Read an exclusive excerpt from Seeing Double by Tamara Baumann
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Dani Botelli has vowed to step out of her demanding movie star mother’s shadow, and is determined to start a new chapter in her life. But two men are making for double the trouble. There’s Jake, her police detective almost-ex who wasn’t so hot as a husband but sizzles between the sheets. He needs Dani’s intuition and visions to help him solve crimes. Then there’s her high school crush, Michael, a former NFL pro who’s now her mom’s hunky lawyer.
Working alongside Jake, while keeping her special gifts under wraps, is proving to be more dangerous than Dani realized. She needs to stay out of harm’s way—and out of Jake’s arms—long enough to find out if Michael is the one. But will her hard-to-explain hunches be the secret that comes between them?
Exclusive Excerpt
Having prophetic dreams on a regular basis wasn’t nearly as fun as one might think, especially when only half of them made sense, but Dani Botelli wasn’t complaining. Instead, she intended to make the next thirty years of her life better than the first thirty had been. Wasn’t thirty the new twenty-five anyway?
As she raced for the courthouse steps, she vowed that this time around she’d search for a more compatible man, she’d hold down and thrive at her job, and she’d do her level best to stay out of harm’s way for more than a day or two at a time. When a person was on a first-name basis with most everyone at the police station and the emergency room, it probably wasn’t a good thing. Unless you actually worked there.
The first item on her self-improvement list involved convincing her detective almost-ex-husband, Jake, to sign their divorce papers. She’d finally gotten serious about the divorce and cut off the sleeping-together part about three weeks ago. They’d never gone that long before, so it was a new record, but he still hadn’t signed.
Next, she needed to make a success of her job as a Realtor and stop living off her famous mother. The living-off-her-mom part wasn’t going to be so easy. Shopping in designer boutiques and traveling to exotic places had become commonplace in her past life.
Actually, it had been the best part of her former life, but she’d been too young to appreciate it before she got married. Paying her own Visa bill that first time had been a life-altering experience. Those statements should come with some kind of health warning like cigarette packs do: “Your risk of a heart attack may increase after you see how irresponsible you’ve been this past billing cycle.”
But in order to keep her job and earn enough money to move out of her mother’s guesthouse, she planned to ignore the unwanted visions that kept popping into her head, the ones compelling her to share them with her ex.
Let Jake figure out “who done it” all on his own.
Jake never missed an opportunity to take advantage of her odd dreams and mostly right hunches about things, but sometimes her visions, ones that seemed to come out of nowhere, could be as confusing as sudoku puzzles to the math impaired.
Her little “extra abilities” were an unwanted burden, and keeping them a secret had always been a daunting task. But, by ignoring her secret woo-woo skills, she’d be able to put some distance between herself and Jake and stay out of the crosshairs of the criminals who loved to hate her after she helped throw them into jail.
Dani lengthened her stride as she approached the courthouse in downtown Albuquerque—yes, the same place Breaking Bad was filmed—to testify for the prosecution in another, and hopefully the last, of Jake’s stupid cases. A glance at her watch showed she was late.
Being on time was absolutely not on her self-improvement list because everyone needed a few vices to keep them interesting, didn’t they? But judges tended to be picky about that sort of thing, so she needed to get a move on.
Just as her stiletto landed on the bottom step, a familiar voice called out, “Dani?”
Michael Reilly.
Crap. Now what?
Michael was the first man she’d ever slept with—to her undying regret—and in a strange chain of events, he had become one of her mother’s many lawyers.
It was something they never talked about. The sleeping-together incident, not the lawyer aspect.
He looked like an extremely buff Ben Affleck, and she’d always been insanely attracted to him. But their complicated past threw a bucket of cold water on those desires.
Most of the time.
Pretending she didn’t hear him, Dani picked up speed, taking the slick stone steps two at a time. No easy task in three-inch Manolos. Michael had once been a starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, however, and she was no match for his powerful strides.
“You’re a little overdressed for a jog, aren’t you, Botelli?” A large hand gently wrapped around her arm, thwarting her plans for escape.
She turned and stared into his gorgeous jade-green eyes. “I’m so late, Michael. Can we do whatever tedious lawyer thing you have in mind later?”
“Sure.” He smiled, exposing deep, sexy dimples. “If we wait until next week, I can just visit you in jail.” His eyes danced with mischief as he leaned so close his breath tickled her lips. “I bet you’ll look extremely hot in one of those orange jumpsuits.”
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About the Author
Tamra Baumann became hooked on writing the day she picked up her first Nora Roberts novel from her favorite bookstore. Since then, she’s dazzled readers of contemporary romance with her own lighthearted love stories. She was the 2012 Golden Heart winner for Contemporary Series Romance, and has also received the Golden Pen Award for Single Title Romance. Born in Monterey, California, she led the nomadic life of a navy brat before finally putting down permanent roots during college. When she’s not attending annual Romance Writers of America meetings, this voracious reader can be found playing tennis, traveling, or scouting reality shows for potential character material. She resides with her real-life characters—a husband of thirty years, two kids, and their allergy-ridden dog—in the sunny Southwest.
