Wild Island Horses by @Layla_in_Alaska is a Beach Reads Event pick #romance #beachreads #giveaway

Title: Wild Island Horses

Author: Liz Harman

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Book Blurb:

Wild horses couldn't drag her away.

Laura Hewitt came to the gorgeous Outer Banks of North Carolina to help fix up her grandmother's beach house—but she fell in love with the islands' wild beauty, including mustangs wandering loose on the beaches, and serenity and solitude to soothe her damaged soul.

And then there's the too-hot-to-handle island handyman, Spencer Bailey. Hammering things, sweating in the sun, toolbelt slipping low over his hips ... It's going to take a lot of cold showers for Laura to get through this spring and summer without an island fling.

Spencer knows he's in trouble as soon as he lays eyes on Laura. The newest resident of Okokie Island is tough and gorgeous and perfect from her freckles to her sun-streaked hair. But it's going to take a lot of gentle handling to open up Laura's guarded heart.

Luckily Spencer has just the right touch for taming a wild thing ...

Don't miss this sizzling summer beach romance set against the backdrop of the beautiful Atlantic barrier islands, to warm your heart and sweep you away for a romantic island getaway.

Excerpt:

"Look out!" someone yelled, just as a horn honked.

Laura yelped and threw herself into a flowerbed in front of the café. A vintage truck—glossy emerald green with the old-fashioned fence-type side rails, very beautiful, if it wasn't trying to run over her—careened through the spot where she had just been, skidded sideways and came to a stop. The back was piled with bales of hay. Several of them slipped their bindings and tumbled off.

The truck's front door slammed open while Laura was picking herself up and trying to pick leaves and petals out of her hair. Her ball cap had been knocked off. She picked it out of a bush.

"Good God," said the driver as he jumped down. "I am so sorry, Miss. I didn't even see you. I was—"

"Driving like a crazy person!" Laura finished for him. "I was on the sidewalk!" She was still high on a blazing wave of adrenaline. Her elbow was beginning to smart as she became aware that she'd barked it on something in her mad scramble to escape being flattened.

It helped only a little that he was strikingly, unfairly good looking, with tousled dark hair and blue eyes looking startlingly pale in a deeply tanned face. His white T-shirt had the sleeves rolled up to expose muscles that she would have been trying not to openly ogle if he hadn't just—she could not emphasize this enough—nearly run over her with a farm truck.

And now he wasn't even seeing if she was okay, or trying to help her up (okay, she was already up, but it was the principle of the thing). Instead he was headed for something in the road.

Something that had fallen off the truck, no doubt, when he was driving like a maniac—oh wait.

It had moved.

In fact it started to run off, but the sexy truck-driving maniac scooped it up with fast, practiced hands. He turned around and Laura, who had taken a couple of steps after him on pure instinct, saw that he was holding a—

"Piglet?" she said, staring.

"I guess so?" said the sexy maniac, who looked equally confused.

The piglet squirmed. It was about a foot and a half long, pink and brown, with a round little body, and it looked confused too.

"Why was your pig in the middle of the road?" Laura said.

"It's not my pig. I guess it's not your pig?"

They looked at each other for a minute. She had to remind herself that he had almost run her down. He was really cute. Even holding a pig. And it took some real panache to pull off a pig as a fashion accessory.

"Right," Sexy Maniac murmured. He went over to the truck, put the pig in it, and shut the door.

"Is that the proper way to transport a pig?" Laura asked.

"I don't know, but it's better than having it running all over the road." He started picking up bales of hay and throwing them back onto the truck. "Are you okay?" he asked over his shoulder.

"I'm fine," she said, rubbing absently at her elbow. A few patrons of the café had come over to stare. A far more alarming number, in Laura's opinion, were simply going on drinking their coffee and eating their sandwiches as if none of this was particularly unusual. This had alarming implications about island life.

She wondered if she ought to help him pick up the hay, but there was no way she could just toss it around like he was doing. From the way his muscles flexed, the bales were heavier than they looked.

"You're sure this isn't your pig?" he asked.

"I think I'd know if I had a pig."

"Guess you got a point there," he muttered, and then called at the top of his lungs, "Hey! Anyone lose a pig around here?"

Laura was increasingly getting the feeling that she had wandered into some kind of bizarre dream.

"No!" a voice yelled out from across the street. There were also some no's from the café patrons.

"Welp, guess that's that, then," he said. "Can I, um—buy you coffee? Or something?"

Buy Links (including Goodreads):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096X9GS1K

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58474897-wild-island-horses

What makes your featured book a must-read?

This spicy-sweet romance will sweep you away to the gorgeous beaches of the Carolina coast, with a hot handyman hero and a heroine putting her life back together along with her grandmother's run-down house. Daydream yourself to a beach house this summer!

Giveaway –

Enter to win a $31 Amazon (US) gift card:

https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/92db7750123

Open Internationally.

Runs July 13 – July 21, 2021.

Winner will be drawn on July 22, 2021.

Author Biography:

Liz Harman is the combined pen name of two sisters who write together. One of us is a full-time writer in Fairbanks, Alaska; the other is a lab manager at Cornell in Ithaca, New York.

Social Media Links:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/509127617175413

https://twitter.com/Layla_in_Alaska