When opposites attract...

The last thing Jenna Landry wants is to fall in love. The former rock musician is getting ready to start a new job and a new life in L.A., and she's only back in her hometown for the summer. Nothing could tempt her to stay any longer than that...not even the sexy doctor next door.

Michael Stone has a reputation for being as cold as ice. So what is it about his free-spirited neighbor that sets him on fire? The strait-laced M.D. has his hands full with his career and his teenage daughter, and even if he were looking for a relationship, he knows Jenna is all wrong for him.

So why does being with her feel so right?

Cross My Heart is a contemporary romance novel of 60,000 words. It's the second book about the Landry family, and follows The Millionaire's Wish. The third book, Waiting for You, is available now!


EXCERPT

His jaw tightened. "We're talking about you right now. Not me."

"Oh, of course. It's okay to put my choices under the microscope, but I'm not allowed to talk about yours? You've got no right to judge me or my choices."

Her lips were parted, her eyes turbulent. Her body was taut with anger, her skin flushed with it, and all he could think about was how beautiful she was.

And how much he wanted her.

He'd never wanted anything as much as he wanted Jenna. Not having her was a sudden agony, a burning pain that ignited his heart and his groin and every other part of him.
 
"It's true. I don't have any right at all."
 
"Then where do you get off--"
 
He felt the exact moment his control snapped. For one instant he was weightless, motionless, balanced perfectly between opposing forces.
 
Then he lunged for Jenna like an animal bursting from a cage, grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling her hard against him.
 
She gasped, her eyes wide with shock. Hunger swept through him as he looked at her, at those lips that had tempted him from the first moment he saw her.
 
Then he brought his mouth down on hers.

René Rodriguez Soriano: An all-sweeping book, magical, transparent and evocative, sown with reflections and signals, so much as lightning, so much as light that, after reading it, no reader goes back to be the same.

Horacio Semeraro: Syncretism effect for a great narrative.
Thousands of stories and novels deal with mirrors. To write about them is a challenge to originality. Otilia Umaga the mulatto girl from Martinique -short novel, winner of the Juan Rulfo Prize 2008- totally deserves that distinction for its subtle sensuousness and the atmosphere achieved,
A Brazilian woman and a Dutchman, who owns an inn at Senegal, play the leading roles in a particular encounter. Over this background they will tell their story. But it will be a revealing mirror that through its transhumant becoming shows us another leading couple of the novel in a far away time:
A Belgian slave dealer –married to a Spanish woman from Seville- and a mixed race –mulatto- girl from Martinique, who enters the scene late, but with decisive participation. With a narrative as exotic as it is attractive, the author leads us to a mixture of Eden and Purgatory. The treatment of the passions and human behaviour in a torrid and sensuous climate coexists with the freshness and originality of her prose. Towards the end the features of magical realism –so dear to Juan Rulfo- get stronger, in an unexpected and fascinating spectacular encounter. The breaking-up of the temporal fields, the natural narration of unconventional or fantastic deeds, as also the meticulous description of characters in the real plane; coexist eclectically with Afro-American mythical elements, ghosts and catholic nuns. But it is Barugel’s prose, precise and erotic, that sinks the reader in that scenery with Senegalese drums rhythm and strong temperaments, achieving a syncretist effect in this surprising novel.

Lidia Barugel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
She published Amores de vidrio (2007) and Contrapalabra (ilustrated poem, 2010)
Otilia Umaga, la mulata de Martinica, obtained the Juan Rulfo Prize,
sponsored by:
Radio France Internationale
Instituto Cervantes
Instituto de México en París
Casa de América Latina
Colegio de España
The newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique

Email: lidiabaru@fibertel.com.ar
Cover Ilustratión:
“Woman”, Digital drawing by Lidia Barugel

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