There’s no better cure for the winter doldrums than a hot beach romance. Olivia Hardin’s new prequel to her small town beach romance series, Love & Found, releases today as a part of the Legacies of Love anthology… and it’s just 99 cents for all six amazing stories!
Olivia Hardin’s The Way You Drive Me Crazy (A Love & Found Prequel):
Official Blurb:
Can a simple drive lead to something as crazy as love?
Lacey: I’m not adventurous. I’m not a wild child. Crazy isn’t what I do. And I’m certainly not the kind of girl who gets into a car with a total stranger to go off on a wild goose chase. But losing my dad changed things and I’ve been on a mission to find out everything I can about our family heritage. So, if hitching a ride with a cute mechanic from Simoneaux Bayou is needed to track down the last mysterious piece of my genealogy… well, a girl’s gotta do at least one crazy thing in her life, right?
Luke: I’m just a grease-under-the¬-nails diesel mechanic. A mechanic who just happens to be the favorite nephew of one Betty Ruth… as in Betty Ruth’s Country Store. And if there’s one thing Betty Ruth loves, its to put her nephew to work. In her eyes I can fix just about anything, so its not that unusual to get a call from her about the “pretty little girl” who’s car is broken down out at Simoneaux Bayou. But this girl is all woman and its hard to keep my eyes off of her long enough to get a good look at her busted transmission. And when Aunt Betty tells me I have to drive the girl to Lafayette… well, I’m not gonna argue over getting to spend a few hours alone with the best-looking girl a mechanic like me has ever seen, am I?
Exclusive Excerpt:
When my parents moved off to Arkansas for Dad’s retirement, I’d decided to stay behind in their old house across the bridge in Texas. Even so, the bayou was still a second home to me, and I spent most of my weekends there, fishing and carousing with my friends and Aunt Betty’s. And it wasn’t unusual for my aunt to call on me out of the blue to repair a car or an appliance or even an A/C unit for the local church. According to her, I could fix just about anything.
I saw the car with the hood up in the lot next door to Betty Ruth’s, so I pulled in beside it instead of going directly to the store. On the phone she’d said, “pretty little girl,” so I figured the chances were good it was some high schooler with a dead battery, and I might as well be prepared to give her a jump.
I’d just started checking things out when I heard footsteps behind me. “I hope you’re Lukey,” a female voice called out.
“It’s Luke, not Lukey. You know how aunts can be.” I pulled the oil dipstick, replacing it when I saw it had plenty of clean oil. Apparently the “pretty little girl” was good about getting oil changes.
“I get it serviced regularly.”
There was a touch of defensiveness in her tone, and I grinned a little to myself. “Yeah, that’s good. So, what was it doing it exactly?”
“Started shifting funny. And making a kind of whizzing sound. I don’t know. Just didn’t feel right.”
“Hmm,” I grunted, head still under the hood. “Might be the transmission. Is this a ‘99? They had some problems with that model. How many miles do you have on it?”
“About a hundred fifty thousand,” she said, and this time her voice was closer. She’d inched in beside me, and I saw a pair of manicured hands take hold of the edge of the car as she bent over to see. I caught the scent of something flowery, like one of the lotions Aunt Betty liked to get at the mall in Port Arthur. Sweet but not too overpowering. I let my eyes study her hands, how slender and long her fingers were. How soft I thought they would probably feel.
As I backed a step from the vehicle, I looked down and caught sight of her legs. Long, slender, yet shapely legs that went on and on. My gaze followed her bare arms up until I caught sight of her face.
This “pretty little girl” was all woman.
Her eyes were brown, dark brown against flawless honeyed skin. There was a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, though I figured she tried to hide them with the little bit of makeup I firmly believed she didn’t need. Her lips were shaped like a heart, darkened a reddish tone by lipstick.
When our eyes met, she let her mouth drop open a little, smiling and stepping away as if she thought she was intruding on something. I instinctively reached into my back pocket for a rag, thinking of how dirty I probably looked. I wiped my hands on that scrap of material that was just as blackened with oil and dirt as my skin was, making any attempt to clean up pretty much pointless.
I was just a diesel mechanic. And this woman was an absolute knockout, with long blonde hair, straight as a board and so fine it reflected the sun in waves. Yeah, she was a looker and out of my league, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the view.
My eyes took all of her in, from the tight little pink tank top to her black shorts and her strappy shoes. I didn’t hurry, lingering as I absorbed every curve and angle. When I found her gaze again, she had a slightly annoyed expression on her face. She tilted her head to the side.
“Are you going to check out my car now or what?”
Amazon Purchase Link Updated October 2023
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About the Author
When Olivia Hardin began having strange movie-like dreams in her teens, she had no choice but to begin putting them to paper. Before long the writing bug had her and she knew she wanted to be a published author. Several rejections plus a little bit of life later, and she was temporarily “cured” of the urge to write. That is until she met a group of talented and fabulous writers who gave her the direction and encouragement she needed to get lost in the words again.
Olivia’s attended three different universities over the years and toyed with majors in Computer Technology, English, History and Geology. Then one day she heard the term road scholar and she knew that was what she wanted to be. Now she “studies” anything and everything just for the joy of learning. She’s also an insatiable crafter who only completes about 1 out of 5 projects, a jogger who hates to run, and she’s sometimes accused of being artistic.
A native Texas girl, Olivia lives in the beautiful Lone Star state with her husband, Danny and their puppy, Bonnie.
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