WAITING ON WEDNESDAY!!

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine. It spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating and let's us share them with others.

So my wow this week is one I wanted last Christmas and I couldn't get my hands on it. Holiday Bound by Keri Author.

Blurb

The Oedipal Complex has never been so sexy…

Alex Carradine can’t believe his father wants to come and visit his ski resort. Could it be that after so many stormy years, “slick Mitch” Carridine wants to offer an olive branch? Maybe the old man is mellowing, settling down with the new lover he’s bringing along.

Then Alex realizes the acid truth. This is no warm family visit. His father’s latest conquest is none other than the woman of Alex’s sexual fantasies, meant only to dangle tauntingly in front of his face. At least an unexpected blizzard has frozen his father out of the picture entirely.

Angeline Kastakis was looking forward to taking the next step in her relationship with Mitch. Too late she realizes she’s been led into a familial battle zone. Now it’s Christmas and she’s marooned in a blizzard with an insolent, gorgeous hunk of man whose blazing blue eyes tell her loud and clear he wants her in his bed. Preferably tied to it with a bow.

There’s no escape in sight. But as Alex stirs her secret longing to be mastered by a man, escape is the last thing on her mind.

excerpt

She jumped in alarm when something thumped heavily on the window. A scream tickled her throat at the sight of the dark, hulking figure looming just inches away. Without thinking, she clicked the lock button. A great paw thumped on the window again. It took Angeline’s stunned brain a moment to realize the paw was covered in a black ski-glove. The frozen metal of her car door handle rattled.
“Unlock the damn door,” the monster-man growled.
Realizing her foolishness, Angeline hit the unlock button. The door swung open. He bent his tall form and glared at her briefly. Angeline had a fleeting impression of flashing, furious blue eyes and a scowl surrounded by a dark beard encrusted with ice crystals. She had to resist the urge to slam the door shut again.
“Can’t you read?” he demanded rudely.
“Eh…excuse me?” Angeline sputtered.
“This road is closed. What’d you do? Remove the barricade?”
“There wasn’t any barricade. I drove right up here, just like any poor, unsuspecting soul might—”
“Unsuspecting idiot,” he interrupted. He straightened. “Apparently you’re the one person on the planet who doesn’t know we’re in the midst of a sleet storm with a blizzard to follow. This road is dangerous.”
“You’re telling me that?”
“Come on,” he said tersely, ignoring her heated outburst. “It’s getting dark. I don’t want to be wandering around this skating rink in the pitch black.”
Angeline hesitated. She didn’t relish the idea of going with this intimidating, rude, bear of a man any more than she did trekking up the mountain alone in search of the resort.
“That’s all right. Thank you. I’ll just follow the road up to Heavenly View. You needn’t bother yourself. I’ll be fine.”
“That’s doubtful, considering the resort is shut down.”
“Shut down? How do you know?”
“Because I own the place. Like I said, this road is dangerous. I don’t want people risking their necks on it. Are you coming or not?”
Angeline swallowed back her retort in the face of his rudeness. She shouldn’t have been surprised that she spoke to Alex Carradine in person. The male outside her door was huge, and hadn’t Mitchell said his son won a football scholarship to Princeton? She should have expected he’d be built like a linebacker—or a bear, which he resembled presently in his insulated, hip-length black ski jacket and black knit hat. She tossed her keys and phone into her purse and clambered out of the SUV. She threw his large, shadowed form a dark look as she slammed the door, although she doubted he could see it in the encroaching gloom.
“Where are we going?”
“To my house,” he said as he turned and started to walk through two feet of snow, his boots making a cracking sound as he broke the thin layer of ice on top. Angeline plunged in after him, glad he didn’t notice when she nearly did a face plant on her slippery first step.
“You don’t live up at the resort?”
“No.”
“Pleasant sort,” Angeline muttered under her breath when he didn’t say anything else, just continued to stalk through the deep snow on long legs.
“Could you slow down, please?” she called out irritably after several minutes. She’d been trying desperately to keep up, placing her feet in the holes his boots had left in the snow, but as darkness fell, it became increasingly difficult to see his footprints. Besides, she was getting winded from the pace he’d set. He paused and turned to look at her.
“I told you I wanted to make it back before dark.”
“Thank you, I heard you. But if you keep going so fast, you’ll get too far ahead for me to see where you’re going. I’ll be lost out here,” she explained slowly, like she was talking to a second grader. He must have taken too many hits to the head in the backfield, Angeline decided. It was a miracle he’d been so successful in his career as a member of the Chicago Board of Trade. Mitchell had certainly implied on several occasions that his only son was thicker than refrigerated molasses.
“Better keep up, then,” he informed her.
realized he was fading from her vision, she plowed into the snow after him. She had to focus all her energy on not falling. The temperature was dropping and the sheet of ice on the snow was becoming increasingly hard to break. The icy pellets that had been stinging her nose and cheeks had altered to large flakes of swirling snow. Thank God she’d just come from her parents’ farm and not straight from work, or else she might have been wearing a pair of stilettos instead of the practical boots she sported.
She could just imagine what Mitchell Carradine’s taciturn son would have to say about her wearing heels. Probably accuse her of being a fashionable idiot—
“Ugh,” she grunted into Alex’s back after he halted abruptly. She bounced off him. The man was as solid as a brick wall. “What did you stop for?”
“We’re here,” he muttered.
Angeline blinked and strained to look around his massive shoulders. She saw the outlines of a dark structure, but couldn’t make out any detail. It took her a moment to realize Alex had opened a door and moved inside. She stumbled after him, catching her foot on the threshold and tripping heavily on some kind of hard flooring, catching herself at the last moment.
“Can’t you turn on a light?” She squinted into the darkness.
“I could—if the electricity wasn’t out,” he muttered dryly. “The ice is weighing down the tree branches and they are falling on the power lines. Weren’t you wondering why it was so dark coming up the hill?”
“I wondered, all right. I just thought the owner was a sadistic cheap-wad who—”
She stopped when she recalled she was speaking to the owner of Heavenly View Ski Resort.
A single flame flared. Alex held a long match to the wick of a kerosene lamp. It lit his countenance in a fiery glow, giving Angeline her first real look at him. His face looked intimidating in the flickering shadows…like it’d been carved from rock. His slanted brows and dark facial hair gave him a demonic look. She shivered when he turned to look in her direction.
While Mitchell was all urbane sophistication, his son was rough-hewn and intimidating.
“Take off your stuff. You’re all wet,” he ordered. He tore at the laces of his boots and unceremoniously kicked them off. He whisked off his knit hat and tossed it on what appeared to be a worktable covered with neatly organized tools and storage bins. Angeline glanced around the dim, cold room, realizing they were in a garage. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that he had unzipped his coat and whipped it over his shoulders. Angeline turned, the image of rippling muscle snagging her gaze. She gasped.
He glanced down bemusedly at his bare chest.
“I was using up the last of the hot water when I heard your wheels spinning. The bathroom is at the end of the hall and faces east. Good thing I was in the shower, or I might never have heard you.” He picked up the lantern and nodded impatiently at her coat.
Angeline peeled her eyes off a glorious spread of male flesh. He was large all right, but his insulated coat had disguised the fact that he was also lean, sinewy…
…and beautiful, in a primitive, Spartan warrior, take no prisoners kind of way.
The thought made her tear at the buttons on her coat hastily, as though action would help chase it away. How old did Mitchell say Alex was? Had he ever said? In her imagination, she’d always pictured him as the overgrown, rebellious teenager, the type who just wouldn’t accept adult responsibility.
But the brooding, somber man who pinned her with a palpable stare while she awkwardly removed her ice-encrusted boots hardly called to mind Peter Pan.
She’d always suspected that Mitchell was quite proud of the fact that, at age 55, he drew stares of longing from females and envious glances from younger males in their prime. He’d certainly seemed pleased by her look of amazement when he’d told her his age. She’d have guessed he was ten years younger if she were going by appearance alone. As a name partner in one of the largest, most successful law firms in the city, Mitchell had it all—the power and confidence of an older, seasoned man along with the athletic build and face of a younger one.
She’d assumed Alex was in his mid-twenties.
She’d assumed wrong, she admitted as she glanced up anxiously between damp lashes to catch a glimpse of the imposing man who stood so close. He was probably in his early thirties, if not older.
He was older than her.
The realization unsettled her for some reason.
“Has your father called? I couldn’t reach him, my cell phone isn’t getting any service here.” She pushed back her hood and slid her wool coat off her shoulders.
What he did next startled her, even though she was getting used to being surprised by Alex Carradine. He stepped toward her and placed his chilled fingers on her chin. He tilted up her face. Her lips parted in amazement as he held up the lantern to study her with a narrowed gaze.
“Angeline Kastakis.”
“That’s right. I thought… I thought you knew it was me when you first saw me,” she said, even though it was clear he’d just now realized she was his father’s girlfriend. She could read his expression in the dim light as easily as she could interpret hieroglyphics. She glanced down, made uneasy by his relentless stare. Mitchell had the manners of a prince. How could his son possibly be so rude…so rough?
“My father’s girlfriend is Angeline Kastakis,” he said in a deadpan voice. Her confusion amplified when his rock-like expression broke. White teeth flashed in his swarthy face. The abrupt alteration—the sheer power of his sudden smile—made her take a step back.
His brows rose at her show of wariness and he gave a sharp bark of laughter.
“He said you weren’t his type.”
Angeline froze. “What?”
His glittering eyes swept down over her body. “Not a petite little doll,” he added, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Angeline couldn’t believe his nerve…his meanness. “Are you trying to imply that Mitchell has been talking about me behind my back? To you?”
His expression went cold once again. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. He said it four years ago. The old man’s had plenty of time to change his mind and decide he likes ‘em built like an Amazon. Come on. I’m gonna have a hell of a time keeping Daddy’s girl warm for the next few days.”

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This was my wow this week, why don't you come and tell me yours. xx