Best Ever Summer Reading - Corinne Davies

Embraced by Fur
by Corinne Davies

We're on week 4 of the Best Ever Summer Reading Blog Tour. Don't forget to comment because you could win this week's prize. To see who's visiting who and what the prizes are, check here. 

Don't despair if you haven't won a weekly prize yet, because your name still goes forward for the big Final Prize - a $50 Amazon Gift Card. 

Today I'm so pleased to host author Corinne Davies. Now, if passion in your paranormal is to your liking (and how can it not be, when you look at the cover of the book featured here?), then you should read Corinne's amazing books - take a look at the rest of them here on her beautiful site. Corinne's here to tell us about a character who haunts her.....

This is Lars

Much thanks to Sue for hosting me here today! This week has been a crazy one and I’m a bit behind but better late than never! We’re talking about characters that haunt our thoughts this week and I’m very familiar with this phenomenon.

I’ve had a couple characters haunt me over the years. Some of them were strong enough to get their own stories and others took on a more secondary role, but no character has been more frustrating than the mysterious Viking that lives in Ecstasy Lake.

Lars is forever in the back of my subconscious, standing quietly, watching everything that goes on in the Lake. Every now and again he drops in a hint from his past. Never much and never often, but when he does…it often raises more questions for me.

In Embraced in Fur, Lars stood on the dock having a quiet early morning conversation with Carol who was trying to figure out her own conflicts.

****

 “It makes you think of forever. A deep voice startled Carol out of her thoughts.

Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you.” His voice was coloured with a slightly Nordic accent when he spoke. She could almost physically feel it wash over her.

She looked up and then kept tilting her head. Damn, he’s tall. A big man with broad shoulders and a strong jawline. Blond hair hung past his shoulders and softened his features slightly. Not enough to make him look feminine, if anything he looked more masculine.

“How the hell did you sneak up on me like that?”

The man tilted back his head and laughed. The booming sound echoed over the water and reinforced the Viking image that first crossed her mind when she looked at him. “I’m afraid that you were caught up in your own thoughts. I tend to stomp when I walk. Here. I bought you a coffee. Double-double right?”

A large takeout cup was placed in front of her. She recognized The Shack’s logo on the side of it. “How did you know what I took in my coffee?”

“Catherine told me. She asked me to bring this to you.”

“That was very thoughtful of her.” I’ve only picked up a coffee once or twice, and she remembered what I like in it? She’d been going to the same coffee shop in the city every day for five years, and she had to tell them every day how she took her caffeine. Not for the first time this morning, she questioned if she was doing the right thing to even consider going back.

“I saw the look on your face as I got closer. The lake has that effect on people.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do.” He leaned a hip against the rail next to her and sipped from the cup in his large hand. “I was simply passing though when I first spotted that big black puddle. I sat on a rock and thought of things I hadn’t wondered in years. Next thing I realize, five years had passed. I had a home I didn’t know I wanted, and a family I wasn’t born to. You look too close and it will make you question everything you think you know.”

“What if you don’t know the truth or have any answers to the question?”

“Then keep looking.”

****

See Lars loves to drop those little insightful gems on me here and there. He does it all the time but when I try to make the big guy sit down for a moment and talk, he sneaks away on those silent feet of his. Returning later, he’ll lean against the corner of my mind and whisper encouragement as I work.

But his time is ticking like a time bomb. I met a woman a few days ago and she has started haunting my thoughts. She’s a sweet thing, curvy, lush and in desperate need of a hero, even though she thinks I’m mad for suggesting it.

Ha! That’s got the big man rushing for his Harley but he can race off as fast as he wants. I’ve got the key to his heart in my hand and I’m about to hand it over to someone else. ;)  

Thank you Corinne...hmmm... I wouldn't mind having a hot Viking drop in on me every now and again. And I'd remember how he likes his coffee! Visit Corinne here (it's such a fun blog).

If you'd like to know which character haunts me...I'm on Lynn Hones's blog here