Spotlight & Giveaway: After Hours on Milagro Street by Angelina M. Lopez

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Angelina M. Lopez’s new release: After Hours on Milagro Street

Opposites attract in this rivals-to-lovers romance from Lush Money author Angelina M. Lopez

 
Guapo pobrecito her grandmother calls him. The “poor handsome man.”

Professor Jeremiah Post, the poor handsome man, is in fact standing in the way of Alejandra “Alex” Torres turning Loretta’s, her grandmother’s bar, into a viable business. The hot brainiac who sleeps in one of the upstairs tenant rooms already has all of her Mexican American family’s admiration; she won’t let him have the bar and building she needs to resurrect her career, too.

Alex blowing into town has rocked Jeremiah to his mild-mannered core, but the large, boisterous Torres clan is everything he never had. He doesn’t believe Alex has the best interest of her family, their community, or the bar’s legacy in mind. To protect all three, he’ll stand up to the tough and tattooed bartender with whom he now shares a bedroom wall—and resist the insta-lust they both feel.

But when an old enemy threatens Loretta’s and the surrounding neighborhood, Alex and Jeremiah must combine forces. It will take her might and his mind to save the home they both desperately need.

“Sparks fly and tempers flare in this passionate, un-put-downable rivals-to-lovers romance that launches a sizzling new series…Lopez seamlessly blends high-heat romance with discussions of Alex’s heritage and the fascinating history of 19th-century Mexican immigrants to the Kansas plains. This is a treasure.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from After Hours on Milagro Street 

After Hours on Milagro Street by Angelina M. Lopez, Carina Press. Available July 26

He flipped on the bathroom light. And froze.
She’d spread her things all over their shared bathroom, then declared her claim by hanging a blue sapphire robe on his hook.
He yanked the door closed behind him. He stripped down to his bare feet, wet slacks, and muscle undershirt trying to look at anything but the robe shimmering against the white tile. When his hand brushed silk as he reached for his towel, he gave into temptation.
The short, sapphire-blue silk robe had a—he tilted his head, verified, then huffed out a breath—had a dragon embroidered on it. The dragon snaked around the blue background in threads of orange and yellow and red, fire shooting out of its snarling mouth.
He could see the short robe wrapped around her curves. He could see the silky blue against her brown skin, the tip of the orange-and-red fire licking her deep cleavage, the dragon’s loopy tail coiling around her soft, thick, strong thighs as he stroked his hands up…
He tore off his glasses and scrubbed the towel across his face. He needed to brush his teeth and flee.
Righting his glasses, he stalked to the fifties-era pedestal sink, wrenched on the hot tap, then glared at a pink jar of hand cream squashed in next to the soap. The jar’s shiny pink lid was askew; its squat packaging and flowery script made it look like a hand cream Loretta would wear, not her fifty-years-younger granddaughter.
When he reached for the soap, he accidentally knocked the lid to the floor.
He resented even picking it up.
The scent rising from the soft pink cream when he reached for the jar to screw on the top was uncomfortably familiar. Uncomfortable because the powdery rose scent provided so much comfort when it drifted off Loretta and Mary. But last night, on Alex, and this morning, this scent had been intriguing. Beckoning.
Sensual.
Jeremiah closed his eyes and took a helpless inhale now.
The sense memory of this soft, rosebud scent trailing off the unfettered woman was like holding one of her heavy rings to feel her residual warmth. Reading a deleted line of wistfulness from her social media. Or bracing for the kick of her black boots and instead feeling the stroke of silk and dragons.
This scent spoke of secrets he didn’t understand about Alex Torres.
“What are you doing?”
Jeremiah’s eyes startled open to see his reflection in the mirror. Standing there with his wet hair shoved back, muscle undershirt sticking to his chest, and soaked slacks, he’d been sniffing her hand cream.
He quickly screwed on the lid as Alex glared at him from the doorway, large lime green headphones pulled down around her neck, a toothbrush in one hand, and a cosmetics bag in the other. She still wore her clothes from today, and her ugly cardigan was sliding off one shoulder, revealing the torn edge of her sleeveless t-shirt and the top of her flower-stroked arm.
His Adam’s apple felt like a bowling ball. He put the jar back on the sink. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t touch my shit.” Her dark eyes could crucify him.
He bristled. “I didn’t want to. The lid wasn’t on—”
“You don’t close the bathroom door?” Her eyes narrowed and her hand curled into a fist she settled on her hip. “Or you think you can flaunt what you got and get another round with me? Unlikely, Mr. Quick-on-the-Draw.”
He clenched his jaw. “Of course not,” he said, disgusted. He’d never once, in his entire life, used his advantages to gain sex with a woman. In fact, he’d actively resisted having sex with anyone who didn’t want him for his burly, over-educated, over-enthusiastic self.
That’s what had led him to make last night’s now-regrettable decision: She’d wanted him only knowing how he looked in his piped flannel pajamas.
Now she thought she was seeing a hand-cream-sniffing deviant in the mirror. He’d spent the first two-thirds of his life being weighed and measured against an unfair reflection. He would never let someone do it again.
He grabbed his toothbrush. “I closed that door.” He wanted to be done in here, done with her. Still, he muttered, “How do I know you didn’t open it?”
“What?” She marched in, her big boots pounding off the tile. “You got something to say, Professor, don’t whisper like a little baby.”
“Just let me finish,” he said between gritted teeth. He put toothpaste on his toothbrush.
She sidled up to him. “You’re taking too damn long.” She actually tried to hip-check him to get to the small sink. The move looked ridiculous in the mirror; he easily out-measured her by twelve inches and eighty pounds.
He raised his chin, held his ground, and met her eyes in the mirror as he put his toothbrush in his mouth and started brushing.
She stood close to his side, glaring and brushing as well. He could feel her scratchy cardigan against his bare bicep. If he breathed deep, he’d stroke the left half of her curves.
He leaned over and spit into the sink. “I was at the very least hoping we could be mature about this forced living arrangement,” he said, straightening and brushing again.
She pulled out her hot-pink toothbrush. It was a novelty brush with a tiny decal of Scooby-Doo. “Are you calling me immature?”
“Would you prefer ‘uncivil’?” he said around the foam in his mouth.
She spit like it was his bad taste she was washing out. She bent over to rinse.
He saw the indent between the strong muscles in her nape. The black hair there was shaved close and looked soft. When she straightened, he realized the extravagant pomp she’d styled her hair into that morning had softened, and she had to tuck the curls behind her ear to keep it out of her face.
She stared hatred at him through eyes smudged with end-of-day makeup as she wiped her mouth with the back of
her hand. “You know what? You should move out.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” Her full mouth curved slowly upwards and raised a surprising level of panic in him. “You living here…it doesn’t work for me. You need to find somewhere else to go.”
She turned her back on him and began strolling out of the bathroom.
Go. Where would he go?
He’d tried living on the Dupen College campus, but the transitory nature of academia—the constantly changing faculty and students—had left him feeling like a man with a shovel floating in the ocean. He’d rented a small house in town but that had been worse. The four quiet walls had given him nothing to dig into.
Only at Loretta’s had he found a home and a community and place where he could sink in roots and grow something meaningful and valuable.
He rinsed his mouth in the sink and wiped his face before he called, “You—” His voice was strangled. He cleared it. “You don’t have the latitude to kick me out.”
She looked over her shoulder and yawned. The flowers on her skin were as bright as that man-eating dragon on her robe. “Now or later, one way or the other, I’ll get you gone.” She smiled patronizingly. “Look, Dr. Fancy Pants, I’ll give you a week to find another place.”
She turned and stepped out into the hall, her hips swaying, as if the matter was settled.
As an awkward kid growing up in an intimidating home, he’d tried to hide in the shadows of the library to avoid his family’s calm contempt and surgically precise insults. Hiding hadn’t worked.
Alex’s contempt was anything but calm—she was a tornado who had wrecked her last job and now threatened to tear apart his found home. And Jeremiah was no longer that little boy.
Shoving back his still-damp hair, he followed her out into the hall.

Excerpt. ©Angelina M. Lopez. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: One (1) Trade paperback copy of AFTER HOURS ON MILAGRO STREET by Angelina M. Lopez (shipping is limited to continental US and Canadian mailing addresses).

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and post a comment to this Q: What did you think of the excerpt spotlighted here? Leave a comment with your thoughts on the book…

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Meet the Author:

Angelina M. Lopez has been writing professionally her whole life: first as a journalist for an acclaimed city newspaper, then as a freelance magazine writer, and now as a romance author. She writes sexy, Latinx-inspired stories about strong women and the worthy men lucky to love them. Her debut book, Lush Money, was named a Top 10 Romance Debut of 2020 by ALA’s Booklist. Lush Money and Hate Crush, received rave reviews from Entertainment Weekly, NPR, and Booklist. Her first book in a new high-heat, small town, Latinx series, After Hours on Milagro Street, available in July, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Angelina lives with her family in Houston, Texas. You can find more about her at her website, AngelinaMLopez.com and at @AngelinaMLo on Instagram.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Goodreads |