Pitch 25: Down is Up

Name: Shannon Lumetta

Title: Down is Up

Genre: contemporary romance

Word count: 120K

pitch:

Lucie Graham has premonitions of a future with the emotionally detached Grey Kennedy, a hitman with a past he’s killed to forget. When their lives converge, fireworks ignite, but their secrets could kill them both.

 

first 250:

"You can’t be real, Angel."

His words caressed my ears in such a way that led tingles in a waltz down my spine to circle my hips and fade somewhere in the tips of my curling toes.

I spun around expecting to find him, the man who would own my heart. My smile quickly lost its grip and fell away. Where I’d have en happily lost in fathomless blue eyes, I found simple kindness in hazel. I should have captured a smile like ice cracking as it corrupted his lightly-freckled cheeks. Instead, a different stranger altogether stared back at me.

"Miss?" The ruddy-faced gentleman offered sympathetically.

"I-I’m sorry,” I sputtered, choking on disappointment and unexpected emotion. I’d anticipated a beautiful man with chestnut surfer curls and his soul in his eyes. "I thought you were someone else."

He nodded with an understanding smile. I ducked my head into the book in my hands just before a tear of frustration escaped down my cheek. I felt cheated, foolish. I tried to focus on the words on the page, but my mind was stuck on a heartbreaking grin that may not even exist.

No! I know he’s real. But who is he? Have I lost him with the rest of my memory?

With only specters of the future and no past to cross-reference, it was increasingly difficult to shoulder the weight of my own expectations. My heart had beat wildly when I envisioned his smile, as though I was alive, at last!