Tuesday Excerpt: The Trouble with Snowmen

Dorlana Vann ♦ November 10, 2015 ♦ Leave a comment

“Oh, boy,” Haley said, dropping her head back down. Bits and pieces of the night before came back to her, more in emotion than in actual events. She knew she had come home with some strange guy, and by her nakedness, they had become much acquainted.

Remorse, guilt, and pure shame fought to be in front. Why the hell had she listened to Maximilian? What had ever possessed her to think that she could seduce someone? But, wait a minute . . . Apparently, that was exactly what she’d done! She had played the snowman.

She peeked back under the cover. Huge score for a snowman, any man on the prowl, actually. Not even the ultra-sexy Travis had managed to bed her on the first date. Not that she hadn’t wanted to, but she had self-respect. Well, she used to.

Where was this guy anyway, this stranger she had seduced? She sat up and listened for any type of sound. Nothing. The classy décor, the showroom-clean living room in creams, maroons, and dark browns didn’t fit her memory of the unkempt guy. A beard! He had a beard and wore sloppy clothes. She had slept with a guy with a hairy face. Gross.

Haley had to make her escape now, leave before the guy showed his ugly face. She sat up slowly, eyeing her purse, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a glass of water on the table next to the couch. She drank some water and got a pill down.

As she finished off the water, she noticed her clothes in a messy pile at the other end of the couch. One last step to complete the snowman experiment—she had to leave something—even though she really didn’t think she’d learned a thing.

The front door handle jangled, and then the door opened, and the guy from the night before entered. Haley’s chance to escape quietly and quickly with dignity, gone.

The man carried a bag and a couple of Styrofoam coffee cups that probably came from a gas station. His hair wasn’t as long as Haley had remembered, but she hadn’t been wrong about the beard. He looked lean, but not too skinny, and carried himself with confidence. “You’re awake,” he said, the tone of his voice faintly bringing back conversations from the night before. “I figured you would sleep till noon.”

“Hi.” Haley forced a smiled.

He shifted the coffee cups and the bag into one hand, held out his right hand and said, “Larry . . . Larry White.”

His eyes caught her off-guard. They were deep and dark and seemed to smile. And his face was the opposite of ugly.

She shook his hand and nodded, remembering. “I’m Haley Monroe.”

“Like the bombshell.”

“Right.” She hadn’t given the Marilyn Monroe spiel since she was, like, fifteen. Super.

He let go of her hand and shifted the cups around. “In case you don’t remember, nothing happened last night. Between us, that is.”

Despite the fact that she hadn’t scored like a gifted snowman, she had the urge to run the back of her hand across her forehead and say Woo-wee! Holy crap, I’ve never been so relieved in all my life! Instead, she said, “Oh. But then why . . .” She glanced down at herself and then back up at his smile.

“Last night I went to the kitchen, and by the time I got back, ta-da. Say, are you hungry? I have donuts.”

Haley grimaced over the food and over how he’d said everything in the same tone of voice, like one was no more humiliating than the other.

The Trouble with Snowmen (Book 1 Trouble with Men)  by Dorlana Vann

Ebook Available Now on Amazon

Snowmen drift into your life like they were sent from above. The relationship is great, rolls right along and builds. Everything seems perfect … until a little heat is introduced. Then they melt, leaving only their hat, their scarf, something to remind their victims of what they’d lost.

Urban cowgirl Haley Monroe is told that the fabulously hot guy who just dumped her was a snowman. Her friend, Maximilian, convinces her that the only way she’ll ever stop being played by snowmen is to become one. It takes a lot of drinks to work up the nerve, but Haley gets her sexy on and goes on the prowl.

Famous horror author Larry White drops everything to attend a midnight séance at Maximilian’s apartment where he meets Haley. By the way she’s dressed—and just propositioned him—he assumes she’s a hooker. Larry can’t pass up the chance to get inside her head, especially since prostitution is the character’s occupation in his next book.

After spending the weekend together, unexpected sparks surprise both Haley and Larry. The trouble is Haley is dead-set on snowmanning the unkempt “starving artist” she met at the séance, and Larry doesn’t think he could have a real relationship with a woman with a past, so they go their separate ways.

The real fun begins when they meet again and find out neither one of them were who they thought they were. Can they reignite the flame? Or will they have a snowman’s chance in hell?