Falcon's Angel by Danita Minnis Blog Tour Guest Post/Excerpt

SYNOPSIS:
Angelina’s passion is music but she has never felt this kind of want before.
Falcon wants the Stradivarius in her possession and goes undercover to track down a thief. He soon discovers he is not the only killer in search of the violin.
il Dragone, a devil-worshiping cult, wants revenge for a past only they can remember.

Falling in love was never part of Falcon’s plan but before he can have what he wants, he must help Angelina unlock the secrets of a love, which ended in tragedy in Eighteenth Century France.

This is one special assignment that must be completed before il Dragone gets what they want.


GUEST POST:
I’m on my first blog tour and am having so much fun celebrating my debut novel Falcon’s Angel this week and meeting great readers like you!

Thank you, Brittany for having me and my heroine Angel here today!

Have you lovely readers visited each stop on the tour? There’s still time because I’m doing giveaways at each stop! Enter a comment and your email address for a chance to win a copy of Falcon’s Angel or an Amazon gift card. Visit each stop on the tour to increase your chances of winning and remember to leave an email address so I can contact winners!

I write paranormal romance for Liquid Silver Books.

Angel is No Angel

Here is what I learned by writing Falcon’s Angel; my characters write their story. After all, they live it! I’m just telling their tale. I give them what they want (even if I think they’re crazy) and see where it takes them.

Running for his life is where it took my hero Falcon. As it turns out, he does not have nine lives, he’s got something better; Angel. He just doesn’t know it yet. She’s just as clueless, and perhaps a bit more stubborn. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that’s a problem for both of them.

Today Angel is feeling guilty. You see, she has a problem; she can’t stop lying. She goes to a foreign and country, meets a foreign hottie, and what does she do? *Sigh* Our Angel, when will she learn…

Angel grew up with three brothers, all of them alpha males. Add in her protective father Roman, and it is fight or flight. She chose to fight, but not the way you might think. Although she probably could plant a good one on you if her inner tigress was aroused but as she is stubborn to fault, Angel escapes the family on a musical sojourn to Italy. She is twenty-one years old after all. She doesn’t need anyone to watch over her every move. Does she?

Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that.

~Danita



EXCERPT:
Falcon shook his head as she reached the church corner. She never noticed the man who was just a few feet behind her now. When the man pushed her into the gloom around the church corner, they were lost from his sight. The girl screamed.

Sprinting, he rounded the corner. About ten feet away, the man was trying to wrestle the violin case from her against the wall.

Falcon pulled out his gun and aimed. “Let her go.”

The man turned toward him, and the girl pulled at his ear. The man bent, holding his stomach. He made an inarticulate sound before running away along the side of the building into the darkness.

Falcon darted past the girl and followed the man into the shadows.

What the hell?

Something flitted overhead, darker than the darkness in which he now stood alone. He pointed the Glock upward even as a figure walked up the side of the building. It looked like a black cloud but more solid than it should be.

Before he could get off a shot, the darkness disappeared over the side of the roof.

Staring at the dead end in front of him, Falcon put his gun away. No doors or windows on either side.

Where is the guy? Must be a hidden door somewhere, he’d check it out later.

Falcon turned back toward the girl. Beyond her, across the street, the man he had been chasing got into a car.

“No way,” he murmured as the car sped off. No way could the man have gotten past him in the alley.

The girl had both arms wrapped around the violin case in front of her. She was leaning against the church wall, crying.

A street lamp flickered on above them, belatedly bathing the passage in revealing light. She did not seem to realize that he was there.

“Did he hurt you, Signorina?”

She looked up. He lifted his gaze from her heaving chest.

“Grazie,” she whispered, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She shook her head. “I am fine.”

“You should not be walking alone at night.” The harsh reprimand in his voice surprised him. She was very young. Her tears wrought such vulnerability that he softened his tone when he came to stand in front of her. “Do you know that man?”

“No, I have never seen him before. But ... he knew me.”

“What did he say to you?”

She looked down at the violin.

He stared at her until she looked up. Ah, she had just found her story. It was in her eyes, and it was not the truth. The fear in her eyes told him that story would never change.

“He didn’t say anything, but the way he looked at me...”

Her chest heaved again. He almost smiled; she was having a hard time with this lie.

She stared at him. “You are from the Conservatory. I saw you the other day.”

“Antonio Russo, Tony to my friends.” She did not hesitate to shake his hand, and he did smile then. She might be lying to him but at least she did not see him as a threat. She continued to stare at him. She must want more. “I’m taking classes at the Conservatory,” he added. “I play piano.”

“Oh yes, I’ve seen you in Signor Gattano’s class.”

He had signed up for the class because it was right next door to hers. So, she had noticed him, too. He smiled wider.

“Signorina, I could call you Bella, but that would not satisfy my curiosity.”

She lowered her eyelashes over cheeks flushed the color of the terracotta tiles on his mother’s sunlit patio in Tuscany. She tanned well for one so light. He almost lifted his hand to touch her cheek. There would be little satisfaction in knowing her name now that her skin was singing a siren’s song to him.

“My name is Angelina Natale.”

“Ah. You are an angel, after all. I have not seen you around here for very long. Did you just fall from heaven?”

He watched her full lips while the sound of earthy laughter, though shaky, amped up the adrenaline coursing through his veins. A vision of her lying naked beneath him, her golden eyes glazed in passion, teased him.

“I am from England. I’m here for the symphony.” Her Italian was excellent.

“Angelina Natale, I would be honored if you would let me escort you home.”

She put the violin case under one arm. “I would like that.”

There was blood on her closed fist.

“Are you hurt?” He moved closer.

She moved her hand behind the folds of her skirt and backed into the wall.

He waited, leaning his hand against the wall above her head, inhaling her perfume. A beguiling combination of ... amber, apples and musk. The scent suited her, organic, delicious. He wanted to lift her skirt right now and take her against this wall, those long legs wrapped around him.

Angelina examined the buttons on his shirt that were in such close proximity. Stepping away from him would be cowardly, and he would guess she was made of sterner stuff. When she looked up it was with the defiance he expected from a cornered tigress.

He held her gaze, reaching behind to bring her fist out from the folds of her skirt.

The bloody gold in the center of her palm was a heavy medium-sized loop engraved with a stylized dragon. She had pulled it from the man’s ear and he had not made a sound.

“A memento?” He whispered in English close to her lips.

“I don’t want it. You can have it,” she answered in her native tongue. Now, that was the truth. Her British accent was tinged with a weary sadness. He wanted to pick her up against his chest and carry her home.

She had courage. Even while his mind worked to figure out what her role was in the mystery of the Stradivarius, he admired that.

He couldn’t leave her alone now. Not on a street where men escaped him when cornered in an alley and black clouds slid up church walls.

“Are you hungry?” Their lips were inches apart and he wanted to kiss her, but that would have to come later.

“I forgot about lunch. I had caffe at four. I’m starving,” the beautiful tigress admitted.

***

She blinked away a flash of light in front of her.

“Do you miss him, Angelina?”

She could not see the woman. The residual explosion of light blinded her. However, the words were that of a stranger. A stranger who knew her name.

“You’ve taken enough pictures. Move along,” her father commanded, holding a palm up in front of the photographer’s camera.

Pictures of the grief-stricken guests to sell newspapers. She kept her eyes on the darkened asphalt of the walkway. The photographer’s high heels peeked from under black pants as she moved away. A photographer in couture? Dark sunglasses and a wide-brimmed floppy hat obscured the top half of her face so that only her full, cherry red lips were visible. The only lips smiling at this sober affair.

The throng of guests who had come to pay their respects to the Maestro turned into a gathering of crows. They huddled around Angelina under umbrellas, which turned into slick black wings before her eyes. Orderly rows of granite slabs, now ten feet tall, jutted out of the ground at precarious angles, a child’s nighttime terror come to life on this gray morning.

“Angelina! I am coming for you!” The camera flashed again and again, lighting up the rain-soaked day as the photographer circled her, chanting the name, louder, closer with each blinding flash. “Angelina Natale, Angelina Natale, Angelina Natale…”

Angelina woke with a start. She shook her head, willing the Maestro’s funeral out of her mind.

So much for steering clear of the London newspapers. That annoying photographer had followed her to Naples and invaded her rest, aided by a guilty conscience and the name Natale.

She had borrowed her deceased mentor’s name to play in the symphony because her real name was too well known, even here in Naples. She wanted her work to stand alone.

She turned on her side. I wish I’d told Tony my real name.

AUTHOR BIO:

Author at Liquid Silver Books, lover of chocolate, a good, scary movie, kittens and pups - especially Siberian Huskies:)

If you asked me which is easier, writing songs or writing novels, I would say it was the former. Melodies and rhymes are second nature. What my characters want is another thing entirely. With my debut novel, Falcon's Angel, I learned to listen to my spunky heroine and sinfully confident hero. They're funny and in danger, and that's just the way they want it. Lesson learned: don't try to save them.

When I'm not writing, I exercise my lungs at my son's soccer matches and our favorite theme park, because everyone knows it's easier on the stomach to scream your way down a roller coaster.


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