Blog Tour and Giveaway: Blessed Fate: H. B. Heinzer

by Kimbytx - Tuesday, June 25, 2013

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Colton Bradford never believed in love at first sight. And then, Rain Maxwell walked through his buddy's front door. He knew there was something special underneath the shy, guarded exterior and was determined to find out what it was.

The problem? Rain had devised her own set of life rules and “Never get involved with a band mate” was right near the top of that list. She allowed Colton into her heart as one of her closest friends, but pushed him away at the mention of anything more.

When tragedy strikes Rain's personal life, Colton is determined to be there for her in whatever way she'll allow. Will she finally open up to him and consider taking things to the next level? Will Colton's ways of trying to bury his feelings for Rain in the past ruin the possibility of a future for them?

**This is the second book in the Blessed Tragedy series, this time from Colton's perspective. While there are some events that overlap, there is plenty of the story you've never heard!

Blessed Tragedy(book 1): Goodreads/Amazon

Maddie Neumann died the day she pulled away from her parents' house determined to make her dreams come true. She wasn't the perfect little princess she'd been raised to be, all she wanted to do was rock. Everything Maddie was tucked away in a box to allow for her re-birth as Rain Maxwell; a badass rocker who answered to no one and lived by her own set of rules.

Rain's world is shattered with one phone call from her estranged family. No sooner does she get home than everything she thought she knew about her life starts changing.

Colton Bradford knew there was something special about Rain the moment they first met. Unfortunately, she had a hard and fast rule about dating a bandmate so he was stuck in the friends zone. When Rain is going through her own personal hell, will Colton finally be able to make her see how he feels and convince her to take a chance on love?

Blessed Tragedy will be free on Amazon June 28 -30th.

Excerpt:

I started pulling her through the bus without releasing her from my embrace. Every few steps, we would stop and kiss again, sometimes sweet, gentle pecks, other times heated, passionate kisses intense enough to make my already throbbing cock harder.

I felt her reach for my belt buckle as we crossed the threshold into the bedroom. If she got her hands on me, I was certain I would explode. “We'll be home soon,” I whispered, wrapping my hands around her wrists pulling her hands to my neck. I needed those hands to be as far from my jeans as possible. “I'm not going to have our first time together be on this bus. For one thing, it's not really my style. And another thing, I'd rather not have six pervy men sitting out there listening to us.”

She looked at me, stunned. “You really are an asshole, you know that?” The tone in her voice told me she wasn't pissed at me, but she was beyond frustrated at me putting on the brakes. Hell, I was pissed at me for putting on the brakes, but I had to do it.

“Wasn't it just this morning when you thought this was all a very bad idea?”

“Yes, but you were quite persuasive.” She laid down on the bed, one arm draped seductively over her head, and I started to rethink every romantic gesture I had planned. “Sue me. I had a very different image of where tonight was going.”

In a move I knew I would regret, I flopped onto the bed next to her, laying on my stomach so I could look into her eyes. When I moved so my thigh was resting between her legs, I could feel the heat through her leather pants. “And you can counter-sue me for wanting to make the first time special. Trust me; I plan on making it worth the wait.”

Her skin drew my lips like a magnet. Every kiss I trailed along her jaw, down her neck and across her collarbone compelled me to have just one more taste of her skin. I stopped myself when I reached her breasts, knowing that no matter how much I was aching to draw them into my mouth, flicking my tongue over the hardened tips, I couldn't.

“Comfortable?” She laughed, her hand stroking my hair.

“Mmm, very. Everyone likes sleeping on new pillows.” I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her body closer to mine. Along with kissing her, feeling her flesh pressed against me was a close second for my favorite sensations. With her continuing to caress my hair, I felt myself drifting off to sleep before she lifted my arm and pulled herself out from under me.

“If we're not going to get hot and sweaty back here, I'm going to head back into the venue to take a hot shower. I have to get some of this funk off me.” She propped her head up on her hand, not seeming any more motivated to get off the bed than I was.

“Save water?”

“Yeah, probably not. But we need to hurry if we're going to get back on the bus before they assume we're holed up back here and head to Pensacola without us.”

“You're no fun.”

Placing one hand behind her back, I lifted myself so I was hovering over her body. “Just because we're not doing that doesn't mean we can't do other things.”

“Nope. You're the one who wanted to wait, so now you wait.” After pushing me away, she walked across the bedroom, still topless. Torturing her was going to be the death of me if she was this comfortable sporting a pair of tight leather pants, heels that had to be over four inches high and nothing else. The way she looked back at me, she knew exactly what she was doing to me.

“I'm an idiot,” I grumbled, falling back on the bed as Rain walked away from me. There was no other explanation for what I had just done.

As crazy as it might sound, I felt a connection to Rain from the moment she walked into Travis' apartment five years ago as a broken and scared girl who didn't rust anyone. Before I even know her name, I wanted to protect her, make her feel safe, and teach her how to open up to people again.
In Blessed Tragedy Colton initially seemed perfectly sweet, attentive, and devoted to Rain. I actually got angry at Rain at times for how she put him off and how she treated him. But in Blessed Fate, we get to see Colton's point of view and more things that were going on behind the scenes. He had secrets and was not always making good choices for him or Rain. And one of those big secrets could ruin him, her, and the band. But for the most part Colton was really devoted to Rain and he had loved her for a long time. In this book, we get the earlier story, different scenes that were not part of the first book, and more of their ending. So it is not just the same exact book in Colton's point of view. I actually felt more connected to the story in his point of view than in Rain's. Maybe since he appeared to be the more emotional of the two at times.

Rain is the tough lead singer of Blessed Tragedy. They boys in the band have been her family for years as her relationship with her own had deteriorated. Her past was painful and she had made it through some tough times before joining the band. But when a real tragedy strikes the core of her family, it opens up new doors for reconciliation and understanding. And her band family and Colton are right there with her to back her up just as they do on stage. Colton has loved her for years but has been placed in the friend zone by Rain.

"Don't you get it? I do want to be here. I want to be here for you. I hate that you're hurting. I want to be the person you turn to when you're sad. I want to be the person you scream at when you're upset. That is why I wanted to be here. But right now I feel like have to be so f***ing careful to not touch you in a certain way, to not get too close. That's what's killing me."

Colton and Rain were so good at communicating as best friends that they could do so without even needing to speak. But once Colton finally convinced her to try to begin a real relationship, their communication skills just went completely off kilter. Physically they could relate without a problem, but verbally it all went downhill. It was a roller coaster of bad choices, misunderstandings, jealousy, and saying the wrong things. Colton went from the guy who could do not wrong to the one that screwed everything up repeatedly. His past mistakes come back to bite them and he succeeded in either hurting, pissing her off, or pushing her away several times. Their easy going relationship became anything but. The band did not always help the situation either and finally it all came crashing down.

"No matter what, you’ll always be my storm cloud. Last night just happened to be closer to a hurricane than a thunderstorm."

If trust is questioned, it is hard to feel secure and once that is gone is there a way to get it all back and start over?

I went back and forth on who I was most irritated with at any given time. Both Colton and Rain made me want to shake them and lock them in a room. But for some reason, I felt more sympathy for Rain in this book than I did in her book. Colton really did manage to fall from grace. But he was not going to go down without a fight especially after waiting for her for so many years. We got to see what played into his thought processes both sober and not. We see his love, passion, fear, insecurity, and need to have Rain in his life. This book allowed us to see his secrets, his plans behind the scenes, and how he worked to get it all back. And I really did love Colton. He might have been misguided, made dumb mistakes, and stuck his foot in his mouth on more than one occasion but his heart was in the right place and he really did love Rain.

"She loves you. You love her. You're just both to caught up in your s**t to see it."~Jared

I love the other band members in this series: Jon, Travis, and new comer Jared add fun and support to this couple and are also integral to the story. I think they deserve their own books in this series. And I really liked Rain's brothers as well. This book made me laugh, mad, frustrated, swoony, and happy all at different times. This series has friendship, love, second chances, and family as the core of the stories and the rock aspect is just the background.

Thanks to HB Heinzer for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

HB Heinzer Website/Facebook/Twitter/Goodreads
With the exception of three years in Nebraska, H.B. Is a Wisconsin girl through and through. She lives with her husband, two kids and roommate (also known as the “bonus parent”) in the middle of nowhere but close enough to civilization to maintain a shred of sanity.
She credits her father introducing her to an APAzine in the mid-90s for her love of writing. Bent, her debut novel, was a NaNoWriMo challenge to write 50,000 words in one month. After years of attempting and failing, she finally got through it and this is the result!

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