Perfectly Polished
Series: Keeney Builds, #2
by Lynne Hancock Pearson
Release date: February 10th, 2025
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Blurb:
He made good on his promise to call. She refused to answer.
Facing an embarrassing divorce and fighting against her controlling mother, Fiona doesn’t have time for the broody ex-con, despite toe-curling kisses that still star in her dreams.
Surprise doesn’t begin to describe her reaction when he appears in her company’s boardroom months later. And ignores her.
Tomas tells himself he’s no longer interested in the tightly wound executive. But he can’t stop wondering if she’s all right. Can’t stop wanting to pick up the pieces. Can’t stop thinking about how perfect she felt in his arms.
Defying her mother, Fiona gives Tomas a chance, and they connect over their shared dream of building affordable housing. The community rallies around them, but not everyone is on board, and roadblocks are thrown up to challenge their plan and their relationship.
Can they build something solid despite threats to their foundation? Is permanent even possible when family differences turn ugly?
Perfectly Polished is a small-town, opposites-attract romance between a burly builder who grunts more than he speaks and a polished professional who has never known love.
Purchase:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/
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Excerpt:
Tomas’s big hands spanned her waist as he lifted her out of the truck. He leaned in to nuzzler her neck and Fiona pushed him back. “Uh-uh. You have a story to finish, my friend.”
Grinning, he set her down, closed the truck door, and followed her up the stairs to her apartment. Unlocking the door, she pointed at a chair. “Sit and talk. I’ll make tea.”
“God, you’re bossy.” Tomas complied and plucked an apple out of the bowl on the table. He rolled it between his hands while she moved about the kitchen. “Carlos likes to fix up cars, and he’s good at it.”
Thinking about the beautifully maintained car Louisa drove, she smiled at the irony of both their mothers driving BMWs, although her mother traded in her car every three years; the woman wouldn’t be caught dead in one as old as Louisa’s.
“He’d finished work on this cherry red Chevy Nova SS. The engine had this low throaty rumble, the interior was gorgeous. I’m getting a boner just thinking about it.” He laughed at Fiona’s glare. “I was pissed at him one night. I’d taken beer from the restaurant. Not the first time, either. This time, he chewed my ass out in front of a bunch of my friends. They laughed. I was humiliated. So I went home, found the keys to the Nova, and took off to Wenatchee for the weekend. On the way back, the cops pulled me over and arrested me for auto theft.” He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.
Anger and frustration played across his face. She could only imagine his fear at the time.
“I didn’t know Carlos had sold the car and he didn’t know I’d taken it. The buyer came to get it, Carlos opened the garage, and it was gone. They reported it to the cops.”
“And your stepfather got you sent to jail?” She moved closer and placed a hand on his shoulder.
He shook his head. “Mom said he tried to talk the buyer down from pressing charges. But the buyer was seriously pissed. I was an angry punk then, which didn’t help matters. So, yeah, that’s how I wound up doing time.”
Fiona pressed into his side, running a hand down his arm to stroke the scarred knuckles of his big hands. Hands that built beautiful homes, designed delicate jewelry, and touched her like she was precious. “Was it…awful?”
He interlaced his fingers with hers. “Yeah. It was a minimum-security prison over in Forks. But I still got beat up a couple of times. There was a nurse who used to live in Keeney. His mom knew my mom, and was able to help me out by getting me a job cleaning up in the infirmary.
“The doc there figured out I had trouble reading. At first, he was a real jerk. Got pissed that I wouldn’t follow the instructions he’d written down. Thought I was lazy and trying to piss him off. I think he saw me staring at the paper, trying to figure things out, and he started asking questions about school and stuff. I had to tell him about my learning disorder. The prison had a rehabilitative program with a psychologist on staff. That doctor got me tested, and they figured out how to help me.”
He turned wary eyes her way. She didn’t know what he was expecting to see in hers, but he seemed to relax and continued speaking.
“I got pulled from the infirmary, which sucked because that nurse, Jaime, made the best cookies.” He grinned up at her. “They put me in school. I wasn’t thrilled, because school sucks when you can’t read. But it was time. If I was gonna have any kind of future, I had to put in the work. There were a dozen guys in the class. Like me, they had learning disorders, although we weren’t all the same. It was hard work, but it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.”
“And you learned to read,” she spoke softly, one hand intertwined with his, the other sifting through his hair, gently massaging his scalp.
“Yeah.” Now there was pride in his eyes. “I’m still slow. And I do better when I hear instructions instead of reading them. But I read something every day, to work at it, get better.”
She cocked her head to the side. “What do you read? The newspaper? Sports stuff?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “I like romance novels.”
“Really!”
“Yep.” Releasing her hand, he shifted so she stood between his legs, his arms caging her in between his hard body and the edge of the table. “They’re kind of like…instruction manuals.”
GIVEAWAY
Blitz-wide giveaway (INT) ends February 20
- $15 Amazon gift card + an ecopy of Perfectly Polished
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AUTHOR BIO:
Lynne Hancock Pearson writes fun, flirty, feel-good fiction that simmers at low heat. Set in the Pacific Northwest, they are stories of people finding their way, even if it takes a while to get there.
She lives near Seattle with two and a half finicky felines and one long-suffering husband. She is a left-handed middle child who grew up in the Great White North and is a proud member of the Métis Nation of Canada.
Author links:
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Love the artwork on the cover.
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