Adele Fergus switched back to her maiden name with plans to never look back—never think about her naïve, short-lived marriage to James Montague. But that was before he turned up on her Wanaka doorstep with her missing diamonds, a crazy back-story, and persistent requests for visitation with his ex-stepdaughter.
Adele’s hell-bent on keeping James at arms-length, but it’s not easy with old attractions still running hot. What’s more, she’s beginning to suspect she may have left him on false information.
Divorce was never in James’ game-plan, so when his ex-wife’s jewellery comes to light, he’s drawn back to her—welcome or not—and he isn’t leaving until he has all the answers.
The more the exes re-learn to trust each other, the more they come to realise someone was intent on dragging them apart from the very beginning. Someone close.
“Don’t move,” she whispered, sure if he touched her, they’d both go up in smoke. “Not a goddamn muscle.”
Groaning at the order, clearly not within his own game-plan, James nevertheless re-laced his fingers securely out of harm’s way. The action left his arms akimbo, torso at Adele’s mercy. To make sure it stayed that way, she brought her hands up to press his tensed forearms into the cushioned leather.
Adele hadn’t meant to make a sound, but it was with a whimper her mouth touched James’. Soft and tentative—the antithesis of the last time these body parts had met.
And oh, oh, oh. The taste of him, the bittersweet memories of all they’d been, and all they’d gone through.
James remained a non-threatening participant through all of it—meeting Adele at her own pace without pushing for more. He let her pick her own way through the sadness of loss to the bliss of the physical realm, where each breath was a miracle of exquisite sensation.
Each whisper of lip against lip ignited an explosion of light against the back of her eyelids.
A.J.…Her James, and the goodbye kiss she’d never allowed herself.
Her breath hitched on a single sob, and she pulled back from him, blinking away the wetness. Realising how tightly she was gripping his arms, she released them too, noting the colour flowing back into her white fingerprints with a strange sense of detachment.
Not a good idea, after all. Not the least bit smart. Rather than smother something, that kiss had re-lit a whole bag of Tom-thumbs. Not only could Adele see it burning in the intensity of James’ eyes, she could feel it fizzing and pulsing through her own body with a heat akin to pain—like freshly warmed blood to long-cold extremities.
Award winning New Zealand contemporary romance novelist and short story writer, Stephanie Ruth lives in the South Island, Te Waipounamu, with her husband, three children, and an ever expanding array of animals. If it doesn’t have a happy ending in some form or other, Stephanie’s not writing it.
A tyrant occupies the Fae Palace and the only woman who could stop him is hiding in Kentucky, drinking wine with a Milton scholar. But that might be a good thing.
Sabrina, a small-town academic, spends her days teaching and hanging out with the kind but somewhat mysterious best friend she met a few years ago. Her life is steady, maybe even a little dull. Until her friend’s family arrives. Suddenly, Fae is no longer a fictional place. Magic is real. And, oddly enough, Sabrina’s knowledge of a 1634 play may hold the key to saving Nin and her realm.
Nin landed in Kentucky after escaping her captor, the tyrant she once loved. The human realm is calming for her, with moments of joy, but she hates how she hides who and what she is from Sabrina. When Nin’s family unexpectedly arrives at her greenhouse, a series of events force her to share her secrets and grapple with her place in Fae — past, present, and future.
Sabrina and Nin must trust in their friendship, themselves, and John Milton’s Comus to survive in Fae and save the realm from ruin. If they cannot, terror and destruction will reign far beyond the Fae Palace gates.
She needed a plan, but she had nothing. Nowhere to go that she could easily reach. No one was near to help. Even if they were with her in this place, or she could miraculously find The Falls where her family now hid, being around her was a danger in this moment because of her uncontrolled magic and the forces that stalked her from the Palace. She missed her old home, she missed the Palace from before, she missed her family and her Queen and her ideals of love now horrifically dashed. She had missed her magic, and now it frightened her because she knew not how to rein it in at this moment. So much to do, to think, to remember, to fear, to hate. Too much. All too much. She finally gave it voice, scrunching her tear-stained face and releasing a scream so fierce and desolate, so filled with magic and loss and pain, that when she caught her breath afterward, she saw her wail had literally ripped a hole in the night air.
Another forest poked through, wild in its own right but smelling of strange soil, utter stillness, and, oddly, a hint of humanity. She approached the split with wonder. She knew of no one who had ever torn through the veil of the realms with only a scream, no spellcraft or intention. But it was just what she needed. A spell was traceable — formal magic scented the air, lingering long after casting and making it easy to follow. Her magic in that moment seeped everywhere, pouring out of her in a continual stream without a definitive ending point or anchor. Comus could not trace this type of magic, mostly because it was something new and unknown. Wouldn’t even consider the possibility of this wild, unwieldy magic because it was something far beyond his own power and therefore inconceivable to one such as him. No one in Comus’ power could come close to figuring this out, either. None of his lackeys had even the hint of that type of power because Comus liked to always be unquestionably the best and most powerful in any room.
Gin could do it. Maybe Mother. They could possibly find her again. They would be the only ones she would want to find her, as defeated and disgraced and dangerous as she was. It was her out, her way to save herself and the rest of Fae. After making up her mind, she slipped through the tear in her reality.
From the other realm, surrounded by new trees and earth and air, she watched the hole in the night heal itself without her intention. Knowing she was in the human world, untouchable by hate or love, apart from all she knew for good and bad, she felt adrift, but also relieved. She did not know this place or the people who inhabited it, yet it did not matter. She was safely away from Comus and utterly alone for the first time in years, her only companion the dense, cold, untouched forest. She breathed a sigh before laying on the leaf-strewn ground and introducing herself to this other earth.
Sonya Lawson (she/her/they) is a recovering academic currently writing fantasy and other forms of speculative fiction. While she remains a rural Kentuckian at heart, she currently lives in the Pacific Northwest. She fills her days with writing, editing, reading, walking old forests, and watching sitcoms or horror films. You can find more information about current projects and upcoming releases at www.sonyalawson.com.
In part two of this extraordinary love story set in the hot, humid, summer of the wide-open mid-west, egos and emotions collide. Andy and Rooster find their romance in peril when job-related stress, injuries, and extraordinary weather conditions interfere with their relationship, both at work and at home.
Andrea has come to understand working outdoors in inhospitable climates and is thriving in her role as assistant bending engineer. She and Rooster have moved in together and are starting a new job. Although exhausted, Andy is glad to be working with Grandpa Buck again, even though it limits her time with Rooster. She’s missed the other hands too, and she is very curious about the new coating foreman; an intelligent, confident, and independent young woman. So is her friend, Nick. Andy also finds herself befriending a neighbor at the RV park, the wife of a welder on the line. Seeing a girl her age as a mother has Andy wondering about her own future. Could she manage to pipeline and be wife and mother too?
As always, pipeline construction is interrupted by delays, fraught with fatigue, and contingent on the weather. Caught up in a world of egos, Andrea and Rooster struggle to maintain their workload while finding time for each other after hours. When a serious on-the-job accident tips the scale of leadership, Andy and Rooster are thrown into conflicting positions. If stress at work, little time for love, and their reputations in danger wasn’t enough, Andy’s parents show up to complicate things further. Rooster is determined to prove himself capable of his new position, and Andrea isn’t about to let Buck down; will their fledgling romance pay the price? The couple has their horns locked in battle and they can’t let go, but they need each other, especially now. Both will have to make sacrifices and take a chance on ruining their credibility in order to stay together.
One joint of pipe was now exposed, but it still lay in a soupy mess and was quickly filling up with water. Two hands slogged out to the pipe, sinking in well past their knees, in preparation to put a belt around the pipe.
“Get a pump over here!” Rooster hollered, and two hands took off at a trot to comply.
The hoe operator hooked a tooth of the bucket in the end of the pipe and lifted, but to everyone’s horror, the weight of the pipe caused the hoe to tip precariously in the mud.
“Let it go!” Rooster hollered. “You’ll have to lift it from up here on the mats.”
It was no easy feat for the hoe to get back up onto the mats. It had to use its bucket for leverage and lift itself out of the muck hole. But soon enough it was stable on the mats and everyone returned their attention to retrieving the pipe.
In the meantime, more trucks had pulled up and men from assorted crews stood watching. Everyone was curious. Included in the group of onlookers was the farmer who Rooster had talked to the morning before. The old man grinned and tipped his hat; it was his way of reminding Rooster that he’d warned him about the mud.
Rooster glanced at his watch. This was taking forever. If they had to go through this for every joint of pipe, it would take forever. Of course, he’d called for more hoes and equipment to help with the work, but by setting up the pipe where it was unstable, he had messed up, and he had no one to blame but himself.
The hoe bucket reached out and once again, down into the hole, while two hands, now almost waste deep in mud, waited with a sling. Slowly, the hoe managed to lift one end of the pipe out of the mud.
A pickup truck worked its way through the mass of workers and stopped nearby. Rooster wasn’t surprised to see Ol’ Louie climb from the driver’s seat. Of course, the boss would want to see the nightmare situation his assistant had created. But Rooster was completely caught off guard when the passenger door of Louie’s truck swung open and Janet gingerly stuck out one pink sandal clad foot to test the mud-smeared mat.
“Now what?” Rooster moaned, his eyes scanning the crowd for Andy. This was the last thing he needed. He stomped over and nudged Andy with his elbow. “Handle your mother, will you?”
Andy’s mouth fell open at his audacity.
Several of the hands turned to stare at the new arrival as she closed the truck door and brushed off her dress. Women on the right-of-way were rare, but a woman in a bright pink dress was unheard of.
One of the inspectors lowered his safety glasses for a better look.
Janet picked her way across the mats with Louie by her side, holding her elbow. The old man left her with Andy and then moved away to speak with Rooster.
Brushing at the mud on her arm, likely from Louie’s truck, Janet adjusted the borrowed hard hat that had slipped to one side. She squinted through her loaner safety glasses toward the pipe that was raising from the hole, dripping and covered in mud. “Well,” she huffed, “that seems strange.” She turned to Andy. “Why do you dip the pipe in mud?”
Kirsten is a dreamer with an eye for art and design. She worked in the engineering field, taught college, and consulted free lance. Due to health problems, she retired in 2012 to travel with her husband. They live and work full time in a 40′ travel trailer with their little dog Bingo. Besides writing romance novels, she enjoys selling art on Etsy and spoiling their three grandchildren.
As a writer, Kirsten’s goal is to create strong female characters who face challenging, painful, and sometimes comical situations. She believes that the best way to deal with struggle, is through friendship and women helping women. She knows good stories are based on interesting and relatable characters.
