Title: Sweet Like a Psycho
Author: Ivy Smoak
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Release Date: July 2, 2019
Blurb
To most people, suburbia is synonymous with good school districts, manicured lawns, and friendly neighbors. But you can never really tell what’s hiding behind those white picket fences and smiling faces.
I mean, we all have secrets. The kid down the street steals lawn gnomes. The woman on the corner is having an affair. And me? I’m a murderer. At least…that’s what everyone thinks.
Because that’s the other thing about the suburbs. Rumors spread like wildfire. Handsome detectives start poking around. Houses explode. You know…the usual.
Yes, I have secrets. But so does everyone else. Welcome to suburbia. I’m one of the smiling faces waving from my front porch. Don’t you trust me?
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Excerpt
I locked the door
and then just stared at it. God, I just lied to a
detective. Why the hell did I just lie to a detective? It had felt
right in the moment. But as soon as the words left my mouth I regretted them. I
could have told him about the woman running through the woods. I could have
pointed him in the direction that she had fled. I could have given him every
detail he wanted and gotten him out of my hair.
But instead I lied.
I shook my head. He hadn’t left me with much of a choice. I couldn’t have the
cops poking around in the woods. I couldn’t have them running all around my
property with police dogs and metal detectors and whatever else cops used in
the search for a criminal. What if they found something? I couldn’t risk it.
I bit the inside of
my cheek. Had the detective known I was lying? It looked like he did. Like he
could easily see right through me. Shit shit shit.
“It wasn’t a big
lie,” I said into the empty room. “It was a little white lie. A nothing lie.
There are no consequences for a nothing lie.” Right?
I should have run
back upstairs to finish what I had started just in case he came back, but
instead I found myself pushing my ear against the door. There was no squeak of
floorboards or crunch of leaves. I closed my eyes and tried to listen. The
silence was incredibly loud as I pressed the side of my face harder against the
wooden door.
Detective Reed’s gaze had been so intense. It felt like he had locked me
in place when he was staring at me. Like I could barely even breathe. Does he feel as frozen as me right
now?
I moved away from
the door. Of course he didn’t. There was no way that he was as affected by our
meeting as I was. It was his job to make me feel
frozen. For his eyes to bore into my soul, see my darkest sins, and to travel
down my body…I shook my head. No. That was most certainly not
his job. But he had done that, right? I hadn’t imagined it?
I swallowed down the
lump in my throat. All my nerves were on hyperdrive. The only man I had
interacted with recently was mailman Joe. And he was like seventy. This was a
normal response to a man my own age. Especially one who looked like Detective
Reed. I glanced down at the business card in my hand. Detective Tucker Reed.
I tiptoed to the
window in the living room and peered through a gap in the curtains. I expected
to see him retreating through the woods, but he was just standing there.
Staring at the door. Frozen. I could feel my pulse beating in my head. I hadn’t
imagined it. He had been looking at me. Really looking. And it didn’t seem like
it was purely for detective reasons.
I let myself stare
unabashedly at him from behind the safety of the curtain. He didn’t look how I
expected a detective to look. Beer bellies and mustaches were the dominant
features of the detectives in my mind. But he was most certainly not like the
detectives I pictured in my head. He was wearing a formfitting wool jacket that
was undoubtedly not hiding a huge stomach. If anything it was probably covering
perfect six pack abs. I glanced down at his left hand. There was no ring on his
finger. Hot and single. I was good at smelling
trouble a mile away. And Detective Reed was most certainly trouble. After
all, he was clearly the reason I had lied. I couldn’t think straight when a man
with a chiseled jaw, five-o’clock shadow, piercing brown eyes, and a deep sexy
voice was staring right at me.
Yes, he was the
reason I had lied. He had made me act poorly. It was all his fault. Jerk.
He turned his head
and I threw myself down onto the floor. Ow. I cradled my elbow
that had just whacked the hardwood floors.
When I peered back
out the window, the detective was gone. And a part of me wondered if I had
imagined him.
Author Bio
Ivy Smoak is the
Amazon bestselling author of The Hunted series.
When she's not writing,
you can find her binge watching too many TV shows, taking long walks, playing
outside, and generally refusing to act like an adult.
She lives with her
husband in Delaware.
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