Spotlight & Giveaway: A Match Made in Lipa by Carla de Guzman

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Carla de Guzman’s new release: A Match Made in Lipa

Childhood friends reconnect as grown-up rivals—and maybe something more—in this witty Filipino romance from Carla de Guzman.

What’s written in the stars isn’t always the whole story…

Chocolate maker and shop owner Kira Luz isn’t looking for love, but if fate leads her that way, so be it. When she randomly runs into her childhood crush, Santi, on vacation, it feels like the stars are trying to tell her something. Memories of their time growing up in Lipa—not to mention the steamy kiss they share when they reconnect—get her heart pounding. But she has to go back to Lipa while he’s headed for Manila, and long distance is kind of an issue.

Until he moves back home…and distance becomes the least of their problems.

Estranged hotel heir Anton “Santi” Santillan is left adrift when his grandfather abruptly cuts him out of the family business. But he finds his footing again running a small niche hotel back in Lipa. The downside of living in his old hometown: it’s no Manila, that’s for sure. The upside: seeing Kira again. Kira, who loves food as much as he does. Kira, who loves kissing as much as he does.

Kira, whose family owns the property—including her shop—his grandfather wants him to buy out from underneath them.

Mixing love and chocolate and family just might get messy. And sometimes messy is exactly what fate had in mind.

The Laneways
Book 1: Sweet on You
Book 2: A Match Made in Lipa
 
 

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from A Match Made in Lipa 

“Hala, errant guests!” they exclaimed. “Excuse me, you shouldn’t be in here.”
“It’s a wedding reception, everyone will be in here in about an hour anyway,” Kira pointed out.
“Nevertheless, I have to insist that—” The wom¬an’s eyes widened when they saw the chocolate bar in Santi’s hands. “Is that a wedding giveaway? Did you steal a wedding giveaway?”
“Um, what?” Kira asked, her voice suddenly high-pitched as Santi groaned. “He didn’t—” “Stop, chocolate thief!”
He wished he could explain why this was his first instinct, but he really couldn’t. Santi just saw the pos-sible danger, and reacted.
“Run,” Santi said, taking Kira’s wrist and pulling her out of the ballroom, just as the wedding coordi¬nator was about to lunge at them to get the half-eaten chocolate back.
“Keep running!” Kira shrieked as they ran past the other wedding guests, past the photo booth and down the stairs, until they made it to the relative safety of the lobby lounge, Kira laughing all the while as Santi sunk into the plush chairs he’d grown up with.
Sitting in the lounge was so familiar it almost ached. He knew which seats shielded you from which views, and which seats made sure you were instantly visible. He and Miro used to play spy games from the lobby lounge, too. Sure, the face of the lounge changed, but the placement of the seats was the same. The four-member orchestra that played every day still stayed in the same place.
Anyway. Pain he could set aside.
“That day we met in Japan,” he said, and he appre¬ciated that Kira didn’t seem confused by his tangent. “I’d just been fired from the Carlton.”
“What?” Kira gasped, putting the chocolate down. “Why did they fire you?”
“My grandfather and I were arguing about salary advances and raises,” he said, and was surprised to find he could say it without too much emotion. Like he was talking about something that happened to some¬one else. “We had different opinions on how it worked. The next day, I came to work and my desk was just… gone. My stuff was in boxes, all the files were taken somewhere else. I’m the owner’s grandson, I couldn’t exactly complain to HR about it.”
While Santi had never experienced the need to spend money that he hadn’t earned yet, he understood that sometimes, bills and salaries just didn’t line up. He suggested that the Carlton be a little more lenient in allowing salary advances, proposing that they be just as low or affordable as a government loan. Vito thought otherwise.
But Santi didn’t think that was why he had been so unceremoniously unemployed. Santi didn’t want to seem like the ungrateful grandson—god only knew anywhere else he wouldn’t be in this high a position. So he left quietly, moped quietly, until New Year’s Eve.
“When I came back with the idea to restore Villa, I proposed that we do it together. Santillan and grand-sons, working on a project together. When he heard, my grandfather laughed in my face,” Santi told her, and realized that he’d never told anyone else this. Who was there to tell? His family already knew, and nobody else…there really wasn’t anyone else to tell. “He gave me the money, put the hotel under the Carlton chain and just…left me alone. My accounts tied to the family were cancelled, my cards were cut, and I was sent off to Lipa. They still tell me that Villa’s success isn’t enough. That I am not enough to deserve coming back.”
“Shit,” Kira gasped, and Santi heard himself chuckle mirthlessly. Shit didn’t even begin to cover it. But he was glad someone else said it. “That’s…sorry, but that’s fucked up.”
“Poor little rich boy, I know,” Santi said.
“Rich boys have feelings, too,” Kira pointed out, smiling kindly. “Your grandfather hurt you because he didn’t agree with you. Who does that?”
Santi didn’t have the answer to that, either. Kira turned her head to the windows, three stories high and gave guests the full view of the Makati skyline.
“It’s raining,” she noted, even as the sun was shin¬ing, and a rainbow streaked across the sky. “A tikbal¬ang is getting married.”
“Lucky tikbalang.” Santi looked up. It was raining in sheets, but it was a gentle drizzle that felt like mist when you walked through it. He used to hate days like this when he was a child, as rain like this only made ev-erything hot and even more humid when it went away. He didn’t mind so much at the moment, if it meant luck for the happy couple.
“How do centaurs wear pants?” Kira asked sud¬denly, and she looked like she really was wondering. Santi blinked at her a few times, as he realized just how complicated the question was. “Tikbalangs have horse heads, so obviously they wear pants like everyone, but what about centaurs?”
“How do giraffes wear scarves?” Santi asked back. “And other nonsense questions.”
“Important questions,” Kira insisted, and there was a moment when he caught a glimpse of the neighbor-hood kid that dominated the roadside. He smiled and leaned forward, picking up the chocolate bar. Only to realize that there was only one serving left. He offered it to Kira, who shook her head.
“You’re the chocolate thief,” she joked, smiling at him. “And it really does make you feel better, no? Eat¬ing the chocolate.”
He had to admit, it really did. Surely there was some “I have to say though,” Kira continued, leaning back against her seat, rotating her ankles in her silver heels. “I’m glad you ended up in Lipa. That you brought Villa back to life. That you went behind my back and opened Sunday Bakery.”
“Really?” Santi asked, in disbelief, although he hoped she couldn’t see just how much.
“Really,” Kira insisted, and Santi felt an inexora¬ble pull in his belly, one that led him closer to her. He knew the distance between where he was sitting, and where she was, had played in these spots for a lot of his life. Almost as if it was to lead to this moment, of them sitting together, the chocolate all gone.
“Kira. I moved to Lipa because of you. It means more, because it was you.”
Santi still didn’t know what his destiny was. Was it to stay in Lipa? To keep pushing Villa to its limits to earn his place back in Manila? He didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure he believed in that kind of thing. But tonight, as the rain fell in sheets outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Carlton, as the candles flickered orange light into Kira’s eyes, he didn’t care.
“You’re about to kiss me, aren’t you?” she said, and that cheeky little grin of hers was enough to make him give in to the pull of her.
“Would you like me to?” he asked.
“Yes please,” she said, a little breathily.
So he kissed her. He came in close and slow, follow¬ing that pull toward her. That little gasp she made be-fore he did almost made him pull back, but Kira sank herself into the kiss, and Santi’s hesitation melted away as he gave in, too.
He held her face in his hands, gently brushing at the still-soft skin, as things like patterns and plans made sense in his head. He finally understood why people married in December, why New Year’s mattered, why you wore stripes instead of polka dots. Why being born under the right stars could bring you to this place, to this exact moment.
And that was all this was, a moment. But stars and planets were born and died in moments like these, and even Santi could believe in destinies revealed by choco¬lates, in the stars determining who he was going to be.
Until, of course, it was interrupted by a very loud, very rude cough. And with that single cough, the mo-ment shattered, gone as soon as it had come. Every muscle in Santi’s back tensed, as a pair of eyes bore into his back.
“Anton.” His grandfather’s voice was a low warning.
“Oh.” Kira pulled away, and he saw her cheeks flush when they pulled apart, her eyes wide and her pupils slightly dilated, her lips still that sweet shade of pink, a little more red now that Santi had kissed them. She turned her head away, as if she’d heard that cough from the direction of the ballroom. “I should…”
Santi didn’t want her to go. He wanted to talk about
scientific explanation about sugar and oxytocin and other chemical reactions. But it was also Kira, sitting next to her and being able to talk, in a way that they never got to before, having him consider how centaurs wore pants, or giraffes wore scarves.
It was her making him laugh and roll his eyes, say¬ing impossible things, and her making him feel like he was just a little bit wanted, making him consider that his feelings really did matter.
“I have to say though,” Kira continued, leaning back against her seat, rotating her ankles in her silver heels. “I’m glad you ended up in Lipa. That you brought Villa back to life. That you went behind my back and opened Sunday Bakery.”
“Really?” Santi asked, in disbelief, although he hoped she couldn’t see just how much.
“Really,” Kira insisted, and Santi felt an inexora¬ble pull in his belly, one that led him closer to her. He knew the distance between where he was sitting, and where she was, had played in these spots for a lot of his life. Almost as if it was to lead to this moment, of them sitting together, the chocolate all gone.
“Kira. I moved to Lipa because of you. It means more, because it was you.”
Santi still didn’t know what his destiny was. Was it to stay in Lipa? To keep pushing Villa to its limits to earn his place back in Manila? He didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure he believed in that kind of thing. But tonight, as the rain fell in sheets outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Carlton, as the candles flickered orange light into Kira’s eyes, he didn’t care.
“You’re about to kiss me, aren’t you?” she said, and the kiss, what it meant, what she wanted. But it was more important to him that Vito Santillan didn’t cross paths with her. Santi moved to the right, totally shield-ing Kira from Vito’s gaze. She tilted her head slightly, as if to ask him what he was doing.
“We’ll talk,” he said softly. “I promise. Thank you for the chocolate.”
“Another promise?” Kira asked wryly.
“One of many I intend to keep.”

Excerpt. ©Carla de Guzman. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 

Giveaway: One (1) eBook copy of A MATCH MADE IN LIPA by Carla de Guzman (open internationally).

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Meet the Author:

Carla believes that every romance has to have a happily ever after. For her, there is always something new to share with the world through her art and her writing. She believes that every person needs a safe space, and she hopes her books provide that for her readers.

She lives in Manila, loves a good pan au chocolat and is on a quest to see as many Manet paintings as she can.

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