RELEASE TOUR: Too Close To Home by C.F. White (Excerpt)

RELEASE TOUR: Too Close To Home by CF White

Length: 456 pages 
Series: Whitton and Black 1 (first of an ongoing trilogy)
Prior Reading: n/a
Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Romantic Suspense
Tropes: Cop x Cop-Hater, Widowed Detective x Hot-Headed Ex-Con, Age Gap, Forbidden Attraction, Hurt/Comfort, Trilogy-long Slow Burn
Trigger/Content Warnings:

• Missing persons / child disappearance
• Kidnapping and abduction
• Imprisonment / captivity
• Violence and physical assault
• References to historic violence
• Grief and bereavement
• Death of a spouse
• Suicide and discussion of suicide
• Suicide bereavement
• Police investigation and discussion of violent crime
• Child endangerment
• Threats and intimidation
• References to imprisonment and a criminal conviction
• Family trauma
• Parental neglect / difficult parent-child relationships
• Discussion of a long-term unresolved disappearance
• References to sexual predation / suspected sexual offences

Designer: Kelly Martin KAM Design 

https://getbook.at/TooCloseToHome

Starting over might mean getting too close.

When DI Harrison Black transfers from the Met to the small Yorkshire town of Hartswick, he’s chasing distance—from London, guilt, and the grief of losing his husband.

He expects a quieter life.

Instead, within hours of his arrival, a seventeen-year-old girl vanishes on a woodland path, plunging Harrison straight into a case with a chilling echo. Thirteen years earlier, another young woman disappeared from the very same place.

Robyn Whitton was never found.

Her brother Jake never stopped looking for her. 

Roofer. Drummer. Ex-con. Local troublemaker with a temper and absolutely no faith in the police, Jake Whitton is everything Harrison should keep at arm’s length. He’s also fiercely loyal, infuriatingly persistent, and determined to involve himself in Harrison’s investigation whether Harrison likes it or not.

Which would be considerably easier if Harrison weren’t becoming far too interested in the man behind all that anger.

Jake knows better than to trust a copper. The police failed Robyn. Then they failed him. And DI Harrison Black, with his quiet authority, wedding ring and grief he wears like armour, should be the last man capable of getting beneath Jake’s skin.

Except he does.

Jake knows how to want a man. He’s far less comfortable with wanting one to stay.

As a present-day disappearance drags Robyn’s cold case back into the light, Harrison and Jake are pulled closer together, blurring the line between professional and personal. Because Harrison isn’t only getting dangerously close to a man connected to his investigation.

He might finally be getting close to the truth.

And in a town that has kept its secrets for thirteen years, someone will do anything to make sure they stay buried.

For Harrison, getting too close could cost him his career.

For Jake, it could cost him the answers he’s spent half his life searching for.

For both of them, it could cost far more than they’re ready to lose.

Too Close to Home is Book One of the Whitton & Black trilogy, a gritty MM romantic suspense featuring a widowed detective, a hot-headed ex-con roofer, cop × cop-hater tension, age gap, forbidden attraction, forced proximity, hurt/comfort and a slow-burn romance that develops across all three books.

EXCERPT:

Harrison pulled in behind the patrol car and killed the engine. Beside him, Calder shifted forward to peer through the windscreen. 

“Balls.”

Harrison followed his gaze to where a man stood beyond the cordon. Arms folded tightly, work boots planted in the mud, shoulders rigid beneath a hoodie. Heavy-duty reinforced trousers suggested he was a tradesman. Not police. That and the filthy boots spattered with the sort of muck that said he’d come straight from a job rather than wandered over for a look. 

Harrison somehow couldn’t take his eyes off him.

Dark curls fell to his shoulders, damp from the mist and frizzing around a face that could have been on magazine covers. And there was a restlessness about him. Not nervous. Angry. As if every part of him wanted to get beyond that tape, and he was using sheer force of will to stay where he’d been told.

Definitely not police.

Probably local.

And, from Calder’s reaction, definitely someone Harrison was about to become acquainted with.

“Comes with the territory.” Harrison unclipped his seatbelt. “We’ll have onlookers.”

“That’s not just any onlooker.”

Harrison glanced back at the man on the verge and collided with a pair of eyes staring straight back at him through the mist. Christ. They were intense. Deep blue. Direct. And Harrison felt the impact of that stare somewhere low in his stomach. It was that same stupid, disordered flip he’d felt earlier on the phone. Unwanted then. 

Even more inappropriate now.

He shut it down before it could become anything worth examining and reached for the door handle. “Who is he?” 

Calder let out a long, weary sigh. “Whitton.” 

Harrison rolled the name around in his head. It tasted as if he already knew it. Then he noticed the van sidled half up on the road. White Transit, not a patrol vehicle or forensics. The block lettering along the side gave it away: Whitton Roofing and Repairs.

“Roofer?” 

“Aye.” Calder narrowed his eyes out the window at the onlooker. “And Hartswick Police’s resident pain in the arse.” 

about the author:

CF White writes gritty British based stories about imperfect men falling in love against the odds and has been accused of sprinkling a bit of humour into them from time to time too. Because what’s life without sprinkles?

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