posted on August 12, 2015 by Elizabeth Lowell

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS…OR IS IT?

by Elizabeth Lowell

Perfect TouchI loved the idea so much I once used it for a book title.  I’d insert a shameless plug here, but this blog is supposed to talk about my newest novel, Perfect Touch.   While this latest romantic suspense has plenty of the action and thrills I love to write, it also deals with a recurring theme for me.  It’s a very important one, perhaps one of the most important themes of all—home.

Home can mean different things to many people.  In the case of Jay Vermilion, the hero in Perfect Touch, home was the breathtaking mountain scenery of the Wyoming cattle ranch where he and the six previous generations of Vermilions grew up and grew old.  Home was also America, the country he had served in two wars–through postings in Iraq and Afghanistan, through battlefield promotions, through the blood and dirt and the squalor of war, which all helped shape Jay into the leader and man who walked through my thoughts and wound up on the pages of Perfect Touch.

For Sara Medina, the heroine of Perfect Touch, home is very much a dirty word.  It brings to mind images of a hardscrabble childhood on her family’s coastal dairy farm—too many children, not enough money, and raising her younger siblings because her mother had too many kids and too little time.  (And don’t even get Sara started on the cows.)  In Sara’s mind, home is unrelenting work and rural poverty and cows ruling the lives of men. She chooses to follow her dream–building her art and design business, named Perfect Touch, into the kind of modern, multi-national taste-maker that will allow her to surround herself with the beautiful things she loves.  And to have a career that takes her around the world to discover new things to love as well.

Sara’s visions of her jet-setting future collide with 6’4” of Alpha male in the form of Jay Vermilion. Jay has asked Sara to appraise the paintings of a little known artist poised for a posthumous breakout, and potentially a scandal worth killing to keep quiet.  The entirety of this artist’s collection of Western landscapes is held in the hands of one family—the Wyoming Vermilions, headed by the military man turned cowboy, Jay.

While that cowboy may be Sara’s newest client, the man has her tempted to break every one of her own professional rules about mixing work and pleasure.  And about getting involved with a marrying kind of man, one whose visions of his home include a huge rural cattle spread, a ranch wife, and a seventh generation of Vermilions to carry on the family’s Wyoming legacy.  This reality has Sara wanting to run for the hills, even though meeting Jay in person quickly turns their phone-based business relationship into a dance of seduction and retreat.

However much Sara might want to run from her feelings, she can’t.  At first, that’s because the job itself could catapult her business into the stratosphere.  And then it’s because the threat of a modern pop-culture art scandal quickly morphs into a murders and a threat on Sara’s life.  Through the building sense of foreboding to the knowledge that she is being hunted, there is one constant—Jay’s steadfast and protective presence at her side.  And eventually, his unconditional love despite the certainty that she isn’t the ranch wife he had been hoping for.

It’s this love that will force Sara to examine her own feelings—and fears—about the concept of home.  Could it be as simple a matter as surrendering to their feelings for one another, with the hope that HOME can be wherever Sara and Jay choose to make it?

And will they survive long enough to find out?

Buy Perfect Touch to find out, or visit www.elizabethlowell.com to read some sample chapters.

Perfect Touch can be purchased in hardcover or eBook format for/from:

Elizabeth Lowell

Elizabeth Lowell

Individually and with co-author/husband Evan, Ann Maxwell has written seventy novels and one work of non-fiction. There are 30 million copies of these books in print, as well as reprints in 30 foreign languages. These novels range from science fiction to historical fiction, from romance to mystery to suspense. Writing as Ann Maxwell, she began her career in 1975 with a science fiction novel, Change. Since then, seven of her nine science fiction novels have been recommended for the Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula Award; A Dead God Dancing was nominated for what was then-called TABA (The American Book Award). In 1976 Ann and Evan (as A. E. Maxwell) collaborated with a Norwegian hunter and photographer, Ivar Ruud, on The Year-Long Day, a nonfiction work about Ruud's life as a trapper and hunter in the Arctic Circle. The book was later condensed in Reader's Digest and published in four foreign editions and three book club editions. In 1985, Just Another Day in Paradise, was published by Doubleday. It was the first of eight A. E. Maxwell crime novels, featuring couple Fiddler and Fiora faced with mysteries in the shade of sunny southern California. The second book, The Frog and the Scorpion, received a creative writing award from the University of California. The fourth book in the series, Just Enough Light to Kill, was named by Time Magazine as one of the best crime novels of 1988. Ann and Evan (writing as Ann Maxwell) have published four suspense novels, the most recent of which is Shadow and Silk. These novels appeared on nation-wide bestseller lists and are considered groundbreaking in the field of romantic suspense, which she helped innovate. In 1982, Ann began publishing romance novels as Elizabeth Lowell. Under that name she has received numerous professional awards in the romance field, including a Lifetime Achievement award from the Romance Writers of America in 1994. She has written both contemporary and historical romances as well as western romance. Since July of 1992, she has had more than thirty novels on the New York Times bestseller list, as well as other national and international bestseller lists. The series of novels featuring the unforgettable Donovan family---Amber Beach, Jade Island, Pearl Cove and Midnight in Ruby Bayou have won acclaim as some of her best romance novels. Her most recent romantic suspense is Night Diver. Her newest romance novel is Perfect Touch. You can connect with Ann on Facebook or Google+.

https://www.elizabethlowell.com

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