embarrassment

Things Are Getting Hairy

/ Diane Henders / 36 Comments

Thanks to @jenny_o at Procrastinating Donkey blog for my topic this week:  Hair.

I’ve had long hair almost all my life, mostly because I’m too lazy to style it and too cheap to pay for regular haircuts.  It’s a practical solution:  I can go camping for days and my hair still looks okay, my head and ears are always toasty warm, and I don’t even notice rain until about ten minutes after it starts.

But there are a few disadvantages:

Shedding:  Studies show that everybody sheds 50 to 100 hairs per day.  If those hairs are only an inch long it’s not too bad; but each of my hairs is at least 24 times that. I’m constantly cleaning hairballs out of the vacuum brush and dragging hair-bunnies out of the corners (and the shower drain).

Safety:  If I’m anywhere near rotating machinery, I’m obsessive about keeping my hair secured up and out of the way.  But even in so-called ‘safe’ environments, whiplash is always a possibility.  I’ve nearly wrenched my own head off by slamming the car door on my hair as I’m getting inside.  (Funny how that only seems to happen when there’s an audience…)

Embarrassment:  I once spent an entire interview secretly battling a chair.  Every time I leaned back, my hair got caught in the chair.  Then I’d try to nod, get jerked to a halt, and have to lean forward to pull my hair free.  I don’t know whether the interviewer thought I was making an embarrassingly awkward attempt at flirting or suffering from some bizarre physical tic; but I didn’t get that job.

The Ick Factor: I’ve had a lot of icky stuff in my hair over the years, from twigs to bugs to random food items.  Forget the old cliché of broccoli in your teeth; you don’t know humiliation until you’ve sat through an entire business dinner-meeting with a stray green bean dangling from your hair.

The Tickle Factor: Long hairs tickle.  Especially after they’ve dropped off your head and lodged in your bra, or worse, your underwear.  Imagine walking in a crowded mall, trying not to squirm while one insanely ticklish hair teases your butt crack.  If you ever catch a long-haired woman frantically groping down the back of her pants, now you’ll know why.  (That’s my best guess.  If it’s not that, we probably don’t want to know.)

And, @jenny_o, your poem inspired my own small attempt at a rhyming haiku:

Hair

I’ve got lots to spare
And yes, I am glad it’s there
But it’s ev’rywhere!

Book 14 update: We’re doing the cover photography this week, so stay tuned for a release date and cover reveal soon!

Ass-Biting And Embarrassment

/ Diane Henders / 29 Comments

I’d like to point out that the title refers to only the metaphorical biting of asses, not the literal sinking of teeth into tushes.

I’d like to point that out; but the embarrassing truth is that bum-biting was a ‘thing’ when I went to university.  For some reason, both the biters and the bitees found the whole exercise hilarious.

It was actually harder than you might think. (It was also more difficult.)  Back in the old days, the average university-student butt cheeks were young and firm; and tight jeans were in style then.  It was tough to sink your teeth into the subject without said teeth slipping off and snapping together hard enough to rattle the remnants of brain bobbing around in a beer-infused cranium.

I had forgotten about the bum-biting fad until this week, when I commented on Jono’s blog and he reminded me that gloating invariably comes around to bite you in the ass.

How right he was.

Only a few short weeks ago, I posted photos of my flowers all happily pretending it was spring.  I tried not to gloat over our warm and beautiful weather, but a tiny gloat (would that be ‘gloatlet’?) just might have slipped through.

I should have bent over and assumed the position right then and there.

Yep, my gloatlet just jumped up and bit me in the ass.  It didn’t have to jump very high, since it was standing on the 18″ of snow we’ve gotten.  And there’s more in the forecast.

Vancouver Island has basically shut down – schools and a lot of businesses have been closed since Monday, and we’ve hunkered down to wait it out since snowplows are few and far between here.  The temperature is hovering around freezing and our power has stayed on (miracle of miracles) so the snow is really only an inconvenience; but it’s also a bit embarrassing after my overly-optimistic ‘It’s Spring!’ post.

But that’s okay.  It’s still not as embarrassing as admitting that I might (or might not; I’m just sayin’) have bitten one or more person(s) on the buttock(s) in the far-distant past.  That was long before cell phones with cameras, so there’s no actual evidence and I may or may not deny the whole thing.

But I can’t deny this:

That’s a full-size 4×4 slowly vanishing in the snow.

 

Flower garden? What flower garden?

The snow is beautiful and it probably won’t stay long (I hope), but that’s okay — go ahead and laugh.  I set myself up for it, after all.

Just remember the dangers of gloating, and don’t forget to cover your ass.  😉

Book 14 update:  It’s lean and mean and 11,000 words lighter after the latest round of edits!  I had to sacrifice a few good scenes, but they’re safely tucked into my files for future use.  And we have a title:  “Friends In Spy Places”.  Stay tuned for a cover reveal!

Butt Of A Soak… Erm, ‘Joke’

/ Diane Henders / 18 Comments

Sometimes the mo(i)st unwelcome surprises in life sneak up from behind.

In arid Calgary where we used to live, rain is infrequent and everything dries fast afterward, so it’s difficult to inadvertently sit on something that will drench your drawers.  But here on Vancouver Island, it rains more, it rains longer, and everything stays wet even though it looks dry.

So when we moved out here, I adjusted my habits accordingly:  I always check outdoor surfaces before sitting down.  But (and it’s a wet butt) the West Coast has sneaky ways to soak my skivvies despite my precautions.

F’rinstance, there’s the rogue wave that caught me unawares while I was crouched in the shallows checking out the contents of a tide pool.  One minute I’m warm and dry and utterly absorbed in watching the little aquatic critters; and the next minute I get butt-slapped by icy ocean water.  (And immediately after that, I squelched rapidly back to my car hoping nobody would notice that I’d apparently peed my pants.)

But I learned that lesson fast; and after nearly two years out here, I was starting to feel pretty complacent about my ability to identify situations that might dampen my derrière.

That mossy log that feels dry to the touch?  Nope.  It’s dry on the surface, but moss holds water like a sponge.  It’s just waiting to humidify my haunches.

That chair placed welcomingly on the deck in the early-morning sunshine?  Nope again.  It’s covered by a thick but virtually invisible layer of dew.

So the other day I found a plastic Adirondack chair out in the sun on a fine afternoon.  It hadn’t rained for a day, but I swiped my hand across the seat just to be certain.  Dry.

I sank into the chair, stretching out my legs and admiring the sweeping mountain view over a vivid green golf course.  Birds sang and fluffy clouds drifted by in the blue sky.  Ahhhh.  Heaven.

I eased back to take advantage of the perfect reclining angle and discovered (butt-first, of course) that plastic Adirondack chairs retain a pool of rainwater in a deep groove right where the back meets the seat.  In this case, my seat.

So there I was, on my way to a birthday party in jeans with a big and highly-visible wet spot on the ass.  With, of course, no time to go home and change.

So the Wet Coast won again; but now I’ve figured out all its tricks – my butt won’t be its joke again!

(I hope…)

Book 14 update:  I made it to the middle of Chapter 19 this week against all odds (it was a very busy week).  Hoping for some quality writing time this week!

Mom Was Right Again

/ Diane Henders / 39 Comments

So, you know how Mom used to tell us to wear nice underwear “just in case”?  Well, this week I found out she was right.

It’s a long story.

You may recall that last week I whined about our drought.  Since June we’ve been doing the summer equivalent of Rick Mercer’s “Seven Day Forecast”.

The forecast has been promising cooler weather in the mid 20s (Celsius) and a chance of showers… but always five to seven days in the future.  So on Friday I was shocked to discover that there was a 40% chance of showers predicted on Saturday!  Mere hours away!

I dragged out our giant tarp and wrestled it across the bottom and up the sides of our 10′ deep, 60′ long (dry) dugout.  All our downspouts are routed to the dugout and we have a lot of roof area, so I hoped that even a little sprinkle might yield a few gallons of captured water.

Imagine my delight when it POURED for half an hour on Saturday and I got three feet of water in my tarp – about 5,000 gallons, enough to water the garden for the rest of the summer!  Hooray!

Except…

The tarp leaked.  And we don’t have any 5,000-gallon storage vessels.

Soon there were only a few sad inches of unsalvageable muddy water lying in the folds of the tarp.  Mosquito eggs hatch fast, so I needed to drain my failed experiment and get it out of the dugout.

But a few inches of water in a 60′ long tarp still amounts to a couple of hundred pounds of water.  Add the couple of hundred pounds of silty gravel that had washed down into the tarp along with with the deluge.  Then add me, trying to shovel/scrape/drain all that so I could drag the filthy (and therefore extra-heavy) tarp up a wet, unstable, 10 foot high, 45 degree gravel slope.

After about an hour of hard labour, I clawed my way to the top looking like some primeval swamp creature:  caked with gritty mud, abraded by gravel, soaked to the skin, and so malodorous that even the mosquitoes lost interest and fled.

So your mother was right:  Always wear nice underwear.  Because you never know when you might end up doing a striptease1 in the back yard so your husband can hose you off2.

* * *

1 At least none of the neighbours live close enough to see my performance (I hope).  I’m going to consider that a qualified ‘win’.  The ‘mud, sweat, and mosquito bites’ theme probably won’t catch on at any strip clubs; but after 19 years of marriage I like to think Hubby’s expectations are realistic.

2 Just thought you’d want to know that ‘hose you off’ is not a kinky euphemism – Hubby was wielding the garden hose.  Honest.

Use Your Words, Diane…

/ Diane Henders / 22 Comments

I have a dysfunctional relationship with words.  I’m infatuated… or maybe even obsessed.  I love words without reason or reservation.  I’m delighted to spend all day with them:  hour after hour of reading or writing; placing and replacing and tweaking them until they’re arranged in a way that delights my soul.

And in return, they fail me.  Over and over.

The little bastards got me again this week.  I’ve joined an art group to force myself to make time for activities other than reading or writing; so every Friday afternoon I take my watercolour paints down to the group studio for yet another three hours of humiliation.

I don’t know why I’m so determined to paint in watercolour.  I suck at it.  In oils and acrylics I’m actually capable of producing something that resembles art, but my watercolours always resemble shit.  Maybe I just have psychological issues that impel me to seek out destructive relationships.

Fortunately, I paint with a wonderful group.  Everyone is supportive, tactful, and happy to help a poor beginner any way they can; lending materials and advice and encouragement in equal measure.  And they all have a great sense of humour.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with frisket – a substance that goes onto the paper as a liquid but dries to a rubbery waterproof coating.  It’s used to mask out sections of a painting before applying colour, so that when it’s removed the background colour is revealed.  But it turns my brush into a rubbery pellet no matter how assiduously I rinse, so Hubby bought me a set of silicone brush-like tools instead.

The new tools work wonderfully.  So, pleased to be able to offer something to the rest of the group instead of always being on the receiving end of their generosity, I showed off my new acquisitions last Friday.

We were standing around talking about the tools, and I explained that I’d been looking for a way to mask fine lines.  But when I turned back to demonstrate, the fine-line tool wasn’t on my table.  I glanced around the group of women chatting beside me and spotted one of them holding the tool I had in mind.

I didn’t want to interrupt their conversation, so I held out my hand.

She didn’t seem to get my meaning, so I wiggled my fingers.  A faint wrinkle appeared between her brows.  I wiggled my fingers some more, miming holding a brush between them.

She drew back a step, beginning to look concerned.

At that point all conversations ceased while everybody took in the sight of me apparently making pinching motions in the general direction of another woman’s boob.

When I finally managed to sputter, “My brush…” and point at her hand, a roar of laughter nearly raised the roof.

“Use your words, Diane,” another woman prompted, still giggling.  “You’re a writer.  You can do this.  Use your words.”

Well, I would have… but as usual, the little buggers skipped out on me when I needed them the most.

I wonder if there’s such a thing as lexical relationship counselling…?

Im-pick-able Timing

/ Diane Henders / 36 Comments

All my life, I’ve had issues with timing.

If there was a ‘worst possible’ time to attempt something, I would nail it.  In grade school, the other kids could whisper and pass notes all throughout class; but if I tried it even once, I got busted by the teacher instantly.

Same with clothing problems.  Anybody can have a wardrobe malfunction1, but mine occur at the worst possible moments.  (Then again, I suppose there’s no good time for a wardrobe malfunction.)

When I was running for a bus and my shoe flew off, it didn’t happen on the sidewalk.  No, the perfidious shoe launched itself off my foot while I was dashing across the middle of a busy six-lane street during rush hour.  Fortunately I didn’t get creamed by traffic or ticketed for jaywalking.  Or would that be jayrunning…?

And the one and only time my underwear elastic failed, it was while… you guessed it… I was running for a bus.  Fortunately I’d worn pants that day; so instead of dropping to my ankles and tripping me into the path of an oncoming truck, the errant undies only slithered down my hips and hung up on the crotch of my pants.  It wasn’t the most comfortable sensation in the world, but at least I didn’t get murdered by my own gitch.  (That’s yet another reason why I avoid wearing dresses.  Just think:  If I’d worn a dress that day they might still be picking my pieces out of a truck grille.  Dresses are hazardous to your health.)

Anyway…

Let’s talk about red lights.  You know those controller devices that emergency vehicles use to switch the traffic lights in their favour when they’re responding to a call?  Well, apparently I have one of those things implanted in my body… only it switches the traffic lights against me.

It’s actually a hereditary condition – my dad had the same problem.  If my stepmom was driving through the town near their place, she’d sail right through with green lights all the way; but if Dad was driving every light would turn red, every time.  I can’t drive through that town without hitting all the red lights, either.  Just when I think “This time I’m going to make it!” the light changes with impeccable timing.

This problem is so much a part of me that I rarely even think of it anymore.  I usually just accept it and move on… until this week, when it jumped up and bit me again.

I was sitting in my favourite chair enjoying the view from our upstairs window.  We live on a dead-end road out in the sticks, so vehicular traffic is sparse and pedestrians are practically nonexistent.

So I was looking out at the mountains absently rubbing my nose… when I lowered my gaze in time to spot a lone man hiking along, staring up at me at the precise moment I was apparently picking my nose.

Argh!

But it could have been worse.  At least I wasn’t having a wardrobe malfunction as well…

Anybody else plagued with timing issues?

* * *

1Here’s a commercial that didn’t get aired during this year’s Superbowl, but I wish it had:

The view that bit me in the, um… nose.

 

Putting My Worst Face Forward

/ Diane Henders / 35 Comments

Lately my face has mounted a malicious campaign against me, and it’s being aided and abetted by my middle-aged eyes.

My near vision has deteriorated to the point where I can’t see myself clearly in the mirror unless I’m wearing reading glasses, so when I glance in the mirror I look great… as far as I know.  Wrinkles?  What wrinkles?  The soft-focus face I see in the mirror doesn’t have any.  It also doesn’t have any zits or nose hairs or big greebly chin-whiskers… until I put on my reading glasses and YIKES!

So I’ve gotten wise to the games of my traitorous body parts.  Now I wear glasses every time I look in the mirror.  They won’t get the better of me again!

But…

A while ago I went for a physio treatment, then ran errands all over town.  When I finally got home I glanced in the mirror only to discover I had creases in my face that looked like a topographical model of the Grand Canyon.  No wonder people were giving me those wary sidelong glances.  Even a couple of hours later, the marks were still faintly visible.  Life just isn’t kind to redheads with fish-belly-white complexions.

So I developed a workaround for physio, propping my face at odd and uncomfortable angles so that I could get up off the table and still pop into the grocery store without frightening the other customers.

I smugly believed I’d won.  My face wouldn’t betray me again.

How wrong I was.

I recently discovered a floral art club that was having a public demonstration (and I just proofread that sentence and found I’d originally written “pubic demonstration”).  Anyhow, I popped in to take a look.  At the flowers.  Geez.

Being new in the area and hoping to make friends, I always try to put my best face forward at these events.  I was warmly welcomed and directed to a table where they offered free dainties and coffee/tea along with (to my delight) chocolate-dipped strawberries.

I snagged a couple of strawberries and sat down to gobble the goodies.  Then, being extra-careful because I wanted to make a good impression, I mopped my face thoroughly with the napkin just in case I had any vestiges of chocolate left on my lips.

The floral demonstration went on much longer than I’d expected, so I had to leave early to get to some other appointments.  Thank goodness I’d been sipping tea, because that meant I also needed to pee.

I ducked into the washroom on my way out, and no; I didn’t have any chocolate on my lips.  But I must have dropped a chunk onto the napkin before wiping my face, because my right cheek sported a giant dark-brown smear.  It was big enough to be easily visible from outer space anywhere in the room; and I’d been sitting there for an hour.  No wonder the other women had given me those odd tentative smiles before turning hurriedly away.

So my face has won another round.  I don’t even want to know what it has planned next, but I’m sure I’ll soon find out.

Please tell me I’m not the only one battling a subversive face…

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

So I’m zipping through the grocery store to grab a couple of things for dinner.  Tired, hungry, and cranky.  Groceries in hand, I waver between checkout lanes.  Which will be faster:  The lineup containing two people with carts piled high, or the lineup containing five people with only a few items each?

I don’t know why I bother wondering, because I already know the answer:  Whichever line I choose will be the slowest.

But wait!  A new lane just opened up, and there’s only one nice elderly lady with a quart of milk and a rutabaga ahead of me!  I slide in behind her, dreaming of home and dinner.

The cashier rings up the order and the little old lady smiles and hands over a twenty-dollar bill.  No coupons, no hassle.

Home free…

“Oh, just a minute,” she says cheerfully.  “I’ll give you the thirty-five cents.”

She rummages through her purse.  Once.

Then twice.

My dreams crash down in disarray.

“I’ve got it right here,” she assures the cashier, extracting her change purse at last.  “Here’s a quarter.  I know I have a dime in here…”  *rummages some more*  “Oh, I guess I don’t.  Well, here are two nickels…  Oh, did I give you another quarter?  Wait, I know I’ve got two nickels…”

Meanwhile, the people in the other lineups have all paid and departed.  I clench my teeth and wonder whether they’d rule it justifiable homicide if I throttled that nice little old lady, who is still excavating her change purse in search of the elusive nickel.

But guess what?  The fates must have a twisted sense of humour, because I just became that little old lady.

I know, I know; I’m sorry!  *flees from enraged pitchfork-wielding mob*

It was an ugly shock when I caught myself digging through my change purse in the checkout line.  I’d like to say I froze in humiliation and immediately whipped out my tap-and-go credit card instead, but I didn’t.  I knew I had two nickels, dammit.

Clearly old age is sneaking up on me.  Six years ago I mentioned that even when I’m looking great I still only look great ‘for my age’.  That seemed important at the time, but now the surest sign that I’m getting older is that I really don’t care anymore.  I’m fine with the way I look, and if anybody else doesn’t like it?  Tough noogies.

But I’m not completely free of vanity.  In fact, I’ve developed a foolproof way to look more youthful:  Forget nips and tucks and lotions and potions – it’s all about geography.  Where we used to live in Calgary, the median age is 36.  In our new area on Vancouver Island, the median age is 66.  So when we moved out here, I was instantly transformed from a worn-out old bag 17 years over the hill to a dewy young thing.  Ta-da!  And it only cost my life’s savings plus most of my sanity!  How often do you get a deal like that?

And hey, maybe now that I’m so much younger I won’t have to hold up a checkout line searching for change again; at least not for another decade or so.

So that’s my two cents worth for this week.  Wait, let me get my change purse…

Better Never Than Late

/ Diane Henders / 23 Comments

Usually I’m a ‘do-it-now’ type, mostly because I have a shitty memory and if I don’t ‘do it now’, I’ll forget about it forever.  Or, if not forever, at least until somebody says, “Weren’t you supposed to have done that last week/month/year?”

But sometimes I know that a task needs to be done, and I just can’t bring myself to do it.  Usually I suck it up and do it anyway after a bit of procrastination, but sometimes… I just… don’t.  Even though I know I should.

For example:

My step-mom lives over 2,000 kilometres away, so I only get to visit her about twice a year.  When I was there a couple of years ago I made cioppino (a kind of seafood soup/stew) for supper.  The leftovers got stashed in the fridge, and the next day I went home.

Six months later, I was back.  My step-mom lives alone, but she has two fridges.  And what did I find, lurking at the very back of the very bottom shelf of the fridge that rarely gets used?

You guessed it.  That bowl of leftover cioppino.  Covered with clear plastic wrap that displayed all its grotty black edges and fuzzy white spots, while sealing in what was undoubtedly the stench to end all stenches.

But I didn’t deal with it right away.  I was only there for a few days, and we were busy.  I forgot all about the Black-Death-In-A-Bowl.  (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

Six months later…

It was still there.

I’m not normally squeamish.  In our household I’m the one who guts the fish, butchers the meat, bandages the wounds, and cleans up the vomit.  But I avoided The Bowl That Shall Not Be Named.  I didn’t even mention it to my step-mom, because that would have meant admitting I had known it was there all along… and then one of us would have to deal with it.

A few days later I cravenly fled home.  Cringing with shame, but not ashamed enough to actually deal with that vessel of festering putrefaction.

Six months later…

It was gone.  I heaved a huge but secret sigh of relief and said nothing.

Later I was yakking on the phone to my niece, who had been out to visit my step-mom just before I’d made my latest visit.  “Yeah, we cleaned out the fridge,” she said blithely.  “There was a bowl in there that was just…”

I burst out laughing.  “That was you?  You finally dealt with the bowl?”  I confessed the whole sordid story and added, “I just couldn’t bear to open that up and wash out the bowl.  You’re a better woman than I.”

She started laughing, too.  “No, I’m not.  I buried it.”

“Buried it?  Bowl and all?”

“Yep.  I just carried the whole thing out behind the shed and dug a hole and put it in.  I nearly puked when I covered it over and it squished up through the dirt…”

By then we were crying with laughter.  Dang, I wish I’d thought of that solution a year ago!

So, tomorrow I leave for my step-mom’s again.  By the time I arrive she’ll have read this and I’ll have to offer my abject apologies; but I can’t promise I’ll never do it again.

And I think cioppino is permanently off the menu.

What your finest example of procrastination?

Oh, Deer!

/ Diane Henders / 54 Comments

Last week I mentioned that mice were infiltrating our house; but we’re also keeping a hostile eye on the deer that are zeroing in on our garden.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I like deer… in venison pepperoni, with a side of fries…

I’m kidding.  (Okay, not really; venison pepperoni is delicious.  But unless I was really hungry I wouldn’t bother killing a deer just for pepperoni.)

Anyhow, when we bought our beautiful little corner of the wilderness we intended to put an 8’ deer fence around our garden.  That was supposed to have happened a couple of months before the garden was planted, but despite our persistent efforts we still don’t have a fence.  The contractor might finally get it started next week.  Welcome to Island Time.

Fortunately there aren’t many deer around our place, but every now and then one wanders in… like the one I caught grazing on the grass (fortunately not on my peas or beans) this weekend.

I opened the front door and yelled, “HEY DEER, GET LOST!”

The deer stared, and a thought bubble appeared above its head:  “What the…?”

“I SAID GET LOST!”  I strode purposefully toward the garden, expecting the deer to run as soon as it saw me leave the house.  After all, its counterparts in Alberta flee at the barest glimpse of a human. But apparently Island deer are braver.  Or dumber, or both.

It stood gawping at me as if it couldn’t quite believe I had the nerve to interrupt its dinner.  And it didn’t run.

Finally when I was only about 20 yards away it deigned to trot a few paces to the west.  Not away from me, mind you, but laterally; giving ground but refusing to stoop to an undignified retreat.

But the deer was the only one burdened with dignity.  I broke into a gallop over the uneven ground, waving my arms and bellowing, “RUN YA LITTLE BASTARD!  RUN!  HRAAAGH!!!”

After a single incredulous glance the deer took to its heels, but it still didn’t run flat-out.  When I started gaining on it, it finally put on a proper burst of speed and vanished over the berm that surrounds our property, undoubtedly to meet its friends in the forest and describe the wack-job that had just chased it.

And wack-job I was; because I had been in the middle of a construction project.  I was wearing safety goggles; my earmuff hearing protectors had gotten tangled up in my hair so they flopped and bounced (painfully, I might add) off the side of my head; and it was hot so I’d tucked my T-shirt up inside my bra, exposing my pasty white belly.

Seeing that apparition advancing, it’s no wonder the poor damn deer didn’t know what to do.  It was probably laughing too hard to be capable of running.  But my garden is still intact.  So far.

I sure hope we get our deer fence installed this week – the snickering from the forest is starting to get to me.

Know of any good deer deterrents (that aren’t rated by calibre)?

* * *

P.S. Woohoo!  I have a draft cover for Book 12, and preorders should be available shortly.  Stay tuned!  But… I can’t decide on a title.  What do you think?

Here’s the draft of the cover blurb:

Reluctant secret agent Aydan Kelly is posing as an arms dealer when her gangland buyer is implicated in a deadly plot to attack Remembrance Day services. 

Partnered with an agent she can’t trust, Aydan races against time to stop the terrorists; but her partner’s volatile temper might blow the whole op… if it doesn’t kill her first.  And when she discovers her lover is embroiled in the case, Aydan must decide:  Will she sacrifice him to save hundreds of innocent lives?

Have your say: