It’s funny, but the cover for my June release, DANGEROUS LIES, was sent to me at the same time I was launching RUN AMONG THORNS, so I didn’t really celebrate it then, busy as I was with the first one.
And then the moment passed.
And although I posted the cover on the Books page, I never really got to go, TA DAAAAAAAAAAAAA here’s my new cover..!
Which is a darned shame, you know, because (and I know everyone says this) it’s GORGEOUS! I mean, not only is it visually stunning and intriguing, but it is an exact representation of the opening scene. Don’t believe me? Okay, I’m going to post the cover, and post an excerpt of the opening scene and you can make up your own mind…
Chapter One
She shouldn’t have come.
There were doves in the courtyard, snowy white and silent. They slept on ledges and in niches, on the roof above the pointed Arabian arches, even on the bowl of the broken fountain.
In Marianne’s mind’s eye, and in her grandfather’s photograph, the arches, the walls, and the fountain were bright and blinding white. Nearly seventy years ago they would have been, but now they were grey and peeling, and here and there a dirty orange stain showed where some elaborately carved bracket had rusted into memory.
Marianne folded the map she held with careful fingers, and stowed it in her shoulder bag. For years she’d dreamed of visiting Morocco, the country her grandfather had loved so much. He’d only lived here for a few years, but the place had burrowed itself into his soul, and woven its thread into the stories he told her years later at home in England.
When her father’s death had dealt her grief and freedom in equal shares, Marianne had taken that rare and precious commodity in both hands, packed new clothes and a new courage, and booked her flight before she’d changed her mind.
Sighing, she stepped forward out of the shaded doorway into the courtyard proper, the rough render catching at the long sleeve of her tunic. In that cherished photograph, the decorative tiles around the fountain lay in a neat order that contrasted with the wild exuberance of their design.
Now they were cracked, lifted, and scattered underfoot. But the black-and-white print could not have shown the depth of the cerulean blue that dust and debris were working hard to conceal.
It was like the photograph, and it wasn’t. The false memory that picture and her grandfather’s tales had painted for her hadn’t anticipated the decline, but it hadn’t shown the colour, either. Hidden good, concealed evil.
She nudged one loose tile with the toe of her cork-soled shoe, absently settling it back into its place by the fountain’s weed-covered plinth. Her movement startled the sleeping birds, who rose in flustered and flapping cooing, swirling the dust with their feathers, and clapping away into the sunlight. With them gone, the space was dead and still, smelling of hot dust and a little of guano. It was a forgotten space, abandoned. Decayed.
It was a mistake, though, to think that the house had been left empty when her grandfather had left. The agents, eagerly anticipating an impulse buy from a gullible tourist, had told her the dwelling had stood empty only for a year or two.
“More like five,” she sighed, running a wary hand down the pillar of one stately arch. The rust stains and broken tiles told of a neglect even older than that.
She tipped her head back, letting the sun’s heat brand her face. Her skin was pale, the sun was strong. She’d stayed in the shade at the hotel pool, and even now she wore a wide-brimmed hat and sunscreen. I am sensible, she thought, even when being reckless. She didn’t much like the notion.
The doves had settled somewhere out of sight. Their cooing floated down to her, and her mind conjured the soft sound of water playing in the fountain, which now stood dry.
The water was long gone. Her grandfather had died years ago, before her mother. And her father . . .
“Damn.” She flicked sudden tears off her chin with fingers that shook. “Damn.”
She shouldn’t have—
“Should you be here?”
She spun on one foot, half tripping on the loose tiles, and steadied herself with one hand on the fountain edge.
The man who had spoken stood in the shadows of the doorway, and for a moment the contrast made him appear dark, as Arabic as any other resident of Rabat, Morocco. Then he stepped forward, and the sun claimed him as her own.
He was fair . . . no, he was golden, gilded, bright. Tall, slim, with a grace of movement that made her stomach clench. His hair was short, tousled, but his grooming was impeccable. Blue eyes, a face lined in the shape of a smile, even now, as he frowned at her. Surfer dude meets the City of London. The debonair beach bum.
She’d seen him around the hotel, here and there. She’d felt his eyes on her, too. Once she’d thought he might have approached, her but he didn’t.
She frowned.
He smiled. “Are you lost? I couldn’t help see you come this way, and I was wondering—“
“The agents know I’m here,” she snapped, more breathlessly than she’d have liked. She tightened her grip on her bag and edged towards the doorway. “So does the hotel.”
His brows went up, but he was still smiling. “That’s good. Good precautions.” He gestured towards the street outside, turning a little so he stood sideways in the doorway. Blocking it and yet not blocking it. “But this is still not a good place for a lone female tourist. You’re well off the tourist trail here.”
“I wasn’t sightseeing.”
“But you are a tourist?” The blue eyes were open, his gaze straight and honest. The mouth was smiling, the posture was nonthreatening. But her steady heart rate had gone the way of her breath and the sun beating down on her head, hat or no hat, made her light-headed. At least, she chose to blame that light-headedness on the sun.
“I think I should get going,” she said, squaring her shoulders, and making an obvious move towards the entrance.
“Ah,” he said, shaking his head a little. “I’m being dense. I should introduce myself. I think you’ve seen me at the hotel? I saw you—”
I saw you. She closed her eyes for an instant, bathing in the illicit, tempting thought that he meant that how it sounded. That he’d really seen her. But, then, there wasn’t anything to see.
I saw you, too, she thought.
“—by the pool,” he continued, “although we never spoke.” He held out his hand, steady and strong. “I’m Alan. Alan Waring.”
Hooray for weight loss!)
