posted on August 10, 2015 by Dani Collins

VOWS OF REVENGE

by Dani Collins

Vows of RevengeThe Sweetest Revenge

My heroine Melodie actively tries not to carry hard feelings in her heart. She hates her father and half-brother for all the pain they caused her and her mother, but her revenge against them is to rise above it. To be sweet, not bitter. She wants to be better than they are. She wants to create a life for herself that includes kindness and hope and love.

Roman is far more base. And patient. He has been plotting his revenge against Melodie’s father and brother since they stole his software security system years ago. The wheels have already begun turning, in fact, when Melodie comes into his home, claiming to be his PA’s wedding planner. He’s sure she’s actually an envoy for her father. He thinks they’re feeling the pinch of his maneuverings against them and have sent her to spy and steal again.

It’s not precisely coincidence that she’s there. Her father was instrumental in her winding up with this commission, but her new career is real and Melodie earnestly wants to pursue it. Her mother has passed away and all her ties to those evil men are gone. She is looking forward to living a brighter life.

Roman ruins everything. He doesn’t just get her fired and evicted, but he sleeps with her before he does it. He takes her to the pinnacle of hope, where she thinks she might even have found her soul mate, where she believes that life works out for those who work hard, then he flattens her with his thirst for vengeance.

This is the part Melodie can’t forgive. She had convinced herself only her father and brother were heartless, but Roman dents her ability to believe in men and love. Her hatred of him is cemented and he soon realizes that his attempt at retaliation has flown way off mark, into an innocent.

Which then moves to the sweetest part of a revenge romance for me: the part where the hero must make amends. Where the only way to get past the hurt is to open the wound then bring both sides together again.

Do you love a good revenge romance? What do you think makes them so appealing?

VOWS OF REVENGE

Revenge never tasted so sweet… 

Calm and controlled Melodie Parnell has always wanted to experience insatiable passion. She thinks she’s found it in the bed of sinfully attractive Roman Killian. But in the sultry aftermath of their lovemaking, Melodie is catapulted back to reality when Roman reveals his true plans…to ruin her!

Satisfying the longing in Melodie’s entrancing blue eyes was a glitch in Roman’s plan. Convinced she’d been sent by his enemy, he intended to simply punish her! Except it seems that Melodie was innocent, and now Roman’s plan takes a different turn… Could his vows of revenge become vows of marriage?

EXCERPT

“Do you think I wouldn’t control this if I could? That I don’t hate you for affecting me like this?” He threw the words at her.

Her head flung back as if he’d slapped her.

“No, it doesn’t feel very good, does it?” he gritted out, skin threatening to split under the pressure of containing himself. “It’s not me doing this to you, Melodie. It’s us. I’m this close to having you against this damned wall with the entire room watching. It’s that powerful.”

“Even though you hate me.” She turned her face to the side, eyes glistening.

“What do you want me to say? That I love you?” The word caught like a barbed hook on the way out, snagging in his chest and the back of his throat. It wasn’t a word he even understood beyond its bastardized use. I love this car. I love crème brulée.

“I wouldn’t believe you if you did, but I want the man I sleep with to say it,” she said with a break of anguish in her voice. “I want to feel it. It’s the only thing that’s kept me going all those years, believing I’d make better choices with men than my mother did. I’m so lonely I want to cry, but I can’t bring myself to believe any of you anymore.” Her lips trembled. “You broke me, Roman. That’s why I hate you.”

He sucked in a breath that felt like razor blades.

“I hate being this person. I hate being skeptical and negative,” she went on, skimming trembling fingertips beneath her eyes. “I hate using words like hate.” She sent a quick, desperate glance toward the exit. “I need to go to the ladies’ room.”

Because she was falling apart.

He thought he might. Hell.

VOWS OF REVENGE can be purchased in mass market paperback or eBook format
for/from:

Dani Collins

Dani Collins

I grew up in Maple Ridge, a suburb of Vancouver, when it was still a small town. My father and both grandfathers switched up between logging and fishing so I grew into a quintessential BC girl: green, natural, and impervious to rain.

I started reading romance in high school. The first one I really remember featured a heroine researching her family tree in Scotland who meets a distant cousin (very distant!) and falls in love with him. I don’t remember much about the actual story, just the amazing setting, a heart-stopping kiss, and a happily ever after. I knew this was my kind of book and began consuming romances voraciously. Within a year or so, I wanted to write them for a living.

However, I thought becoming a writer was something you did when you were old. It was your second career. (Kinda turns out to be true in my case. Hashtag SpoilerAlert.) I still gave it a shot at twenty, taking up writing about the time I moved in with my high school sweetheart.

The key to writing, for those of you wondering, is to actually show up to the keyboard and make words land on a page. While I received my first rejection from Harlequin Presents when I was twenty-one, for the first decade or so, I was hit and miss at actually producing stories and sending them in. We traveled, got married, had kids… the usual distractions.

I also worked at various office jobs from a ski hill, to a real estate office, to a chiropractor’s office, to an air conditioning installer and some manufacturing facilities. None of these jobs was particularly glamorous and rarely a day went by when I didn’t imagine myself quitting to write full time.

When my husband took a job in the interior of BC, I thought my ship had come in. I was a stay-at-home writer for the first year, started writing for the local paper and concentrated on finishing manuscripts. When money got tight, I took a part-time job in yet another office. It turned into a fulltime job and I kept writing on the side, still hoping, dreaming, of someday writing full time.

I should mention that along the way, much like a gambling addict, I had just enough success to keep me going. I placed in several writing contests, most notably: HUSTLED TO THE ALTAR was a Golden Heart finalist and an American Title finalist. I also had an agent for a time. In 2008, I was notified that my story was a runner up in the Instant Seduction contest with Mills & Boon in London. I was convinced this was finally my big break.

Four. Years. Later…. And several (five or six) manuscripts later, they called to offer me a two-book contract. Did I quit my job? No. All those years of rejection had taught me not to count my chickens. So I wrote and worked and somehow managed to stay married despite the fact I didn’t really participate in family life or household chores. I’m surprised my kids didn’t sue me for neglect.

Almost a dozen books and two years later, I did quit my job. As of May 2014, I am a full-time writer and it is awesome. Click for my printable book list and you’ll see that I don’t have any problem with showing up at my desk and doing the work. I’ve even managed to pull a few of my old rejected manuscripts into the pile of paying titles. (Take heart from that, fellow rejected authors!)

And I was lucky enough to have one of my first books, PROOF OF THEIR SIN, nominated for a Reviewer’s Choice Award from Romantic Times Magazine. Having been a bridesmaid in so many contests, I was fairly convinced I’d remain honored to be nominated, but I won! Click here to see me with my daughter after I accepted the award.

What’s next? Well, I love, love, love writing for Harlequin Presents so expect as many of those out of me as they’ll take. I have some fun novellas with Tule Publishing’s Montana Born imprint and I have a few more of my rejected tomes I’d like to revise and publish. Honestly, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep this career going so I never have to work in any office except my own ever again.

http://danicollins.com

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