A Second Chance at Paris by Cole McCade
One week in Paris.
One chance with her childhood crush. And one lie that could ruin it all.
Before she was Dr. Celeste London, Astrophysicist, she was Mary Celeste Haverford: dork, loser, the geek formerly known as Hairy Mary. But she’d left all that behind—and left Ion Blackwell behind, nothing but an unrequited crush and the memory of a high school field trip, a night in Paris, and the words Celeste had never had the courage to say. She’d never expected to see him again…until a surprise encounter on a Parisian riverboat tour brings him back into her life, and gives her the opportunity to start over as someone new. Someone Ion doesn’t recognize, transformed from a social outcast into a polished, professional woman that Ion doesn’t realize is the girl he’s been longing for since childhood, the ideal he’s dreamed of his entire life.
Suddenly this vivacious (if charmingly awkward) “new” woman is teaching him that real love is better than any dream—but Celeste is hiding more than her identity. Hiding something that makes it hard to trust her increasingly erratic behavior, and her frequent secretive phone calls. When the truth comes out, the deception could shatter them both…unless they can give each other a second chance, and take a risk on love.
Before she was Dr. Celeste London, Astrophysicist, she was Mary Celeste Haverford: dork, loser, the geek formerly known as Hairy Mary. But she’d left all that behind—and left Ion Blackwell behind, nothing but an unrequited crush and the memory of a high school field trip, a night in Paris, and the words Celeste had never had the courage to say. She’d never expected to see him again…until a surprise encounter on a Parisian riverboat tour brings him back into her life, and gives her the opportunity to start over as someone new. Someone Ion doesn’t recognize, transformed from a social outcast into a polished, professional woman that Ion doesn’t realize is the girl he’s been longing for since childhood, the ideal he’s dreamed of his entire life.
Suddenly this vivacious (if charmingly awkward) “new” woman is teaching him that real love is better than any dream—but Celeste is hiding more than her identity. Hiding something that makes it hard to trust her increasingly erratic behavior, and her frequent secretive phone calls. When the truth comes out, the deception could shatter them both…unless they can give each other a second chance, and take a risk on love.
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Excerpt:
With a smile, Celeste leaned on the rail.
She’d been a silly girl, heart on her sleeve, but she kind of missed that.
Falling in love was never the same—never as light, as sweet, as guileless, the
emotion not as raw or real when it became about work schedules and who paid for
dinner and whether it was too soon to have sex. Mundane things took the romance
out of it, when at sixteen it had been about wishing for that one perfect,
breathless, magical kiss with that special someone who didn’t even know she was
alive.
Now she just had a half-dozen ex-special
someones who said she was an amazing friend, but a lousy girlfriend.
Her eyes stung. She should be standing here
with…someone. People did that; they fell in love and took romantic trips to
Paris, and cuddled on dreamy moonlit boat tours. But even then she’d have been
worrying over her presentation for tomorrow, wondering if Ophelia gave their
father his meds, pondering wind speed for Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in
Jupiter’s Red Spot, picking out constellations…and never quite here with the imaginary boyfriend.
She really wasn’t cut out for relationships.
She lifted her gaze to the sky and picked out
Venus. It hurt, when she smiled. “Guess I wasted a wish,” she whispered. “Do I
get a do-over?”
The soft scuff of a sole against the deck
warned when someone approached. She straightened, rubbed her eyes, and pulled
her hoodie tighter around herself. Last thing she wanted was to ruin some happy
couple’s romantic Parisian night when they stumbled on a single woman on the
verge of a nostalgic crying jag. They’d probably think she was pulling a Rose, about
to fling herself dramatically over the rail of the mini-Titanic.
The footsteps stopped at her side, barely a
foot away. She caught a sense of height, masculine body heat, a quietly
commanding presence. A low voice rolled over her, husky baritone like whiskey
and silk.
“Belle
nuit, n’est-ce pas?” he asked, softly accented inflections agonizingly
familiar. Celeste looked up, her heart tumbling to the very bottom of her chest
and constricting painfully tight.
Fathomless blue eyes looked over the water,
set in an elegantly sculpted face: ten years older, more weathered, tanned
complexion darkened by the shadow of stubble—but so distinctive she’d know him
anywhere. She clutched the railing with fingers almost numb to the cool metal,
blood draining to leave them rubbery. She knew him. She knew him, but there was no way it could be him. It was impossible.
It was incredible. It was absolutely unbelievable, and she had to be
hallucinating.
It was Ion Blackwell.
Author bio
Cole McCade is a New Orleans-born
Southern boy without the Southern accent, currently residing somewhere in the
metropolitan wilds of the American Midwest. He spends his days as a
suit-and-tie corporate consultant, and his nights writing romance novels in
between fending off Tybalt, his geriatric cat. And while he spends more time
than is healthy hiding in his writing cave instead of hanging around social
media, you can generally find him in these usual haunts:Twitter: @ColeMcCade
Website & Blog
Goodreads
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You can also get early access to cover reveals, blurbs, contests, and other exclusives by joining the McCade’s Marauders street team at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mccadesmarauders/
Q&A
Where to you get your
inspiration from?
The
everyday minutiae of life. It could be a random conversation or the way
someone’s hair drifts across their jaw as they turn their head; a story
flashing by on the news or tripping and hitting my shoulder on the doorframe
(if I’m lucky enough to catch myself and not faceplant into the wall). It could
be someone discussing something they didn’t like in one book, or something they
loved in another. It could be a lighting effect in a film, or nature’s very
real lighting effects in how lightning turns a city so many colors in the
moment if flashes. Everything accumulates. Layers upon layers that seem like
nothing until you pull back and see they’ve formed this bigger picture of an idea.
When writing a new book, what
usually comes first- characters or story line?
They
all kind of come together, because you can’t have one without the other. I
can’t really have this free-floating character with nothing motivating him or
her, no story; nor can I have a story without someone to populate it. The story
is the character, and the character
is the story.
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