February 11, 2008 | contests, hero worship
It’s Modern Heat Treasure Hunt day today!
If you haven’t joined the hunt yet, here’s the deal: Throughout February, you visit different Modern Heat authors’ blogs to find clues. There’s a schedule of who to visit when on the Modern Heat authors’ group blog. Then, at the end of the month, you send in all the clues for a chance to win a huge great big bumper pack of books!
My book giveaway is one of my backlist, Being a Bad Girl. I chose this one because out of all my heroes for Mills & Boon, I get the most fan mail about two of them: Angus MacAllister, from Delicious/MacAllister’s Baby, and Oz Strummer, from Being a Bad Girl. And as it looks like BaBG isn’t going to be released in the US in the foreseeable future, I thought I’d give someone a chance to read it.
Oz, properly known as Dr Oscar Strummer, Ph.D., is–well, he’s just lovely. He’s a clinical psychologist, and when he first appears, in my very first book Featured Attraction, he’s the voice of reason to his best friend Jack’s impulsive charm. Oz grew up as the eldest of six children, the son of a minister, and he has a very overdeveloped sense of responsibility. As a teen he was tall and weedy and brainy, and even though at Harvard he joined the rowing team and has developed into a drop-dead-good-looking hunk, he still thinks of himself as a nerd, analysing everyone’s behaviour from a distance. He is beautiful, caring, loving, and very lonely.
Which is, obviously, why he borrows a motorcycle and leathers, puts on a fake tattoo, and roars into a charity bachelor auction. Where good girl Marianne Webb sees him:
With a roar, the most extraordinary sight Marianne had ever seen exploded onto the stage.
The motorcycle was a blur, a flash of red and silver. Marianne hardly noticed it. What she saw was the man.
He was big, and tall, and strong. He wore a sleeveless black t-shirt that exposed the muscles of his arms. On the golden skin of one of them, she glimpsed a tattoo. She couldn’t tell exactly from here, but his hands looked big enough to wrap around her waist and meet on either side. His hair was blond. Streaks of it looked as if they’d been bleached nearly white by the sun. It wasn’t that long for a biker’s; it didn’t reach his collar. But it was wild. As if the wind belonged in it.
“After that entrance, ladies, Oz needs no introduction,” said the auctioneer. “Who’d like to start the bidding for our biker boy? Do I hear eighty dollars?”
A forest of hands went up in the audience. “A hundred dollars to the lady in blue, and do I hear a hundred and twenty? Good, one-twenty to you by the jukebox, will anybody give me one-fifty?”
His long legs were encased in black leather. Marianne imagined how the leather would smell. How it would be warm from him. How, when he stood up from the bike, it would fit the contours of his body.
And what a spectacular body. Even his muscles had muscles. He was one hundred per cent male, from his blonde hair to his leather-booted toes. Testosterone-ridden.
Dangerous.
“And that’s two hundred and fifty dollars. Girls, that’s the highest bid we’ve had so far this evening, let’s go as high as we can. It’s all for charity. And a date with Oz, of course. Who’ll give me three hundred dollars?”
Hands were still waving, blocking her vision of the man on stage. She stood on tiptoes so she could see better.
That wasn’t enough. There were still arms waving around everywhere. The bidding seemed to be reaching some sort of a frenzy.
Marianne planted her hands on the bar and hoisted herself up onto it. She scrambled onto her knees on the slippery polished wood.
There. A clear view at last. Clear enough to see his tattoo: a sword and a snake. And that he wasn’t wearing leather pants; he was wearing chaps. The black leather framed and drew attention to his crotch, covered in snug faded denim, straddling the flaming red motorcycle.
This man wouldn’t be polite. He wouldn’t worry about rules. He would do exactly what he wanted, and forget the consequences.
This man was the baddest bad boy she’d ever seen in her life.
So here’s my question: What two big phallic symbols are on Oz’s fake tattoo? (Hint: it’s two paragraphs from the end of the excerpt.)
Don’t forget you need to collect all the answers to win, and then email them to the contest address on the Modern Heat blog.
For the next clue, visit Trish Wylie’s blog on the 13th!
Debs Carr says:
I loved Oz in Featured Attraction and am thoroughly enjoying reading Spirit Willing, Flesh Weak. Great books.
Julie says:
Hooray, thank you Debs!