Title: The Promise
Series: Lost in New York
Author: Felice Stevens
Genre: M/M/ Romance
Release Date: March 23, 2020
Tagline:
The Lost in New York Series:
These men may have lost their
way and all hope, but they don't know they're about to lose their hearts
Blurb:
A promise made:
When Ezra Green sits next to
Monroe Friedman in their high school English class, friendship blooms into
first love, and even Ezra moving to California won’t keep them apart. Ezra
promises Roe that once he finishes college, he’ll come home and the two will be
together. In the meantime they’ll write and keep in touch. Nothing has to
change.
A promise broken:
After months of unanswered
letters, Roe makes one final attempt to contact Ezra with disastrous results.
Ezra will never be his and he needs to move on.
Now, more than twenty years
later, Ezra has come home. He doesn’t know why Roe stopped writing, but he’s
determined to find out. But Roe won’t talk to him and Ezra doesn’t understand
why. After all, Roe is the one who cut off contact. Isn’t he?
The promise of what is meant
to be:
When Roe’s beloved grandmother
suffers a stroke, the past becomes the present, and Ezra comes up with a plan.
Pretending to be together to make an old lady happy should be no big deal, but
after an unexpected explosive night together, decades-old secrets and lies are
exposed, shattering Roe’s control and Ezra’s heart. Is first love only a dream
and a promise merely words, or are Ezra and Roe meant to last a lifetime?
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In the Series:
Fool For Love
Excerpt:
“Are you married?”
His brows drew together. “Married? No, why?”
I pointed to his hand. “Your ring. I thought it was a wedding
band.”
A wistful smile tipped his lips. “No. It belonged to a friend.”
He gazed down at it and twisted the thin braided gold band around and around.
“He died.”
Pain as sharp as a knife jab twisted inside. “I’m sorry. It
sounds like you were very close.” A lover, I supposed, and my heart seized with
jealousy. I must be fucking crazy to feel like this. I was an adult, not a
high-school kid anymore. Yet I still wanted to know about this man who
obviously meant so much to him, but Ezra had become tight-lipped and didn’t
seem to want to elaborate.
“We were, yeah.”
His lips pressed together, and I waited for him to speak further,
but he remained frustratingly silent. My annoyance spiked. “Asking again, what
are you doing here? If you want to forget the past, why not make a clean break
and wipe me from your memory?”
Like you did when you left.
But I wouldn’t say that out loud. It was stupid for a
forty-year-old man to still be hurt about events more than two decades old.
“Roe, come on.” He took my hand in his, and the shock to my
system from his touch woke me up as if I’d been sleeping for years. “I-I
thought we could be friends. I don’t know many people in the city, and it gets
lonely.” Smooth fingers rubbed against mine. Goddamn, it felt so good.
“You? Lonely? A big-time agent in Hollywood? I’m sure you have
millions of friends coast to coast. All you need to do is pick up the phone,
and you’re set.” I tried to pull my hand from his, but he held firm.
“They don’t know me.”
“And I do, not seeing you all these years?” I couldn’t believe he
had the gall to say that crap to me. “You’re being ridiculous.” Yet I couldn’t
pull away.
“No. I’m not.” His thumb played over the top of my hand, and
tingles shot through me despite my reluctance. “My industry is so fake; people
say what they want to get who they want. It can get so lonely. I’ve never
connected with anyone the way I did with you.”
I could tell him about loneliness. Long, dark nights wishing I
could talk to him, but the few times we tried, it was awkward with my parents
around, and…well, it wasn’t easy to talk about how we felt, so we agreed to
write. And for a while we did, but then the letters dwindled to nothing.
Endless years where finances, school, and work prevented me from traveling to
California to surprise and eventually confront Ezra. If he’d wanted me, he’d have made the effort, my pride argued with
my heart. He had the means to pick up and go wherever he desired. There had
been other men for me, of course, but the affairs had led nowhere.
The phone rang, but I let it go to voice mail. All the broken
pieces of the past floating around in my head paralyzed me.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I’d turned into a solid block
of ice and could barely breathe. Maybe it was a delayed reaction to the slight
hangover from last night’s two beers. The intensity of Ezra’s eyes captured me,
drawing me in like I was his prey. I felt devoured whole. I shivered, goose
bumps rising on my arms as if his lips had touched my sensitive skin.
“Roe,” he whispered and tugged my hand.
With my brain on hold, I swayed toward him and fell into his
mouth, my body lighting up the moment Ezra’s lips found mine. He grabbed my
face, and I dug my hands into the thick of that glorious head of hair and pulled
him close. I drank him down as if parched, as if I’d been traveling through a
desert for years. His kiss flowed through me, watering my dried-up soul.
Author Bio:
Felice Stevens has always been
a romantic at heart. She believes that while life is tough, there is always a
happy ending just around the corner. Her characters have to work for it,
however. Like life in NYC, nothing comes easy, and that includes love.
She lives in New York City and
has way too much black in her wardrobe yet can't stop buying "just one
more pair" of black pants. Felice is a happily addicted Bravo and Say Yes
to the Dress addict and proud of it. And let's not get started on House
Hunters. Her dream day starts out with iced coffee and ends with Prosecco,
because...why shouldn't it? You can find her procrastinating on FB in her
reader group, Felice's Breakfast
Club.
You can find all my books,
grouped by series in proper reading order on my website located here:
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