Afterburn

Book excerpt: Finding love isn't easy and keeping love is even harder—especially when everyone seems bent on trying to destroy it. When Washington, D.C., chiropractor Yardley Brown goes to his local bank, it isn't only to make deposits into his account. He has long since accrued some interest in Rayne Waters, a bank employee who's too beautiful to be true—and too beautiful to be single. At least that's what Yardley believes, which is why he has never approached her. Little does he know that Rayne is anything but taken. Not for want of trying, of course. But after barely surviving a dating disaster with her hairdresser's brother and then falling for a member of her church band, she's on the verge of giving up. That is, until Yardley—discouraged by his own slew of dead-end romances—finally works up the courage to give her a try. But the true craziness is just beginning, thanks to a cast of characters who seem bent on botching the young couple's relationship. There's Rayne's erratic mother, Yardley's playboy buddies, always trolling for sex, and past lovers who make a habit of popping up to ruin things as only old flames (or previous mistakes) can. Weaving the carnal and the comical in true Zane fashion, Rayne and Yardley's struggle to find love in a world gone mad is a timeless talk about everything that can go wrong in the dating game—and a few things that can go right.