Spotlight & Giveaway: Disarm by Karina Halle

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Karina Halle’s new release: Disarm

Karina Halle, the New York Times bestselling author of Discretion, lifts the veil off a privileged family dynasty to reveal a wealth of secrets and dangerous obsessions.

Seraphine Dumont seems to have it all: she’s gorgeous, brilliant, and part of one of France’s most illustrious dynasties. But underneath the facade, Seraphine struggles to hold it all together. Besides grieving her adoptive father’s suspicious and sudden death, she also shares a tenuous role in the family business with Blaise, her in-name-only cousin. As tumultuous as their history is, he may be the only member of the deceptive Dumont family she can trust.
 
Seraphine is a temptation Blaise can’t resist. The torch he’s carried for years still burns. It’s his secret—a quiet obsession just out of reach. Until his brother demands that he spy on the increasingly cagey Seraphine, whom their father considers a dispensable Dumont outlier. But the more Blaise watches her and the closer he gets, the more he sees Seraphine may have every right to be suspicious. And she could be the next one in danger—from his own family.
 
As blood runs hot and hearts give in, Seraphine and Blaise have only each other. But can their love survive the secrets they’re about to uncover?

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Disarm 

Nine years ago

I sit at the foot of the bed and proceed to drink straight from the bottle, wishing once again that I’d just stayed away. But the more I stay away, the more I have to ask myself, where am I staying? I’m twenty years old, and I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. I just know what I’m trying to avoid.

I drink and I think about this, and I’m not sure how much time has gone past, but then I look up and see a figure passing in front of my door, the door I’d left halfway open.

It’s Seraphine.

I’ve barely said two words to her since I arrived yesterday.

There’s not much to say.

Everything I want to say can’t be put into words, and if it could, it would be inappropriate.

Just the sight of her makes something inside me unravel.

I can’t let that happen.

I have to stay intact. I have to avoid her.

And yet I get to my feet and walk unsteadily over to the door, leaning out of it in time to see her silhouette disappear into her room.

I quickly follow her, putting my arm out against her door just as she starts to close it.

“Jesus,” she swears as she jumps. “You startled me.”

“What are you doing?” I ask her.

“I was about to go to bed,” she says, looking me up and down. I’m shirtless, and her eyes trace over my bare skin with more care than she’d like to show. “And it seems so were you.”

“Have a drink with me,” I tell her, showing her the Scotch and pushing the door open even further. “Talk to me.”

Her eyes go wide. “Talk to you?” She sweeps her long hair over her shoulder and puts her hands on her hips. “Since when do we ever talk, Blaise? The last time we even spoke, you punched my ex-boyfriend in the face.”

“He deserved it. You know it.”

“It doesn’t matter. It was uncalled for. It made it all a bigger deal than it was. Had you not done that, no one outside the party would have known how humiliated I was. After you did that, all the tabloids reported on the story. Made you out to be a violent and crazy drunk, made me out to be some loser whose boyfriend cheated on her in front of everyone. I regret that night.”

“What else do you regret? I mean, now that we’re laying everything out.”

She takes a step toward me, her fingers curled around the edge of the door. “We’re not laying anything out. Don’t get it twisted. I think it’s time you go to your room.”

But I don’t move away. I lean in and whisper, “Do you regret kissing me back?”

“Get out.” Her voice trembles slightly.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell her, moving forward until I’m pressed up against her. She tries to push back, but I keep going until I’m inside and clear of the doorway.

I’m not sure what I’m doing, I just know we need to talk. Maybe not about everything, maybe there’s nothing to talk about on her end. But I hate this whole back-and-forth thing we have, the ignoring each other for months and months and then the forced conversation, the formalities we put up in front of everyone else when there is something so much more raging underneath. Perhaps all unbeknownst to her.

This is what I need to find out.

“What do you want?” she asks quietly. She doesn’t look scared, really, just wary.

I reach over and brush her bangs out of her eyes so I can see them more clearly. Perhaps now she looks scared. The fact that I touched her.

I then hold up the bottle, keeping it between us. “Just have a drink with me.”

She eyes it. “That’s probably a bad idea.”

Excerpt. ©Karina Halle. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: eBook copy of Disarm by Karina Halle (Gifted via Amazon)

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Meet the Author:

Karina Halle, a former travel writer and music journalist, is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of The Pact, A Nordic King, and Sins & Needles, as well as fifty other wild and romantic reads. She, her husband, and their adopted pit bull live in a rain forest on an island off British Columbia, where they operate a B&B that’s perfect for writers’ retreats. In the winter, you can often find them in California or on their beloved island of Kauai, soaking up as much sun (and getting as much inspiration) as possible. For more information, visit www.authorkarinahalle.com/books.

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