“An Uncommon Sense (Sensual Healing,
Book 1)”
by
Serenity Woods
Published by Samhain Publishing
Contemporary Erotic Romantic Comedy
The giveaway is a copy of An Uncommon Sense. Do you believe in mediums? I do. I believe that some people have the ability to talk to people when they have passed. Please leave a comment and an email address to get in touch with you. I will draw a winner on Saturday. Good luck.
BLURB
All
six senses tell him she’s the one.
High
school science teacher Grace Fox doesn’t believe in any of that woo-woo stuff.
So it’s easy to laugh off her friend’s prediction that she’ll have
swear-out-loud sex with the next man who walks through her classroom door.
Who
knew that local celebrity Ash Rutherford would have the time to attend his
daughter’s parents’ night? Or that the Viking lookalike would trigger an attack
of klutziness? He may or may not see dead people, but he certainly got a good
look up her skirt.
A
doctor turned medium, Ash spends his days communicating with unseen spirits.
When it comes to his moody daughter, though, he hopes down-to-earth Grace will
give him some insight. The racy lingerie she hides beneath her prim and proper
clothing is an added bonus he didn’t expect.
Their
attraction is instant and blazing hot, but Ash has been burned before. His
ex-wife didn’t believe in his abilities, and no way is he going down that road
again. At least not until Grace accepts the possibility there might be life
after death. And the ghosts of his past are laid to rest.
Product Warnings:
Contains a real live Viking, proof
of life after death and sex on a 1970s sheepskin rug, but absolutely no Barry
White.
EXCERPT #1
(1,200 words)
“You
are going to have wild, passionate, swear-out-loud sex with the next man who
walks through the door.” Mia read the prediction aloud from the astrology
section of her magazine.
“Even
if I did believe the position of the stars could tell my future, I’d know you
made that up.” Grace continued to study the latest batch of science exams. “And
anyway, that doesn’t sound remotely like something I’d do.”
“Have
sex?”
Grace
put a big red cross against the answer she’d just read. “Very funny. I meant
swear. I would never swear during sex. Very unladylike.” She read the next
question. What happens to your body as
you age? And then the answer. You get
intercontinental. Massaging her forehead, she drew another red cross. Jodi
Rutherford barely appeared to have retained enough information from her biology
lessons over the past ten weeks to fill a postage stamp.
“That
explains a lot.”
Grace
shot the teacher sitting next to her an exasperated look. “What’s that supposed
to mean? And will you please stop trying to distract me? I want to get these
finished before I go home.”
Mia
grinned. It was nearly seven o’clock on a typically cool New Zealand October
evening, and moths had started to flit around the strip lighting. Even though
the parents’ evening had been the busiest of the year, the stream of visitors
to the auditorium was starting to wane, and the teachers sitting at the rows of
tables were beginning to pack up their laptops and books. Neither she nor Grace
had seen a parent for fifteen minutes, and she was quite clearly bored. “I
meant that your reaction to my prophecy accounts for why you’re still a
spinster at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. If you’ve never been with a guy
who could make you swear out loud during sex, it would explain why you haven’t
come close to settling down.”
“Don’t
call me a spinster,” Grace grumbled, turning over the page. “And anyway, I’m
only a year older than you. You make me sound like I’m eighty-five.”
“You
dress like you’re eighty-five,” Mia said impatiently.
“What’s
wrong with the way I dress?” Grace frowned as she looked at her clothes. Her
neat pencil skirt and white shirt were hardly retirement-age clothing. Okay,
maybe the flat, sensible shoes, hair in a bun and glasses were a bit more
“traditional schoolmistress meets university librarian”, but she hardly looked
as if she should be vacationing with the over-fifties.
“You’re
practically Victorian.” Slim and pretty, with thick, shiny black hair, Mia
always wore the latest fashions.
“Because
I don’t have a skirt above my knees and my shirt unbuttoned to my cleavage?”
“Grace,
honestly. You’re beginning to worry me. You really should try to have sex at
least once each decade, you know, or you’ll forget how to do it.”
Grace
stared at the floor in front of her desk and tipped open her hands in
protestation. “Mia…do you mind?” When her colleague remained quiet, she tried
to concentrate on the paper in front of her. Then she groaned. “God, listen to
this. ‘If conditions are not favourable, bacteria go into a period of
adolescence.’ I mean, honestly.”
Mia
laughed. “Whose paper is that?”
She
put another red cross on it. “Jodi Rutherford’s.”
“Ooh.”
Mia perked up. “The medium’s daughter? I didn’t know you taught her.”
Grace
sighed. “Oh Lord, don’t you start. What is it with the women in this school?
One mention of that guy and I swear their bodies undergo some kind of chemical
change, turning them into goo.”
“Grace
Fox, seriously, have you not seen him? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Grace
put her pen down impatiently. “Of course I’ve seen him. Well, a photo of him.
You can’t avoid it. His picture’s been plastered over half of Wellington for
the last week, for crying out loud. But he’s just a guy. Two arms, two legs.
Nothing that warrants all the mooning about.”
Mia
shook her head. “Now I know there’s
something wrong with you. Sweetheart, Ashton Rutherford is sex on legs. Seriously. He’s, like, six-foot-four and
played lock for the Hurricanes.”
“That
means absolutely nothing to me, Mia.”
Mia
rolled her eyes. She was an avid Rugby Union fan. “They’re the tall ones who
jump up at the line-outs.”
“Is
that supposed to impress me?”
“Don’t
you find him a little bit intriguing? A rugby-playing doctor who became a
clairvoyant—don’t you think that warrants even a little bit of interest?”
Grace
snorted. “Any man who gives up a serious profession after years of training to
become a fortune teller needs his head tested.”
“He
doesn’t tell fortunes. He’s a medium. He speaks to dead people.”
Grace
gave her a look. “This conversation does not sound like something I’d be even
vaguely interested in. I’m packing up now. It’s nearly seven.”
Mia
sighed and started logging off on her laptop. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell
me he could have been coming to see you tonight.”
“I
honestly didn’t expect the guy to turn up. I’m sure interest in the welfare and
progress of his only daughter is way beneath such a superstar. On my to-do
list, informing you which students’ parents were coming tonight was right at
the bottom.”
“He
wouldn’t be at the bottom of my to-do list,” Mia mumbled.
“Mia,
honestly.”
“You
sound just like your mother when you talk like that.”
Grace
shuddered. The ultimate insult.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t
mention it. You seriously need to get laid, though.”
Tell me about it. She didn’t say that, however. Instead, she said,
“For the love of…will you desist?”
“Next
guy that walks through the door, I’m telling you. Look—the door’s opening…”
“Please
don’t let it be Professor Michaels,” Grace muttered as she got on her hands and
knees to pull the plug of her laptop out from underneath the wall heater,
making Mia laugh out loud at the mention of the overweight, balding, officious
deputy principal who drove them all to distraction.
Mia’s
laughter turned abruptly into a gasp. “I don’t believe it.”
“What?”
The lead was stuck. Grace pulled it hard, but it had somehow got wedged against
the plug of the heater and refused to come out.
“Well,
this is going to be interesting.”
Grace
took the plug in both hands but it still failed to move. “Sweetie, I don’t care
if he’s Robert Downey Junior, I am not
having sex with him.” She leaned all her weight on the lead, and all of a
sudden, it gave and pinged out of the wall. She fell backward, banged her head
and ended up sprawled in a most ungainly fashion facing the parent who was
waiting at the foot of her desk.
“If
you’d turn down Robert Downey Junior I guess I don’t stand a chance,” he said,
amused.
Grace
looked up at the face of the man she’d seen plastered on billboards all across
town and then turned slowly to face Mia, whose eyes were practically falling
out of her head. Mia stared at her and made a slight gesture with her hands,
bringing them together, making Grace realise she was facing the guy with her
legs open, giving him a splendid view right up her skirt.
EXCERPT #2
(1,200 words)
His
stormy-blue eyes met hers. This time, there was something other than amusement
in them. Grace’s cheeks grew warm at the sparkle of interest glittering in
their depths.
“There’ll
be none of that,” she said before she could think better of it.
“Of
what?”
“Any
funny business.” Her cheeks grew even hotter. “I’ll help you, but it will be
purely a business relationship.”
“Of
course.” The amusement was back.
“I’m
sure you usually only have to bat your eyelids at a girl and she turns into
mush, but I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Actually,
I beg to differ. I’d known you precisely two seconds and you swooned at my
feet.” He winked at her.
“I
did not swoon.”
“There
was definite swoonage going on. You were practically Victorian.”
“That’s
the second time tonight I’ve been called Victorian,” she said indignantly. She
patted her bun self-consciously. “Mia thinks I dress too conservatively.”
He
ran his gaze slowly down her and then back up again. “On the surface, maybe.”
She
frowned, not understanding, then realised when he grinned he was referring to
what he’d seen when she’d sat on the floor before him, legs apart. Her
stockings and garter belt. And maybe even her black, silky teddy. Oh God, I hope the teddy was covering
everything.
“Oh.”
Her cheeks burned again. “You did
see.”
“Sorry,
but you were right in front of me—it was difficult not to see everything.”
“You
didn’t have to mention it. That was extremely impolite.”
His
eyebrows rose. “You’re giving me lessons on being polite?”
She
thought about it. “Touché.”
Smiling,
he tapped her nameplate. “Are you really a Miss? Or is that just school-teacher
licence?”
“Are
you asking whether I wear nice underwear for a partner or whether I wear it for
myself?”
He
hesitated. Then he grinned. “Yes.”
“Then
just ask, for God’s sake. I hate having to rummage around in people’s words
looking for the true meaning behind them.”
He
nodded. “Duly noted.”
She
zipped up her laptop case. “I’m single. I happen to like pretty underwear.”
“So
do I. So that’s two things we have in common.” Smiling, he pushed himself to
his feet. “We’d better go. I think you’re getting the evil eye.”
Grace
looked up, surprised to see they were the last two people left in the
auditorium. Professor Michaels was standing in the doorway, tapping his foot
impatiently, waiting to lock up. “Oh.”
“Come
on. I’ll walk you to your car. It’s dark outside.”
She
put the register and pen in her bag, slipped on her jacket and walked with him
out of the auditorium, nodding to the professor as they passed and apologising
for keeping him waiting.
“Jeez,”
said Ash as they went out into the cool night air and walked down to the main
road. “What a weird guy.”
“I
know. Mia told me I was going to have swear-out-loud sex with the next guy who
walked through the door. I was terrified it was going to be him.”
He
stopped walking and looked down at her, smiling. “And instead you got me.”
She
glanced up. She was five-feet-eight, hardly short for a woman, but he still
towered over her. He was like essence of man. She was acutely conscious of the
way his shirt sleeves stretched across his generous arm muscles. “You’re not
Robert Downey Junior,” she said, a little breathlessly.
He
smiled. “No.” His eyes glittered in the light from the street lamp.
“You
are gorgeous, though.”
He
gave a short laugh. “You really have no control over what comes out of your
mouth, do you?”
“Not
when I’m nervous. It lands me in heaps of trouble.”
“I
kind of like it. I don’t have to worry about what you’re thinking.”
“I
can see how that might be appealing.”
They
studied each other for a moment. An impish smile gradually spread across his
face. “Swear-out-loud sex, huh?”
Her
cheeks grew hot. “Mia’s words, not mine.”
“It
sounds like an interesting prediction.”
“I
don’t believe in predictions.” She swallowed. His eyes had turned quite hot.
“Or swearing.”
“You
don’t swear?”
“Never.”
“Not
even during sex?”
Her
eyes widened. “Mr. Rutherford!”
“Yes,
Miss Fox?”
“I…”
For once, words failed her. He was a man who thought he could speak to dead
people. He was certifiable, almost certainly delusional, and quite possibly an
outright fraudster.
He
was also the most gorgeous guy she’d ever met in real life, and the way he was
looking at her made her knees go weak. She wrapped her arms around the laptop
case as if it were a breastplate that could protect her.
“You’d
be surprised how many predictions I’ve made that have come true,” he said, his
deep voice husky.
She
swallowed. “Well, for a start, Mia made up the stupid horoscope, and she’s
usually about as accurate as a stopped watch.” Her voice was faint. “And
secondly, there’s no such thing as the ability to see into the future. We exist
at a fixed point in time. It’s not possible.” She lifted her chin determinedly.
He
smiled. “Even a stopped watch is right twice a day.” His gaze had settled on
her mouth. Ohmygod, he wants to kiss me.
She
gave a little shake of her head. “You’re flirting with me.”
“Am
I?”
“Men
don’t flirt with me.”
“I
can’t believe that.”
“I
scare them off.”
He
laughed. “Now that I can believe.”
“Don’t
I scare you?”
He
stepped a little closer to her. “Not in the least.”
She
looked up into his dark blue eyes. Her skin prickled with his nearness. She desperately wanted to kiss him. But she
knew she couldn’t. It wouldn’t end well. She couldn’t bear to see the
disappointment in his eyes.
“Don’t,”
she whispered. “I’m not your type of girl.”
“Oh?
And how do you know what type of girl I like?”
She
moistened her lips with her tongue, not missing the way he watched her. “I
know. I’m sure you like confident women, who’ve read the Kama Sutra from cover
to cover and know massage techniques and own special equipment.”
“You
mean like power tools?”
“Don’t
make me laugh. I’m trying to be serious. I meant…” How on earth had she got
herself into this conversation? She’d only just met the man, for crying out
loud. “I mean, I’m sure the women you date are sexy and very good in bed and
I’m…not.”
His
eyebrows rose. “What makes you say that?”
“I…I’ve
been told.” Her cheeks grew hot again.
He
stared at her. A frown marred his forehead, and something like anger shone in
his eyes. Then, gradually, his smile reappeared. “Maybe you just need more
practice.”
“I’m
a schoolteacher who dresses like she’s stepped out of the Victorian period. How
good in bed do you really think I am?”
His
smile widened. “Dresses on the outside.”
He
was talking about her stockings again. She moistened her lips once more. “Silky
underwear doesn’t make a woman sexy.”
He
gave a small laugh. “Oh, I beg to differ.” He gave her a curious, amused
glance. “You are an exceptionally
sexy woman, Miss Fox. And I am sure that, given the right location, the right
encouragement and the right man, you would be exceedingly good in bed.”
EXCERPT #3
(250 words)
Grace
pulled up in front of the house and turned off the engine. She got out and
leaned across to collect her bag and papers from the passenger seat, giving him
a beautiful view of her backside. She was wearing a pale pink skirt made of
some floaty material that the wind had great fun playing with, showing him her
stocking tops before she smoothed it down impatiently. Oh yeah. This woman was hot enough to make him hard at twenty
paces.
She
turned, locked the car then walked across the large, circular drive toward him.
A chiffony white blouse peeked from under her cream jacket, and she’d wound the
red scarf with the glittery thread loosely around her neck. He felt the usual
sweep of relief at the knowledge that he’d been right.
She
wore her light brown hair pinned up in a bun again, although the wind had
teased some tendrils from the tight knot. They curled around her face, doing
their best to soften the furious look plastered across her features and the
blaze of her eyes beneath her Tina Fey glasses.
“Hi,”
he said, trying to defuse the bomb before it exploded.
She
walked up to him and glared, her beautiful brown eyes snapping with anger.
“What the hell kind of game are you playing? Are you having me followed? How on
earth did you know my scarf was under my bed?”
So angry rather than intrigued, then.
“You’re
welcome.” He stepped back. “Won’t you come in?”
REVIEW
4.5 Stars –
Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews
This is my first book by Serenity Woods, and I can
honestly say I will be reading more.
This is a great story with a little mix of everything
you would want from a romance, a little paranormal with one of the main
characters being a medium, and a teenaged daughter going through the adjustment
of dealing with her dad dating for the first time after her parents’ divorce,
the death of her mother, and a skeptical woman who has been hurt by the crazies
she has dated in the past.
First we have Grace the tenth grade high school
teacher, with absolutely no verbal filter on her mouth, who dresses like a
Victorian spinster on the outside with racy lingerie underneath. Then we have
Ash Rutherford the Viking lookalike father of one of her students, picture in
your head Eric from True Blood (yummmmmm). Ash is a doctor turned medium,
meaning he can communicate with the dead. He is a local celebrity doing shows
similar to John Edwards. Grace is the ultimate skeptic, until she attends one
of his shows with her two best friends, and receives a message from her dad.
This is not your typical sappy romance; you get a full
range of emotions from laughter to almost tears. I honestly just really liked
these two people, and want to see them get their HEA. There are some really hot
sex scenes including one on a 1970’s sheepskin rug, but also a lot of
heartwarming scenes. I really liked the paranormal aspect of this book. It was
done without being cheesy. What I like most about this book was that the fact
that Ash's daughter was not thrown into the back ground. Jodi was not just a
sprinkled in character. She was as important to the romance as Ash and Grace.\
I can’t wait to read the rest of the books for this
series.
BUY LINKS
Samhaim Publishing:
Amazon:
Barnes
& Noble:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Serenity Woods lives in the sub-tropical Northland of New Zealand with
her wonderful husband and gorgeous teenage son. She writes fun, flirty, and
sexy contemporary romances for the modern woman who likes intelligent, spirited
heroines, and hunky but approachable heroes. She’s won several romance writing
competitions and is a member of the Romance Writers of New Zealand. She would
much rather immerse herself in reading or writing romance than do the dusting
and ironing, which is why it’s not a great idea to pop round if you have any
allergies. You can check out all her books at http://www.serenitywoodsromance.com.
