Spotlight & Giveaway: Here to Stay by Adriana Herrera

Posted August 28th, 2020 by Sara @HarlequinJunkie in Blog, Spotlight / 28 comments

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Adriana Herrera’s new release: Here to Stay

Award-winning, highly-acclaimed author Adriana Herrera delivers the sexy, modern enemies-to-lovers romance you’ve been waiting for.

Starting over is more about who you’re with than where you live…

Julia del Mar Ortiz is not having the best year.

She moved to Dallas with her boyfriend, who ended up ditching her and running back to New York after only a few weeks. Left with a massive—by NYC standards, anyway—apartment and a car lease in the scorching Texas heat, Julia is struggling…except that’s not completely true. Running the charitable foundation of one of the most iconic high fashion department stores in the world is serious #lifegoals.

It’s more than enough to make her want to stick it out down South.

The only monkey wrench in Julia’s plans is the blue-eyed, smart-mouthed consultant the store hired to take them public. Fellow New Yorker Rocco Quinn’s first order of business? Putting Julia’s job on the chopping block.

When Julia is tasked with making sure Rocco sees how valuable the programs she runs are, she’s caught between a rock and a very hard set of abs. Because Rocco Quinn is almost impossible to hate—and even harder to resist.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Here to Stay

I was still sitting in my car, where I’d been since I’d said my goodbyes and agreed to meet everyone again for drinks the next week. In the end, I’d had a nice time.
Still, I was brooding.
As soon as I’d gotten to the bar tonight, I knew I’d made a mistake. I really needed to remember that I was here to do a job and get back to New York City and the responsibilities I could not turn my back on.
That was my other problem. The meeting had actually been fun. Tariq and Dani were big Yankees fans, and Julia, that traitor, joined them in giving me shit about the Mets. Mean¬while, Salome, who was a diehard baseball fan, but only of Dominican teams, had the time of her life telling us all the ways in which the Dominican winter league was superior to the major leagues. José teased us mercilessly about his new¬found love for the Rangers, and the hours flew.
Then there was Julia. Julia and her colors and her energy were addictive, and I had a feeling once I got a taste, I would not be able to stop coming back for more.
Her big brown eyes hypnotized me. Her long, curly hair cascading halfway down her back was as big and wild as I’d imagined it. There had been something different about her tonight.
She’d been at ease. A side to her that wasn’t what I’d seen in the office. It seemed to me like Julia, once she was away from work and the machinations of the IPO, had shed some of the tightness she always carried around me. And no mat¬ter how much I wanted that to mean there was some kind of opening there, it didn’t matter. She was still her and I was still me, and I needed to do my job, and that job was to deliver that IPO into Duke Sturm’s hands.
I’d started my car and headed out of the parking lot when I noticed her standing on the sidewalk, glaring at her phone. She’d put her hair up in a messy bun and was tapping furiously as she leaned on a bench. I drove up to her and lowered my window with my heart beating way faster than it should with someone I was supposed to keep my distance from.
“Hey, do you have a ride home?” I spoke in a soft voice, aware it was never a good idea to startle a woman who’d grown up in New York City.
She jumped anyways, but when she turned her eyes to¬ward me, she looked relieved to see me. “Do you go around sneaking up on women like that? You’re lucky I’m slow when I’m tired.”
I tried to look contrite, but a smile happened anyway. My lips had a mind of their own when it came to Julia. “Sorry about that. This car makes no noise.”
Davidson’s arranged for whatever we needed while on a project and usually went for something that would “reflect well” on the brand. So I was driving a black Tesla sedan.
Julia was still squinting at me and my vehicle when I ges¬tured toward her phone. “I can give you a ride if you want to cancel your Lyft.”
She looked at her phone again and then at the street—pursing her mouth as she considered her choices. I didn’t take it person¬ally, but was surprised at how much I wanted her to say yes. Her brows stayed furrowed for a second and finally with an eye roll, she relaxed. She was wearing a shade of lipstick almost the color of red wine. I imagined her mouth half-open as I crushed our lips together and I had to breathe through my mouth to get myself together. There was something that happened to me whenever Julia Ortiz was around I was having a hard time even naming. But the last thing a woman like her needed was me and my baggage.
Right now though, she looked tired and ready to go home, and I could do that for her. I clicked to unlock the passenger door and leaned over to open it, suspecting that if I got out to open the car door for her she’d send me on my way.
“Hop in.” I needed to dial down the eager beaverness by like a thousand percent.
She looked around, like she still wasn’t sure any of this was a good idea, but after a moment, she nodded. “All right. Thank you.” She tapped something on her phone, then came around and got in the car.
As soon as she had her seat belt on, she pushed her back against the seat and let out a long exhale. I turned to her and caught a glimpse of a little bit of white lace peeking from that crop top, which was probably going to star in every one of my fantasies after this.
She closed her eyes for just a second and took a deep breath in and out. Like she was letting go of the whole day. When she opened them, she almost seemed surprised to see me.
“Where to?”
She pointed left as I turned on the car. “45 Orchard Street, Los Sauces apartments.”
I nodded as I put in the info in the GPS and when the ad¬dress came up, I made a sound of surprise.
“What?”
I shook my head and tried once again to chill out. “Oh, nothing, we just live really close. I’m in a building like two streets over. The Lofts.”
She widened her eyes and then dipped her chin, her mouth in an expression I’d seen many a time from some of the girls I grew up with. It was a mix between “show-off” and “good for you.”
From my peripheral vision, I saw her lift a shoulder as I ma¬neuvered us out of the parking lot and onto the dark street. I knew where I was going, so I muted the directions and talked to Julia.
“Thanks again for letting me crash your party. It was good to be around other New Yorkers. I just missed the energy that people from the city have, you know?”
I caught a surprised look on her face, like she didn’t expect me to admit I’d had a good time, but when she spoke she was friendly. “I totally get that. Tonight was the first time since I’ve been here that I felt like I might actually be able to stay long term.” I could tell there was a lot more to that than she was saying, but I didn’t push her to explain.
Instead I did something I never ever did—I talked about myself. “I never really left New York until after I finished grad school and started working as a consultant. It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t lived there just how different it is to everywhere else.” I meant to stop talking, but again my mouth started before I could stop it. “I’ve only been here a few weeks, but I like it. It feels manageable in a way New York never felt to me. I love the city, but sometimes I felt like it was carrying me and not the other way around. Here I feel like I set the pace.” I turned to look at her and found she was watching me like I’d totally thrown her off. “Sorry, I’m not making sense.”
She started to speak and then paused, like she wasn’t sure if she should say what she was thinking. But as I drove, I caught a glimpse of a smile.
“You’re making total sense. It does feel more manageable. I can slow down or speed up; in New York I always felt like I was trying to catch up to someone, you know?”
I grunted in answer, feeling the truth of that statement all the way down to my toes. “How did you find yourself this far from Corona?”
I regretted asking almost as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Seeing Julia sad was much worse than seeing her mad—and that was the kind of information that would only complicate things for me.
She didn’t answer my question right away, and I figured she had better sense than me. But right when we were com¬ing up to the turn to her apartment she spoke into the eerily silent car. “I made a string of bad choices that left me dumped, holding a two-year lease for an apartment and a car payment a week after I started my dream job.” Her tone was harsh, but not bitter, determined. I could hear in her voice she was used to being judged about this. Like the asshole who left her hanging wasn’t the one who should be ashamed of themselves.
“So this person asked you to trust them and move across the country and then left you here holding a lease?” I had no right to be enraged on behalf of this woman, but I could’ve slain dragons to keep seeing the smile that suddenly appeared on her face.
She grinned shyly, obviously noticing my pissiness, and when she spoke again she sounded like the Julia who could get my blood boiling in two seconds flat. “It was a he. And yes, he did.”
What kind of dipshit could ever leave a woman like this?
“I hope that fucker knows not to show his face in Queens.”
That laugh, the head thrown back as she looked at me with a mixture of shock and glee, puffed up my chest. This was better than when I graduated from business school, bet¬ter than the moment I was finally able to get my sister out of my parents’ house. Julia Ortiz could become a very danger¬ous addiction for me.
By the time she’d stopped laughing, we were coming to a stop in front of her building, and she was still smiling wide. I was having trouble looking away. Julia’s smile took over her whole face. As I stole one more look at her face, I realized that I would probably be willing to do a lot of crazy shit trying to coax more of them out of her.
When she spoke her voice was still ringing with humor. “You already know he can’t come anywhere near Corona. Dominican mom and dad from PR.”
The Queens burst out of me before I could stop it. “He doesn’t know much, if he ever let you go.”
I held her gaze, because I meant it, but what had flames licking low in my gut was how she locked those brown eyes with mine. She wasn’t shying away from the compliment. This woman knew what she was worth.
Something in the energy between us kindled and caught fire and I had to grip the steering wheel hard so I didn’t do something we would both regret. I wondered if she felt it too. And maybe she did because when she spoke I could hear a tremor in her voice that was more than the AC.
“Thanks for the ride, Rocco, and for showing up early.” She raised her eyebrow, hands on her big purse. “Even though it’s still sort of nerve-wracking being around you, tonight was fun.” I didn’t have to ask why I made her nervous.
“I’m glad you let me stick around.”

Giveaway: One (1) Trade paperback copy of HERE TO STAY by Adriana Herrera (limited to North American mailing addresses only).

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Meet the Author:

Adriana was born and raised in the Caribbean, but for the last fifteen years has let her job (and her spouse) take her all over the world. She loves writing stories about people who look and sound like her people, getting unapologetic happy endings.

When she’s not dreaming up love stories, planning logistically complex vacations with her family or hunting for discount Broadway tickets, she’s a trauma therapist in New York City, working with survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

Her Dreamers series has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist and has been featured in The TODAY Show on NBC, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Library Journal and The Washington Post. Her debut, American Dreamer, was selected as one of Booklist’s ‘Best Romance Debuts of 2019’, and one of the ‘Top 10 Romances of 2019’ by Entertainment Weekly. Her third novel, American Love Story, was one of the winners in the first annual Ripped Bodice Award for Excellence in Romantic Fiction. Adriana is an outspoken advocate for diversity in romance and has written for Remezcla and Bustle about Own Voices in the genre. She’s one of the co-creators of the Queer Romance PoC Collective. Represented by Taylor Haggerty at Root Literary.

Connect with Adriana Herrera
Website: https://adrianaherreraromance.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ladrianaherrera
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laura.adriana.94801
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ladriana_herrera/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18639202.Adriana_Herrera

Buy Here to Stay by Adriana Herrera
Harlequin: https://www.harlequin.com/shop/books/9780369700926_here-to-stay.html
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Here-Stay-Adriana-Herrera-ebook/dp/B086R2QY77
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/here-to-stay-adriana-herrera/1136795733
Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/here-to-stay/id1506190677
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Adriana_Herrera_Here_to_Stay?id=_-zaDwAAQBAJ