Love, Valentine Style!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Well, Christmas is over. But I love holidays and I’m looking forward to the next one! Are you ready for Valentine’s Day!? My fellow authors and I are celebrating the day of love with a brand new anthology of Valentine’s stories!

I’ve made my name by writing classy, sexy erotic stories. But there comes a story where hot and heavy bedroom antics just don’t apply. And that’s what happened when I started writing Grace’s Valentine’s story. She’s shy, and she doesn’t think she’ll every find a man, especially not the right man. And when she does meet him, well, she’s automatically going to a little suspicious. After all, how could a good-looking man like Brian want someone like her? You’ll find out in my contribution to the anthology! Here’s a blurb from each story to whet your appetite, then I’ll give you an excerpt of Be My Other Valentine! Thanks to Pamela Fryer for the fab cover!

In Love, Valentine Style, the magic of Valentine’s Day comes alive in a very special holiday anthology of never-before published novellas by award winning and Amazon bestselling authors. You will not find these stories published anywhere else, and this box set will be available exclusively at Amazon for only .99!

Be My Other Valentine by Jasmine Haynes

Five years ago, Grace was given a sacred duty by a woman dying of cancer: Every Valentine's Day, Grace must deliver a special cake to a girl named Valentine, addressed from the girl's mother in heaven. But this year, Grace's van gives up the ghost before she delivers her cargo.

His daughter Valentine is all Brian has left of his wife, but he's forgotten the cake Valentine receives every year, and they've moved to a new house with no way to contact the baker who follows his wife's wishes.

In their quest to fulfill a dying woman's last request, can Grace and Brian find their own Valentine?

Hotel Amore by Pamela Fryer
After being jilted at the altar by her fiancé, Virginia Montgomery quit her job and moved a thousand miles away to manage Hotel Amore on Little West Cay, hoping she'd never see that no-good coward Thomas Bennet again. But Fate and Mother Nature conspire and whip up a little Valentine's Day magic to bring Virginia and Thomas back together.

Civil War Valentine by Haley Whitehall
Charlie Bristol comes to Seattle to set up a traveling Valentine's Day exhibit. The director of the museum surprises her with a package of Civil War valentines from an anonymous donor. She is touched by the heartfelt messages. Does such powerful love still exist?

During a nap she dreams she's alive during the Civil War and meets Elliot Lowery, the author of the valentines who mistakes her for his fiancée Charlotte. She and Elliot negotiate the murky waters of wartime romance. When she wakes she's still under the dream's spell and Valentine's Day love is in the air. Can love work some miracle time and death cannot overcome?

Forever My Valentine by Raine English

Miranda's determined to avoid the man whose heart she broke. Until she finds an engagement ring engraved with a decades' old date. The only man who can help reunite the precious ring with its owner is the last man she wanted to see.

When Ian sees Miranda come into his antique shop, his defenses go up. She walked away from him once without a backward glance. But when their eyes meet and sparks fly, the frost begins to melt from around his heart.

A snowy Valentine's journey to bring the ring to its elderly owner could turn into a second chance at romance for Miranda and Ian. Or prove that their love was never meant to be.

Finding Mr. Right by Lois Winston
In this sequel to the award-winning Hooking Mr. Right, Grace Wainwright, has become romance guru Dr. Trulee Lovejoy. Thea Chandler, the original Trulee, now married to her Mr. Right, is a successful cookbook author and co-host with Grace of Love Recipes. When producer Beck Delaney announces a Valentine theme for February's shows, Grace freaks. The worst day of her life occurred on Valentine's Day, and she wants no reminder of it. Beck has his own reason for hating the holiday but must bow to sponsor demands. When a citywide blackout traps him and Grace in his 34th floor office, their adversarial relationship really begins to heat up.

Valentine Rules by Mel Curtis
It started as an innocent assignment-accompany an actress fresh out of rehab on shopping trips-but gained Gemma Kent a makeover and notoriety as a mystery woman with the Twitter handle: GlitterfrostGem. Everyone in Hollywood is speculating about her identity. In real life, Gemma wears combat boots, Poindexter glasses, and a prickly attitude. Now Randy Farrell, the man she can't get out of her head, wants a date with Glitterfrost Gem! Which would be great if he realized that invisible Gemma Kent and Glitterfrost Gem were one and the same.

Be My Other Valentine

Copyright 2013 Jasmine Haynes

The van coughed and grumbled as Grace Collier turned the ignition key. Her mechanic was good, but the old beast of a vehicle was starting to spend more time in the shop than it did on the road. It needed replacing, but she’d just spent a fortune on a new state-of-the-art rack oven, not to mention the floor mixer she’d had to replace six months ago, and there wasn’t any money to spare right now.

She should have taken her car, but the van was tricked out with special cubbies for holding confections so they didn’t slide or fall. She’d heard horror stories of five-tier wedding cakes toppling when the driver turned too quickly. So Grace wasn’t taking any chances with this morning’s special delivery.

“Come on, baby,” she crooned, leaning forward to pet the dashboard. “You can do it, I know you can.” The engine suddenly roared to life. Animals, children, old people, and finicky vans needed a little sugar and spice, just like the name of her bakery.

The predawn streets were practically empty. In the bakery business, you had to be an early riser, no pun intended. She had another baker and two kitchen helpers who started work at three-thirty, but she was still down at the shop no later than four o’clock in order to be ready for the on-the-way-to-work crowd dying for a sweet treat in the morning. Her cinnamon rolls were to die for, if she did say so herself. Grace loved the smell of crisp morning air. Winter in the San Francisco Bay Area didn’t bring snow except on the mountain tops, and while the days could be gorgeous and relatively warm, the early mornings were downright cold for her Bay Area-bred bones.

Today she had a side trip to make. She lived in San Carlos, the bakery was in Burlingame, about ten minutes north on 101, but she had to get off in San Mateo. The brief detour would cost her only another ten minutes.

At the bottom of the ramp, the van coughed and sputtered, and for a moment, she was terrified the poor thing would expire right there. Maybe she shouldn’t have called it a beast. But then she pressed the gas and rolled onto a deserted Hillsdale Boulevard, which led up to the mall. She stopped for a light, though it was beyond her why it had turned red when there wasn’t another car in sight. She had a few blocks to go; the house she wanted was on the other side of the mall.

Five years ago a pregnant woman had walked into Sugar and Spice. Grace could still see her image as if she haunted the bakery. Though she had an ethereal beauty, she wasn’t healthy and glowing the way Grace thought of pregnant women, far from it. Her request had been very special: she wanted a baker who would commit to delivering a cake every year on Valentine’s Day. Every single year for as long as Grace was capable. That was a lot of cakes, since at the time Grace had only been thirty-three, and Sugar and Spice had only been around for three years. Though it was a birthday cake, the woman wanted it to be decorated in pinks and reds for Valentine’s Day. For a little girl. Her daughter. It was to be delivered in a plain pink box with no markings identifying the bakery, and accompanied only by a card. The woman had signed one sample and told Grace to copy it each year. Starting the following Valentine’s Day, not this one. The card’s words were as indelibly written into Grace’s mind as was the woman’s gaunt but beautiful face.

To my special Valentine, from Mommy. I will always love you, even up here in heaven.

Grace hadn’t asked questions. She hadn’t felt the woman was capable of answering without breaking down, nor was it Grace’s business. They’d negotiated a price, though Grace thought it was far too much; she would have done it for free.

She saw the obituary a week later. The same name that had been on the credit card she’d charged. Survived by a husband and an infant daughter, the woman had died on Valentine’s Day. Of course, she’d known she would die giving birth to her little girl. Precognition? Grace would never know, but she’d kept her promise to deliver the cake to a little girl who’d lost her mother. She would always keep that promise. She knew the woman’s name, she knew the father’s name. If he moved, she’d track him down.

She had to. Deep inside, she felt the love that woman had for her baby. Grace would never be a mother. She would never get married. She had Sugar and Spice, she had her work, and that was more than enough.

Except on Valentine’s Day when she always felt the ache for something she would never have as she delivered the cake to a house with a white picket fence on a tree-lined street in a quiet neighborhood. Last year, there had been a tricycle on the front porch. She’d left a cake in the shape of a lamb, with small pink marshmallows as its fleece, tiny chocolate chips for its snout and hooves, and a garland of gumdrop flowers around the neck. The marshmallows and chocolate chips had taken forever to apply. They’d been worth it.

She pulled away from the light, the van coughing again. She’d made it through the intersection when it sputtered. And coughed. Then died. Oh no. It couldn’t be. She cranked the ignition and pumped the gas. The van rolled a few more feet, allowing her to pull to the side of the road, though she was still partially blocking the lane. Dammit.

“I didn’t mean it about being a beast,” she told the van. But no amount of apology made the engine engage again.

She turned on her flashers, though thankfully the street was deserted so she wasn’t stopping traffic. Give it two hours, though, and things would be a mess if she didn’t get the van started again.

After calling roadside assistance, she tugged on a pair of gloves and slid out the door. Pulling her quilted jacket tightly closed against the cold, she opened the hood. Maybe she could see something. Except that she didn’t know a thing about engines, and it all looked normal to her.

She was going to be late for the morning rush. She’d be late with the cake. God, what if someone was awake in the house and saw her? It would violate the promise she’d made. No way. She couldn’t. There was only one choice. She’d have to walk the few blocks. And hope she made it back before the tow truck got here.

You can read another excerpt of Be My Other Valentine on my website. You can find Love, Valentine Style exclusively on Amazon.

Just a couple of reminders. get your free copy of She’s Gotta Be Mine in ebook! Enjoy! Kindle, Kindle UK , BN, iBooks, iBooks AU, iBooks UK, Kobo, Smashwords, All Romance, Coffee Time.

And drop by the 12/21 blog to enter my drawing for two free audiobook copies of Fool’s Gold. I’ll be announcing the two winners on the Jan 6^th blog!