Kindle Edition Download to your Nook (eBook) Amazon Tina Martin's Website Category:  Romance Publisher: Xpress Yourself Publishing ISBN-10:  0984527389 Type: Fiction Pages: 328 Copyright: January 1, 2011 ISBN-13: 9780984527380 The novel that asks the question, can a man and woman be best friends?  To onlookers, Tiphani Water and Reggie Howard’s close, platonic friendship is enough to make people believe that a man and woman can be friends and nothing more. But when Tiphani has a dream about Reggie the night before their college graduation, she can no longer lie to herself. She has deep feelings for her best friend – her best friend who sort of knows that Tiphani has a crush on him. Her best friend who plays on her emotions to manipulate her. Her best friend who has a girlfriend.  When Tiphani goes on a blind date with Derrick Brooks – a charming, good-looking marketing executive – they hit it off and she suddenly isn’t spending all of her time daydreaming about Reggie. Jealous of Tiphani’s new relationship with Derrick, Reggie abruptly ends his relationship with his girlfriend with sole intent of stealing Tiphani away from Derrick. He comes up with every reason why Derrick is not right for his best friend. In his eyes, no one is good enough for her – only him. Still, Tiphani presses forward with her new man, keeping Reggie on the backburner, but her strong feelings for Reggie just won’t die. What’s a girl to do when she loves two men?  Another Man’s Treasure is an emotionally-charged novel packed with great intensity and heartbreak. It is a story about not appreciating the one you have until you see them in the arms of someone else.  Excerpt Prologue It’s dark out. Here we stand alone, his large hands engulfing mine easily, our feet meshed in warm, damp sand. I love it here, love this place, just as much as I love him. He moves closer to me; our bodies touch. “Look at me, Tiphani,” he says, his voice deep and strong, enhanced by the wrestling waves behind us. I stare into his eyes, see his essence through them. I see the man I’ve loved all of my life. “Is this what you want?” he asks smoothly. The warmth of his breath catches a tropical wind that kisses my jaw, loops around my ear and sends a sudden chill down my back. I turn away from this intensity, thinking to myself how much I love this man, how I’ve given him so much power over me by freely handing him my heart. I want to answer him. I want to scream to the entire universe about how much I love Reggie. I love him with such passion, the very thought of him makes my spirit joyous. “Tiphani,” he says in less than a whisper. I close my eyes, wiggle my hands from his grasp, throw my arms around him, and rest my chin on his shoulder. “Yes,” I say, staring off into the Atlantic via the shores of Virginia Beach, admiring how even at this time of night, the beauty of this place is still abundantly clear. The way I feel about Reggie is even clearer. “Baby, I need to know if this is what you want.” “Yes, Reggie. I’ve always wanted this. I love you so much,” I confess in tears, and at the very moment I cry, it begins to rain as if I brought it on by my own emotions. We don’t scramble for shelter. We stand there, in a trance, our faces wet with precipitation. Water saturates my hair, dribbles down to my lips. “I want it too,” he tells me as a raindrop rests on the tip of his nose. He kisses me softly, steering my head in whichever way is convenient for his aims, grabs my hair so tight, he’s able to wring heaven’s tears from my strands. I taste the rain as our lips slam together, but that’s no disturbance to our realization that we belong together. This moment – the moment when true loves becomes apparent, the moment when nothing else in the world matters, the moment when we knew we were made for each other – this moment is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Reggie lays me down on the sand. Rain continues to fall but we’re completely oblivious to the elements. Reggie doesn’t speak, just stares at my body as if this is the first time he’d seen me in a two-piece “I love you,” he says. “I always have,” he feels the need to add on, though I need no further convincing. I know he loves me. He lines kisses on the base of my neck, suck beads of water from my chest. I quickly look from side to side to see if anyone is here, witnessing this intimate moment. No one is around – just us, the sand, the ocean, rain, and heaven. He brands my stomach with his lips. I close my eyes to capture the feeling, then study him as his body shields me from the rain. Reggie looks at me, smiles briefly, then is right back at it, giving my belly button attention it’s never seen before. My body twitches as his tongue run laps around my navel. I flicker my eyelids quickly trying to prevent rain from splashing in them and that’s when I hear a loud banging sound disturbing our perfect night. I turn to the left. Nothing. To the right, nothing. No one is in sight. Just us. I’m uncertain if Reggie hears it too, or if he just doesn’t care at the moment. His focus is on me. The noise is becoming increasingly louder, more annoying with every passing second now and just as Reggie pulls the string on my bikini, I wake up. “Ahhh!” I grunt in agony, apparently awakened by the loud party at the apartment next door. It honestly pains me to know that this is only a mere dream, a figment of my imagination, a product of my subconscious mind. Reggie still doesn’t know how I feel about him. I scream into my pillow, slam my head against it a few times then glance at the clock. It’s just a little after midnight. Getting back to sleep won’t be easy. See, tonight for me is Graduation Eve and no, there’s no confetti falling from the ceiling, champagne bottles poppin’ or party anthems warbling in the background – it’s just me. Here I lay alone, tossing and turning in my queen-sized bed in the pitch, black darkness of night pondering over my big moment. I’d rather be finishing my dream about Reggie – my best friend. We are actually graduating together from the same college, same major. But skip all that for now. Let me tell you how edible, (I mean incredible) this man is. In my eyes, Reggie is perfect, though some would call him arrogant (only because he was just that flyy). He’s beautiful and to me he looked just like the R&B artist Trey Songz; same bone structure, same sexy lips, same slim, athletic body. He was very much into sports back in high school (which would explain the small scar on his right jaw) and could effortlessly pick me up without breaking a sweat. I loved his strength. His beautiful skin tone reminds me of a Dove candy bar – brown, creamy and tempting from far away with some unexplainable force that makes me want to consume pieces of it at slow intervals to make it last longer and to buy myself more time to savor every bite. I often imagine Reggie would taste of chocolate. It scares me how much I need him. When Reggie isn’t around, I feel nervous and jittery, like an alcoholic going through detox. I need a dose of him to make it through my days. And just being with him is my equivalent of taking a stroll on the beautiful beach I love so much, Virginia Beach, the city I call home. Eighty degrees, blue skies, puffy white clouds, squawking seagulls and roaring, tranquil ocean water – it’s my addiction. So is Reggie, and though I admire the touch of water, the beauty and its peaceful serenity, I quickly realized that as much as I love water, it doesn’t love me back with the same fervor. Water is not alive in that it can feel my passion for it. Water doesn’t know I need it to extinguish the flames burning in my heart. Water doesn’t know I cannot live without it, just like Reggie doesn’t know I can’t live without him. One day, he will.

What Do You Do When You're In Love with Your Best Friend...?
On the outside, Tiphani and Reggie have a solid platonic relationship; on the inside, each of them is burning with a secret desire for the other. When Tiphani hooks up with Derrick, though, she soon finds herself moving away from her old friend as her budding feelings for her new man begin to deepen - much to Reggie's chagrin. Afraid of losing the only woman he's ever truly loved, Reggie sets about the task of convincing Tiphani that she really belongs with him - but will his efforts ultimately prove too little, too late...?

Throughout the pages of Another Man's Treasure, author Tina Martin invites the reader to consider the tenuous boundaries of platonic friendship. Though some may claim that a man and a woman can truly remain friends, Reggie and Tiphani ultimately prove to be the exceptions to that rule as they struggle to suppress their deeper feelings for one another. Perhaps the most salient lesson to be learned from Martin's engaging tale is never to hold back how you truly feel for someone - lest you lose the chance to act on those feelings someday. As Reggie soon discovers, there truly is no time like the present to express your love for those who mean the most to you, and the reader can only hope that the strength of his desire is enough to outweigh Tiphani's urge to embrace a new love. An enjoyable read.