The Song That Seduced Paris by Cindy Irish ♥ Book Blitz & GIVEAWAY ♥ (Contemporary Romance)

Opera gets sexy! American music mogul Teddy Wilson combines the beauty of opera with the marketability of pop and creates the pop-opera multinational singing group called “Bel Homme.” French for “Beautiful Man,” the four performers he chooses are much more than that.

Gabriel Grenier is already a huge celebrity in his native France, but even at the height of his career, he’s bored and lonely and still wants more, so he accepts Teddy’s offer, hoping it will become his redemption.

American music teacher Annie Morgan is brought into this venture by her Aunt Harriet, who’s Teddy’s executive assistant. Annie becomes Teddy’s special emissary in this new undertaking—but she’s not prepared for her instant attraction to the charismatic Gabriel. And he’s blindsided by the life-altering effect of Annie’s very first smile.

It doesn’t matter, anyway, because Teddy wants nothing personal mucking up this gig, and he forbids the two to get involved. Gabriel has never had to answer to anyone, and he’s not sure he wants to start now. Annie is still mourning her deceased husband’s memory, and she’s not sure of anything.

What happens when beautiful music meets predestined love? Seduction always wins.

Gabriel’s and Annie’s love story is the first book in this romantic, sexy Bel Homme Quartet. Don’t miss being there from the very beginning. Vive la France!

Annie held Gabriel’s hand as they strolled across the English countryside in the picturesque county of Kent. “What’s it like being one of the biggest celebrities in France?”

Gabriel answered without thinking. “Lonely.”

Annie softened. What an odd word to choose for the first one. “Is it fun?”

He watched his feet. She was going to do it. She was going to open him up and discover every answer she was looking for. “Usually.”

“Challenging?”

“Always. I don’t want a job that teaches me nothing.”

Illuminating, she thought. “So the easy choices don’t interest you.”

“Not at all. Even when I was young, I had an old man’s pride to balance a young man’s romantic spirit, and the belief I was given a gift that shouldn’t be squandered.”

“How old were you when you started acting?”

“Eight.”

Annie studied his profile. In this revealing light, he looked younger than his thirty-odd years, and a speck of that little boy was there behind the faint lines around his eyes. He was grown, but he still felt the weight of delivering the goods. “Did you go to a regular school?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Non, private tutors always.” 

“I want you to tell me what’s bothering you,” she said. They were getting closer to the trees. Out here, they were in the open. The forest would close them in. Maybe its cover would allow him to share his secrets, so she headed that way. “Don’t worry about how it looks or how it might sound.”

Gabriel watched a flock of birds flying overhead. This place really was soothing. So was the woman holding his hand. “How I look to the outside world and how I sound is all I always think about,” he admitted as she led him into the shade of the woods. Here it was different. Intimate and protected. The air was cooler, and everything smelled vibrant and fertile. He looked down at her. She was unlike any woman he knew. “I’m different with you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, feeling hot prickles climb up her back. When he aimed his charm and his energy at her, she found it hard to breathe.

“I’m…normal,” he said. A leaf fell from a tree and landed on the rise of her breast. Good choice. That’s where he’d like to be. “I’m not my image or my reputation. I’m how I feel myself to be inside.” He couldn’t stop looking at that leaf. It fluttered with the rise and fall of her lungs, still clinging and unwilling to let go. “I’m accustomed to working with others in my acting, but with music it’s always been only me. I’m adjusting, Annie. This is entirely new to me, and I’m finding I still haven’t found that…is the American word pocket? You know, that place where I fit in.”

She smiled. “I think you mean niche.”

He stepped forward and smiled, too. “Yes, oui. My niche.” He moved closer, then closer, backing her up until she was against the tree trunk. He leaned a hand against the tree right next to her head, unable to stop looking down at her delicate, tempting body. He wanted to taste it. Assault it. Pleasure it. He wet his lips, then whispered her name, but she stuck to the business at hand.

“You know how it is when you sing?” she asked him, trying to maintain some semblance of control. “It’s physical, but you use your other senses, too?”

He did know. “Yes. I feel the music and the words before I let them out.”

“Precisely,” she said as he brought his hand down and reached. “Do…uh, that.” He stroked the slope of her breast. “Trust…your feelings…” Her eyes slid closed, and she saw sparkles of light: exploding stars. “What are…what are you doing?”

Gabriel’s voice was gruff. “I’ve been watching this leaf that fell on you and waiting for it to fall the rest of the way, but it likes you too much to leave.” He flicked the tip of his finger over her and it floated away in the air. “There. It’s free.” But he was captive, and now he knew: Annie was a battle he was losing. He leaned down and rested his forehead against hers…struggled to catch his breath. “We’d better go back.” He forced himself to lift away. “Make me go back.”

Annie’s awakening heart pounded with passion and desire, fear of her feelings making her move. Taking his hand again, she started them walking. “Do the job, Gabriel. There’s plenty of time for more.” Still, her eyes were drawn to his sculpted masculine profile. Beneath that cultured exterior beat the dark warning of an untamed beast, yet she craved to know that part of him. With him, she wanted it all. Oh yes, she may not have his worldly experience, but one thing she did know. If she unlocked that door, he’d sweep in and steal her heart away.

       

♥ Click on the cover to learn more ♥

Author Cindy Irish writes Contemporary, Paranormal, and Speculative romance fiction. She's a member of Romance Writers of America, as well as the Mid-Michigan and Greater Detroit chapters. Cindy lives in Michigan with her family. For more information about her work, visit her website at http://www.cindyirish.com

As you can see, I was a happy, carefree child.

Obviously, I had a fabulous fashion sense

that touted the stunning charms

of short-sleeved patterned shirts

with earthy grime around the neckline. 

I completed my farm-girl assemble

with the practical flair of bib overalls.

It made for frustrating tinkle breaks,

I’m sure, but then it never bound me at the

waist, either. 

You’d think for that reason alone I could have at least unfurrowed my

brows and cracked a smile, wouldn’t you? 

Maybe it was that hideous hair.

My kinky hairstyle was totally fabricated by the application

of a very bad perm, as I have naturally straight locks.

The overall sweaty look of it was created by the hot and humid

temperatures of a sultry Michigan summer. My mother could

never trim my bangs in a straight line, and as a result,

to this day no one but me cuts my hair in front. 

Trust once betrayed leaves deep repercussions.

I don’t remember what happened to that bunny in my arms,

but I wouldn’t be surprised if my older devil-brother

buried him alive years ago.

Actually, I don’t remember being as testy

as I look up there, either, but the camera doesn’t lie. 

Nonetheless, this is my favorite photograph of myself

because it never fails to make me laugh—and I love to laugh.

There’s nothing more entertaining than human beings, is there? 

Not even puppies. 

Well, okay, except maybe puppies.

I love puppies, especially Old English Sheepdogs.

This is our dearly-missed Sam,

or Lady Samantha Amber as she was formally titled.

I like Golden Retrievers, too.

I love cats—and, it seems, the mangier the better.

I’ve always adopted strays someone else has abandoned.

My childhood consisted of playing cars in the sand

and making up stories starring my paper dolls.

Even then, I was a Romance Writer-in-Training.  

Before I turned five and posed for this equally giddy-looking

picture here, I’d sit at a table—any table—and play it

like a piano, so it was decided to get me a real one

(a piano, not my very own table) and see what I could do. 

I took piano lessons from Mrs. Draveling for many, many years.

She was a strict instructor who insisted I learn the classical composers only.

No Broadway show tunes for Cindy. 

For that I’m extremely grateful because today I love classical music.

In my pre-teens, I took organ lessons from Professor Romeo Fracalanza

whose home always smelled like garlic bread and Chianti. In retrospect,

I think that must have been when I fell in love with everything Italian.

I remember looking out his beautiful beveled glass windows as I played.

He was born in Piombino Bese, Italy, and his teacher was the organist

at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. How cool is that? I was a lucky little girl

to have him as my teacher, and I was blessed to have known him. 

My first job was in fourth grade when I became a church organist. 

I wanted to become a nun, but I hate being told what to do, 

so I scratched that idea pretty fast.

(Don’t act so surprised. Look at those two pictures

above again. Is that the face of a peaceful, pious person?)

Anyway, music has always been a big part of my life. 

I sang and wrote music. I wrote poetry. 

I read all the time—the library was one of my favorite places.

Now, I write all the time. 

I honed a lot of my skills as a copywriter creating radio commercials. You think it’s easy coercing the public in sixty seconds or less to buy a product?

Think again, unaware consumers. 

That kind of writing sharpens the brain cells and focuses the mind to turn emotion

and need into a blur of mass shopping ejaculation. 

(Using snappy double entrendres is a given with romance writers.)  

Then in my late teens,
I picked up an astrology book,
and that’s all it took.
In a flash,  I was well and truly hooked.

I sound like a metaphysical Dr. Seuss…

But this is sincerely true: I’m very serious about the subject of the stars and the planets, and how their magnetic energies affect and correlate with everything on our earth.

I’ve studied with the best astrologers in the business, and I’ve taught adult education astrology classes and had my own astrological radio program. I’m one of only a handful of astrologers who uses the INCARN program to calculatenatal charts. (This fact should tell you that the rest of them look on INCARNwith a mixture of patient humor, subtle skepticism, and thinly-veiled disdain.)

The theory of soul-based natal charts, rather than birthtime charts, is mentioned in some of Edgar Cayce’s readings,and the computer program toimplement them was created by my mentor, the late John Willner. The ancient algorithm itself can be traced back to a British woman who used it to formulate spiritual-birth charts at the turn of the 20th century, but beyond that, I have no further knowledge of its true origin. I only know that THIS is the astrology of the future.

So the music and the metaphysics in my background explain the subject matter in my writing today. My romantic heart, I attribute to being a water sign with a very heavy emphasis on Pisces.

For years, it never occurred to me to try writing romance.

Now it seems impossible not to.

Whether my setting is contemporary or paranormal, the tales are super sexy, witty, sentimental, and uplifting. I want you to smile and sigh when you finish the last page.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to have you read and enjoy the stories I’ve been privileged and honored to have come through me. See, although I reached up through the frail barrier of the collective imagination and claimed them as my own, they’re not really mine. 

But knowing that doesn’t keep me from joyfully passing them on to you… 

   

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