Spotlight & Giveaway: Serving Sin by Angelina M. Lopez

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Angelina M. Lopez’s new release: Serving Sin

Thirteen years ago, decorated former-Army Ranger Roman Sheppard rescued Mexican heiress Cenobia Trujillo from a shocking kidnapping that riveted the world.

 
In the years since, Roman’s risen from his humble Texas roots: He is now the head of an elite security firm and the reluctant half-prince of a glamorous wine-growing Spanish kingdom.

And today, Cenobia–“Cen”–is finally in the CEO role she’s trained for her whole life. But serious, growing threats against her are derailing a product launch that will change the Mexican industrial landscape forever. She’s done the hard work to recover from her kidnapping, but therapy has’t changed the fact that Roman Sheppard will forever represent safety in her mind.

He’s the only one she can trust.

And his coming to Mexico will allow Cenobia to finally figure out if what she feels is a teenager’s daydream or a grown woman’s reality…

But there’s a reason Roman has stayed a continent away. His mission is to save people. And nothing–not duty to family, not the mistakes of his past, and certainly not love–is going to get in his way.

He’ll go to Mexico. He’ll help Cen. He’ll keep her safe.

What he won’t allow himself to do?

Desire Cenobia Trujillo. He won’t allow her to become his sweet Cen.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Serving Sin 

Thirteen years ago, decorated former Army Ranger Roman Sheppard rescued Mexican heiress Cenobia Trujillo from her kidnappers. Three years later, he asked her tycoon father for a loan to help save his royal half-siblings’ impoverished Spanish kingdom.

What this reluctant warrior prince didn’t know then, what he’s just discovered now, was that the loan came from the heiress, now a CEO, and not her father. It’s been Cenobia, under the guise of her father, that he’s been emailing with all these years.

She asks everyone to call her “Cen.” But Roman doesn’t dare.

Cenobia’s brown eyes, coffee bean dark and velvety, traveled over him as she walked closer. “You certainly look the part of CEO,” she said, voice soft.
Roman straightened.
“Yeah, I’m CEO of a firm that employs two hundred and fifty-five of the smartest private-security minds in the world,” he said. “I’m also advisor to the guy who runs this place. Right now, they should yank me off both jobs.”
She paused, confused, just a few feet away between the two high-backed chairs in front of his desk.
“A stranger had her pretty fingers playing around in this kingdom and I had no clue.”
The surprised hurt was instant on her wide, expressive face. “You’re upset,” she said, raising her chin.
“Damn right,” he growled out. “Why didn’t you tell me you were the one okaying our money, Cenobia?”
“Please,” she said. “Call me Cen.”
Like hell he would. He looked at her steadily.
Everyone talked about how bright and green his eyes were, brighter and greener surrounded by dark lashes. Interrogation hadn’t been his primary skill as a Ranger. But his eyes, his silence, and the sense of threat that ran closer to the surface than anyone understood had always been his best tools at getting people to talk.
His best tools weren’t often greeted with a direct, cat-eyed gaze.
“Roman, imagine how that would have looked,” she said, the fingers he hadn’t meant to call pretty running absently along the back of one of the wooden chairs she stood next to. “A great and noble kingdom receives aid from a twenty-one-year-old girl?” She gripped a finial. “It would have looked like I was adopting the Monte as my puppy.”
He shook his head. Focused. “Screw everyone else. Why didn’t you tell me?”
He’d spent the day trying to rewrite ten years of understanding. All those emails and notes hadn’t been with her father. They’d been with her.
A thread had woven between them when he’d extracted her from the bunker, held her up while she was physically ill from seeing the death he’d delivered, then raced her across the desert to safety.
But those short, quick notes had created a bond.
Those notes had transformed her into the only former Sheppard Security client Roman expected the truth from.
“If the loan came from my father, you would assume it was a business decision,” she said. “From me… I was afraid you would think it was pity.” For the first time that day, she dropped her gaze. “Or teenage…fancifulness.”
Fancifulness?
A CEO in cashmere and leather stood before him saying she hadn’t revealed herself in a decade of jointly overseeing a fortune because he’d think she had a crush?
He wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole. “You didn’t tell me in the beginning? Fine. But ten years, Cenobia.”
“Cen.”
He crossed his arms and glowered back.
She clasped her dark hands together and ran four fingers over the back of one. “I did repeatedly invite you to Mexico with the intention of telling you in person.”
Well…shit.
He’d repeatedly found an excuse not to accept.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” she said quietly. Her dark eyes were velvet soft as she looked at him. “I admire you so much for what you’ve accomplished here.”
Okay.
What was he doing?
This woman had given him a fortune and helped him figure out to use it. How long was he going to browbeat her for it?
“I didn’t do anything,” he said, gruffly. “It was you, you convincing your dad to loan us the money. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
“I know you do,” she said gently. “You still have a right to be angry.”
He shook off his glower, which wasn’t the easiest thing to lose on the best of days. “Look, if Mateo and Sofia aren’t pissed, then I shouldn’t be. They’re the ones who did all the work.”
Her head with that heavy crown of shiny black hair tipped as she looked at him. “That’s not true.”
He wasn’t gonna go round-and-round with her the way he did with his siblings. The Monte had been able to pay off the loan in half the time because of his brother’s plans, his billionaire sister-in-law’s financial oversight, and his sister’s idea to begin a winemaking industry that matched the Monte’s winegrowing reputation. Roman had just watched the money.
She nodded at Roman’s bicep. “The reluctant warrior prince has become the king’s right hand,” she teased gently.
He looked down and saw the mammoth gold ring his crossed arms showed off there. Saw the finger next to it with its missing top third. His other hand was rippled and tight with a burn scar covering the back.
His brother had shoved the king’s advisor ring with its family crest and ode of loyalty on Roman’s middle finger six months ago, after their father’s stroke had made Mateo the official king he’d already been acting as for the last ten years. The thing was tight and surprisingly heavy.
“It’s a role worthy of you,” she mused. “Your careful management of our money helped make me interim CEO.”
“Interim?” That word kept him from hiding his hands in his pants’ pockets. His tailor made sure his hands wouldn’t fit anyway. “What do you mean interim?”
Cenobia crossed her own arms and absently stroked her earlobe. “My father wants an opportunity to observe me in the role before he names me his successor in truth. The heart condition that was reported as the reason he stepped back is a ruse. Only me, my father, and his doctor know.”
On that long-ago four-hour drive, she’d filled the air with words, and many of them had been about her family’s company, Trujillo Industries, Mexico’s largest producer of foreign cars and parts, and her future hopes and dreams for it. In his occasional googling, he’d read how hard she’d worked to earn the CEO seat.
“Sorry,” he said. He watched a peach pearl earring wink between her fingers as she continued to stroke her ear.
“Actually, it’s why I’ve come.” She dropped her hands and raised troubled eyes to look at him. “I need your help.”

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

Giveaway: 1 Mass market paperback copy of SERVING SIN by Angelina M. Lopez (limited to North America)

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 writes sexy, contemporary stories about strong women and the confident men lucky enough to fall in love with them.

When her kindergarten teacher asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Angelina wrote, “arthur.” In the years since she learned to spell the word correctly, she’s been a journalist for an acclaimed city newspaper, a freelance magazine writer, and a content marketer for small businesses. At long last, she found her way back to “author.”

The fact that her parents own a vineyard in California’s Russian River Valley might imply a certain hedonism about her; it’s not true. She’s a wife and a mom who lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. She makes to-do lists with perfectly drawn check boxes. She checks them with glee.

The first two books of her Filthy Rich series, Lush Money and Hate Crush, are available now from Carina Press. Serving Sin, the third in the series, will be available Summer 2021. You can find more about her at her website, AngelinaMLopez.com and at @AngelinaMLo on Twitter.

Filthy Rich

Book 1: Lush Money
Book 2: Hate Crush
Book 3: Serving Sin

Amazon |  Barnes & Noble  | Apple | Google | Kobo