Sharon Wray is a librarian/archivist who studied dress design in the couture houses of Paris and now writes stories of adventure, suspense, and love. She’s a three-time Daphne du Maurier® winner and an eight-time RWA Golden Heart® Finalist. She lives with her super-hero husband and teenage twins in Northern Virginia.
Find Sharon online:
Website
Dear Readers,
As
an author, I both love and fear release days. I’m thrilled that the book I’ve
spent years on is entering the world, ready to find readers. Yet terrified
because the fictional world I’ve spent so much time in—dreaming about, thinking
of, planning for—is no longer my own.
The
story and everything in it, especially the characters, now belong to you. All
the feels you experience, whether I intended them or not, will be filtered
through your own life’s events. Your memories, your dreams, your joys, and losses
will determine what you take away from the story. And that’s the way it should
be.
Yet,
while reader reactions are completely out of my control, it’s also scary.
Especially when one makes changes to the genre. Every Deep Desire, and the other books in the Deadly Force series,
are all romantic suspense stories—yet they’re also different. And we all know
how the world feels about change.
The
Deadly Force series is about a group of ex-Green Berets, under the command of
Colonel Kells Torridan, who were charged with a crime they didn’t commit and
dishonorably discharged despite their innocence. Some of the men from the unit
are in prison, but the men in the series, including Kells, are living in
Savannah, GA, managing Iron Rack’s, a
run-down, pirate-themed gym in a not-so-nice part of town, and working as
bouncers at a goth strip club. They’re hiding in plain sight, teaching Krav
Maga classes, tossing drunks, desperate to find any information that can lead
them to who destroyed their lives, and why.
But
these books aren’t just about the men and their weapons. They are also romances.
To be more specific, each love story is a retelling of one of Shakespeare’s
greatest love stories. Just add in sexy, down-and-out Green Berets, dangerous arms
dealers, and strong heroines who teach these alpha males that Grace always defeats Reckoning. <grin>
Every Deep
Desire,
a contemporary retelling of Romeo and
Juliet and first in the Deadly Force series, is about Rafe Montfort and
Juliet Capel. Rafe, a man in Kells’s unit, left his men and his wife to join
the Prince and his Fianna army only to end up in prison. Now, eight years
later, Rafe finds himself released without explanation. His only clue is a note
telling him to return to the remote sea island off the coast of Savannah where
he and Juliet grew up. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that his wife Juliet,
the woman he’s adored his entire life, is in danger.
Juliet,
a landscape architect, has struggled for eight years to recover from Rafe’s abandonment
and disappearance. Their early marriage had been a disaster both their families
had warned them about, but they’d been too young and too in love to understand.
Now she’s determined to live her life on her own terms without help from
anyone. And the last thing she needs is her ex-husband returning home with
vague warnings of danger.
But
when vague warnings become real threats, Rafe and Juliet realize that both of
their enemies, the Prince and Remiel Marigny, know a 17th century secret
about the Isle where they both grew up, a secret both of their families have
kept for hundreds of years. Now, in order to figure out why an army of
assassins, a brutal gun runner, and a team of ex-Green Berets are interested in
Juliet’s ancestor—a Puritan woman accused of witchcraft—Rafe and Juliet must
face their past together.
Now
they’re running out of time. And not only is Juliet’s heart and Rafe’s freedom
in jeopardy, the secret they uncover is far deadlier than anyone could’ve
realized.
I
hope you all enjoy this first book in the Deadly Forces series. It’s a world
where sexy, smart heroines must teach these ex-Green Berets bent on redemption that
physical strength and combat experience isn’t always enough to win. Sometimes a
person’s greatest weapon—true courage—comes from seeking forgiveness and accepting
love.
EXCERPT
Juliet’s
house had disappeared.
Rafe
Montfort scrubbed a hand over his face. A strangling ache invaded his chest,
filling the empty space that once held his heart. He shifted the Army duffel
he’d shouldered for the past six miles, moving the burn from one arm to the
other. Why had he assumed her father’s trailer would still be standing? That
she’d be living there? Waiting for him?
Because
he wasn’t only a bastard who made assumptions. He was a fool who once believed
the Prince’s brutal goals justified Rafe’s ruthless actions.
Or,
as Escalus used to say, “a fool whose violent delights have violent ends.”
Summer
cicadas hummed in the Isle of Grace’s surrounding woods, their mournful drone
filling Rafe’s head with rhythmic disapproval. Sweat soaked his T-shirt,
pooling low in his back above his waistband. Where he used to keep his gun.
He wasn’t just a bastard. He wasn’t just a fool. He just
wasn’t the man he’d once hoped to become. With a nod to his broken past, he
left the overgrown property and headed home.
Keep
it moving, Montfort. That’s right. One boot in front of the other.
He
kicked an empty beer bottle into a ditch, shattering the brown glass, and
marched toward Pops’s trailer tucked between the towering Georgia pines a half
mile down the Isle’s dirt road. He’d given up his honor, his wife, his men.
Thank God his mother had died before he betrayed everyone he loved. In the
years he’d been away, he hadn’t just cut out his heart; he’d sold his soul.
Despite
the breeze, questions about Juliet’s departure burned his blood.
Why
had she left? He climbed the pine steps to the deck alongside the double-wide.
Where’d
she go? He jumped the last two steps to avoid the missing planks.
Did
she ever think of him? The Capels had arrived on the Isle long before the
American Revolution. It’d never occurred to him that her family would leave.
For eight long years, he’d been counting on that.
His
duffel landed with a thud next to an outboard motor and buckets of fishing
gear. He rubbed the knotted muscles in his shoulder and faced the broken screen
door. His vision faded until all he could see was the blurry mesh.
What
the hell was he doing? Why had he even come home? Because he’d had no choice.
Everything depended on him remembering that. With renewed determination, he
raised his fist and hit the metal door.
No
answer. He closed his eyes, took another breath, and knocked again.
Juliet’s
family was gone. Had his left as well?
He heard a banging around back, pulled out his leather
jacket, and covered the tattoos on his arms. He’d rather die of heat stroke
than start an argument. Then he jumped over the deck rail. His combat boots
made it easier to walk through the tall weeds to the red barn a hundred yards
behind the trailer. Three times larger than the home, the barn and surrounding
yard held remnants of every American classic car ever made.
Everything
stood as if he’d never left, except for the cell boost antenna on the barn’s
roof. From the height and distance, it probably provided a cell signal the
width and depth of Pops’s property. Pops had joined the twenty-first century?
Maybe miracles were possible.
He
drew closer and saw his daddy’s gray head bobbing up and down beneath the hood
of a black 1958 Chevy Impala. He stopped on the other side of the car and
exhaled until his lungs ached. “Pops?”
His dad raised his head, his eyes squinting. “Who’s
there?”
“It’s
me. Rafe.”
A
man, shorter than he remembered, stood. In a stained red T-shirt and overalls
with one strap hanging down, his father waited a few moments before nodding. At
least he wasn’t holding a beer. Or his shotgun.
Rafe
waved at the car. “She’s a real beauty. She yours?”
“No.”
Pops wiped his dirty hands on an oily rag, and Rafe focused on the remaining
finger on his father’s right hand. He’d given the other four to the Marines.
“She belongs to your brother.”
“Good
for him.”
Pops
tossed the rag onto the engine and gripped the side of the Chevy’s frame. His
hard stare took in Rafe’s leather jacket in what had to be triple-digit heat.
“What you doin’ here, boy?”
He
held out his hand. A hug would only be an invitation to an ass-kicking. “The
Army released me from prison.”
“Released?”
His father picked up a dirty wrench, his face brown beneath a haircut the Corps
would salute. “What the hell for? Good behavior?”
“No,
sir.” He dropped his hand. If disapproval were a color, it would be the dark,
muddy brown in his father’s grim gaze. “I don’t know why.”
Since
he’d spent two years in a Russian jail and then the last nine months locked in
isolation in Leavenworth, he wasn’t sure what to think. “I was told to return
to Savannah and wait for a call.”
While
it went against every one of his hard-earned instincts urging him to run, he’d
come home to find out what the hell was going on. Besides, it wasn’t like he
had anyplace else to go.
“You
still a sergeant?”
A
sharp ache hit Rafe’s back molars, and he eased off the teeth grinding. On his
left, he noticed a band of magnolia trees surrounding a white glory cross. He
shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and forced himself to meet his
father’s reproach. “I don’t know what I am.” Sergeant? Prisoner 061486? The
Prince’s warrior? Hell if he knew.
“I
know what you are,” Pops said. “Damn traitor. Not to mention adulterer, liar,
thief.”
Rafe’s
exhale sounded more like a hiss. While he wasn’t all of those things, he’d done
other things—worse things. “I was also dishonorably discharged.”
He's taking it all back
His honor, his freedom, and the woman he loves
Rafe Montfort was a decorated Green Beret, the best of the best, until a disastrous mission and an unforgivable betrayal destroyed his life. Now, this deadly soldier has returned to the sultry Georgia swamps to reunite with his brothers, and take back all he lost. But Juliet must never know the truth behind what he's done...or the dangerous secret that threatens to take him from her forever.
It took Juliet Capel eight long years to put her life back together after her husband was taken from her. Now Rafe is back, determined to protect her at any cost, and it's not just her heart that's in danger. The swamps hold a secret long buried and far deadlier than either of them could have imagined.
Series: Deadly Force #1
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Formats: audio, ebook, paperback
Release Date: March 6th, 2018
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | Book Depository* | Chapters | iBooks* | Indiebound | Kobo | * affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.
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