Or, as we say in Scotland, I dinna understand ye eedjits
And I definitely dinna understand the crazy mother-in-law of my cousin Declan. Who in their right mind names a wee dog Chuffy?
I’m stuck in New York after ma agent makes a bloody mess of an otherwise good endorsement contract for a sports towel company, and this crazy American holiday–Thanksgiving–is in two days.
The invitation to spend it in Mendon, Massachusetts, with the Jacoby family is about as appealing as rotten haggis. As far as I can tell, Thanksgiving is about stuffing yerself silly, watching pathetic American “football,” while fighting with relatives ye only see once a year.
If I wanted that last one, I’d head back to Scotland, where we dinna need a holiday to be salty to each other.
Ma firm answer is nae.
Until I remember Amy is part of the family.
Suddenly, I’m available.
Eager, even. Perhaps she’ll pull ma wishbone. I hear that’s part of the Turkey Day festivities, aye?
What I canna admit, though, is how she pulls ma heartstrings, too.
Which shouldna feel better than the wishbone, but it does.
And here comes Amy’s mother with another holiday tradition, this one a bit early.
A sprig o’ mistletoe, dangling right above Amy’s bonnie head.
He’s been in his birthday suit on sports magazine covers. Done endorsements for regional breweries and energy bars. I know from Declan that he’s close to making it big.
He’s already big.
My eyes dart to his feet.
How big is he?
Heat fills me at the thought, a combination of self-loathing and desire. Which is nothing new for me when it comes to Hamish McCormick.
Why did he have to be here? Now? Of all times, when Mom has a broken leg, Declan’s brother Terry is filling in for her as yoga instructor, and we’re already in disarray? I’m finally finishing my MBA, working another co-op at a venture capital firm. My last one was disrupted by scandal after the high-profile associate gunning for partner turned out to be married to a massive conman. I think I might have gotten my new co-op just for my potential gossip supply.
But my life is smoothing out now. It took me eight years to earn my bachelor’s, but with Declan’s help, the MBA has been full time, which is so much easier. I’ve told him straight out I don’t want any favors, and I refuse to work for Grind It Fresh! Or Anterdec. No nepotism.
Though I’ll certainly network and accept help making connections.
I’m on the cusp of a new life, moving into adulthood at last. I finished a major project yesterday, excited for the Thanksgiving break. I was at the gym, fresh off submitting my group work to our professor, when Dad called about the –
Well. You know.
And now Mom and Dad broke her leg and half their bedroom, my sisters and I have to manage Thanksgiving dinner from scratch, and I can’t stop ogling Hamish’s backside.
That’s too much input.
“Let go of troubling thoughts,” Terry says in soothing, deep dulcet tones as we do triangle pose, our breathing syncing with slow movement. Hamish’s arms stretch out and down. He has muscles on top of muscles, with fine ginger hair all over his arms, darkening as it tapers to his wrists. When we all go into a partial squat, his hamstrings pop like cello strings under his skin, each tiny muscle and tendon in stark relief across a body I could watch forever.
Too bad he has the emotional maturity of a hedgehog.
And that might be giving him too much credit.
“Fine form,” Hamish whispers to Shannon, who blinks fast.
“Thanks. I’ve been doing yoga on my lunch breaks. Even fifteen minutes makes a difference.”
“Aye. People think it’s about doing long workouts but smaller amounts of time really do add up.”
Insane–they’re driving me insane. How can they just idly chat like that while every inch of my skin is on fire? Every breath turns into a proto-orgasm as I watch him stealthily.
Or maybe not stealthily enough. He turns around, catches me watching, and winks.
I hate this. I hate reacting to him like this. I hate that he knows he’s doing this to me, and he revels in it. I hate that he’s so smarmy and overconfident and…
Tantalizing.
I’m going to assume that when all the blood in my body rushes to the surface of my skin and between my legs, it means my IQ drops a bit; lack of oxygen to the brain is the only explanation I have for finding him so attractive. This is a purely physiological response, driven entirely by evolution.
This is not my fault.
He’s big and strong, and his physicality signals virility and protection. Biology is an amazing science, its processes optimized to drive us to reproduce.
My blushing, my throbbing, the zings running across my arms and legs–it’s just electrical impulses, a response shaped over hundreds of thousands of years to produce the right outcome: hot, sweaty, reproductive activity to repopulate the earth.
It’s really just that simple.
I don’t emotionally desire this guy. Not one little bit. My heart isn’t attracted to Hamish McCormick.
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Julia Kent writes romantic comedy with an edge. From billionaires to BBWs to new adult rock stars, Julia finds a sensual, goofy joy in every contemporary romance she writes. Unlike Shannon from Shopping for a Billionaire, she did not meet her husband after dropping her phone in a men’s room toilet (and he isn’t a billionaire). She lives in New England with her husband and three sons in a household where the toilet seat is never, ever, down.
A haunting in Santa Fe will either reunite Ghost Healers, Inc. or disband the group forever.
When Ellen decides to buy a fixer-upper in an art community in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she’s reassured by the realtor that nothing evil has ever occurred there. What she doesn’t know is that the bridge near the back of the property is notoriously known in the town as Suicide Bridge. As she and her friends try to uncover why so many people have taken their lives there, they are shocked by what they find. Can the reunion of Ghost Healers, Inc. untether the troubling spirits near Ellen’s fixer-upper, or will their discoveries be too much for them this time?
When her name was called, Ellen followed her massage therapist, Kelly, to one of the private rooms in back. Kelly didn’t look much younger than Ellen, but she was in amazingly great shape, and her skin glowed. She wore her brown hair braided, and bangs swept across her pretty, brown eyes. Her summer dress tied around her neck and was backless, exposing three interesting tattoos. One of them read, “STAY HUMANE.”
The room smelled of lavender and was dimly lit with candles. Soothing music played overhead. The massage table was covered with fresh linens.
“You can hang your clothes on the hook behind this door,” Kelly said. “I’ll be back in just a moment.”
Ellen undressed and hung up her clothes. Then she climbed onto the table on her stomach and covered herself with the top sheet. She put her face in the donut pillow and closed her eyes. She had dozed off when Kelly knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Ellen said, drowsily.
As Kelly started on Ellen’s back, Ellen sighed and sunk more deeply onto the table, relaxing the muscles she didn’t know she’d been clenching. Not wanting to fall asleep and miss the massage altogether, Ellen decided to start up a conversation.
“I just put an offer on a house here in Santa Fe.”
“Congratulations,” Kelly said. “You’ll love it here. I’ve lived here for over thirty years, and I wouldn’t move for anything.”
“Well, I’m not actually moving here,” Ellen explained. “I’m buying it for a studio retreat. I’m an artist. I paint.”
“How nice,” Kelly said. “What kind of art do you make?”
“Mostly portraits and landscapes. Whatever inspires me. I’m not a serious painter. It’s more of a hobby.”
“And in what area are you buying?”
“It’s on Luna Circle, right behind the Frank S. Ortiz Dog Park,” Ellen said. “In the Casa Solano Subdivision.”
“I know the area well. I take my dogs to that park every weekend. Is it the house by Suicide Bridge?”
Ellen stiffened. “What’s Suicide Bridge?”
Kelly moved her hands down Ellen’s back. “I didn’t mean to make you anxious. Try to relax. I’m sorry I mentioned it. I just thought that the real estate agent would have had to disclose the information.”
“What information?” Ellen asked.
“There’s a bridge between the dog park and a house on Luna Circle that’s been for sale for ages.”
“Is it an old steel bridge across a narrow ravine?”
“Yes.”
Kelly worked her way up Ellen’s back, but it was hard for Ellen to enjoy it, because now she was anxious about the bridge.
Kelly massaged beneath Ellen’s right shoulder blade and said, “Over the years, it’s become known as Suicide Bridge, because, for whatever reason, that’s where a lot of people have gone to take their lives.”
“What do you mean by a lot?”
“It seems like someone does it every year for as long as I’ve lived here. I would guess over fifty people have died there.”
“How sad. I wonder what it is about jumping from that bridge. Why there?” “They don’t jump. They hang themselves.”
After earning her Ph.D. in English and teaching writing and literature for over twenty years, Eva Pohler became a USA Today bestselling author of over thirty novels in multiple genres, including mysteries, thrillers, and young adult paranormal romance based on Greek mythology. Her books have been described as “addictive” and “sure to thrill”–Kirkus Reviews.
Supernaturals around Portland are turning up dead. I’m next … if the vampire I just made a powerful bond with doesn’t kill me first.
Magic is in a short supply for a half-witch like me, which makes things very difficult when I’m bound by a blood promise to avenge my parents.
With no leads left to follow, I make a bargain with a demon for help. Bad decision. The quest the demon sends me on binds me to a vampire named Killian, a half-mad, half-naked monster who hates my guts almost as much as he longs to drink my blood.
Killian swore to kill all witches on sight, but we agree to work together to solve the murders ravaging the city. He despises me, and I can’t stand him… but there’s an unexpected connection between us, something I can’t help but be curious about.
No, I can’t let anything distract me. Not even a hot and enraging vampire who presses all of my freaking buttons. I’m determined to find my parents’ killers, and stop the chaos taking over the supernatural world.
“Why? What happened?” I glanced around. “Did you see something?”
“Just stop the car,” he practically snarled.
After a quick glance to the side mirrors, I pulled over. “What is it?” I asked, worried. Had he seen something?
“I can find my way.” Killian opened the car’s door.
“Wait, what?” I stared at him, confused. “How are you going to find your way?”
“I can feel the box’s pull from here. I’ll be able to find it.”
That didn’t make much sense. “What happened? Why aren’t you going with me?”
He turned to me, his green eyes shining dark in the gloominess of the car. “Because after seeing so much blood, my senses are high and demanding. Because I can see you want to ask more than I’m willing to talk about. And because being in this car with you and your scent is torture right now.”
His gaze fell to my throat.
I swallowed hard.
Without another word, Killian got out of the car, closed the door, and zipped away in the dark of night.
I stood there for a minute, holding on to the wheel, and trying to wrap my head around what had just happened. Hell, I kept forgetting Killian was a vampire. A predator. A practiced killer.
And just now he had craved my blood—again.
I should be glad he had left. But for some reason all I felt was as if I had been abandoned.
While Juliana Haygert dreams of being Wonder Woman, Buffy, or a blood elf shadow priest, she settles for the less exciting–but equally gratifying–life of a wife, mother, and author. She resides in North Carolina and spends her days writing about kick-ass heroines and the heroes who drive them crazy.
