Loving Trixie Fine by Beth Henderson and Letty James is a New Year, New Books Fete pick #romcom #romanticcomedy #romanticfantasy #romance #giveaway
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  • N. N. Light
    • Jan 4
    • 6 min read

Loving Trixie Fine by Beth Henderson and Letty James is a New Year, New Books Fete pick #romcom #romanticcomedy #romanticfantasy #romance #giveaway



Title: LOVING TRIXIE FINE

 

Author: Beth Henderson and Letty James

 

Genre: Romantic Comedy Adventure Fantasy

 

Book Blurb:

 

From "ho hum" to "vaboom"! Babyboomer scientist Beatrice Fine is at the top of her field, even if, should she have her rathers, she'd rather not be making yet another wrinkle reducer concoction in the lab she shares with much younger colleague Zack Ashcroft. Then on the eve of her birthday, industrial espionage turns her life on end. In a freak turn of events, the ER-6900 formula does what she never planned for it to do. It strips 30 years of wear and tear from her body, turning Bea into the ultimate fantasy: Trixie.


Humor, adventure, and erotic bedroom antics combine in a contemporary romantic fantasy that Babyboomers might well dream about!

 

Excerpt:

 

Awareness returned when Bea heard the metal staircase pull free of the ceiling cables entangled around it and crash to the floor.

 

Her head throbbed and her whole body dripped with gook. Her formula. The tall vat of her creation had disappeared. There were no pooled puddles of the lotion anywhere in the lab, which meant it was all but gone, the residue clinging to her the sum total that remained.

 

The emergency lights illuminated the room in a spotty pattern. A miracle considering the devastation in the lab had taken out large parts of the ceiling. Glass from the vat coated everything like fine pixy dust. The staircase had been blown across the room and now lay mangled and twisted where it had come to rest. A fire burned in the remains of her office at the far end of the room, but it wouldn’t for long. Water gushed in various places from broken pipes overhead while the few sprinkler heads still affixed to the ceiling remained dry.

 

Not a single beaker, jar, or container remained on them but for the canister of coffee still upright on the far table. The heavy plate glass windows that overlooked the far from lovely view of the employee parking lot were missing as well, allowing a chill evening breeze to invade the room.

 

Bea drew her knees up, resting her brow on them. All her work had been destroyed, but she was alive. At least she thought she was alive. Her hair, usually bound in a lopsided knot at her crown, straggled around her shoulders, lank and sticky. The lab coat hung in tatters, the silk blouse and wool skirt she’d put on that morning were in equally bad shape, and her stockings were shredded. She’d lost her shoes, too.

 

A junior high rock band had taken up residence in her temples. The racket made her whole body feel oddly out of sync and concentration nearly impossible. One would think she’d been hit with a bomb, Bea thought and started to laugh.

 

Oh, God, she was alive. No one could feel this terrible and be dead.

 

The sound of running footsteps in the hall didn’t register with her at first, her mind thinking them part of the internal noise. But when the lab door fell off its hinges and a man climbed over the rubble to reach her, Bea breathed a sigh of relief. She knew those steps, knew the voice that called her name.

 

Her assistant. Not the little twerp who’d blown her up, but the current assistant – or rather colleague. The brilliant, funny man over two decades her junior who preferred to waste his time with her rather than have a real life away from the B&S facility.

 

The man who believed in her work as much as she did.

 

His hands cupped her face, brushing back her formula-matted hair. “Bea.” There was a catch in his voice, probably because she now looked like the hag Skip had termed her. “Are you okay?”

 

She tried to smile and failed. “Yes. No. Oh, God, Zack. All our work is gone. Gone.”

 

When he crushed her to him, she didn’t want to think about how good it felt, but common sense made her push him away.

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

He gave her a sorry excuse of a grin. “Happy birthday?”

 

“Hell of a party,” Bea murmured. “Help me up.”

 

Rather than do so, he swept her off the floor and up into his arms. “There’s glass everywhere. You’ll cut your feet. I’ll carry you to my office. As soon as the EMTs get here, they can check you out and –” 

 

“No, I’m fine.”

 

She could see from the stern set of Zack’s mouth he might argue that point. But instead of berating her, he merely shifted her more firmly in his arms.

 

Was it the Galahad routine or the aftereffects of being dumped in a vat of ER-6900 that made her enjoy the closeness, the attention? After all, she was long past menopause. Ye Gods, she had turned twenty-five and nearly finished her first doctorate the year Zack was born. Yet he gave her no choice. He simply hefted her up and climbed over the rubble and out the door without a single gasp for breath.

 

“I didn’t think the formula was volatile,” he said.

 

Behind his rimless glasses worry shadowed his lovely green eyes. Since when had she noticed his eyes? And his broad shoulders. Damn, his aftershave smelled good. Obviously, the explosion had rattled what remained of her scientific mind. All she’d ever admired about Zachary Ashcroft in the past was his brilliance, a dedication to their work surpassed only by her own single-mindedness, and his wicked sense of humor.

 

“It wasn’t volatile until Skip Geary scattered bombs around the room, including one on the vat.”

 

“Geary.” Zack snarled his predecessor’s name. “Where the hell is he?”

 

“Probably ran off after trying to drown me in the vat of ER-6900,” Bea said. One further step took them to the door of Zack’s office. Bea noticed the plate was scarred near the lock. “Skip must have tried to access files from your office as well.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Zack declared, then kicked the door – hard. It sprang open, slamming back against the inner wall.

 

Well, that explained the odd thumps she’d heard when he left the lab in the past, usually after one of their arguments over ER-6900. Skip had been nothing but her assistant. Zack had shot past the original designation and was a colleague who really deserved a better designation than secondary on the ER-6900 project. It was typical of his temperament that his office door now opened to a swift blow rather than a plebian turn of the knob.

 

Zack raised one brow in answer to the look she gave him. “Don’t start,” he warned. “This has been a more effective way of releasing frustration than punching holes in the drywall.”

 

Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):

 

 

 

 


It’s a brand-new year, full of possibilities. Did you make any resolutions/goals for 2024? If so, please share one.

 

The one thing that writing stories does is steal away reading time. Well, for anything other the books we write since the entire book is read and reread for editing. For 2024 reading other writers’ books is noted in big letters and underlined on my resolutions list. Hopefully, that makes it the first priority. Cleaning the house is, as usual, at the bottom of the tally.

 

Why is your featured book a must-read in 2024?

 

LOVING TRIXIE FINE was written when Letty and I were a few years younger than we are today, but even then, we both wanted to be Trixie who not only is a brilliant chemist but has a very hot assistant in equally brilliant, and much younger, chemist Zack. This is definitely a story with heavy doses of fantasy, though it lacks paranormal or magic elements. I leaned on Letty for the bedroom scenes since I usually don’t have erotica in my romantic comedy. However, she claims I rewrote what she spun, upping the heat feature. Well, what can I say? It’s fantasy in more than just a few ways! Others apparently felt the same way since it’s collected 5* reviews. With cold temperatures upon us, the adventures of Bea/Trixie and Zack are sure to warm a girl up nicely.

 

Giveaway –

 

One lucky reader will win a $75 Amazon gift card

 

 

Open internationally.

 

Runs January 1 – 31, 2024

 

Drawing will be held on February 1, 2024. 

 


Authors Biographies:

 

Beth Henderson has a tally of 38+ published novels, plus short stories, articles and nonfiction titles in her long tally of publications. Writing under various pseudonyms, she spins contemporary romantic comedy, historical romantic mystery, romantic suspense, urban fantasy, and Steampunk.

 

Letty James is the author of numerous erotic romances in both novella and short story form. This is her first adventure into writing a full-length novel, but she has (sadly) since needed to retire from the tale spinning lists while taking on caregiving for her father.

 

Social Media Links:

 

Twitter @Beth__Henderson

 

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