Can I just say how much I’m enjoying #sixsunday?

Since most of the participants in #sixsunday are romance authors, this is a more “adult” excerpt from my older contemporary YA novel, Want, which, as of Wednesday Jan. 4, is under contract with Inkspell Publishing and tentatively scheduled for release in June 2012!!!

Here’s the set-up: Seventeen-year-old piano student Juli is on a post-performance high and risks coming on to her 28-year-old teacher. He’s rebuffed all her previous attempts. But here she has just, um, invaded his personal space.

His eyes glass over, and he doesn’t say no. Instead, he reaches up with his right hand and trails a finger along my jaw from ear to chin. I don’t expect an answer, so I don’t wait for one. I slip out of the studio and discover I’ve got a new little wiggle in my walk. Before I shut the back door, I take one last peek.

Isaac has his head in his hands.

Here’s the synopsis for the novel:

 Julianne counts the days until she can pack her bags and leave her old-money, tradition-bound Southern town where appearance is everything and secrecy is a way of life. A piano virtuoso, she dreams of attending a prestigious music school in Boston. Failure is not an option, so she enlists the help of New England Conservatory graduate Isaac Laroche to help her.

She can’t understand why he suddenly gave up Boston’s music scene to return to the South. He doesn’t know her life depends on escaping it and the madness that threatens her success. Isaac must resist a taboo attraction, but an indiscretion at a Mardi Gras ball—the pinnacle event for Mobile’s elite—forces their present wants and needs to collide with sins of the past.