Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, the most excellent blog series where I share snippets from works-in-progress, up-coming releases and published novels. Except for days like today, when I show off teasers from good writing buddies.

DB Tait’s first novel Cold Deception hit the shelves earlier this year and it was a cracking read. Great Blue Mountains setting, fantastic suspense and a super-feisty heroine. I loved it, so it was very exciting to discover DB had written a follow-on story. I’ve snapped Desperate Deception up already and you can too with just a click. Visit  Momentum, Amazon.com, Amazon.au, Kobo, iBooks, Booktopia or your favourite ebook retailer.

Now here’s DB to tell you about her new release.

Desperate Deception is Book 2 in the Dark Mountain series and comes after Cold Deception where we met Julia and Dylan for the first time. She’s just out of jail after serving a ten year sentence for murder and he’s a cop. After the tumultuous events of the first book, in the second they have to work out how to have a relationship against the background of a complex murder investigation. It’s a story about what happens after the protagonists get their “happily ever after” ending.

I used to work with women who’d just been released from jail. The euphoria would wear off once they experienced how hard it was to get re-established in the world. Julia is blessed with a supportive family (and a cute, smart, Jack Russell terrier), but she’s still struggling with life and her place in it. But she has to step up when murder and mayhem hit the Blue Mountains with a vengeance!

I hope you enjoy this teaser of Desperate Deception.

“No.” A shout. Cut off.

Then laughter.

Julia Taylor sat up, completely awake. She reached out to the other side of the bed before she remembered she was alone. Alone in her old bedroom in her mother’s house.

Her heart wasn’t pounding as it usually did when nightmares from the past reared up to dig their claws into her brain. She was fine. No memory of what woke her, except the certainty she’d heard someone shout out.

She threw off her quilt and crossed to the window. The wind had picked up, making the unpruned cherry tree slap against the roof. Maybe that’s what woke her?

Peering out from her second story bedroom, she looked down on the house next door. A dim light shone out through the laundry room window. Not unusual, Bill and June always had some light on in the house at night as they slept.

A shadow moved across the window. Then Jack, their unimaginatively named Jack Russell Terrier, let out a muffled bark.

That’s what it was. June was probably up to go to the bathroom and trying to resist Jack’s efforts to sleep in their bedroom. Not that Julia had any idea about her neighbors’ relationship with their dog. Since she got out of jail after doing ten years for murder, her neighbors weren’t keen to have friendly interactions. She knew Jack a whole lot more than she knew Bill and June. He seemed the kind of dog who liked people, so he probably wanted to sleep in their bedroom.

Pity he had such chilly owners.

She breathed in the night air then turned to go back to bed, but saw a movement in the street. A man was out the front. As she watched, he stopped outside Bill and June’s house for a moment, then kept walking. Probably suffering from insomnia like her.

Julia yawned, padded back to bed and buried herself in her warm quilt, wishing she had the even warmer body of Dylan next to her. Her boyfriend. Her lover? Her friend with benefits? She still didn’t know what place he occupied in her life, only that he was in her life and didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

©DB Tait