Prescott Lane | Have Dessert First

Have you ever gone to a fancy restaurant and ordered dessert first?

About a year ago, my husband took me to Commander’s Palace for dinner. Known for its flowers, splendid food, and wine, the restaurant is a landmark in the Garden District of New Orleans. We’d been before, and each visit is a treat.

But this time was extra special. We were celebrating our wedding anniversary. Plus, we got to sit in the Garden Room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows showcasing huge oak trees. I’ll always remember this time -- and not just because it was romantic -- but because I ordered dessert first!

Commander’s Palace has such great desserts, like so many other places in New Orleans -- pralines (“praw-leens”), beignets (“ben-yeahs”), bananas foster, bread pudding, doberge (“dough-bash”). Oh my! I didn’t want to wait two hours for dessert.

So when the waiter came by, I ordered a praline parfait, which is hand-crafted ice cream with candied pecans and praline syrup. The waiter looked at me like I had three heads, but no amount of judgment was going to stop me. It was going to be my first course.

While devouring the divine dessert, I remember having an idea for a book. A broken young woman named Peyton runs a pie shop in New Orleans, and her world turns upside-down when a handsome architect and self-confessed player comes into her life and thinks she’s perfect.

I don’t know whether it was the dessert itself that triggered the idea, or whether it was that I ordered dessert first. But either way, over praline parfait in the Garden Room of Commander’s Palace, my current novel PERFECTLY BROKEN was born.

If you can’t make it to Peyton’s pie shop or to Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, I’d highly recommend you check out some recipes for New Orleans’ famous desserts. You never know what will happen if you do!

Don't wait for this sweet treat; buy your copy of PERFECTLY BROKEN today!

Even after years of trauma therapy, Peyton still believes she’s broken. She has little desire to date or show off her natural beauty, content simply to hang out with her best friends and run her pie shop in New Orleans. But her world turns upside-down when a handsome architect and self-confessed player shows up in her shop and thinks she’s perfect, much more than the usual hook-up.

While Peyton does her best to resist his charms, believing she could never be enough for him, she can’t deny the obvious heat between them. With Reed determined to have her, Peyton must decide whether to continue to hide behind her apron and baggy clothes or take a chance and share her scars with Reed, a man with a playboy reputation and scars of his own -- a dark past he can’t possibly share with Peyton, not after learning the horrors she’s endured. But if they can find a way to trust each other, and themselves, they just might be able to heal, to save each other, to live perfectly broken together.

About Prescott Lane

Prescott Lane is the author of FIRST POSITION and her new release, PERFECTLY BROKEN. She is originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, and graduated from Centenary College with a degree in sociology. She went on to receive her MSW from Tulane University, after which she worked with developmentally delayed and disabled children. She married her college sweetheart, and they currently live in New Orleans with their two children and two crazy dogs. Prescott started writing at the age of five, and sold her first story about a talking turtle to her father for a quarter. She later turned to writing romance novels because there aren't enough happily ever afters in real life. Visit her online at her website, Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.