AVAILABLE NOW +eXtasy Books the first book in
THE ALWAYS CAMBRIDGE SERIES
The saga begins...
family saga series crime suspense + a love story
The Always Cambridge Series chronicles the life of Holly Cambridge through her tumultuous childhood and violent teen years and the consequences that stem from being the daughter of mob boss, Bill Cambridge.
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Always Cambridge Book One
He is her guardian, but she'll do anything within her power, to protect him.
His only duty is to keep her safe, but he can’t save her.
Holly Cambridge is just a typical kid, or so she thinks, until one day, she takes a good look around and realizes her friends don’t have bodyguards dogging their every step.
At the age of sixteen, Holly is assigned a new bodyguard, Randy Phillips. He is a tall, muscular, God-like force in the young, impressionable and lonely girl’s life. He is her friend, her confident, her conscience, and the older man she adores beyond reason.
Randy Phillips is fully aware of his young charge’s adolescent crush on him. Although he is flattered by the adulation, he maintains a safe distance and professional demeanour until Holly is wounded in a rival family blood feud, and the course of both their lives is changed forever.
Advisory : This is a six book series. The first five installments end with To Be Continued...
eXtasyBooks will release a new book, the first of every month until the conclusion in September.
Excerpt:
I stopped, turning to face him. “None of this is any of your doing,” I repeated his words quietly back to him.
Randy smirked but his eyes remained serious. “Smart, aren’t ya, little one. But my job is to keep you safe and I wasn’t here.” He stuffed his thumbs into his jacket pockets and said so softly that I had to lean in to hear him. “I was so scared I wouldn’t get here in time. I could hear your voice. And his.” He shook his head remembering.
My eyes filled. “I was scared too. But I knew you’d come. And Paddy. I trust you. The two of you are always here for me.”
He stepped closer to me and I had to look up.
“Patrick said the threat isn’t over. He said that man was not it.”
“No, he was just another bad man in a long line of many who walk the halls here, Holly.”
I shuddered at the thought.
Randy kept his head bowed but looked at me through lowered lashes. “Are you afraid of me now? After what you saw? Not just last night? But your friend, Timmy?” He exhaled shakily. He seemed to need my reassurance that I was still okay with him. I’d never seen him like this. He was never anything but confident in my eyes.
“We are all bad men here, Holly.” His stormy grey look was intense. Was he trying to warn me? It was not something I wanted to hear right now.
“Is the man dead?” I asked.
I heard his teeth grind. “He was alive when the others removed him from here last night. I didn’t kill him.”
I turned away from him. Angry. “Well, that makes it alright then, doesn’t it!”
“Yeah, that’s right, Holly. See what’s really going on. Take your blinders off. You’re a smart girl.”
He grabbed me and spun me back around to face him. His eyes narrowed. “I’m not a good guy, Holly. No one on this whole goddamn compound is good except for you and the longer you stay here…” He let me go and stepped away from me. He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Sometimes you look at me and I can see in your eyes that you think I’m…” His lips thinned as he searched for the right words. “…like I’m your own personal saviour. I’m here to keep you safe, Holly, but I can’t save you from what’s going on here. I can’t stop this from tainting and shaping your life. This is going to be your life forever. You’ll always need protection. You will never have that normal life that I see that you crave.”
“Don’t say that! Don’t say it, Randy!” I rushed at him wanting him to stop.
He pulled me into his arms, he whispered in my ear, “See what’s going on. Accept it. The sooner you do the easier it’s going to be for you.”
I cried into his chest. I don’t know how long. He pulled
away to look down at me. His eyes looked glassy, too. He stroked his thumbs
down my cheeks, wiping away the wetness.
“You’ve been watching and absorbing everything around
here since you were nine years old, Holly. This can’t honestly be a big shock
to you.”
“I’m not stupid.” I said petulantly. “I see. But I
don’t look. I don’t want to know. But I should. It’s not right, but it still
happens. I can’t stop it. Is it so bad for me to want normal? Should I have to
pay, should April? Do you and Patrick have to pay for his sins?”
“Patrick and I chose to be here. You and April
didn’t.”
As much as I wanted to stay in his arms forever, I
pulled away from him. He was trying to make me see him for the man he really
was and not the one I had created in my mind when I was nine. Didn’t he know
that would never change?
“Is that why you do the charity thing, Hol? Do you
think you can atone for the man?”
I looked at him dumbly as he finished.
“It’s still his dirty money.”
“I never thought of it like that. It just makes me
happy. It feels good to help people. Especially when they don’t even know who’s
doing it. It doesn’t matter to the people who need those things that I’m a
Cambridge. I have so much.” I looked at the big house, the pool. “It never
occurred to me that’s what I was doing.”
He shook his head. “Aw, Holly, I didn’t mean…”
“No, you’re probably right, on some level, maybe
that’s why I do the things I do.” I was thinking hard about what he’d said. I
didn’t really think about the things that I was revealing as I spoke. “But it’s
not his money. It’s my own. My mom left
April and me a lot of money. Most of it is in trust, but I have access to some
funds. We get lump sums at certain ages. Sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one and the
balance at twenty-five. My mom came from a well-to-do family before she married
my dad. And he had crazy life insurance policies on her, as well.”
I bit my lip as I stared at the house, not realizing
until it hurt. “Sometimes I just want to leave. Ya know? I want to run away.
Disappear. Forget that I’m a Cambridge. Go somewhere where nobody knows who I
am.” I was just thinking out loud, I didn’t expect him to comment.
“That would be incredibly dangerous. Stupid, even,” he
warned me. “Did last night teach you nothing?” He was angry with me now. I felt
him step close to me. His voice in my ear, deep and severe. An eerie coldness
ran up my neck, different from the feeling I had last night but just as
chilling. “You have no idea what he would have done to you, do you? You are so
naïve, for sixteen. And that’s the least of your worries. If his enemies,”
he gestured towards the house, “were to get their hands on you, you’d beg them
to kill you. And if by some miracle you were able to outrun them, you’d never
escape me. I would find you.” He threatened.
I guess I should feel privileged to think he cared enough to come after me, but I was not feeling that. I got the impression that he saw it as a challenge, and another part of me thought he only saw me as his job. Was I just fooling myself that he cared about me? That any of them cared for me.
Buy Links:
Expected Always Cambridge Series Release dates:
April 1
May 1
June 1
July 1
August 1
September 1, 2014 
Oooh! I'm excited!
ReplyDeleteMe too! Thanks Normandie! :D
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