Excerpt and Giveaway: Wedding Favors by Anne Tenino

Welcome to Anne Tenino on the Wedding Favors (A Bluewater Bay Novel) blog tour. Anne’s teasing us today with an exclusive excerpt from the book and on behalf of Riptide Publishing, is also offering the chance for one lucky reader to comment-to-win a $15 Riptide Gift Card! (Tour Wide)

Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on April 18, 2015. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Don’t forget to add your email so they can contact you if you win!

Blurb: Lucas Wilder’s best friend is a traitor. First, Audrey moved back to their hick-infested hometown, Bluewater Bay, and now she’s marrying a local. His own brother, in fact. And as her man of honor, Lucas gets coerced into returning for an extended stay. Although, between his unfaithful ex-boyfriend and his artist’s block, going home isn’t the worst thing that could happen. Even if the best man is Gabriel Savage, Lucas’s first crush, first hookup, and first heartbreak.

The only reason Gabe hasn’t been waiting for Lucas to return to Bluewater Bay is because he never thought it’d happen. Not that it matters now that Lucas is back—Gabe’s still a logger who’s never been anywhere (Canada doesn’t count), and Lucas is now a famous sculptor who’s been everywhere twice. Plus, there’s that shared past.

When Audrey asks Lucas to make her wedding favors, the only place to set up a kiln is at Gabe’s tree farm. Soon, they pick up where they left off twelve years before, then blow past it, discovering why neither of them forgot the other. Now they have to choose how much of their history they’ll repeat, and what future they’ll make together.

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Excerpt: Lucas drank too much at the engagement party. He pretended it was because he was with people he hadn’t seen in forever, like Audrey’s other bridesmaid, and other friends from high school who were still living in Bluewater Bay.

In reality, he’d tied one on to forget about Gabe Savage. He woke up Saturday morning with a headache and a bad taste in his mouth, but it had all been in vain—he could still remember the night before.

Fucking Gabe. With his sincere face and his lying tongue and his twisted history of them. The worst part was that Lucas had been falling for it, exactly like he’d sworn not to, because: peanut butter.

He’d loved peanut butter. Still did, but Drew had trained him out of eating it from the jar. Lucas’s arguments about them sharing bodily fluids anyway, and pointing out they’d never offer guests PB&Js were swept aside. Too weak to stand against Drew’s disgusted faces and comments about Lucas’s total lack of decorum. Shame was a great motivator for breaking bad habits.

Apparently, though, Gabe had liked it when Lucas ate peanut butter. Had been turned on by it. Or maybe by his sartorial choices when indulging, he wasn’t clear, but still. If Lucas were to, theoretically, eat peanut butter out of Gabe’s jar . . .

Don’t go there.

Yeah, bad idea.

Good thing Gabe had said that thing about respect. Respect. Such a perfect example of the kind of parochial, conservative, good ol’ boy mentality he’d been fleeing when he left this town. Had the guy seriously thought he’d respond positively to that? It offended him on so many levels—including his sexist bullshit-o-meter, and he wasn’t even a girl—especially since, two years later, Gabe had clearly stopped respecting him. That was what had kept him from believing it when Gabe made that comment, “When I found out you were leaving . . .” Trailing off suggestively was such a dead giveaway. He’d known he couldn’t come up with the right words, so he’d hoped Lucas would for him. Manipulative bastard.

If he lay here all day, he’d be rerunning that scene the whole time. Especially that part about peanut butter.

Maybe Audrey had some? That got him out of bed in spite of the headache, because for some reason he was sure if he could lick some of the gooey stuff off a spoon, it’d cure his hangover. No use clinging to the condition if it couldn’t block out what had happened.

Throwing on a pair of sweats over his briefs seemed like the polite thing to do. And the bare wood floor of Audrey’s studio was cold on his naked toes, so he needed socks. The whole room held a chill—wasn’t it heated? He’d never asked. Making a mental note to do that, he pulled a hoodie on over his T-shirt on his way across the landing to the main apartment, in search of magical elixir of nut.

Heh. Magical elixir of nut. He’d have to tell Audrey that one. She’d appreciate it.

About the Author: Catalyzed by her discovery of LGBTQ romance, Anne Tenino left the lucrative fields of art history, non-profit fundraising, and domestic engineering to follow her dream of become a starving romance author. For good or ill, her snarky, silly, quasi-British sense of humor came along for the ride.

Anne applies her particular blend of romance, comedy and gay protagonists to contemporary, scifi and paranormal tales. Her works have won awards, she’s been featured in RT Book Reviews, and has achieved bestseller status on Amazon’s gay romance list.

Born and raised in Oregon, Anne lives in Portland with her husband and two kids, who have all taken a sacred oath to never read her books. She can usually be found at her computer, procrastinating.

Connect with Anne: •Website | •Blog | •Twitter: @AnneTenino | •Facebook | •Goodreads