[Moonlight & Oranges Blog Tour] An Excerpt

About Moonlight & Oranges

Moonlight and Oranges

by Elise Stephens

A timeless tale of young romance.

Lorona Connelly is ready for a change from her carefully planned, bookish life. When sparks fly at a costume party, she embraces a chance for romance with the handsome Kestrin Feather. However, she quickly realizes that even love and destiny may not be enough to overcome the reality of an overprotective mother-in-law and Kestrin's long, tarnished history of relationships.

When Lorona's curiosity leads her to Kestrin's journal, doubt plagues them both with insecurities and threatens the relationship. Can true love overcome the odds, or was their whirlwind romance just a frivolous crush? Author Elise Stephens shares a journey of young love, fate, and wounded trust in the story of Lorona and Kestrin, a couple who must learn to overcome their fears to share a life together.

An Excerpt

He was coming to see her. If she wanted to keep Yuki out of it, she’d have to avoid walking past her door where the squeaky floorboards lurked.

So now I’m planning a clandestine late-night rendezvous.

Lorona wanted to beat her head against the wall. The next moment she wanted to laugh. Was he coming to say something so wonderful, he could only say it in person? She caught herself checking her hair in her mirror and stopped, surprised.

Get control of yourself.

But the next moment she was smiling dopily at her reflection. She promised herself she wouldn’t change her clothes for fear that Kestrin would think she was putting on a show for him.

He could talk to her just as she was if he was so excited to see her, Lorona decided with a firm nod.

She remembered the meteor shower, wrapped her bathrobe around her t-shirt and pajama pants, and pushed her window open to crawl onto the fire escape. Yuki wouldn’t hear her if she never passed the other bedroom.

The stars in the sky hung still in a frigid sky. The moon stretched bright and full and contented. The swing set in the playground in the park hung motionless. Everything in the world

was holding its breath for him. She willed herself to stop shivering, wondering where her overabundance of fever had gone.

She didn’t notice the car pull up, but she heard its door slam and his walk across the gravel parking lot. There was a noble, proud curve to his spine. He had both hands balled around something he held in front of his chest. His black dress shirt was loosely buttoned and his jeans were torn at the knees. They might have been the same pair he’d worn at the restaurant earlier. He shook, not like a person who was afraid, but like a man who’d gotten used to the crazy rock

of a ship on the sea, and then tried to walk on land. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he was in a storm at sea and didn’t know which way was up. Lorona smiled. Either way, she’d done this to him.

When he drew close enough for her to see his face, he turned his eyes up very slowly, deliberately, almost reverently. He opened his hands to reveal a small navel orange, glowing like a tiny sun.

Kestrin felt his teenage asthma, absent since soccer days, return in violent force as he watched the maiden descend her tower.

Lorona’s hair glistened in the starlight as she glided down the fire escape and crept toward him. He felt the pale moonlight wrapping him in gossamer strands, tugging him toward Lorona as she moved haltingly over the gravel in bare feet, gasping quietly. He wanted to pick her up or take off his shoes and make her wear them, but he had the feeling that any quick movement toward her would make her frighten, fly away, and vanish like a dream.

But that was just it. She was part of his dream. She was part of his fate. These weren’t things that evaporated. By the time Lorona was close enough to take the orange, Kestrin’s mouth was sandpaper.

“I keep craving these things like crazy,” he croaked as she took the orange. The line would definitely not have made it onto the list of top ten most romantic things to say to a woman.

At least I’m not stuttering or drooling.

He added, “I bought a whole crate of these wholesale from the

restaurant. They think I’m—”

“I finished a whole carton of orange juice the night of the party,” she interrupted, smiling with encouragement.

“Lorona, I—” he stepped forward, unable to keep still.

She drew back, eyes wide, and clutched the orange. She was nervous, but something tied her here.

Kestrin smelled orange oil and, with Lorona standing right in front of him, it was impossible to avoid reliving the kiss. He’d relived it a million times just to give himself courage for this moment.

What if she says no?

He shoved the thought away and mentally kicked it down.

“Lorona,” he began again, his voice softer. “I came to ask you something. This orange craving is driving me insane. I think it’s more than us both simultaneously deciding that we have a new favorite fruit.”

She nodded. Her breath was quickening and hiccupping, almost like she was crying, but her eyes didn’t tear up.

Kestrin thought of her kiss on the night of the party, strangely fervent for a sober, never-been-kissed, good girl. There was a passionate woman lying trapped somewhere beneath, like an exquisite red dress stuffed into an old oak chest and bolted with a lock. But as he watched her standing there, looking just as scared and moonstruck as he probably looked to her, he was sure he was seeing a scrap of the red dress again. It would resurface if he could tug gently. If he yanked, it would tear and be ruined.

Don’t mess this up, a voice in his head snapped.

If it’s fate, do I even have the option of messing up? he shot back.

His legs buckled and the skin on his kneecaps was bleeding into the gravel. He looked at her hair. Her long braid was coming unraveled. She was unbelievably beautiful and he was sure she wasn’t trying.

“Kestrin, what are you doing?” she whispered.

About Elise

Elise Stephens received the Eugene Van Buren Prize for Fiction from the University of Washington in 2007, where she also received her degree in Creative Writing. Moonlight and Oranges is her first novel and was a quarter-finalist for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

She lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband where they both enjoy swing dancing, eating tiramisu, and savoring the flavor of local live theater.

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