Spotlight & Giveaway: Snowbound with his Forbidden Princess by Pippa Roscoe

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Pippa Roscoe to HJ!

Hi Pippa and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Snowbound with his Forbidden Princess!

 
Hi everyone, lovely to be here as always! I’m thrilled to be introducing you all to the Royals of Svardia trilogy, starting with Princess Freya.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

When Princess Freya is sent by her brother – The King of Svardia – on her last official duty before sacrificing her title for the good of her family, little does she expect to not only meet the man who broke her heart, but worse – to get stranded with him by a snowstorm!
Kjell Bergqvist has been exiled from his country ever since Freya passionately declared she never wanted to see him again and she is most definitely the last person he wanted to have in his one bedroom cabin in the Swedish wilderness!
But as the storm rages outside the intense passion between them burns inside and it’s not long before more than just secrets are laid bare. Without a royal title, he cannot offer Freya the future she deserves, but they have each other as long as the storm rages…
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

‘I should have told you the truth,’ he said, unable to stop his hand rising or his thumb sweeping gently across her jawline.
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Because I wanted you more than I could stand,’ he said, before letting her go and walking away.
*
‘Boots off. Clothes off.’
She squeaked in shock. ‘No.’
‘Wet kills around here, Princess. If your clothing is wet, it’s not coming into the cabin.’
‘You can’t be serious,’ Freya exclaimed, looking for a joke, or the hint of one.
Kjell simply levelled her with that glacial gaze. ‘You might want to turn around.’
She felt distinctly as if the cold was affecting her brain function. Why would she want to—
The moment his hands went to his hips she spun on her heel, squeezing her eyes shut. Not that it stopped the images exploding to life on the backs of her eyelids. In her mind’s eye she saw the full length of his naked body as she heard the slide of material against his skin and falling to the floor. Heat stung her cheeks as she imagined him plunging one leg and then the other into the dry pair of trousers she’d seen on the shelf unit by the door.
‘You can look now, Princess.’
‘Stop calling me that,’ she said through clenched teeth. She waited an extra beat before turning around to find him looking at her with too much in his eyes.
*
Her breath shook in her lungs. ‘I thought I was supposed to take what I needed,’ she said, her voice trembling with desire, a shiver of want rippling down her spine and sheening her skin with need.
‘You were taking too damn long,’ his words short and sharp. ‘I’m just going to have to give you what you need.’

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Although Princess Freya is from the fiction kingdom of Svardia, she and Kjell spend most of the book trapped in a snowbound cabin in Sweden.
• A cabin that has only one bed.
• Freya is the first of three siblings in The Royals of Svardia Trilogy. Her naughty younger sister Marit and stern older brother Aleksander also get their own happy-ever-afters.
• If you enjoyed Lykos in The Greek Secret She Carries, then you’ll be pleased to know he’s making his return next!
• This is also part of the Harlequin Presents Jet-Set-Billionaire series, where every single book in the month of March was a tour de force of international destinations, glitz and glamour.
  Book 1: Penniless and Pregnant in Paradise by Sharon Kendrick
  Book 2: The Royal Baby He Must Claim by Jadesola James
  Book 3: Innocent in the Sicilian”s Palazzo by Kim Lawrence
  Book 4: Revealing Her Nine-Month Secret by Natalie Anderson
  Book 5: Cinderella for the Miami Playboy by Dani Collins
  Book 6: Their One-Night Rio Reunion by Abby Green
  Book 7: Snowbound with His Forbidden Princess by Pippa Roscoe
  Book 8: Return of the Outback Billionaire by Kelly Hunter

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

The last thing that Kjell Blomqvist wants is to fall for the woman he is secretly protecting. It’s something he really struggles with. But she makes him laugh, which he’s surprised by. I loved writing the flashes of the past they shared when they were at university – it brought a youthful fun to the story that was unencumbered by the hurts that snuck into the intervening years.

Freya wobbled on heels that she was clearly unaccustomed to and that made Kjell even angrier. Her so-called friend had stayed on at the half-term party, letting Freya walk back to her dorm alone, in the dark, inebriated.
Kjell was tempted to have the girl transferred.
In the past two weeks alone he’d redirected the interests of one student determined to ‘bag a princess’, and another who’d wanted to cash in on her fame.
Princess Freya had the self-preservation instincts of a duckling.
She leaned a little to the left and he caught up with her just in time to balance her.
‘Are you drunk?’ he demanded.
Freya shook her head. ‘Absolute not.’
He cursed.
‘Why do you swear in Swedish?’
‘You know Swedish swearwords?’ he asked, surprised.
She nodded. ‘And Greek, English, German, Italian and several in Russian,’ she said proudly.
‘Svardian tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.’
‘No. That’s for my degree. I learned swearing on my own time.’
He had to bite back a smile. Beneath the layers of royal etiquette she was funny.
‘Okay, Princess, let’s get you home.’
He pulled her against his side, but she twisted gracefully in his arms so that they were chest to chest. She craned her neck to look up at him.
‘So small,’ she whispered.
‘I am not small,’ he replied.
‘No… But I am,’ she said, shaking her head.
His lips curved and her gaze flickered between his mouth and his eyes, her own wide and full of glitter.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘You smiled.’
‘I didn’t,’ he said, scowling.
‘You did. I saw it. You can smile, Kjell,’ she accused him, as if it was something he kept from the world.

Freya sees in Kjell what no one else does; softness and a great capacity for love.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

The scene I first thought of when planning this story happens towards the end. It takes place at Svardia’s Spring Ball and it represents Freya’s acceptance of her duty and her future, even though it will be a hard road, she knows it’s the right one. It is also a road that takes her away from Kjell which is heart-breaking for them both. There’s more – and I promise, there IS a happy-ever-after, but it’s still the one scene that caught me by the throat and heart.

‘You left without saying goodbye.’ His voice was low, audible only to her.
Her eyes flared, but still she didn’t look away. ‘I… I couldn’t. I couldn’t say it,’ she confessed, pain breaking through the words. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ He looked away only briefly, catching Freya’s brother’s glare. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to let you go,’ he admitted, the truth of his statement evident in the raw edge of his voice.
‘But you can now?’ she asked. He pulled her just a little closer into his hold, his legs sweeping through the layers of tulle and silk and beading, desperate to feel the warmth of her body as they continued to dance.
‘You were born for this, Freya, not into it. The title, the role…these things were meant for you.’
I was meant for you, a part of him cried, but he thrust it aside. For her.

Readers should read this book….

If you enjoy stories about finding the strength to face the world when you feel less than. Stories that explore the tearing between duty and desire, your home and your heart and the righting of past wrongs. And most of all, if you like an emotional punch packed with sensuality and fire.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’m strilled to reveal that book two, Marit’s story, comes in May – Stolen from her Royal Wedding, and book three – Claimed to Save his Crown is out in August.
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A signed copy of a UK 2in1 edition featuring a Pippa Roscoe book for three international readers.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Snowbound with his Forbidden Princess is part of the Jet-Set-Billionaires series for Harlequin Presents. If you could be whisked away to a gorgeous location, where would it be?

 
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Excerpt from Snowbound with his Forbidden Princess:

‘Exile, Freya. You exiled me.’

The beep of the satellite phone’s ringtone cut through her shocked silence and he didn’t know whether to laugh or rage. That she hadn’t even realised what she’d been doing all those years ago was incomprehensibly cruel.

‘Answer it,’ he said, disgusted with her, with himself. He just wanted her gone. He turned his back on her and walked towards the internal door to the cabin. He nearly laughed at the irony that he now wanted out of the very space he’d enclosed them both in.

No matter how much he wanted to walk into his sanctuary, he would not do it while she was still here. But he was at the very end of his patience. Her brother had taken this too far in sending Freya to deliver the medal, but he’d overplayed his hand. This refusal would be his last. He would never accept that medal.

He heard Freya speak quietly into the phone, unable to resist glancing to the side where he could just make out her turning away from him in his peripheral vision. The words grew urgent and louder, until, ‘No, wait! Gunnar!’ she shouted, flinging open his front door and disappearing into a flurry of blinding snowflakes.

Kjell cursed loudly and violently, grabbing his coat before shoving the front door closed behind him as he ran after her. He threw an arm into a coat sleeve as he jogged in the direction of the heli and strained to hear Freya’s angry shouts in the distance as he pushed into the other sleeve. His heart pounded even as his quick mind began to process the reality of this new situation.

The blades were already in motion and he hurried forward, knowing that in Freya’s state of mind the danger they posed might not actually stop her. By the time he caught up with her the helicopter was already two feet off the ground and the downwash was fierce enough to have her shielding her eyes. Her hat had fallen off somewhere in the snow and her long dark hair was streaming out in waves, buffeted by the air from both the helicopter’s blades and the storm that was now, for all intents and purposes, here.

He pulled her back from the downwash, their hunched forms blindly retreating until they were far out of reach from the pounding waves of air and snow. From a position of safety, they watched as the helicopter jerked up into the air, hovering momentarily as if offering its regret for leaving her behind, before gliding up and away from view.

Kjell watched her as she stared into the sky long after distance and visibility had made it impossible to see, as if she couldn’t believe that it wouldn’t come back. He peered at the cabin through bloated fluffy flakes of snow that looked harmless until they overloaded a helicopter’s engine, making it too dangerous to fly, or too dangerous to wait for the very important person they had left behind.

‘Give me the sat phone,’ he ordered.

She held it out to him without looking, her fingers already red from the cold. She couldn’t stay here. She wouldn’t last five minutes. She was too soft for his world.

He pressed the button as he turned back and headed to the outbuilding. ‘Gunnar,’ he shouted into the phone past the howling wind, ‘I can get her out to the other side of the lake.’

‘It’s too late.’

‘Don’t give me that. Your pilot has done far more in worse conditions,’ he said, noticing that Freya had started to follow him more quickly as she realised that he was trying to get them to come back.

‘Not with a royal on board, Kjell.’

‘That’s bull and you know it, Gunnar.’ Freya reached for the phone but he lifted his elbow out of the way and turned so she couldn’t reach it. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ Kjell demanded, trying to keep his question out of Freya’s hearing.

‘I have my orders, Kjell. We’ll be back to pick her up when the storm clears.’

Gunnar disconnected the call his end, leaving Kjell standing halfway between his cabin and the outbuilding where he housed his snowmobile, seriously considering just jumping on and getting as far away from Her Royal Highness Princess Freya of Svardia as possible.

‘Well?’ she asked, the flush on her cheeks and hope in her eyes brighter than the north star.

He took one last longing look at the outbuilding.

‘Sorry, Princess,’ he said without the faintest trace of sympathy. Stalking back to the cabin, he threw his next words over his shoulder. ‘Looks like you’re stuck here.’

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

In this sensational royal romance by Pippa Roscoe, can the roaring fire melt away their resistance?

A winter storm… and a white-hot reunion!

Princess Freya is dreading the dutiful task that will mean facing Kjell Bergqvist again. The hardened soldier he’s become is nothing like the man who broke her heart eight years ago. But memories of what they once shared enflame new desires when a snowstorm leaves them stranded!

Kjell can’t forgive Freya for exiling him from his country—until they discover the truth of what really tore them apart. Without a royal title, he cannot offer Freya the future she deserves, but they have each other as long as the storm rages…

From Harlequin Presents: Escape to exotic locations where passion knows no bounds.

This book is also part of The Royals of Svardia series.

Read all the Jet-Set Billionaires books:
Book 1: Penniless and Pregnant in Paradise by Sharon Kendrick
Book 2: The Royal Baby He Must Claim by Jadesola James
Book 3: Innocent in the Sicilian”s Palazzo by Kim Lawrence
Book 4: Revealing Her Nine-Month Secret by Natalie Anderson
Book 5: Cinderella for the Miami Playboy by Dani Collins
Book 6: Their One-Night Rio Reunion by Abby Green
Book 7: Snowbound with His Forbidden Princess by Pippa Roscoe
Book 8: Return of the Outback Billionaire by Kelly Hunter
Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | kobo | Google |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Pippa Roscoe lives in Norfolk near her family and makes daily promises that this is the day she will leave the computer and take a long walk in the countryside. She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t dreaming of gorgeous alpha males and misunderstood heroines. Totally her mother’s fault of course – she gave Pippa her first romance at the age of nine! She is inconceivably happy that she gets to share those day dreams with you! @PippaRoscoe www.pipparoscoe.com
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