Excerpt & Giveaway: Cocktail Hour by Tara McTiernan

Title: Cocktail Hour
Author: Tara McTiernan
Published: March 11, 2013
Publisher: Bramblevine Press
Purchase: Amazon

What if your friend, someone admired, envied, and fervently sought after by everyone who knew her, was really a dangerous sociopath? Spring in glamorous uber-rich Fairfield County, Connecticut is a time of beginnings: a new diet for the approaching summer spent out on the yacht, fresh-faced interns being offered up at the office as the seasonal sacrifice to the gods of money, and corporate takeovers galore. Five women in their thirties have a brand-new friendship, too, one that fed and watered regularly at local hotspots over cocktails. With all of their personal struggles - Lucie's new catering business is foundering due to vicious gossip, Kate's marriage is troubled due to an inability to conceive, Chelsea's series of misses in the romance department have led to frantic desperation, and Sharon's career problems are spinning out of control - the women look forward to a break and a drink and a chance to let their guards down with their friends. And letting their guards down is the last thing they should do in the kind of company they unknowingly keep with the fifth member of their cocktail-clique: Bianca Rossi, a woman who will stop at nothing to have it all.

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Sharon spun on her heel and stalked away through the crowded bar, slowing and turning sideways to edge through groupings of strivers when they blocked her path. She was going home. She'd call Chelsea once she got there to explain. The company directory with her co-worker's phone number on it was in her work folder filed under 'T' in her home office's filing cabinet. She'd take some Advil for her headache after all.
Pushing through yet another cluster of men near the door, she almost slammed right into Chelsea, who was posed by the door, hip cocked, in another one of her expensive-looking outfits.
Chelsea's expression, a manufactured one of disdain and oh-so-coolness, brightened and became more natural seeing her co-worker. "Sharon! There you are!"
Sharon, stumbling to a stop, raised her hands up, palms out. “I’m sorry, Chelsea, but I’m out of here.”
Chelsea’s face crumpled, her lower lip popping out. “No! But…I was so excited to hang with you? Please? Pretty pretty please? With sugar and ice cream on top?”
Sharon shook her head, but felt herself giving in just looking at the girl she had grown to genuinely like. Under the blond bimbo exterior was a smart girl whose whip-sharp observations regularly caught Sharon off-guard. At the same time Chelsea had a sweet and helpless side, reminding Sharon of a little wide-eyed kitten. Chelsea had "help me" written all over her, her good heart being her biggest weakness and making her target for the users in the world. She brought out Sharon's protective instincts. “Oh. I don’t know. Okay. One drink. One. Then I’m out of here.”
“Goody-goody-goody!” Chelsea said, bopping up and down and bringing her hands together to patter them quickly against each other in a mini-clap.
“Okay, don’t get too excited. I’m not that much fun.”
“Oh, yes you are! You are the coolest. All right. Now we have to get a drink. I’m buying. Well, unless we can find some gentlemen here who want to buy them for us,” Chelsea said, straightening up and trying to put on the cool act again unsuccessfully, one eyebrow arched as she peered at crowd around the bar.
“No way. I’ll buy my own drink, thank you. I just had a very unpleasant experience I’d like not to repeat.”
“What? What happened!”
“Please. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just go to that end of the bar,” Sharon said, pointing at the opposite end of the bar from where Dean, her neighbor and freshly-minted arch-enemy, was sitting.
“Really? You don’t want to talk about it?”
“Trust me.”
“Okay?” Chelsea said in a doubtful voice and shrugged. “I want a strawberry daiquiri. I wonder if they make those here? And you’re letting me buy you a drink. I dragged you out here. It’s the least I can do.”
“Fine. Just no men.”
“You’re funny,” Chelsea said, shaking her head wonderingly while starting to move ahead through the crowd, staring at particularly handsome men and turning her head quickly when they glanced her way.
“I’m a regular laugh-riot,” Sharon said wryly, following.
Once they had their drinks, Sharon at last holding her anticipated martini and Chelsea holding a raspberry-flavored cocktail that was the closest thing to a strawberry daiquiri that the bar offered, Chelsea raised hers in a toast. “To finally getting together for drinks! At last!”
“Here’s mud in your eye,” Sharon said, raising her glass up and then pouring half of her drink down her throat.
“Whoa! You can really drink that thing,” Chelsea said, her already-large blue eyes growing huge.
“Only when a nail is being pounded right through my forehead,” Sharon said and sighed, feeling the pleasant burning sensation of the vodka hitting her stomach and then spreading like a warm fog through her body.
Chelsea took a tiny sip of her bright-red candied-looking drink that was also in a martini glass. “Mmmm, this is good! Not a strawberry daiquiri, but close. Wait. What? You have a headache?”
“Not anymore. Or I won’t in a few minutes. Nothing like a libation to smooth out the wrinkles of life,” Sharon said and took another sip. She knew she should probably slow down, but it just felt so good, especially after the afternoon she’d had. She would just have this one – she still had to drive home.
Just then it was as if a breeze had passed through the room, a whispering wave of movement. Sharon looked up from her glass to see a striver nearby curling his upper lip with lust and staring at the entrance. She turned to look. A drop-dead gorgeous woman with long flowing dark hair wearing a fire-engine-red dress that hugged enviable curves was poised with her hand on her hip just inside the door. The group of women clustered at the door had all drawn back, as if not wanting to have their attractiveness compared to the woman’s – which was understandable as they would all fall pathetically short.
“Oh! Good!” Chelsea trilled. “It’s Bianca! Now the party’s really starting.”
Sharon turned to look at Chelsea. Chelsea was friends with this arresting and somewhat haughty-looking woman? It seemed an unlikely pairing. “You know her?”
“Sure! We went to Stamford High together. We’ve been friends for…ever?”
The woman had spotted them and was crossing through the packed room toward them, her walk smooth and slinking like a cat’s. The crowd continued to peel back for her, the striver-sea parting. Sharon wanted to shake her head. She’d never seen anything like it: this universal visceral reaction to a person.

Tara McTiernan grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut and spent most of her childhood summers on an island in the Great South Bay on Long Island, New York - both of which has been the setting for her novels, Barefoot Girls and Cocktail Hour, as well as her short stories. She currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her husband, Ash. Visit the author's website at: http://www.taramctiernan.com or check out her page on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TaraMcTiernanAuthor for more information including upcoming book releases and events.

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