Read extended excerpt & enter to WIN! ONCE UPON A MARRIAGE by @SSaraDaniel
ONCE UPON A MARRIAGEBeyond Fairytales
by Sara Daniel
Time is running out for Armina Keer to have the baby she’s always wanted. Before she can move on with her life, she needs her estranged husband to sign their divorce papers. When she can’t get him to respond, her meddling uncles arrange for a trip to his inn. Despite vowing to guard her broken heart, she has to settle the past before she can have a future.
Ian Keer might not deserve a second chance with his wife, but he’s not going to give up one either, not with the immediate flaming attraction still between them. While her uncles’ antics wreak havoc on life at The Inn, he offers her the ultimate gamble: Spend the night with him, and afterwards he’ll sign the papers if she still wants to leave.
With everything riding on one night together, Ian must convince her that their love is strong enough the second time around, and Armina must decide if love is worth sacrificing her dreams.
AVAILABLE FROM:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | All Romance ebooks | Decadent Publishing
I had a lot of fun writing the “three surgeons,” the three elderly gentlemen who are the heroine’s only family in Once Upon a Marriage. Check out the mischief they get into in this extended excerpt:
Armina broke eye contact with Ian, glancing at her companions. “Lenny, what are you doing with your eye?”
Ian stifled a laugh. The man had his old prosthetic eye suspended between his thumb and index finger over his soup bowl, as if contemplating dropping it in.
“Eyeball soup. I’m going to serve it to Ned. Freak him out when he gets here.” He roared with laughter, his single eye patch bobbing.
“Lenny, you are not.” Armina gasped.
Frank grinned, evaporating the last of his moroseness over his missing hand. “I’ll buy you a flask of bourbon if he puts it in his mouth before he discovers it.”
“You’re on. Serves him right for being late.” Lenny dropped the old prosthetic eyeball, letting it splash into the bowl. He switched his bowl with Ned’s while the third surgeon shuffled into the room, squinting at the smart phone in his hand. He didn’t glance at the others as he settled into the last empty seat at the table.
Ian shifted his feet. He’d never witnessed such a direct sabotage of another guest before. As the Innkeeper, he had a responsibility to save the man from the ignominy of eating eyeball soup, not to mention head off a potential lawsuit.
Armina’s shared smirk with the other two surgeons stopped him. She’d grown up watching these men pull pranks on each other and apparently had no qualms over this one. He’d wait to step in until the situation reached the point of a potential choking hazard.
“My heart surgeon sent me the most amazing video.” Ned picked up his spoon, not making eye contact as he moved his finger around the screen of his phone. His buddies held their poker faces, but Armina looked ready to burst as she followed the progress of his silverware.
“This is going to blow your mind.” He rotated the phone toward her.
She stared at the screen, her face turning an unnatural shade of green. “What is that?”
“It’s a video of my heart surgery. This is the part where the doctor took my heart out of my chest.”
“Took it out?” Ian asked, sure he’d heard wrong.
Armina twisted the electronic away from her and in his direction, giving him a glimpse of the fist-sized organ.
“Heart transplant, but you knew that, right?” Ned glanced over his shoulder at him. “I thought you two were still together when I went into the hospital.”
“I left here to go to your bedside,” Armina said, her tone more frigid than when she’d confronted Ian in the lobby. “I haven’t been back since.”
Until now. Not for the first time, he sifted through his memories, trying to pinpoint the moment she’d left and what she’d said to him when she walked out, but he couldn’t. They’d never had any epic arguments that led to her storming out on him. Instead, he’d been so consumed with business he hadn’t realized she’d left him until much too late. “Did you tell me Ned was sick before you left?”
“I tried.” She looked resigned instead of angry or defensive. “If it didn’t have to do with the Inn, you weren’t interested in the details.”
“That’s not true.”
Her gaze called him a liar. Aloud, she said, “I left messages on your phone. If you really cared, you’d have at least returned one call to ask about my uncle.”
And he hadn’t. He hadn’t even bothered to listen to the messages. No matter that he’d been in the middle of a multimillion dollar expansion and fending off a lawsuit that threatened to destroy not only his company but also his reputation, he’d been a complete douchebag of a husband.
“Forget worrying about me. Didn’t you wonder where your wife took off to?” Ned demanded, scooping up a spoonful of soup, a suspicious rounded lump protruding over the top.
“I did. I made a huge mistake in asking my staff to call her instead of doing it myself.” Of all the duties he’d needed to delegate, the responsibility for saving his marriage belonged to him alone.
“One of your mistakes.” Ned opened his mouth and lifted his spoon.
“One of many,” he agreed. He’d do penance, beg forgiveness, whatever it took to keep those hideous divorce papers from flying out of her purse at him.
“For goodness sake, Uncle Ned, look at what you’re putting in your mouth,” Armina shouted.
The eyeball touched his lips before Ned lowered his spoon.
“Why’d you stop him?” Lenny complained.
“Besides how unsanitary it would be to ingest that thing?” Armina shuddered. “He could have choked to death.”
Between the disturbing video and the haunting mistakes of his past, Ian hardly registered the prank playing out.
“What the heck?” With his thumb and forefinger, Ned picked the prosthetic eye from his spoon. “Lenny, this is the grossest thing I have ever seen.”
“I’ll take the eye, and I’ll get you a new bowl of soup, too.” With a napkin, Ian plucked the eyeball from Ned’s fingers then set it on the tray behind them. He handed the soup bowl to one of the servers. “Please dump this and bring Ned a new bowl.”
The surgeon shuddered. “Don’t bother bringing anything else. My appetite is gone.”
“I’m looking forward to that bourbon,” Lenny crowed.
“I don’t owe you anything,” Frank replied. “He didn’t put it in his mouth.”
“It touched his lips, so it counts.”
Ned rubbed a napkin over his lips then scoured his mouth with his sleeve.
“And he damn well would have swallowed it whole,” Lenny continued, “if Armina had kept her mouth shut.”
AVAILABLE FROM:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | All Romance ebooks | Decadent Publishing
Sara Daniel writes what she loves—irresistible romance, from sweet to erotic and everything in between. She lives her own happily-ever-after romance with her hero husband. Connect with her online at:
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