March 4, 2013
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On Any Given Sundae
by Marilyn Brant


Twelfth Night Books
ISBN: 978-1-4580-1011-7

Purchase from:
Amazon | B & N

Featured Book

Ebook June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4580-1011-7

**Limited Time 99-Cent Sale!!! (75% off!)**

In this light romantic comedy, when Elizabeth's uncle Siegfried and Rob's uncle Pauly rush off to Europe for a month, they temporarily relinquish the reins of their ice cream shop to their respective niece and nephew -- two people who may have grown up practically next door to each other but who have next to nothing in common...

Elizabeth "Please Don't Call Me Lizzy" Daniels is a small-town girl at heart. Shy and inexperienced at love, the frizzy-haired dessert cookbook writer still resides in her quaint hometown, stutters painfully when nervous and is only comfortable with her tiny circle of cooking pals. She must come out of hiding to help her uncle, but she's convinced her childhood crush, Rob, barely knows she exists.

Roberto "You'd Better Call Me Rob, or Else" Gabinarri is the town's golden boy. A former football star who left home after high school, he made a splash in the big city and never looked back. He returns home to help out, but he's counting the minutes until he can escape again. Despite his chattiness and charm, Rob was always intimidated by quiet, brainy girls like "Frizzy Lizzy," and he isn't pleased to be back where people still see him as that popular but dumb jock -- an image he worked for almost a decade to shed. And then there's his dear Italian mother, who's bent on lining up potential hometown brides for him...

"You'll want to read it for the humor and great characters and a plot that's sure to leave you smiling."

~Romantic Times Book Reviews, Hot Pick (October 2011)

Read an excerpt:

 

Elizabeth rarely swore aloud but, in her mind, she was cursing not just a blue streak, but also a red, orange, yellow and green streak. She was, in fact, well on her way to a complete blasphemous rainbow, and Rob Gabinarri hadn’t even arrived yet.

Of all people. She never thought she’d have to make it through so much as a ten-minute soda break with him again. The boy who’d broken her heart and didn’t even know it.

Or maybe he did know it.

She couldn’t decide which was the greater tragedy.

A snazzy red Porsche convertible squealed to a stop behind her sensible blue Toyota Camry, and the town’s Golden Boy stepped out of the car and into the empty confectionary shop.

“Hey, Lizzy. Long time, no see,” he said, glancing around the shop in a frantic kind of way.

“E-Elizabeth,” she corrected automatically.

“Oh, all right. Sorry.”

She stared at him, which of course he didn’t notice because he was too busy looking at everything else in the place besides her.

He walked into the backroom then out of it again.

He opened and shut a few closets.

He paced back and forth, sat down in a booth, got back up and paced some more.

The guy was as tall, muscular and breathtaking as he’d been a decade before when he used to saunter through the unremarkable halls of Wilmington Bay High School, oblivious to anyone and anything beyond the football field and his bevy of admirers. If it were possible, he seemed even more youthful and in command now than he did at age eighteen.

And she felt about as queasy as she’d felt the last time they’d been face to face.

Finally, his pacing stopped. “Where is my uncle?” he asked in a husky whisper, directing the query at a tray of chocolate-dipped sugar cookies. “Uncle Pauly?”he called out.

She wanted to tell him, but the words were lodged in her esophagus and, anyway, he wasn’t talking to her.

He strode into the backroom again, as if convinced the elderly Italian man could be found hiding behind a jar of candied cherries or a vat of butterscotch syrup. The long black eyelashes blinked in confusion when he reemerged, his gaze and those nutmeg-brown eyes directed at her.

“Don’t tell me he left already.” This was more a threat than a question. He shook his head at her as though that gesture alone would discourage an affirmative reply.

She held her breath and nodded.

“Where is he?”

She pursed her lips, just as she’d learned in her special speech tutorials so long ago, formed the first letter and tried to push it out of her mouth. But she stuttered anyway.

“L-Lufthansa. F-Fl-Flight four-oh-three.”

He cocked his gorgeous head to one side and stared at her in the way she’d grown so accustomed to during her miserable school years: Poor Old Lizzy, the look said. What a geeky dweeb.

“What time is it scheduled to depart?” he asked her with an affected gentleness that made her want to rip out his vocal cords.

She tapped her watch and gathered her courage for whatever might happen next.“T-Twenty m-m-minutes a-ago.”

“Oh, bloody hellfire!” Rob shouted.

Elizabeth managed to squeeze out a few additional syllables of explanation, but Rob was quick to catch on to the full meaning, even when words were left unspoken.

She grabbed her notebook, ripped out the page she’d been working on and handed it to him.

“What’s this?” he said, slumping against the counter.

With her pen, she pointed to the heading she’d written in block letters.

“A schedule? For what? The shop?” He stared at her as if this were the most foreign of concepts.

She nodded.

“For us? To divide up the opening and closing times?” he asked.

Good. He could read. She nodded again.

“But who’s going to work the shifts in between?”

“My fr-friends will be w-working here,” she said.

“Well, great,” he said, looking relieved. “Hey, I mean, if you think you can handle all of the organizing and get trustworthy people to take the over shifts, you can count on me to chip in with other things. Funding their salaries. Doing all the stock ordering. Sending out publicity notices. Anything you need, just so I can be back in Chicago soon.”

She winced. She’d been dreading relaying this part of Pauly’s parting message. Although she didn’t know the precise reason, she sensed Rob wouldn’t like the news. “Y-You can’t l-leave.”

“Why not?” he said, but the uneasiness in his tone convinced her he wasn’t surprised there’d be a complication.

“P-Pauly called your m-m-mother. T-Told her to expect you for Sunday d-dinner tonight. And every night.”

“Oh, hell.”

She pushed her unruly hair out of her eyes and blinked at him. Funny, she’d never before seen the Golden Boy’s rugged olive complexion look quite so peaked.

“Lizzy,” he said, setting her carefully constructed schedule on the countertop.“You’re looking at a dead man.”

And with that, he collapsed into a six-foot heap of hunky male onto the floor.

Learn More:

http://www.marilynbrant.com/

   

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