Excerpt from A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

You got this, she thought, feeling calmer. Get gritty. Get scrappy. But don't give up.

As she perched on the ground, something on a small teak plat-form glinted and caught her eye. Brushing the dirt off her hands, she walked over to investigate. It was a plaque.

THE SITE OF EDEN LOUNGE CABARET
1927–1929

STAR-STUDDED NIGHTS, WORLD-CLASS MUSIC, ERA-DEFINING STYLE.

THE PARTY ENDED TOO SOON WHEN AN ELECTRICAL FIRE DESTROYED THE NIGHTCLUB, INFORMALLY MARKING AN END TO THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE ERA—WHEN BLACK BRILLIANCE CAPTIVATED THE WORLD.

Ricki read the last line out loud. She thought about being Black in the '20s, facing unfathomable obstacles and still flexing on the world. If Josephine Baker could go from being a thirteen-year-old divorcée eating out of Saint Louis garbage cans to a Broadway superstar in five years, why was Ricki crying? Her biggest prob-lems were that she bruised easily and lacked closet space.

And that was when she noticed the undeniable fragrance: the sweet, heady vanilla almond of night-blooming jasmine. It wafted over her, carried on a chilly breeze. Sigh. It was her favorite scent. She'd recognize it anywhere. Ricki followed the walkway to a lush bed of jasmine where the delicate white and yellow flowers were crawling up a garden wall.

Transfixed by the nocturnal blooms, she almost didn't register the feeling of being watched. But then it hit her. She spun around and gasped, clapping a palm to her mouth.

A figure stood in the shadows.

He was tall and powerfully built. Chunky shearling coat, char-coal jeans. His features were cut from granite, with an impossible jawline and a stern, commanding brow, but then there was the sensual surprise of his mouth. It gave his chiseled masculinity a vulnerable, lush softness. The effect was mesmerizing.

Jesus Christ, he's beautiful, she thought, unabashedly staring. He'd be beautiful in any era, anytime, anywhere.

Then Ricki caught the blazing intensity in his expression. She froze. It was something beyond surprise, beyond shock.

The man looked terrified.

Ricki felt a punch of emotion in her chest almost knocking her off her feet. This moment was important. She didn't know why, but it was. She didn't know him, but she did. The hairs on her arms prickled, and every cell in her body jolted to attention. Her brain went haywire with images too vague to grasp. She was reeling. All the secret places she hid herself felt exposed. She stood before this man, this glorious stranger, and felt utterly naked. Laid bare.



A thrilling, throbbing sense of inevitability surged through her, and then she realized she felt as terrified as he looked.

He must've felt it, too.

But before she could ask, he was gone. As swiftly as if he'd never been there at all.

And Ricki was left standing alone in the garden, clutching her pounding heart.

Thoroughly thunderstruck, she realized only later that the mys-tery man wasn't the only reason she'd left the garden feeling so unsettled. The scent of night-blooming jasmine made no sense. The plant flowered only from July to October. And it was winter.

February 1.

Adapted Excerpt from A LOVE SONG FOR RICKI WILDE by Tia Williams. Copyright © 2024 by Tia Williams. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.