly negative encounters that
linger in her mind. Instead it’s the sadness she glimpses from time to time in
his face. There’s no explanation for why she’s so bothered by this, nor can she
imagine a situation where she’ll be in a position to discover the cause of his
silent misery. All of which means she’s wasting her time. If anyone can take
care of himself, it’s Dr. Levy.
Stratton had only been at Hutchison
Clinic a short time before he heard about the beautiful nurse on the second
floor. In his usual skeptical fashion he discounted the gossip until he saw
Leah for himself. He had no problem admitting that the reports of her beauty
hadn’t been exaggerated, but appreciation was as far as he was prepared to go.
Love, romance and the so-called happily-ever-after only exist in the movies.
Putting your happiness in someone else’s hands is just begging to be hurt. He
has a monthly alimony payment to prove it. Getting his family and friends to
understand his preference for bachelorhood isn’t so easy. While he appreciates
their concern, he doesn’t need the complication of something with such
overwhelming odds of failure. One ex-wife is enough for any man.
(Affiliate
link included.)
Excerpt
The salad course had just been
served when Leah became aware of movement behind her. She turned her head to
see what was going on and nearly dropped the dinner roll she’d been in the act
of buttering. Under her astonished gaze, Dr. Levy sat down in the empty seat
beside her.
After thanking the waitress for a
menu and asking for coffee, he turned to Leah and smiled. “Hello, again. If I
wasn’t so sure you don’t like me, I’d begin to think you’re following
me.”
This provocative greeting broke the
spell she’d fallen under. “I was here first, so the person doing the following
is you.”
“Don’t confuse the issue with
facts.” He opened the menu and ran his eyes down the offerings. “This place has
a little of everything, doesn’t it? What did you get?”
“Grilled shrimp with a baked sweet
potato and Caesar salad.”
“Sounds good. I think I’ll get
that, too.”
As if on cue, the waitress arrived
with his coffee and took his order. Leah used the time to finish buttering her
roll and quiet her jangled nerves. In the three weeks since Dr. Levy had given
her a ride home, she’d avoided going anywhere near his area of the clinic. This
kind of behavior was unusual for her, but no one likes being caught in an
embarrassing situation by someone who already thinks badly of them. And now,
here they were again, thrown together by forces outside her control and which
no one could have foreseen. Escape was impossible. Her only choice was to make
the best of it.
“How do you know Evangeline and
Cecil, Dr. Levy?”
He smiled as he stirred cream into
his coffee. “The name is Stratton. Save Dr. Levy for work. I don’t know
Evangeline at all. I’m one of Cecil’s numerous cousins. What about you?”
She didn’t hear much of what he
said after the word Stratton. It was an unusual name, but it suited
him somehow. As for calling him by it, that was something else entirely.
“Evangeline and I met in middle school. Her family moved to South Carolina
during our senior year. She was thrilled when I took the job in Myrtle
Beach.”
“If we’d known ahead of time that
we were both coming this way, we could have ridden together.”
Leah was saved having to come up
with a response to this startling remark by the arrival of the main course. In
truth, she was having trouble reconciling this sociable man with the somewhat
reserved and often-times stern physician she knew from the clinic. Which
one was the real Stratton?
She almost jumped out of her skin
when she heard his voice close to her ear.
“What are you doing after the
rehearsal dinner is over?”
“I’m going back to Evangeline’s
house. All the bridesmaids are staying there.”
“It’s still early. Would you be
interested in taking a drive?”
Taking a drive? With him? Now
things were just starting to get weird.
When she didn’t say anything, a
gleam appeared in his eyes. “It’s okay to refuse, Leah. You won’t hurt my
feelings.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to go;
I’m just…” She stopped, trying to think of a nicer word than flabbergasted or
amazed. “I’m surprised. Our acquaintance has had some…rocky moments.”
He speared one of his shrimp and
doused it in melted butter. “Then it’s about time we did something to change
that.”
“Is it?”
“Of course. First or even second
impressions aren’t always the right ones. Don’t you think we owe it to
ourselves and each other to find out how wrong or right we were?”
Other
Books in the Series
(Linked to an Amazon affiliate link.)
About
the Author
I'm a Georgia girl at heart if not
by birth. I love to read, watch college football, and spend time with my
husband. I'm a hopeless romantic so there will always be a happily ever after
in my stories. I also like to write about second chances because love doesn't
always work out the first time.
My books are sweet romances set in
both contemporary and regency settings featuring stories about the journey to
love, from that first meeting to the point where two people know their hearts
are no longer their own. My characters aren't perfect. They make mistakes and
have faults like the rest of us. They learn the sometimes painful truth that
the path to love isn't always smooth, but it's a road worth traveling.
Tour
Schedule
(Posts go live on the day they're
scheduled.)
December 14th: Raneé
S. Clark - Her Country Christmas Date
Tour Giveaway
1 winner will receive a $50 Amazon eGift Card
Open internationally (as long as
winner is eligible to receive prize)
Ends December 28, 2019
Comments
Post a Comment