Black Ice

People might go on and on about springtime in Paris, Chloe Underwood thought as she walked down the street huddled in her coat, but there was really nothing to compare to winter in the City of Lights. By early December the leaves were gone, the air was crisp and cool and enough of the tourists had left to make life bearable. In August she always wondered why on earth she'd chosen to pull up stakes and move three thousand miles away from her family. But then winter came, and she remembered all too well.

It might have helped if she could have abandoned the city to the tourists every August, as all the French did, but she'd yet to find a job that included such luxuries as vacations, health care or a living wage. She was lucky she'd managed to find work at all. As it was, her presence in France was quasi-legal, and most days she decided just being there was blessing enough, even if she shared a tiny walk-up flat with a fellow expatriate who seemed to have very little sense of responsibility. Sylvia barely remembered to pay her half of the rent, she'd never swept a floor in her life and she considered any piece of furniture or flat surface a place to leave her astonishingly large wardr ... read full excerpt from: Black Ice ebook