A Thursday teaser for Romance Month from One Shade of Red
By Scott Bury
Photo by Armin Rimoldi: https://www.pexels.com/photo/anonymous-lady-drinking-juice-while-relaxing-on-sunbed-at-poolside-5265154/
Then I nearly jumped out of my skin as a buzzing voice said: “Yes? Who’s there?”
I hadn’t noticed the little speaker, a white plastic box that blended with the trim around the doorway. I pressed a little round button under the speaker grille. “PoolGeeks,” I said, loudly and clearly.
“Don’t talk so loud or so close to the speaker,” the voice buzzed. It was impossible to tell if the speaker was male or female, young or old. “Come around the left side of the house. I’m by the pool.”
Great. The old biddy was going to watch me clean her pool. I pictured a crone in a flowered sun-dress and a big floppy hat, sipping on a mint julep, croaking “Don’t miss the far corner.”
I threw the strap of the canvas bag over my shoulder and followed a stone path around the house. The side yard was filled with flowering bushes and exotic shrubs. A gate with a semi-circular top that matched the front door pierced a solid cedar fence. I pushed it open with the aluminum pole of the pool skimmer to see a huge patio of interlocking reddish stones. In the middle of it, a curved pool gleamed blue and white in the sun.
“You’re early,” said a musical voice from somewhere around the back corner of the house at the same time that the gate closed, catching the butt of the pool-skimmer pole as I took a step forward.
The canvas bag, loaded with accessories and supplies, vomited all over the stone walk. The aluminum pole hit the ground and bounced up, smacking me in the face as I went down. I barely got one hand under my face before it hit the stone, too.
“Oh, dear! Are you all right?” said the musical voice. Nothing like the buzzy squawk from the speaker by the front door. All I could see, though, was grey flat stone and a little green blur to the side.
I craned my head up. This can’t be real, I remember thinking.
She was a dream. My dream. A tall woman with long, wavy brown hair. Couldn’t be more than 30 years old.
In a big floppy hat. And a string bikini.
I scrambled to my feet. My hands and knees were scraped and my face hurt where the aluminum pole had hit it. “Ya, yah, fine,” I stammered. “I’m from PoolGeeks.” I yanked the pole free of the gate.
“You’re early.”
“Sorry.”
“No, that’s good. For once, my pool will be clean before all the neighbours’.” She pointed at the pool. “Well, as you can see, there it is.” I couldn’t look at the pool, because I couldn’t stop looking at her.
I felt like I was in junior high again. The only word that came into my mind was: stacked. There were acres of bare skin. The bathing suit barely covered her nipples and pubis, but none of those words made it into my mind at that moment.
She looked at me, eyebrows raised, and I realized that she was waiting for me to say something. My tongue felt thick and heavy.
One Shade of Red
Women want the perfect man, so they can change him. But when university student Damian Serr discovers a rich, beautiful woman who’s voracious about sex, he doesn’t try to improve on perfection. It’s all that he can do to hold on for the ride.
Damian has always followed the rules, always tried to please others. At 20, he still dates the girl next door because his parents like her parents. When Nick, his university roommate, asks Damian to take over his pool-cleaning business so he can take an internship in London, Damian can’t say no — especially to Nick’s first and only client, a rich widow.
But widow Alexis Rosse is far from helpless or lonely. This beautiful financial genius is busy turning the markets upside-down, and she revels in sex wherever, whenever and with whomever she wants.
Over the summer, Alexis gives Damian an intense education. Day after day, she pushes him to his sexual limits. The only question he has is: will she break them?
“So well-written that it flows easily, hooking the reader right from the beginning. I had real problems to stop reading it.” — Cinta Garcia de la Rosa, author of A Foreigner in London and reviewer of Indie Authors You Want to Read.
“How nice it is to see a dude lit-style book! And well-written at that!” Lisa Jey Davis, “Ms. Cheevious”
“So hot, you’ll want your own pool boy.” — Charity Parkerson, author of The Society of Sinners
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Scott Bury
can’t stay in one category.
After a 20-year career in journalism, he turned to writing fiction. “Sam, the Strawb Part,” a children’s story, came out in 2011, with all the proceeds going to an autism charity. Next was a paranormal short story for grown-ups, “Dark Clouds.”
The Bones of the Earth, a historical fantasy, came out in 2012. It was followed in 2013 with One Shade of Red, an erotic romance.
The Eastern Front trilogy tells the true story of Maurice Bury, a Canadian drafted into the USSR’s Red Army to face the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Army of Worn Soles, the first volume, was published in 2014, followed by Under the Nazi Heel in 2016 and Walking Out of War in 2017.
Scott Bury was invited to write for three Kindle Worlds by bestsellers Russell Blake, Toby Neal and Emily Kimelman. From 2015 to 2017, he published six novellas and a novel. He has since revised and republished three as the Hawaiian Storm mystery series: Torn Roots, Palm Trees & Snowflakes, and Dead Man Lying.
In between writing books and blog posts, Scott helped found an author’s cooperative publishing venture, Independent Authors International. He is also President of an authors’ professional association, BestSelling Reads.
He lives in Ottawa with his two mighty sons, two pesky cats and a very understanding wife.
You can find more about Scott Bury, and contact him through his website, his blog, Written Words, and on Twitter @ScottTheWriter.
