Guest Post & Giveaway: Falling Hard by HelenKay Dimon
Falling
Hard
Bad Boys Undercover # 2
Bad Boys Undercover # 2
By:
HelenKay Dimon
Releasing
May 26, 2015
Avon
Books
Blurb
After
a grueling assignment with the black ops force known as the Alliance,
Weston Brown is craving downtime. Instead, he's pulled into his
deadliest operation, in the one place he never wanted to see again.
No-nonsense and so damn hot, Lexi Turner lied to get him to her
mountain clinic in Pakistan. But the threat is terrifyingly real.
Lexi
has been asking too many questions, drawing the wrong kind of
attention. As soon as she lays eyes on West, she can tell he's
quiet—yet tough—and has a rescue complex which will come in handy
for going up against the world's most ruthless gunrunners.
Cut
off from the rest of the Alliance, Lexi and West navigate the brutal
terrain and a primal sexual attraction. Sticking around has never
been West's way, but now he'll use every resource to keep Lexi by his
side, safe from a killer who leaves no loose ends behind.
Excerpt
Breathing
in, forcing the adrenaline buzzing through him to slow, West eased
his grip on his gun.
The
whole attack probably took less than two minutes, but it dragged in
West’s head. He lived every second in slow motion. Always did.
Suddenly
he was facing down the barrel of a nasty assault weapon. An AK-103 or
something similarly problematic in the hands of someone aiming it at
his head. To add to the fun, this one had a grenade launcher attached
to it. Which was just fucking fabulous.
West’s
gaze traveled over the shaking arms to the white-knuckle grip on the
plastic. Then to her face. A brunette of the shockingly hot variety.
Not that he cared about that on a job.
He
didn’t like shooting women, but he would. He had. An enemy was an
enemy, and he waited to see if that’s the tack the
victim-turned-potential-attacker took.
“Two
roads diverged.” She spit out the not-so-random sentence, and the
dark energy spinning around the room eased.
“Well,
damn,” West whispered, stunned to hear the code from her.
Josiah
lowered his gun as he finished the agreed-upon signal. The one the
doctor provided and insisted on, citing faulty short-term memory and
a love or Robert Frost. “Sorry I could not travel both.”
She
blew out a long breath as the stiffness across her shoulders eased.
“Thank God you’re here.”
West
tagged her as American but definitely not male, which made little
sense under the circumstances. But she wasn’t firing at random, so
he considered that a bit of good luck.
Still,
a potential novice with a weapon was an invitation to get his nuts
blown off, and he sure as hell didn’t agree to that when he signed
Alliance’s employment contract. “Ma’am, I need to you put that
gun down.”
She
blinked a few times before her gaze went to her hands. It was as if
she forgot she took it off the dead guy when he dropped it. “Why?”
West
chalked the confusion up to the chaos of the last few minutes. Still,
shock and bullets rarely mixed well. “I don’t want to be shot.”
Her
chin came up as she nodded at him. “That makes two of us, so you
lower your weapon first.”
Okay,
chaos or not, her attempt to order him around was pretty fucking hot.
Kind of brave, too. “No.”
Not
dropping his guard, West took a second to study her. Long hair, half
in and half out of a ponytail, huge whiskey brown eyes, and the
sexiest pouty mouth he’d ever seen. He couldn’t make out her
frame under the olive pants and oversized long-sleeve tee but he
guessed curvy.
Not
just pretty but lose-the-ability-to-spell sexy. Of course that could
be the gun. Something about a woman holding a weapon turned him on,
sick twist that he was.
“I’m
not really giving you a choice,” he said, more to stall than
anything else.
Josiah
moved in, step by small step, as if not to scare or rattle her.
Pretty soon two trained men would almost be on top of her, and then
it was just a matter of time until one of them wrestled the weapon
away from her.
And
that’s how it would end because there was no way West was heading
back home after this and listening to the shit he would get from
Bravo if he let a hot brunette get the jump on him and take a shot.
He had a badass shoot-anything reputation to uphold.
“At
this distance I can blow your balls off,” she said,
looking
ready to do just that.
Then
again . . . “Okay, that’s a solid argument.”
Romancing the Readers would like to thank HelenKay Dimon for the guest post she did for us. Please give her a warm welcome!
Readers
ask all the time where book ideas come from. The answer, really, is everywhere.
I read about things, hear about things. Sometimes I start with a general idea
or a tiny piece of information then play the “what if” game to spin it out for
a book.
When I
started writing FALLING HARD, or thinking about writing the book, I wasn’t 100%
sure where it would take place. The undercover team in this series – Bad Boys
Undercover – is made up of former military, CIA and MI6. Their cases are
international. That meant thinking about where the book would unfold and what
the plot would be as entwined ideas.
I read a
lot of Himalayan climbing books, which is kind of odd since I’m afraid of
heights. Like, I get shaky and weepy on a stepladder. The idea of climbing something
like 30,000 feet into the air is beyond my understanding. Yet, I’m endlessly
fascinated by the personality type that would seek out that type of adventure.
It just
so happened I was reading one of those books around the time I plotted FALLING
HARD. One included a reference to the “fearless five,” which turned out to be
Squadron Five of the Pakistani Army. This squadron is made up of a group of
pilots who engage in battles on the Siachen Glacier, the highest battleground
on earth where Pakistan and India fight over boundary lines. The fearless five
also perform amazing rescues on some of the highest mountains in the world,
including K2.
That
simple reference started me down a path. I researched the squadron, the area –
Skardu, Pakistan – the clinics in the area used by climbers and locals,
avalanches and a whole bunch of other issues. And that’s when I found my
setting for FALLING HARD. The book isn’t actually about the Pakistani military
but this area, right near the base of K2 and right in the middle of a lot of
military action, proved to be the perfect place to launch Lexi and West’s
story.
Add all
that together and I ended up with a quiet marine hero, a chatty but determined
med tech heroine, a setting that turned out to be dangerous due to both fighting
in the region and the weather, and a cache of weapons that are exactly where
they should not be. Welcome to FALLING HARD!
Author
Info
HelenKay
Dimon is a former divorce attorney turned full-time romance author.
Odd transition, right? She has sold over thirty novels, novellas and
shorts to numerous publishers, including Kensington, Harlequin and
Penguin, Samhain, Carina Press, and HarperCollins. Her nationally
bestselling and award-winning books have been showcased in numerous
venues and her books have twice been named "Red-Hot Reads"
and excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine. But the best part of the job
is never having to wear pantyhose.
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