Professional badass Luki Vasquez and weaver Sonny James meet for the first time in Loving Luki Vasquez, and they might make a sizzling couple if they can ever get past the impulse to run the other way every time romance comes into view. Then again, they have to stay alive if they’re ever to see their wedding day, and tribulation, cruelty, and greed has a way of demanding attention at all the worst moments. Together, they pack a lot of resources to fight for love. If they can hold out, they just might win the enduring love and family they were meant to share.
Reclusive weaver Sonny Bly James controls every color and shape in his tapestries, but he can’t control the pattern of his life—a random encounter with Luki Vasquez, ex-ATF agent and all-around badass, makes that perfectly clear. The mutual attraction is immediate, but love-shy Sonny has retreated from life, and Luki wears his visible and not-so-visible scars like armor. Neither can bare his soul with ease.
While they run from desire, they can’t hide from the evil that hunts them. After it becomes clear that a violent stalker has targeted Sonny, Luki’s protective instincts won’t let him run far, especially when Sonny’s family is targeted as well. Whether they can forgive or forget, Sonny and Luki will have to call a truce and work together to save Sonny’s nephew and fight an enemy intent on making sure loving Luki Vasquez is the last mistake Sonny will ever make.
Sonny James and Luki Vasquez are living proof that the course of love never runs smoothly. Ambushed by grief, Sonny listens to a voice singing the blues from beyond the grave. While revisiting the sorrows and failings of his past, in the here and now he puts up a wall against love. Just when Luki chips through that barricade, the couple becomes the target of a new threat from outside: an escalating and unexplainable rash of break-ins and assaults.
Thoughts of infidelity rise between them, a threat that may strain their newly mended love past its limits. To come through the trials alive and together, Luki and Sonny will have to unite against enemies who were once friends and overcome crippling hatred and overwhelming fear. If they succeed, maybe then they can rekindle the twin flames of passion and love.
Luki Vasquez and Sonny Bly James finally have their Hawaiian wedding, and it’s perfect, almost. But their three-phase honeymoon is riddled with strife. Luki’s status as a working badass spells discord for the newlyweds. A former informant from Luki’s days with ATFE brings a troubling message (or is it a warning?) from a Mob hit man. When Luki’s sixteen-year-old nephew, Jackie, is lured into capture and torture by a sadistic killer, the honeymoon is well and truly over.
The couple put aside their differences and focus on the grueling hunt, which takes them from leather bars to dusty desert back roads, and calls on Sonny’s deep compassion as well as Luki’s sharpest skills. Their world threatens to fall apart if they fail, but their love may grow stronger than ever if they succeed in finding Jackie—before it’s too late.
Luki Vasquez and his still newlywed husband are back home after pulling off a harrowing desert rescue of their teenage nephew Jackie. But the events of the last couple of years have begun to catch up with Luki—loving Sonny James and letting Sonny love him back has left gaps in his emotional armor. In the gunfight that secured Jackie’s rescue, Luki’s bullet killed a young guard, an innocent boy in Luki’s mind. In the grip of PTSD, memories, flashbacks, and nightmares consume him, and he falls into deep, almost vegetative depression.
Sonny devotes his days to helping Luki, putting his own career on hold, even passing up a European tour of galleries and schools—an opportunity that might never come again. But when Luki’s parasomnia turns his nightmares into real-world terror, it breaks the gridlock. Sonny realizes what he’s doing isn’t working, and he says yes to Europe. Enter Harold Breslin, a dangerously intelligent artist’s promoter and embezzler whose obsessive desire for Sonny is exceeded only by his narcissism. When Harold’s plan for Sonny turns poisonous, Luki must break free of PTSD and get to France fit and ready in time to save his husband’s life.
Professional badass Luki Vasquez and textile artist Sonny James have been married for five years, and despite the sometimes volatile mix, they’re happy. From their first days together, they stood united against deadly enemies and prevailed. But now the deadly enemy they face is the cancer thriving inside Luki, consuming his lungs.
As Luki’s treatment proceeds, Sonny hovers near, determined to provide every care, control every thread of possibility just as he does when he weaves. But he can’t control the progress of the cancer or how Luki’s body reacts to the treatment regime. Sonny tries, but Luki dances with cancer alone—until he gets a startling reminder of the miracle of life. With renewed determination and mutual love, the two men emerge from their coldest winter into a new spring day.
Luki Vasquez receives the news he’s still cancer free after five years, and he wants to celebrate with his whole family. He and his husband, Sonny James, take a road trip south, intending to gather at the home of his nephew Josh, Josh’s wife Ruthie, and Jade—a little girl who was still in the womb when she and her mother helped Luki beat lung cancer.
Halfway to their destination, Luki learns Josh and Ruthie have met a tragic death. The horrible news lays Luki low, but he pulls himself together in time to be the family’s rock and see to the dreaded business of tying up loose ends. The most important business is Jade, and when Luki and Sonny head home, they take Jade with them.
Luki and Sonny must combat self-doubt and fear and help each other learn to parent an unexpected child—and they must also nourish the love that has kept them whole for the past ten years. A relative’s spurious claim to Jade threatens the new family, and even if they prevail in court, they could lose their little girl unless they can rescue Jade from evil hands and true peril.
About the Author: Lou Sylvre hails from southern California but now lives and writes on the rainy side of Washington State. When she’s not writing, she’s reading fiction from nearly every genre, romance in all its tints and shades, and the occasional book about history, physics, or police procedure. Not zombies, though. Her personal assistant is Boudreau, a large cat who never outgrew his kitten meow. She plays guitar (mostly where people can’t hear her) and she loves to sing. She’s usually smiling and laughs too much, some say. She also loves her family, her friends, the aforementioned Boudreau, a Chihuahua named Joe, and (in random order) coffee, chocolate, sunshine, and wild roses.
Visit her at her website or contact her at lou.sylvre@gmail.com, Facebook, Author Page, Twitter: @sylvre
Exclusive Excerpt From Yes: At home, Luki saw Sonny at meals and a few times a day when he made sure Luki was doing his oxygen right and taking his meds—though often he let Kaholo do that or even let Luki do it on his own. And at night they crawled into bed, more often than not holding hands but not otherwise touching because waves of heat would swarm Luki, unpredictably and without warning, leaving him sweating and kicking away the covers and anything else that touched his skin. Sonny had an alarm set to give meds in the middle hours of the night, selecting tablets and capsules and measuring out liquids with practiced ease from the array on Luki’s night table. As hard as it was for Luki to believe it, he apparently slept through that, more or less. He never really remembered it the next day.
On Christmas day, he had nothing to give, and he felt good enough for that to bother him. Sonny had spent the hours since early morning at his loom, and that seemed like a second Christmas present for Luki. When Luki got sick, Sonny had dropped his art—the art that was like breathing for him—to take care of him. Luki had dealt with horrible guilt, but when he tried to talk to Sonny about it, Sonny insisted he had nothing to weave, was taking a long-needed break from weaving. Luki appreciated the spirit behind the lie, yet lie it clearly was. He thought he’d ruined something singular, something golden, something irreplaceable in all the world. But now Sonny went to his studio in the early morning, and the rhythmic clack and muffled thump of the loom—shuttle and treadle and beater—calmed Luki like music, like Kaholo’s lazy slack key songs.
It makes him more beautiful, Luki thought, though he wasn’t sure how Sonny could get more beautiful. He, Luki, had never been beautiful, though Sonny saw him that way. The long scar that slashed from eye to jaw on the left side of his face made him ugly to see. He knew that, and he’d always tried to make up for it with his perfect, tailored clothing, his perfect, fit body, and his curls. His magnificent curls. They were gone, at least temporarily. When he looked in the mirror and saw that shiny bald head over a puffy round face—a steroid induced moon—with a crevice down the cheek where the scar didn’t stretch as much as everything else, he said to his reflection, “Well, that won’t make anybody’s Christmas present.”
He could laugh about it, but that was the thing that most niggled at him, this Christmas day. He had nothing to give, and what if this was the last Christmas he’d have? The thought wasn’t bitter or angry; it was, he admitted, realistic. It didn’t devastate him the way it had at Thanksgiving, and he was not about to repeat that debacle, but… still. When he stood at the coffeemaker carefully pouring his black coffee, an idea floated into his thoughts, like a bubble of cautious joy pushing itself up from the sea bottom. He poured a second cup and stirred in flavored creamer until he thought it looked right, left his own coffee sitting on the shelf, and with slow steps—with Bear following—made his way to Sonny’s studio door. The dog sat on his haunches, waiting for Luki as he knocked twice, a knock Luki hoped Sonny would recognize.
“Just a sec,” Sonny said, and it was no more than that before the door swung open. At first Sonny’s face had mild alarm painted on it, but it turned into a smile.
“I brought you some coffee.” After Sonny took it from his hand, Luki added, “Merry Christmas.”
Sonny’s smile grew a bit wider. He set the steaming cup down on something behind the wall, then stepped into the hall to draw Luki into his arms for a long and intimate hug. Luki held on to him for all he was worth, and Sonny whispered across his ear. “Merry Christmas to you, Luki Vasquez. I love you, and you’re smiling.”
“Yes,” Luki said and let go.
Kaholo was doing Christmas dinner. Luki didn’t really have a desire to help, but he sat in the kitchen keeping the old man company and watching snow slowly blanket the yard, the chopping block, even the clothesline. Kaholo gave him a bag of green beans to snap, just like when he was a child, and for the first time in a long time, he felt at peace. Kaholo kept him busy with small, mindless chores until they were mostly done, and then Luki got an idea.
“Uncle, how about a game of Konane?”
“You’ve got the rocks and the board?”
“Of course. I’m your nephew.”
Taking it slow, Luki managed to fetch the game pieces from a closet where he kept such things and bring them out to the beat-up, round, kitchen worktable. Luki gave Bear an extra good scratching under the chin and whispered into his koala-like ear, “Merry Christmas, Bear. Then he turned to the game board, and by the time Kaholo finished tending to some stirring and poking, Luki had already set it up in diagonal stripes of black and white stones. “You pick, Uncle,” he said.
“No, I ain’t gonna pick, Mililani. Every time I do, you win.”
“I win anyway, Uncle.”
“That’s right, so why the heck did I agree to play? I haven’t won against you at Konane any time after you turned ten years old.”
“You agreed to play because it’s fun, and it’s Christmas, and we always play at Christmas. It’s tradition.”
“All right, all right, nephew, then just beat me good, and get it over with.”
Luki laughed, and the almost smile he’d worn most of the day stayed with him as they played.
Kaholo did pick after all, and Luki ended up with black stones. He moved them about the board, jumping and taking—“eating”—Kaholo’s white pieces. He hadn’t lost his skill despite very little practice over the last twenty years or so. Still, at the end, the last move was Kaholo’s.
“You let me win, Mili! Why’d you go and do that? You’ve ruined your perfect record.”
Luki leaned sideways to pet the dog, turned back to answer Kaholo’s smile, and almost impishly said, “Yes. Merry Christmas.”
It all made for a busy day, as Luki’s days went, and by the time the light had begun to fade into that cobalt twilight that happens only in winter snow, he felt a little low.
“Honey,” Sonny said, wandering out of the studio for a piece of Kaholo’s macadamia fudge. “Are you going to be upset with me if I tell you to take your meds, turn your oxygen on, and sleep for a while?”
“O—”
Sonny interrupted him with a hand held out in the universal stop signal. “Before you answer, I’m only saying about the nap because you’ll want to be up, later, when everybody’s here for dinner and the tree and all that.”
“As I was saying, okay. I’m pretty tired, and I don’t think I’m breathing right.”
“Your inhalers are in the drawer….”
Sonny let his words drift off when Luki rolled his eyes. Luki started to get up, but he fell back into the chair, more spent than he’d realized. He held a hand out for help, and Sonny took it. When Luki was secure on his feet, he walked past Sonny, putting a smile in his eyes. “Okay, dear. Tell me where they are if it’ll make you feel better.”
The Giveaway: A Luki & Sonny Prize Pack
I have only read the first book in the series but the rest are definitely on my TBR. Wow – Yes sounds like it is going to be an emotional read. I’ll make sure I have tissues ready. Thanks for the excerpt and giveaway!
WOW WHAT A GOOD SERIES
I just got the first book and haven’t read it yet, but I’m looking forward to reading about both of these very different characters.
I have the first 4 in the series but I’ve fallen a bit behind. I don’t think I could choose between the two.
I see a new series hitting my TBR list! They are being pushed toward the top. Thanks for an entry in the giveaway.
I’m about halfway through the series, and it’s so spellbinding!
I NEED to read this series. Soon.
Oooh, tough choice…Though, I think I would go with Luki.