Spotlight & Giveaway: A Virgin to Redeem the Billionaire by Dani Collins

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Dani Collins to HJ!

Hi Dani and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, A Virgin to Redeem the Billionaire!

 
Hi Sara, thanks for hosting me today! Hi HJs!
 

To start off, can you please tell us a little bit about this book?:

Sure!
Gisella is searching for an earring that once belonged to her grandmother. She heads to an auction when it comes up at an estate sale and Kaine swoops in at the last second and buys the entire estate. It’s only Gisella’s life’s ambition to return the earring to her grandmother! She’s pretty upset and confronts him, accidentally kisses him, even.
He didn’t mean to kiss her, either. He has a grudge against her family and leaves her wanting more (*wink!*)
When she confronts him a week later, he mentions his thirst for revenge and corners her into a fake love affair that turns very real. (swoon!)
 

Please share your favorite lines or quote(s) from this book:

“My door is always open. I’ll just put that out there.”
“I won’t put out at all,” she said firmly, and made the mistake of trying to stare him down.

What inspired this book?

It all started in a car with my daughter. I said that my editor had asked if I wanted to do a duet and that I thought I’d like the heroines to be cousins.
She said, “What comes in twos? How about something with earrings?”
Fun fact – she recently read the first one and called me special to say she enjoyed it. I’ve since sent her the second one.

How did you ‘get to know’ your main characters? Did they ever surprise you?

Well, I wanted the two heroines to have different enough backgrounds that I wouldn’t be telling the same story twice so I had the grandmother have their mothers with different men. I had to go all the way back to what her history was with both of them to inform both of the heroines.

As for the heroes, that’s always a struggle for me! Kaine is American, working in tech and living in San Francisco so I gave him a Hispanic mother and a lot of childhood turmoil that forced him to grow up fast–as a Presents alpha-hero often is forced to do.

What was your favorite scene to write?

One of my favourites comes later in the book. They’ve both been through an emotional ringer and stay up half the night. In the morning, Kaine impulsively asks if she wants to watch the sun rise. It’s one of those scenes where they’re allowed to feel like they’re in accord, but you know they’re putting off the difficult conversation–which they have on the boardwalk. For now, though, they pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist…

“You have a car?”
“Daddy does,” she said with a conspirator’s smile. The address of the garage was on the way and a cab was easy to flag down at this time of morning. Minutes later, she was showing her ID to the night guard, and signing out a vintage T-topped Camaro.
Kaine gave a low whistle at the apple-red sports car. “You’re taking me back to my teen years, when I was boosting rides to take girls to the beach.”
“I thought you only shoplifted.”
“Sometimes the shop was a car lot. I always brought it back before anyone knew it was gone. Borrowing, really.”
“Hmm…” She couldn’t help chuckling at the distinction as they slid into the low-slung leather-covered seats.
He did like to drive. He soon had them on the freeway, where he made the engine growl as he put the car through its paces, a relaxed smile of pleasure on his face.

What was the most difficult scene to write?

Something I always struggle with is trying to keep the secondary characters on the sidelines! It’s also hard to write the scene where everything falls apart after spending pages bringing them together. In this case, cousin Benny arrives to ruin everything…

“I’m an adult and can sleep with whomever I want without asking any of my cousins to sign off.” She flicked a glance at Kaine, wanting him to hear the subtext. What they had was purely between them. It had nothing to do with anyone else.
He remained unreadable.
“Not him, Gizi,” Benny said with a dark scowl. “Not like this. For God’s sake, man,” Benny said with disgust. “She’s a twenty-four-year-old kid.”
“Hey.” Gisella grabbed Benny’s arm and gave it a firm shake. “I’m standing right here. Don’t talk about me like I’m not. Especially don’t talk about me like I’m too young to hear bad news or too dim to understand the implications.”
“He’s using you as leverage, Gizi. Insurance to put pressure on me.”

Would you say this book showcases your writing style or is it a departure for you?

Great question! But I don’t know.
I really enjoy writing for different publishers because it allows me to flex different writing muscles. In a Harlequin Presents, readers want the focus to stay tight on the hero and heroine. I struggled with that in this book because I had a lot of backstory to cover with the grandmother and her earring. My heroine comes from a big family — that’s classic Dani Collins, but usually other books, not so much my Presents books.

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

I’m writing a Cinderella story for Harlequin Presents that will come out in 2020. I’m about halfway through and having a lot of fun with a trope I haven’t tackled before.
Please watch next month for the other half of this duet, Innocent’s Nine-Month Scandal, where Gisella’s cousin Rozi goes to Hungary to retrieve the other earring from Viktor. Fun Fact – there will also be a free read on Harlequin.com with Benny’s story. It’s called Innocent’s Pregnancy Revelation and will come out in (I think!) April.
Join my newsletter and I’ll send you the link when I it goes live: https://danicollins.com/subscribe/

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

I’m writing a Cinderella story for Harlequin Presents that will come out in 2020. I’m about halfway through and having a lot of fun with a trope I haven’t tackled before.
Please watch next month for the other half of this duet, Innocent’s Nine-Month Scandal, where Gisella’s cousin Rozi goes to Hungary to retrieve the other earring from Viktor. Fun Fact – there will also be a free read on Harlequin.com with Benny’s story. It’s called Innocent’s Pregnancy Revelation and will come out in (I think!) April.
Join my newsletter and I’ll send you the link when I it goes live: https://danicollins.com/subscribe/
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One signed set of the duet (A Virgin to Redeem the Billionaire and Innocent’s Nine-Month Scandal) anywhere in the world.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Gisella wants to return the earring to her grandmother because it was given to her by her first love. Do you have any heirloom jewelry in your family? Does it have a great story?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Excerpt from A Virgin to Redeem the Billionaire:

“I don’t use sexual favors to get what I want,” she informed him. “If I kiss a man, it’s because I want to.” There. It was a dropped glove, but it was true. If she thought a man boorish, she told him so.
If she found a man enthralling… Well, he was the first to fascinate her like this. She wondered if he might become her first in other ways. This power struggle was inordinately exciting.
“Is that so,” he murmured. All the humor bled out of his expression, leaving it full of grave angles. He seemed to consider her words while the backs of his fingers continued to caress her throat where her pulse thrummed like a hummingbird’s wings.
What was she doing? This was madness. He was a stranger. Voices were conversing in a nearby room.
But she wanted him to kiss her. It wasn’t about the earring. He was unlike any man she had ever met. If he walked away and she didn’t at least know what it felt like to have his mouth on hers, she would always wonder.
She stared into eyes that had become the incendiary gleam of liquid gold and dared him to make her day.
His hand came back to her jaw, his touch firm as he bent his head.
He claimed her mouth without ceremony, as if they’d been kissing like this every night for years. And, oh, did he know how to kiss.
This was what she had sought all her life. A man who met her strong personality with an even stronger one. One who took her out of herself with a twist of his mouth against hers, parting her lips and sinking into a hungry, passionate ravaging that dismantled her even as he promised she would be safe in his strong arms.
She became a molten substance as he gathered her hair and squeezed an arm across her back. She pooled like quicksilver against him, curves fitting into the dips and contours of his chest, arms curling around his tense waist to settle her fingers against the warm hollow of his spine.
She had never been kissed like this. Carnal and possessive, urgent and lazy at once. Her scalp stung under the clench of his hand in her hair. Heat consumed her, burning up any memory she had of other men. A moan of pleasure escaped her, but it contained loss. She understood that every kiss that had come before this one had been a manufactured fraud. This was the real thing. She could never settle for less again.
And he was already pulling away.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

He’ll make her pay…

Until he learns of her innocence!

Self-made billionaire Kaine Michaels has just given Gisella Drummond, daughter of one of New York’s most influential dynasties, a shocking ultimatum: use her spotless reputation to save his own or he’ll ruin her family for betraying him! Kaine knows Gisella wants him, and he knows how much pleasure he can give her! But uncovering sweet Gisella’s virginity makes Kaine want her for so much more than revenge…

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Meet the Author:

Award-winning and USA Today Bestselling author Dani Collins thrives on giving readers emotional, compelling, heart-soaring romance with some laughter and heat thrown in, just like real life.

Dani writes contemporary romance for Harlequin Presents and Tule’s Montana Born, but her backlist includes erotic romance, romantic comedy, and even an epic medieval fantasy. When she’s not writing—just kidding, she’s always writing. She lives in Canada with her high school sweetheart husband who occasionally coaxes her out of her attic office to visit their grown children.
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