#EditsUnleased & Giveaway: Home at Last Chance by Hope Ramsay

Today it is my pleasure to welcome romance author Hope Ramsay to HJ!

“Edits Unleashed” gives authors an opportunity to share with readers deleted scenes that did not make it through the final edits into publication.

Today, Hope will be unleashing edits from her book Home at Last Chance.

Hey y’all

The book

Home at Last Chance is the story of Tulane Rhodes, a good ol’ boy NASCAR driver who has a little problem. His sponsor has painted his race car pink and put a snuggle bunny on the hood. Even worse, his new sponsor is Cottontail Disposable Diapers and they want him to officiate at baby changing races that feature their product’s “improved pull tabs for quicker pit stops.”

The only thing that makes any of this even remotely enjoyable is the woman his sponsor has send to keep him in line. Sarah Murray has a lot of dangerous curves hiding out under her black business suit. And, better yet, she’s determined to learn how to become a bad girl, and Tulane knows everything about that.

The Characters

Tulane Rhodes, is a South Carolina good o’l boy who is embarrassed by the pink race suit his sponsor is trying to make him wear, not to mention the fact that he’s got to officiate at baby changing races. Tulane is equally embarrassed by his own family, especially his daddy who owns an 18 hole miniature golf course right outside of the little town of Last Chance, South Carolina. The golf course is dedicated to the Lord and called Golfing for God. The front nine depict old testament stories and the back nine are all from the new testament. Tulane is determined to keep the world from finding out just how eccentric his family is.

Enter Sarah Murray, a good girl who works for Tulane’s sponsor. Sarah, a minister’s daughter, is desperately trying to learn how to shed her nice girl persona. Unfortunately every time she tries to do something naughty it kind of backfires on her. Like, for instance, the silly memo she wrote about baby changing races. She put a colleague’s name on that stupid memo. It was supposed to be a joke. But, unfortunately, her boss took it seriously and now Sarah finds herself permanently detailed to Tulane Rhodes as his “advance man,” which means she had to get him to those stupid baby races. Of course it’s not all bad, Tulane is a notorious bad boy and, of course, she ends up convincing him to giver her lessons on how to break rules.

The Scene

In the first draft of Home at Last Chance, Tulane agrees to become Sara’s “sex coach” much earlier in the book, and well before he actually falls in love with her. So in the big love scene Tulane is far less committed to Sarah than he was in the version of the book that was published.

In addition, the big love scene is not spontaneous as it is in the published version of the book. Instead, Tulane and Sarah agree to a time for their big moment. As a result, in the original version of the scene, Tulane does a number of very cute things to help Sarah relax. And Sarah has a lot of fun inner dialog as she’s anticipating the things that Tulane is going to teach her.

The resultant love scene is considerably hotter than the one that was published. And much funnier in some ways. When I wrote the final version of the scene, I used this original as the starting point. So you’ll recognize a lot of what happens, but the characters’ thoughts are somewhat different, and the circumstances are very different, because of the planned nature of the encounter.

I’ve always liked the original version of this scene, but I realized that to make Tulane’s character arc work, he had to be fully committed to her before they become completely intimate with one another. Otherwise the events of the next morning, when her father shows up and Sarah treats it all so casually, do not have the same emotional hit for Tulane.

The original scene begins with Sarah awaiting Tulane’s arrival for their big date.

Edits Unleashed:

Sarah had a feeling eight o’clock might never arrive, like she was permanently trapped in the Twilight Zone, waiting for the seconds, and the minutes, and the hours to tick by.

While she waited, she worried about her breasts, her backside, her underwear, her outer wear, and her hair. She changed clothes ten times, finally settling on a pair of blue jeans and a long-sleeved, pale green T-shirt with a scooped neck–one of the tops Ruby had picked out for her. There wasn’t anything overtly sexy about this outfit, so Tulane couldn’t complain that she was trying to be someone she wasn’t. The jeans were on the tight side, but well within limits. The T-shirt was practically demure. She had worried about the crucifix at her neck–the one she had gotten on her confirmation. Maybe she should take it off. Maybe she should leave it on. Back and forth she went on that decision, as if her entire life depended upon it.

And in between changing her clothes, and her sheets, and worrying about her crucifix, she found herself wondering just exactly how Tulane planned to teach her what she needed to know. Whole scenarios and fantasies played in her mind: Tulane as Don Juan. Tulane as Casanova. Tulane as Cyrano. Tulane as Lothario.

That one pretty much brought her up short. Oh dear, what had she gotten herself into?

When eight o’clock finally came and Tulane didn’t ring the doorbell right on the dot, she experienced a serious bout of self-doubt.
She should have known he wasn’t going to come, especially given Jim Ferguson’s reaction to the events of Friday night. Lori Sterling had been put on a month’s administrative leave, Ken Lewicki had been detailed to one of the other Ferguson racing teams, but not as head engineer, and Tulane was officially on probation, a status that had made Deidre very unhappy, even though Tulane’s car was selling diapers by the container load.
Deidre was adamant that Tulane was not appropriate for the car seat program and the direction she was going in her negotiations with the Racer Rabbit people. Sarah was in the dog house with Deidre for reasons that had to do with the bogus memo she’d sent after Pete’s funeral.
Deidre’s BS detector had been fully engaged.

Given all this drama, Sarah should have told Tulane not to come.

But she hadn’t. This might be her one and only time to learn the stuff she needed to know in order to move forward in her life and break out of the whole nice girl mold.

By eight-fifteen, she had almost talked herself into believing that being stood up was a good thing, because she was so nervous she doubted she could learn anything Tulane might want to teach her.

So it came as a big surprise when eight-twenty-seven rolled around and the doorbell rang.

When that happened, she behaved like a silly goose, checking herself out in the mirror in the hallway, then rushing to the door, feeling scared, and excited, and worried all at once.

She held her breath and opened the door.

He leaned in her doorframe with that same boneless, athletic quality she had noted the first moment she had set eyes on him. His attire was as studiously casual as her own: a white golf shirt, a pair of blue jeans, docksiders without socks. He held a brown paper bag in his arms, and he looked at her with an oddly somber look.

She thought about all those scenarios, which had rolled through her mind that afternoon. Tulane was unlikely ever to successfully emulate someone like Cyrano. He wasn’t the most articulate of men. Words were not his thing.

But he did have those verdigris eyes. They were more eloquent than a million love sonnets. That look said he wanted her, regardless of her big butt, inexperience, or the fact that she was his sponsor liaison.

That was good. That was so good it made her heart flutter in her chest.

But, as usual, her head was trying to take charge. And her head kept saying Tulane was not the first man who had wanted her. The boy who had taken her virginity in the back seat of his mother’s Chevrolet had wanted her. The English literature professor who had seduced her sophomore year had wanted her. The stock broker she’d met in that pick up bar had wanted her.

But she had messed up every one of those encounters. She had met that want with such ragged clumsiness the last guy had been physically turned off. Each of those encounters had ended almost before they began. All of them had ended unhappily.

She could well be on the point of having another experience just like that: Frustrating, and unsatisfying, and humiliating.
But at least Tulane didn’t expect too much from her, since he had learned all about her dirty, little secret.

“Hey,” he said in that low accent that made electricity hum right through her.

“Hi. What’s in the bag?”

His lips twitched in clear amusement. “It’s my bag of tricks.” He pushed off the door frame and she let him into her apartment.
He gave the pre-furnished living space the once over. The little sitting room was decorated in shades of burgundy, with a neutral carpet, floral couch, and utilitarian blinds at the balcony doors. The place was semi-sterile–a temporary home for someone who didn’t plan on staying too long in Florence, South Carolina. The temporary nature of her home seemed to underscore in Sarah’s mind the fact that tonight was likely to be a one-time experience. She would have to wring as much from it as she could.

He wandered into the Pullman kitchen with its darkly stained oak doors and basic, ivory appliances. He put his paper bag on the counter. “So,” he said. “You have a stereo in this place?”

“Um yeah. It’s in the living room.”

He rooted in the bag and came up with a CD. He arched his eyebrows. “I hope you like Nora Jones, because I looked all over for a Barry White CD and couldn’t find one.”

A little nervous giggle escaped her. “Barry White?”

“Uh huh.”

“I thought you were an Alabama fan.”

“Yes ma’am, but Alabama is foot stomping and two-stepping music, not make-out music.”

Her face flamed, and this earned a genuine smile from Tulane. “I do love it when you do that.”

“What?” Her voice squeaked.

He leaned closer and ran his finger down the curve of her cheek. It was hardly a touch at all, but it sent heat flowing to every corner of her body.

“It’s kind of cute to find a woman who can still blush when someone says the words ‘make-out’. Now, why don’t you put the music on while I open the wine?”

“Wine? Tulane, I’m not sure–”

He put one finger across her lips. “A little sip of wine is not going to make you sick, but it might relax you just a little. My guess is you won’t much like the taste, anyway, since it’s a pretty dry Cabernet. Trust me, Sarah, I am the last person on earth who wants to get you drunk. I’m not going to let you have more than half a glass, anyway.”

“You’re not going to let me?” She could feel her eyebrows arching. The man was so infuriating some times.

He smirked and his eyes lit up. “I just said that to annoy you. You are real cute when you get ornery. Tickles me to death.”

He was teasing her. He hadn’t done that in so long she had forgotten what it felt like. “I’m so happy to oblige,” she countered in a sassy voice as she picked up the CD and headed into the living room.

She heard him chuckling behind her, and it relaxed her just a little bit.

She popped the disc into the player, and a moment later the soft sounds of Nora Jones’s unique and sexy blend of jazz-soul-folk filled the air with the refrain, “I don’t know why I didn’t come.”

The double entendre made her stomach clutch. She looked up just in time to see Tulane walk into the living room with a couple of glasses of wine. He seemed to be just as conscious of the words wafting from the stereo as she. His ears looked kind of red. Apparently, Tulane could blush, too.

That gave her all kinds of things to think about. Good things. Sexy things. Powerful things. She had made a man like Tulane blush. What had she done?

He still carried the paper sack under his arm. “Which way is the bedroom?” he asked, putting the wine glasses down on the coffee table.

Suddenly short of breath, she nodded toward the bedroom door across the room.

“I’ll be right back. Won’t take a minute.” He crossed the carpet, opened the door, and closed it behind him.
A million scenarios played through her head. What, exactly, was in that bag?

Condoms. Obvious choice–but condoms were small and she was pretty sure there were some other, larger, items in the bag. Maybe he brought an economy-sized box of condoms. There was a titillating thought. Maybe he was planning on staying for a while.

She shook her head and forced herself to breathe. No, he had more than just condoms in that bag. A million prurient thoughts ran through her mind about sex toys. Goodness, there must be all kinds of sex toys she didn’t even know the names of. She had never done any research on sex toys, but maybe she ought to. Maybe she should learn what to ask for in the future.

Her insides went hot and liquid. She wanted to run into the room and tear off her clothes and tell him to forget about the make-out music, and the wine, and the whole set up he had planned, and just get on to instructing about sex toys.

But obviously he had put a little thought into this coaching business and who was she to tell him he needed to move along with it. After all, every other guy in her past had been in a hurry. She ought to be pleased with his studious approach. She needed to be patient.

But her patience was wearing thin when he finally opened the bedroom three minutes later. He wore a little enigmatic smile, as if he were immensely pleased with himself. He closed the door behind him, sealing in the secrets.

She was dying to ask, but this situation was sort of like Christmas Eve. She could ask all she wanted, but she would just have to wait until the time came to open the door and find out what surprises lay behind it.

He crossed the room and picked up the wine glasses. “Here, try a sip,” he instructed. “Not a big gulp, either.”

The big country boy was telling her how to drink wine. He was filled with surprises, wasn’t he?

She took a little sip, expecting the sickening sweetness of sacramental wine–which pretty much defined her experience with alcoholic grapes.

The taste jolted her with a complex combination of bitterness and sweetness. It was overwhelming, and surprising, and worthy of another try. She could taste blackberries in it, and other flavors like oak and even a hint of vanilla.

“I take it from the surprised look on your face that you like it,” he said, his eyes sparkling with more than just amusement.

She looked up at him, feeling a frisson of pure excitement. The electrical hum was back, rumbling through her body, disturbing her synapses. Nora was singing a vamp about someone melting someone’s cold-cold heart.

“So?” he said, arching his eyebrow.

She said the first thing that came to mind. “It reminds me of you.”

His lips twitched. “Sarah, you can’t say something like that without explaining.”

Heat crawled up her neck. She took another quick sip, feeling it burn down her throat. She had only meant that it tasted as complex as he did, but she didn’t think she could say that out loud.

He put his wine glass down on the coffee table and turned back toward her, a wide-eyed sober look in his eyes. “Honey, it’s okay. You can tell me what you’re thinking. In fact, it’s required. If you don’t feel comfortable enough with a man to tell him what you’re thinking, then, you aren’t comfortable enough with him to do anything else. You’ve got to tell me what you want and what you’re thinking. I can’t give you what you want without that.”

“I . . . uh . . . only meant that the wine tasted like . . . um . . . well . . . that it was a complex kind of sweet and bitter taste that reminded me of the way . . . ah . . .you tasted.”

This elicited the sweetest smile from him. A real smile that curled up both corners of his mouth and folded laugh lines into his cheeks and around his eyes. He looked like a little boy when he smiled like that, and that tugged at her heart.

He took the wine glass out of her hand and put it on the table, next to his. “So you liked that, huh?”

“What, the wine or the . . . ” Her voice faded out because when he turned back toward her he ran the back of his finger across her cheek, and the touch, even as gentle as it was, generated a contrail of fire across her skin. She closed her eyes.

“You like that too, don’t you?”

She didn’t say anything as his finger traveled across her cheek, and over her jaw, and down her neck to her collar bone, where he played with the little crucifix. Obviously he didn’t find the jewelry any obstacle to the program of the evening, because in the next instant he said, “Let’s find out where your erogenous zones are.”

Her eyes flashed open. “Erogenous zones? Uh, aren’t they kind of obvious?”

He shook his head and gave her an earnest look. “No ma’am.”

“No?”

As if in answer he stopped playing with her necklace and reached for her right hand. He cradled it in his much larger palms for a moment, and she could feel little shocks of reaction running all along her arm wherever the man’s rough skin abraded hers. And then, like some kind of courtly gentleman, he brought her hand to his lips.

He brushed his mouth across her fingers, and his lips parted just enough for the tip of his tongue to lave the back of her knuckles right in the crease between her first and second fingers.

Sensation curled around her insides and bubbled right out of her in the form of a groan. His lips retreated. “Nice,” he murmured.
With that the man placed her hand up on his shoulder, then brushed her hair away from her face at the same time as he pulled her closer, his fingers running across her neck and up into her hair line.

Tension coiled in her belly the minute his lips found the flesh of her neck. He nibbled at her skin, sending all kinds of reaction shooting through her like some kind of super nova. But that sensation wasn’t anything like what happened when his tongue found the lobe of her ear.

Once again something unspeakably exciting bubbled right out of her in the form of a noise that should have embarrassed her, but didn’t, because the minute she made that noise she heard Tulane make a noise of his own.

And that noise did something wicked to her soul, and her body, and her mind. It occurred to her that he might have a few erogenous zones of his own. She could touch him back if she wanted, and she wanted to touch him everywhere. She wanted to feel him next to her in a way that had become suddenly urgent.

She shoved her hand up into his hair, reveling in the texture of it, the hard contours of his skull. Her fingers traveled down across his shoulders, feeling the power in them, and something else. He was trembling. She had made Tulane Rhodes tremble? How had she done that?

Just as that thought registered in her brain, Tulane moved off in search of yet another one of her zones. His right hand traveled over her shoulder and down to her ribcage, and then back up to her breast, where it played a game of ring-around-the-rosy with her nipple. This wasn’t at all like being groped. His touch was barely there, polite to the point of distraction, and almost teasing. By the time he finally got down to actually touching her nipple, she wanted it so bad she was ready to beg for it.

And then, the top of her skull exploded. She groaned again and she could almost feel Tulane mentally chalking up another one of her erogenous zones. Only maybe her nipple didn’t count, since that zone was about ten times more obvious than the spot on her hand.

Who cared, the sensations radiating from that spot put all kinds of ideas in her head. Suddenly, Tulane wasn’t nearly close enough. She wanted to feel him, not just his hands and his lips. She wanted his . . .

She didn’t know what she wanted. She just knew she wanted something more.

She sagged back a little and managed to look up into his face. What she saw there sent her up in a column of flame. He looked drugged, wide-eyed, red eared, aroused, and excited. Somewhere in the back of her brain she registered Nora on the stereo singing about “the nearness of you.” Tulane wasn’t anywhere close enough.

“What?” he asked, letting go of her breast and stroking her hair back from her face. “Tell me.”

The music died on the stereo. They had gotten to the end of the CD. Goodness, they’d been kissing and touching each other for a long time. It seemed to have taken only an instant. “I want to get closer,” she whispered.

His gaze did a little slow circuit of her face. “You want to get naked?”

Yes, that was precisely what she wanted. She wanted to feel his skin on hers. She nodded, biting her lip. “Don’t you?” she said, hoarsely.

“Honey, I wanted to get naked about five minutes after I arrived, but I’m a simple kind of guy.”

Only that wasn’t true at all. Tulane was a lot of things. Simple wasn’t one of them. Easy maybe. Easy to arouse. Easy to be with. She had no idea

what she had done to put that look in his eyes. But that look made her so hot she felt like she would burn up in the next instant.

“I want to feel your skin,” she said, because he had told her she needed to tell him what she wanted.

“Okay.” He reached over his head and pulled off the golf shirt. He tossed it on the couch. “Your turn.”

She stared at him.

He smiled.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said. But she wanted to lose her T-shirt, and she wanted to lose the little Puritan who lived in her mind and who was trying to take control of this situation. That little prude had ruined situations like this for years. Not this time. Not with a man who seemed to be really, really hot for her.

She told that Puritan to take a hike and reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it off.

She tossed it next to his. He looked down at her. What she saw reflected in his gaze made something hitch in her chest. No man had ever looked at her like that, including all those other guys who had wanted her. He stared down at her as if he thought she was beautiful and desirable, not just some flatchested loser who needed him to teach her about sex.

He ran his finger down her clavicle and down to the front clasp of her bra. He had it unfastened in about one second flat. No fuss, no muss, no fumbling.

The man had been there before. He knew what he was doing, thank goodness, because she was out of her element, out of her depth, clueless, and completely out of control.

In the next moment, he had backed her up into the couch. She fell back into it, and he came after her. Not quite all the way, though. She found herself sitting on the edge with him kneeling on the carpet in front of her.

He pulled her legs apart and made room for himself as he came at her once again. His mouth connected with her lips and he nibbled them for a little moment and then trailed his tongue over her jaw and down her nape and finally to her breast. He didn’t play it so coy this time, but he still took his sweet time before his mouth closed over the sensitive flesh.

Her hands found the warm skin of his shoulders and then went on an expedition of their own, trailing down over his pectorals until she found his flat nipples. She brushed her finger across his nipple.

He groaned.

The noise came from down deep in his throat and he shuddered at the same time. In the next moment, something changed in his approach. Polite went right out the door.

In the next five minutes he had her completely undressed, and for the first time in her life she didn’t even feel embarrassed. She was too busy feeling a wide range of sensations that Tulane seemed to have a real talent for making her feel.

His hands and his mouth seemed to be everywhere at once, and then, finally, as if it was what she had been waiting for, he touched her the way he had touched Friday morning and she almost came right off the couch. Her little mainspring coiled up again, much faster and much tighter than it had on Friday morning.

And then it happened. She found the switch, or maybe Tulane did. But something snapped and the world exploded and there wasn’t anything she could do about it but scream her head off as her body took her on a wild breathless ride..
For one brief second she thought it was over. She thought this was death and it was okay, because she felt like a goddess who understood all the secrets of the universe.

But Tulane still had most of his clothes on, and she had not exactly gotten completely intimate with him. In fact, she hadn’t even gotten into the bedroom, yet. And there were secrets in the bedroom that she wanted to know about.

But that made no sense. Nothing in the bedroom could possibly compare to the life-altering, religious experience that had just happened in the living room.

Could it?

# # # # #

Okay, he could relax, now.

Only that didn’t seem possible right at the moment, because his heart was pumping so hard he could hear it in his ears, and his face felt red as beet, and his crotch . . .

Well, he felt like a freaking fifteen-year-old watching his first ever porno flick and thinking about Tammy, Reverend Reed’s daughter and her bodacious boobs.

He looked down at Sarah, and she looked up at him just like some kind of porno star, a little sweaty, her hair messed up, her lips red and plump, her hazel eyes dark, her nipples . . .

He wanted to pull her right down onto the carpet. By the look in her eyes, and the little self-satisfied grin on her lips he had this uncanny notion that she might actually let him do that without freaking out.

He’d seen that look in her eyes once before. Right after he’d fed her that first weak margarita down at Dot’s Spot, that time. Right before they started dancing. Before he broke Bubba Lockheart’s nose. That look said she had just figured out that orgasms were kind of like potato chips. You couldn’t just have one.

But there was a problem with that scenario. The condoms were in the bedroom, along with all the other stuff. He should go get them. Or maybe he should take her into the bedroom. He thought she might like it in the bedroom.

But she was staring up at him like she might actually like it on the rug. Or on the dining room table, or any place he decided to do it. A million depraved ideas marched right through his head.

“Tulane,” she said in a husky voice, pulling him back from his fantasies.

“Uh huh.”

“You’re still wearing your pants.”

“You noticed.”

“I want you to take them off.”

“I thought you would never ask, but uh . . .”

“What?”

“Uh . . . I think we need to go into the bedroom. We could stay here but . . . uh . . . the uh . . . well . . .”

She grinned at him. “Condoms?”

“Yeah, those.”

“In the bedroom?” she asked, her eyes getting wide as if she were talking to someone whose faculties were impaired. His faculties–at least the mental ones, anyway–were impaired. His physical faculties, however, were raring to go.

“Yeah. Okay. Let’s go.” He got up and pulled her into his arms and carried her across the living room. She sank her head down on his shoulder and that made him feel kind of manly in a way that confused the crap out of him, because she didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. He regularly bench pressed more than that. So how could carrying a little bitty woman like her make him feel like some kind of big he-man?
He braced himself for her reaction when he opened the bedroom door. He sincerely hoped she liked what he had done. He’d gone on-line in search of romantic ideas designed to help a woman relax and get in the mood. Obviously, the Norah Jones was a stroke of genius. He wondered if the other stuff would work just as quickly and just as well.

He stepped across the threshold into the mellow light cast from the two dozen votive candles he’d picked up at the Buy Lo that afternoon. The candlelight glowed, giving the room a cozy kind of warmth.

She drew in a sharp breath. He felt a moment of complete and idiotic delight, knowing that he had surprised and pleased her. It lasted until she threw back her head and laughed.

She didn’t giggle. She didn’t chortle. She didn’t snigger. She let go with a full out belly laugh.

He stood there cradling her in his arms feeling suddenly like a complete and total jerk.

“What’s so funny?” he said, his voice sounding flat to his own ears.

“Oh Tulane, I’m sorry,” she replied, curling her head against his shoulder and simultaneously running her nimble little fingers up over his cheek and into his hair, where she did that little thing that made shivers run down his spine. God help him, but he did love it when she rubbed him the wrong way. It was hard to be mad at her when she was doing that thing with her fingers.

“Uh huh,” he managed as his eyes closed of their own accord and he pressed his head up against her touch. “You’re laughing at me.”

“Goodness. No. I’m not laughing at you. You’re so sweet. The candles are so sweet. That’s not what I’m laughing about.”

He opened his eyes and carried her to the edge of the bed. “No?”, he said, putting her down, then pulling her legs apart so he could get himself closer to where he wanted to be. She looked up at him, hazel eyes wide, lips twitching with amusement.

“Then what do you think is so funny?”

She continued to stroke his hair, and her touch sent little shocks down his spinal chord. “I’m laughing at myself.”

“Yourself?”

She nodded. “You see, when you came in here . . . before . . . um, well . . . I could tell there was stuff in the bag and . . . um . . . my mind got creative, and I started to think about what stuff you might have brought, and . . . well, it never once occurred to me that you had brought a dozen candles.”

“Two dozen. What stuff did you think I had brought?”

Her unbelievably creamy skin turned red all over. “I thought you might have brought some . . . you know . . .” Her voice faded out.

“Some what?” he asked.

“Sex toys?” Her voice kind of squeaked.

It was his time to roar with laughter. If he had known she had any interest in learning about that sort of thing, he would have bypassed the on-line advice for romantics, the wine shop, the record store, and the Buy Lo, and gone straight to one of those tacky adult stores off I-20.

“Now who’s laughing at whom?” she asked with a little wide-eyed pout that was about as phony as a three-dollar bill.
He controlled his amusement. “Honey, the fact is I did bring a sex toy, only not in the bag.”

A slow, sexy grin turned up her sassy little mouth, and one of those beautifully shaped auburn eyebrows arched upward. “Well, then,” she said in that Yankee accent of hers, “It’s time for us to take it out and play with it, don’t you think?”

“Uh-huh.”

She dropped her hands from his head, and trailed those perfect little pink nails over his shoulders and his abs and down to the placket of his blue jeans.

“And, as the teacher, you’ll have to instruct me as to its proper use.”

“Uh-huh.”

Despite her avowed lack of experience, the woman made short work of his belt, snap, and zipper.

“And you’ll let me know if I get it wrong?”

“You’re doing just fine so far. But I’ll be sure to spank you if you mess up.”

Her tongue darted between her lips and her skin flushed again, and Tulane got the feeling she might like to be spanked.
In the next minute, his jeans and underwear hit the carpet, he pushed her back into the bed and came after her, pulling her as close.
He had a whole plan for what he intended to do next, but it immediately went up in smoke. Sarah, it turned out, had an agenda of her own, and simply took control like the strong-willed woman she was. For once in his life he didn’t fight it, because he was too busy having his mind and other parts blown away.

The woman was supposed to be shy. She was supposed to be clumsy. She was supposed to not know what she was doing.
None of this proved to be true. With the enthusiasm of a three-year-old attacking an all-day sucker, the woman put her mouth on him. She found more erogenous zones on his body in fifteen minutes than anyone had discovered in the last fifteen years.

By the time she rolled a rubber on him, he was lying on his back, gasping for breath, and hardly able to even form the words: “Ride me, baby.”
And just like that, the woman up and straddled him.

Man-oh-man, she wound him up tight and then she let him go. His engine kicked in and it felt like he was riding a jet, going eight hundred miles an hour without any steering wheel. And when he hit the wall, it felt sooooo . . . gooood.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Book Info:

Dear Reader,

You won’t believe what’s happened. My son Tulane has come back home! You remember Tulane? He’d set out to find fame and fortune in the big, wide world outside of Last Chance, and I’m mighty proud. But that’s not the half of it-Tulane isn’t only back, he’s brought a young lady with him.

Now Sarah-she does PR for Tulane’s stock-car team-she’s from Boston, but she’s just about the sweetest girl you could meet. I think she’s meant to keep Tulane out of trouble after that story in the papers, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. Anyhow, the Ladies Auxiliary can’t wait to start matchmaking and introduce Sarah to our Reverend Ellis. But mark my words, Sarah is tired of being a good girl. And no one is better at breaking the rules and raising Cain than my son . . .

Listen to me going on and keeping customers waiting. I best get back to work, but you come round again. The Cut ‘n’ Curl’s got hot rollers, free coffee, and the best gossip in town.

See you real soon,

Ruby Rhodes
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Author Bio

Hope Ramsay was born in New York and grew up on the North Shore of Long Island, but every summer Momma would pack her off under the care of Aunt Annie to go visiting with relatives in the midlands of South Carolina. Her extended family includes its share of colorful aunts and uncles, as well as cousins by the dozens, who provide the fodder for the characters you’ll find in Last Chance, South Carolina. Hope earned a BA in Political Science from the University of Buffalo, and has had various jobs working as a Congressional aide, a lobbyist, a public relations consultant, and a meeting planner. She’s a two-time finalist in the Golden Heart, and is married to a good ol’ Georgia boy who resembles every single one of her heroes. She has two grown children and a couple of demanding lap cats. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia where you can often find her on the back deck, picking on her thirty-five-year-old Martin guitar
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Giveaway: I’d love to give away a copy of Last Chance Knit & Stitch, my latest release, to a reader in the United States.

To enter Giveaway: Post a comment to this Q: Did you enjoy reading the deleted scenes? What was your favorite part?

Please note: This contest will close on Friday April 11 2014 at 8:59 PM (PT) and the winners will be notified via email and on this Post. Winner will have 48 hours to respond to my e-mail before a new winner is selected. All entrants must adhere to HJ’s official giveaway policy.