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Blog Tour: Shine Not Burn: Elle Casey

by - Sunday, September 08, 2013




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IT HAPPENED IN VEGAS.

I can't be held responsible. Things that happen there are supposed to stay there, right? Right? Yeeeah. Not so much.

Andie's just days away from tying the knot, but there's just ooooone little glitch. Apparently, she's already married. Or someone with her name is married to a guy out in Oregon of all places, and the courthouse won't issue her a marriage license until it's all cleared up. Tripping her way through cow pies and country songs to meet up with a man who gets around places on horseback is her very last idea of how to have a good time, but if she's going to get married, make partner at the firm, and have two point five kids before she's thirty-five, she needs to get to the bottom of this snafu and fix it quick ... before her fiance finds out and everything she's been working toward goes up in flames.


"They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but sometimes the trouble follows you home."

One wild night in Vegas totally derails Andie's life. But she does not even realize the full extent until two years later.

Andie is a lawyer...always in control and she has a life plan that she is set on following. She is rarely spontaneous and is completely set in her safe little world. She went to her friend's bachelorette party in Vegas and let herself go for the first time. Mac was there for his brother's bachelor party and could not resist the girl who practically fell at his feet. One fantastic, sexy night mixed with large amounts of alcohol happens. They have an intense connection that neither expected.  But he next day they are both alone and Andie is left with some holes in her memory.

"What I have going through my mind is that I don't want this to end. There's something about you that's just lassoed my heart or my common sense of something and I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to get it back until you let it go."

She changes her life again upon her return, and two years later is engaged to another successful lawyer. She seems to be be following her previously set life plan to the letter and found the perfect man on paper to fill the husband slot. Even if the man is not really perfect for her. Unfortunately, her friends do not like the direction her life and her relationship status has taken. In order to clear up a pesky little problem like a cowboy husband she does not remember marrying, she heads off to Oregon. She never expected to still feel that instant connection and chemistry with Mac. Or that Mac was not going to just give up without a fight. He is sexy, bossy, and knows what he wants. He pushes her, challenges her, and totally tries to screw up her silly life plan.

“Why can’t you just let me go?” “I can’t let you go because you’re mine. And because I can't stand to see you sad. I'm going to fix that.”

Mac is all kinds of hot, sexy, charismatic cowboy. He is bossy, alpha, seductive, and surprisingly sweet. He has such a good heart and is not afraid to be honest about his feelings. She broke his heart, but is not afraid to risk it again if it means he has a chance with "the one that got away."

"All's fair in love and war, and I plan on winning, no matter what."

Andie is spunky and sassy, but feels the need to have a safe and stable life. Issues from her past have ingrained that in her. She has plans and does not want to deviate from them. She thrives on control. She  set the ideal plan and then just fit the man into her plan and it seems like a perfect match. But then there is Mac...and he does not fit at all on paper, but for some reason he keeps digging into her heart and making her see the world differently. And in a lot of ways she did the same for him. For the first time in her life, she is really enjoying herself and succumbing to the charms of Mac, his family and the country life.

"Shine not burn...
To me, though, it means that I have a choice. I need to balance the bad with the good, make sure to avoid the things that could burn or scare me but get close enough to the heat that I feel life and really experience it. Until I met you, I'd never really embraced that idea....Then there was you and suddenly it all made sense." 

But when it all comes crashing down around them, will she follow her safe set plans or risk it all for a cowboy she has only really known for a few days, years apart. And how does this man know the real Andie better than any man ever has?

Her friends Candice and Kelly were wild, silly, and fun. His brother Ian and his whole sweet, crazy family were lively, eccentric, and loyal. It made me want to move to the ranch and take off on a horse to see the majestic views.

This was a hilarious, quirky, and sweet love story. It's about following your heart, living in the moment, and going along for the ride. It had me laughing out loud at some of the situations of the city girl on the ranch. And Mac melted my heart on several occasions. I would love to see another book in this series about his brother Ian since he deserves his own true love story.
EXCERPT #3
Andie's awkward moment after spilling her drink on a handsome stranger


I half stumbled, half ran over to fix things. Oh my god, oh my god, what have I done! The former contents of my drink were now dripping off the top of his hat and down his cheek and into his shirt. He’d stood up and was staring down at himself in shock.

“Holy shit, I am so sorry. Oh my god, what did I do?! Oh my god…” I grabbed a bunch of cocktail napkins off the table, nearly spilling other people’s drinks in my haste, using them to dab at his amazing, gorgeous, weather-lined face. He was even better-looking up close, which seconds ago I would have said would be impossible.

When he lifted his gaze to look at me, I nearly had a heart attack. I dropped the napkins with a plop onto his cowboy boots. It would have made Candice proud, the high register that I hit with my girly squeal. “Eeep!” Those eyes! They glowed out from under his hat a sky blue so bright they looked as if they were illuminated from inside his head.

“I’d say the drink is on me, but that would be way too corny and cliché,” he said, his voice almost lazy the way it came out. But I barely heard what he was saying because his glowing blue eyes were piercing my soul or something. I’d never seen anything like them in my life. I could look at him all day long and never get tired of it.

“Huh?”

I cringed inwardly as soon as the syllable slid past my lips. The oratory skills that served me so well in the courtroom had abandoned me entirely. I doubted at this point whether I’d be able to string a coherent sentence together. His beauty combined with his slow-talking cowboy sexiness had completely robbed me of any intelligence. The drinks probably weren’t helping.

“Never mind.” He took his hat from his head and shook it a little off to the side, droplets of my former drink flying off to land on the carpet. His hair was longish, the ends curling up at his neck, which really surprised me. I’d been expecting a crew cut or a big bald spot under that hat to spoil the effect, to make him seem more human and not so supernaturally gorgeous … but no such luck. He wasthat beautiful, managing to make every other man in the place look like dog meat. Every single one of them instantly ceased to exist for me, just like the memories of that guy I’d been dating for three years who’d broken up with me by text on my way out here. What was his name again? Puke, I think?

I looked down and noticed a wet spot on the front of the cowboy’s jeans and all down the front of his shirt, and suddenly felt the desperate need to help. I’d caused this problem. I’d ruined his night. And if the stacks of chips in front of him were any clue, he’d been doing pretty well.

I grabbed the pile of cocktail napkins that the dealer had put down at his place and dabbed the whole wad of them first on his shirt and then on the front of his pants.

“I am so sorry. I have no idea what my problem is. Well, that’s not true, I do know what my problem is.” I snorted in disgust. “I’m wearing these ridiculous heels, which I knew were a mistake the first time I saw them, but against my better judgment, I put them on anyway.” I was busy pounding away on his crotch, trying to soak up the alcohol, not really thinking about what I was doing, so wrapped up in my nightmare of a life. “I knew this was a mistake, I knew Vegas was going to be a problem. I don’t know why I let people talk me into things like this all the time.”

He grabbed my wrist and halted my movements. I stopped in mid stream-of-consciousness brain vomit and looked up at him.

“I think you’d better stop now.”

“What?” I was totally confused.

He looked down at his crotch, still holding onto my wrist.

I followed his gaze and nearly had another heart attack. There was a distinct bulge going down the leg of his pants that hadn’t been there before.

Elle Casey Website/Facebook/Twitter/Goodreads

Elle Casey is a full-time writer of New Adult and Young Adult titles in several genres, including romance, urban fantasy, sci-fi dystopian, and action-adventure. She's an American girl who's been living in southern France with her husband and three children since 2010. She loves chatting with her readers, so feel free to drop her a line.




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