Created by Melinda DiLorenzo
“For just one night I needed to turn off the dread I felt every day. I needed to forget that despite every carefully planned escape, my past was waiting to tap me on the shoulder and steal away everything I cared about. I wanted this man. It was passionate. It was perfect. It was the beginning of the end.
–Polly
Hoo-boy! You want it steamy?
Harlequin‘s short-lived Intrigue Noir series (four books?) offered plenty of panty-wetting innuendo amid the usual trappings of “noir” fiction: scam artists, private detectives, bounty hunters, femme fatales, and the usual melange of blackmail, murder, nasty secrets and scandal. Plus, of course, more than a little romance. Or at least sex.
Handled discreetly, of course.
Plus, some carefully distressed covers, perhaps suggesting old pulp fiction?
In Pinups and Possibilities (2014) by romance writer Melinda Di Lorenzo, “reluctant stripper” Polly, she of the big blue eyes and the “subtle sexuality,” crosses paths with PAINTER, a thirty-something (despite the salt-and-pepper hair) rough-and-tumble hunk who’s been reluctantly working as a bounty hunter and debt collector for would-be crime lord Cohen Blue (who deals in “money and girls”) for the past six years.
Painter’s latest task? Track down a Jayme Duncan, whom Blue wants back in the worst way. But it ain’t easy–Duncan, it turns out, is a slippery devil, and Painter’s been on the road for three long months. He’s a long way from home, sleeping in “shitty motels” (or his car when he has too) and he just wants it all to be over.
He doesn’t drink and he doesn’t smoke, but after yet another fruitless day, he decides to seek out some “relax and regroup” at Tangerines, a strip club in the middle of nowhere, thinking a “bad meal” and “maybe even a lap dance” might just be the ticket, when he encounters Polly at the bar.
Polly and Painter are both damaged goods, with each having plenty of naughty secrets in their respective pasts, but the attraction is instant and mutual, and soon enough they’re in Painter’s room, going at it hot and heavy.
But… just by coincidence? Polly is also sleeping with Jayme…
Or is it just coincidence?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melinda DiLorenzo writes happily-ever-afters from her coastal home in British Columbia, which she shares with her “handsome hero of a husband” and their three children. When not writing, she can be found at the soccer field – playing or watching – or curled up with a good book.
NOVELS
- Pinups and Possibilities(2014) | Kindle it!
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Harlequin’s Secret Shame
Sometimes They Liked It Rough.. - Bounty Hunters
“Not your average nine-to-five job”
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
