Spotlight & Giveaway: Jane & Edward by Melodie Edwards

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Melodie Edwards’s new release: Jane & Edward

This powerful reimagining of Jane Eyre, set in a modern-day law firm, is full of romance and hope as it follows the echoing heartbeats of the classic story.

 
A former foster kid, Jane has led a solitary life as a waitress in the suburbs, working hard to get by. Tired of years of barely scraping together a living, Jane takes classes to become a legal assistant and shortly after graduating accepts a job offer at a distinguished law firm in downtown Toronto.

Everyone at the firm thinks she is destined for failure because her boss is the notoriously difficult Edward Rosen, the majority stakeholder of Rosen, Haythe & Thornfield LLP. But Jane has known far worse trials and refuses to back down when economic freedom is so close at hand.

Edward has never been able to keep an assistant—he’s too loud, too messy, too ill-tempered. There’s something about the quietly competent, delightfully sharp-witted Jane that intrigues him though. As their orbits overlap, their feelings begin to develop—first comes fondness and then something more. But when Edward’s secrets put Jane’s independence in jeopardy, she must face long-ignored ghosts from her past and decide if opening her heart is a risk worth taking.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Jane & Edward 

“Want to dance?”
The question was so unexpected and abrupt that Jane jerked her head around in an ungainly spastic motion to stare at him, but his face was impassive as he continued to survey the crowd and he gave no indication that he’d said anything unusual or that Jane had responded alarmingly.
“Um.” She faltered. “Okay.”
Without a word, he placed a light hand on the small of her back and ushered her toward the small dance floor where a DJ had just set up. A little over a dozen or so of the younger employees from various departments were enthusiastically jumping around to a thumping hit by Rihanna, but they gave way as an old Frank Sinatra tune followed, and a number of mismatched couples took their place for an old-fashioned glide around the floor. Jane spotted Adele nearby, dancing grace- fully with the head of the tech department.
Jane snapped to, suddenly confronted with Mr. Rosen, here on the dance floor in front of her, expecting them to dance. She felt a nervous urge to laugh. And maybe to hyper- ventilate. She prayed her palms weren’t sweating.
Mr. Rosen was perfectly calm, which made Jane feel like her out-of-control reaction exposed feelings of being terribly miscast for this scene. But he was uncharacteristically serious. He slid one large hand around her waist and gently clasped her much smaller hand with the other. His palm was rough and warm. Flailing for how to position herself—she couldn’t quite reach his shoulder—she rested her free hand as lightly as pos- sible on his upper arm, just nearing his shoulder. A respectable amount of space remained between them.
Still, he must have felt her stiffen, and he drew back slightly for a moment.
“We don’t have to dance if you’re not comfortable. Really.” “I’m fine,” Jane said, and hoped the loud music covered her voice’s quaver.
He nodded, serious expression still in place, and swayed them lightly to the music.
Jane was glad to see that, far from the romantic clinging together of bodies that had typified high school dances, which were her only experience of couple dancing, the bodies here kept a polite level of disengagement, more like how people might dance with in-laws at a wedding: friendly and not quite stiff, as helped by the wine, but still with a level that would allow them to look each other in the eye at the office Monday morning. The jaunty, old-fashioned tempo of the Frank Sina- tra ballad helped in that regard, it was more quaint than ro- mantic.
Yet eye contact for Jane remained impossible, and instead she stared directly in front of her at the subtle diamond pattern of his navy-blue tie.
“It used to be tradition, back in the day, for partners to dance with their assistants every year at the holiday party.”
Jane nodded receipt of this factoid, but did feel comforted that there might be a sort of precedence for this, in the eyes of the firm.
There was another long pause, and then . . . “Are you en- joying the party?”
This made her look up.
“Really? We do small talk now?”
He shrugged and grinned. “Thought I’d give it a try.”
Jane smiled and shook her head, but felt a little easier now that he was being himself again.
“So I leave for Montreal tomorrow . . .”
Jane nodded. She had booked his tickets, after all. “. . . will you miss me when I’m gone?”
Jane rolled her eyes at his teasing tone but bit back a noise of surprise when he took the opportunity to pull her slightly closer. To anyone looking on they would still be just this side of a respectable distance apart, but it didn’t feel respect- able when Jane was hyperaware suddenly of the physical pres- ence of him. She’d always known he was an imposing man, but from her usual vantage point on the other side of his desk, it was an entirely different experience.
Now he overwhelmed her.
The breadth of his shoulders that blocked her view of any- thing else, the anchor of his hand on her waist, and the solid way he stood, a rooted tree that couldn’t be knocked down, made her feel . . . she didn’t know. Only that she did feel, and it didn’t help that his dark eyes were steadily searching her face. All she knew was that it felt frightening, but that she could never feel frightened of him, and that fact alone was a novel one in her solitary life.
The last bars of the song came to an end, and Jane pulled back, feeling almost dazed, her heart beating fast. The next tune blared on, a Top 40 dance hit, and the discord jarred her to her senses. “Thank you for the dance,” she said carefully. People were flooding the dance floor, becoming a mass of fast- moving bodies that seemed to blur everything around her.
“It was my pleasure,” he replied. He leaned down.
Her eyes fluttered closed as Mr. Rosen’s warm mouth brushed her cheek in a gentle kiss. His stubble rasped against her, and she shivered as he lingered for a moment, the slightest sensation of his breath in her ear as he whispered to her lowly.
“I’ll see you in the new year, Jane Raine.” He stepped back and let her go.

Excerpt. ©Melodie Edwards. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: 1 finished copy of Jane & Edward by Melodie Edwards

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Meet the Author:

Melodie Edwards has a BA from the University of Toronto, a master’s degree from McMaster University and Syracuse University (2023), studied comedy writing at the Second City Training Centre, and works in communications. Jane & Edward is her first novel.
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