Laura Florand, bestselling author of The Chocolate Kiss, combines lush description, smart dialogue, provocative sensuality, and the perfume of love itself in A Crown of Bitter Orange, an irresistibly lush novel that is an ode to the scents and pleasures of the south of France and the beauty of falling in love.
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BECOME LOVERS IN LAURA FLORAND’S CROWN OF
BITTER ORANGE
A CROWN OF BITTER ORANGE
by Laura Florand
February 2017 / Ebook & Trade Paperback /
Original / Fiction
$5.99 ebook / 978-1-943168-12-5/ $14.99 trade / 978-1-943168-13-2
Author Residence: Durham, NC
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Childhood friends. Tristan Rosier might have asked
Malorie Monsard to marry him when he was five years old, but things had only
gone downhill from there. She’d spent the rest of their lives ignoring him,
abandoning him, and destroying his perfumes. Now she was back, to wreak who
knew what havoc on his life.
Lifelong enemies. Tristan might choose to dismiss the
generations-long enmity between their two families, but Malorie didn’t have
that privilege. Like all the other privileges wealthy, gorgeous Tristan took
for granted that she couldn’t. But if she was going to restore her family
company to glory, she might just need his help.
Or the perfect match? They’d known each other all their
lives. Could these childhood friends and lifelong enemies ever uncross their
stars and find happily ever after?
PRAISE FOR LAURA FLORAND’S NOVELS:
“Chocolate, Paris, and a
Greek god for a hero; this delectable confection has it all!” – Library
Journal Starred Review
“(Florand) captures the
nature of love, its fierce, soul-warming necessity, in a way that will make you
as happy as the finest bonbon could.” – Eloisa
James, The Barnes & Noble Review, a Best Book of 2013 selection
“Florand outdoes herself with
this exquisite confection… painstakingly crafted and decadent as the sweets it
portrays, leaving the reader longing for just one little taste.” – Publishers
Weekly Starred Review
“Adorable, charming, whimsical.” – Smexy Books
“Florand
serves up a mouth-watering tale of slow-burning passion and combustible
consummation that’s as perfectly crafted as the hero’s surprisingly complex
confections and as silky and addictive as the heroine’s dark chocolat chaud.”– RT
Book Reviews, 4.5 stars, TOP PICK!, RT Seal of Excellence, RT Reviewers
Choice nomination Best Book of 2013
“A
delectable summer bonbon.” – NPR Books
“This is one of the cleverest, most persuasive
enemies-to-lovers stories I’ve read in a long time.” – Dear Author, RECOMMENDED READ
Laura
Florand burst on the contemporary romance scene in 2012 with her award-winning Amour
et Chocolat series. Her international bestselling books have appeared in ten
languages, been named among the Best Books of the Year by Romantic Times and Barnes & Noble, received the RT Seal of
Excellence and starred reviews from Publishers
Weekly, Library Journal, and
Booklist, and been recommended by
NPR, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal, among
others.
After a Fulbright year in Tahiti
and backpacking everywhere from New Zealand to Greece, and several years living
in Madrid and Paris, Laura now teaches Romance Studies at Duke University.
Contrary to popular opinion, this means she primarily teaches French language
and culture and does a great deal of research on French gastronomy,
particularly chocolate. For more information, please see her website: www.lauraflorand.com.
More Praise for Laura Florand’s Novels
“The battle of pastries
is an erotic subtext for their love affair, and every bit as decadent.” – Publishers Weekly
“All the elements of
[Florand’s] successful recipe for reading pleasure—headstrong heroine, dashing
hero, sinful desserts, and sultry situations—come together in another
deliciously entertaining offering.” — BOOKLIST
“Full of whimsical charm, great dialogue and what turns into
a very sexy romance. The author weaves the food these two create into their
romance so well… a truly charming book. Highly recommend.” – USAToday.com
“Sweet,
sexy, and all around delicious. I’m addicted. I can’t wait for the next book.”
– Nalini Singh, NYT bestselling author
©
Laura Florand, 2016
Well, look at
that. Prince Charming. Malorie should have known she’d stumble over him the
instant she set foot back in his kingdom. The man was the bane of her existence
even when she was halfway around the world.
She put her
hands on her hips and looked down at him, so peacefully dozing out in the open
that he hadn’t even stirred at the sound of her feet in the great white pebbles
by the river.
Tristan Rosier
asleep looked exactly how Malorie had always imagined. Gorgeous. Insouciant.
Not vulnerable in the least, except to being over-kissed by the sun. A wicked
little smile curving his mouth as if that sun was a woman and he was quite used
to this kind of treatment.
Shirtless and
completely ripped, the definition of his muscles visible even relaxed in sleep.
He’d probably just come down from that beautiful limestone cliff face rising on
the other side of the gorge and his muscles were still pumped from it. One hand
held a half-eaten apple, the other a small white paperback—Giono’s Hussard sur le toit—and they had both
slumped to his torso when he dozed off. In full sun.
She sighed. It
would serve Tristan right to have his nose peeling for a week, but then forty
years from now, if he got skin cancer, it would be all her fault, and the last
thing a Monsard needed was more lives on her conscience.
Plus, knowing
Tristan, a peeling nose would probably improve his ability to flirt with hot actresses,
not weaken it—he always managed flips like that. And his ability to flirt with
hot actresses was already freaking annoying.
Fine. She
dipped her hands in the milky green river, high from the recently melted snow
in the peaks, limestone giving it that beautiful color. She carried the water
back across the round white pebbles, tightened herself and double-checked her
buttons to make sure her clothes weren’t going to melt off as soon as he winked
at her, and then tossed the icy water over his bare torso.
Muscles
flicked like a cat’s—powerful, lean, surging awake—and he opened his eyes,
blinking sleepily at her as if she was all shadow in too much light. “Malorie
Monsard,” he said, with a sensual, lazy pleasure, as if he’d just woken up on a
Sunday morning and was quite happy to see that she was the woman draped in his
bathrobe bringing him coffee in the hopes he would ask her to stay.
She had to
dive fast into irony to protect herself, as she always did with him.
“You make a
good Sleeping Beauty, Tristan.” She used the masculine beau au bois dormant. “Or should I say Snow White?” A nod to the
half-eaten apple resting against his washboard abs.
Tristan sat
up, blinking, his eyes clearing. “Malorie Monsard.” His voice flattened. He
shifted to sit on the rock against which his head had been resting, cushioned
by his backpack. “Trust you to replace the kiss in the story with ice water on
a man’s skin.”
Yeah. Tristan
had been as friendly to her as to any other female on the planet when they were
in high school, but when they met again in New York, it had not gone well. For
him.
Supple,
expressive eyebrows that could lilt up subtly in amusement, invite a woman in
with laughter, tease her wickedly, did what they always did when she was
around. They drew together. “Malorie,” he said for the third time, looking
around them at the limestone cliffs and the rushing spring river as if finally
processing it. “What the hell are you doing here?”
