Motor City Witch available now...

Happy November, everyone! We're all a little under the weather this weekend at my house, so I'm just going to leave you with an excerpt from Motor City Witch

Motor City Witch

Urban Arcana Book 2

By Cindy Spencer Pape

Buy from Carina Press:

Blurb: She’d left magic behind.

Once upon a time, Elise Sutton had been a powerful witch and paranormal enforcer. Once she’d been madly in love with Fae lord Aidan Greene. But when Aidan had considered his duties more important than their relationship, the love affair ended badly. Shortly after, while on the hunt for a rogue demon, Elise was brutalized and almost killed. Months later she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. To protect her child—and her heart—Elise decided to live a nonmagical life.

Until she meets Aidan again, and he assumes Dina is his daughter. When Dina is kidnapped by a racial purity movement, Elise turns to Aidan for help. The icy facade she has built around herself shatters at Aidan’s touch. Together they have to hunt through the human and faery worlds to find Dina...and to discover whether or not they have any kind of chance at a happily ever after.

Excerpt: (PG)

“So were you ever planning to tell me I have a daughter?”

When Aidan Greene got upset, his not-quite British accent became extremely clipped and right now it was sharp enough to sever limbs.

Elise sighed. She’d known this moment would come someday. As soon as her friend and client, Meagan Kelly, had turned out to be the missing cousin Aidan had been looking for all these years, Elise had known the showdown was going to come sooner rather than later. She’d been hoping, though, that it wouldn’t happen right in the middle of Meagan’s wedding reception. For some reason, the short, jade silk suit she wore didn’t seem like nearly enough armor for facing down a pissed-off Fae in his elaborately decorated Grosse Pointe garden.

She gulped the last of her champagne for courage and set the glass on the tray of a passing waiter before she looked up at Aidan. The six-foot-four Fae lord was resplendent—and way hotter than she liked to admit—in his custom-made tux, even with his human glamour securely in place. His dark brown hair was styled perfectly and she knew the reddish highlights were natural, while the touches of gray at his temples were just for show. Elves didn’t age like humans, but if they wanted to hang out in the human world, they had to at least pretend to.

It was a beautiful early-October afternoon in southern Michigan. The band played on the terrace behind them, wedding guests laughed and danced, waiters mingled and smiled their way through the crowd, but all that receded into the distance for Elise as she tried to steady her nerves. Personal confrontations were not one of her strong suits. She could sell art to anyone—but having to discuss her own life and emotions was so awkward it was painful.

“Elise?” Aidan crossed his arms over his lean but well-muscled chest and glared down at her with sparks of fury shooting from his emerald green eyes. “You were about to explain why I have a five-year-old daughter I didn’t know about.”

“Four.” She sat down her glass and rubbed the bridge of her nose to forestall the migraine she knew was coming. Looking around at the party in full swing, she sighed again. There was no getting out of this, so she might as well get it over with. “She’s only four. Her birthday isn’t until the end of this month.”

Aidan’s spine stiffened, and barely suppressed outrage made his long frame vibrate, though it was so slight most humans wouldn’t be able to see it.

Elise wasn’t most humans. As a Wyndewin witch, with a trace of elven blood of her own, she was far more sensitive to energies and vibrations, as well as magic and auras. And she’d always been tuned into Aidan Greene—gods help her.

Stalling wasn’t going to work. Aidan was the most arrogant male she’d ever met and once he made a decision, he never backed down—he simply expected everyone else in the universe to jump to his bidding. She didn’t want to interrupt the wedding party or disturb Meagan and she particularly didn’t want to do this in front of her daughter, Adina, who was whirling on the dance floor with a handful of other children, all under the watchful eyes of Meagan’s human grandmother and a couple of her aunts. “Let’s take this inside. There’s no point in upsetting the other guests.”

“Fine.” Taking her elbow in a grip that was nearly painful, he half-dragged her across the terrace, around the corner of the building, through the rose garden and into the library of his sprawling mansion.

Elise hugged her arms around her chest and glanced around the familiar, luxuriously appointed, book-lined room, even as he pulled her further inside, into a smaller private den that he clearly kept as his home office. Aidan was the CEO of Underhill Industries, a multi-faceted company that encompassed the Fae’s vast holdings in the mortal realm. Since she’d broken up with Aidan, he had also become the keeper of the Detroit area safe house for the Fae. According to information she’d received from her brother, Aidan had relocated here less than a year after their breakup, convinced that his missing cousin was somewhere in the area, and he’d moved the headquarters of Underhill with him. So while she’d visited the mansion as Aidan’s guest, she’d never seen his inner sanctum before. It was like stepping into an upscale British gentleman’s club, without any other members.

“Nice.” Suppressing a shiver, she sat in one of the leather club chairs in front of the empty fireplace while Aidan dropped into the other, gripping its arms with knuckles gone white.

“My daughter,” he grated in a voice she imagined made his employees tremble with fear. Good thing she didn’t work for him. “Were you ever going to tell me about her?”

“No.” She fought to keep her voice from cracking and stared into the cold, empty hearth rather than chance looking at him. She gathered her breath before she blurted out the salient fact. “Because you aren’t Adina’s father.”

.