Exciting Excerpt from Lost in Little Havana - Caridad Pineiro® Romance Author

I can’t believe it’s only 42 days until the release of Lost in Little Havana, the first book in the South Beach Security romantic suspense series. I had a blast dreaming up the Gonzalez family and their private security and investigation agency and can’t wait for you to meet Trey, Mia, and Ricky, the siblings in the first three stories (which are all standalone). I also can’t wait for you to meet the spinoff with SBS’s K-9 division when it debuts in 2023. I’ve already finished the first book in the K-9 series and am busily working on book #2!

Teaser

Each brush with death…
…makes their shared desire harder to ignore

Detective Roni Lopez has been keeping a secret from Detective Trey Gonzalez her whole life. When his partner is gunned down in a Miami Beach nightclub, she has a new secret to keep. Trey can’t know that she’s working for Internal Affairs—just like he can’t know that she’s always loved him. But when their lives are on the line, she has to make some tough choices about what really matters…

Excerpt

MIAMI BEACH DETECTIVE Roni Lopez worked her way through the club, her walk one that any fashion model on a catwalk would envy. She was there to draw the attention of the man they suspected of having abducted a number of women in the South Beach area. Roni had only the barest information on the alleged kidnapper and a police sketch from a woman who had luckily managed to avoid a similar fate. The man might also be responsible for the disappearance days earlier of two college students.

As Roni neared the bar, she caught sight of her best friends, Mia and her cousin Carolina. They were dressed to the nines in dresses that had to be designer and Louboutins with their distinctive red soles. Mia’s almost seal-black hair was cut short in a stylish bob while Carolina’s hair hung in soft waves to her shoulders. Men scrambled around them, eager to buy them drinks, but her friends politely refused the offers.

She sauntered over for a quick hello and to warn them about the club—that it was a possible hunting ground for a kidnapper, although her friends were unlikely targets. As well-known influencers, their disappearance would bring too much attention. It was much easier to grab women who would not be missed as quickly, like sex workers. That was why she had been surprised to find that the college students had been taken while on a school trip. Their absence had been noted within 48 hours.

Roni slipped an arm around her friends’ waists and dropped quick kisses on their cheeks. She wiped away a red lipstick stain she left behind on Mia’s cheek.

Mia smiled and said, “Hola, mi amiga. What brings you here tonight?”

In a whisper so that only her friends could hear, she said, “Work, unfortunately.”

“You and Trey. You just missed him,” Carolina said and tossed her head toward the far side of the club.

Roni looked that way, but Trey was nowhere to be found.

“Disappointed?” Mia teased, well aware that Roni had once had a massive crush on her older brother. That crush had dimmed but not totally disappeared, given the way her heart had jumped at the mention of Trey’s name. But he was Mia’s brother as well as a fellow Miami Beach police detective and therefore definitely off-limits.

“Been there, done that,” Roni lied and shot a quick look around again, searching for the handsome detective. She didn’t see Trey, but she suddenly spied Trey’s partner, Doug Adams, speaking to a man who looked way too much like the police sketch of her possible suspect. She was about to walk over when Doug’s gaze locked with hers.

Doug’s eyes widened in surprise, and he quickly leaned toward the other man to say something. The man looked her way, his blue eyes as flat as a shark’s, rousing a chill in her center. Dangerous eyes. Maybe even the eyes of a kidnapper.

She took a step toward them, but they separated and raced off in different directions.

Roni muttered a curse under her breath and murmured a hasty good-bye to her friends. “Gotta run. Stay safe, okay.”

“You, too,” they said in unison as Roni hurried after the man with the cold dead eyes.