Sheer Pressure
Two privileged thirty-year-olds struggle to establish their identities apart from family and funds, falling into illicit love that could spell their salvation or ruination.
“A newly pressed tuxedo and suave demeanor were all Alex needed to breeze uninvited through the staid Park Avenue lobby and into the elevator. Looking the part had never been his problem. Deep inside his chest, however, like a small, expanding balloon, was a sense of impending doom. In an effort to calm himself, he took several long breaths. The cabin delivered him directly into the gilded foyer of the de Lapalisse apartment, where he slipped into the party unnoticed …
Peeking around a puffed silk sleeve as if it were a duck blind, Alex searched among the glittery crowd for Emily. When he caught a glimpse of her sitting down, his heart went haywire, though through the swarm of socialites he couldn’t get a look at her face. What he did see stiffened his spine; flanking her like sentinels were Charles and the bodyguard. Alex hadn’t expected the bodyguard to be present at such an occasion. Apparently, Charles wasn’t taking any chances. The goon looked like a heavyweight wrestler and was probably packing heat … The defenses around her were formidable…Clearly, Alex wasn’t going to get all the answers he sought, but he was confident that Emily’s eyes would reveal something. They couldn’t lie to him, even if they tried.“
Sheer Madness
Sheer Madness picks up where its prequel Sheer Pressure leaves off, only on higher octane and with higher life-and-death stakes. It follows the evolution of Alex and Emily as their once scandalous love affair feathers its way into the Upper East Side Manhattan mainstream jungle. That is where their lives really begin and where the reader learns who they really are and what they’re made of.
“When it came to forgiveness and gratitude, he knew he was a soft touch. He felt that holding grudges only made one ill. Never before, however, had his capacity for forgiveness been so severely challenged… All Alex could be sure of was that his boys were the center of his existence. As much as he intrinsically believed in keeping families together, was one morally beholden to be miserable for the rest of one’s life, to swallow a spouse’s heinous betrayal and treachery? Nobody should be obliged to live under those conditions, and doing so would only set a damaging … model for his kids. The more Alex tried to accept accountability for his own contribution to this debacle, the more his brain became a swirling hodgepodge of conflicting shoulds. Trying to think for everyone … he realized that he could control only so much. All that mattered in the end was how he felt, how he wanted to live his life, and who he wanted to live it with. The rest would fall into place as God willed … When he and the boys got home, he silently packed his bag and got out of the house as quickly as possible, to be with his own thoughts, map out the future, and finally call his own shots.“
