Football player Sloan ‘Willow’ Williams has been looking for The One for years. He’s checked all the right places—and some of the wrong ones—and found sh*t all. But the moment he sees Eden Jade Cartwright, he knows she’s the girl for him.
Unfortunately, her entourage won’t let him anywhere near her…
Eden doesn’t want anything, aside from an international music career. She does, however, enjoy being worshipped, which the giant redhead seems inclined to do. But with a world tour beckoning, now isn’t the time for a boyfriend…
Willow has the perfect solution; a short, fake relationship that will boost Eden’s clout and scratch both their itches. Only he’s hoping the beautiful blonde will keep him around. And Eden’s praying she’ll be able to let him go…
First and Forever is a standalone romance by the critically acclaimed author Eve Dangerfield.
There was nothing inside but a wide wooden staircase. Putting a hand on the bannister, she climbed. Classical string music was playing softly from somewhere, the sound sending a shiver down her spine. She paused at the top of the stairs. There was another, albeit polished, wooden door and fixed to it was a plaque.
Dr Sloan Williams
Physician
The Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh
Eden peered at the plaque. It looked real. She touched it. It was real. It was a wooden plaque with Willow’s name written on it in gold, saying he was a doctor. He wasn’t a doctor, was he? No, that was stupid. But surely, he hadn’t gotten it made just for—
Inside the room, a chair scraped. Eden’s heart jolted.
Stop thinking about the plaque and go inside.
With a shaking fist, she knocked on the door. There was a pause.
“Miss Cartwright?”
Heavy footsteps on the floorboards, then the door swung open to reveal Willow. He wore a white coat and suspenders, and his red hair was neatly combed back.
“Hi, I mean… hello, Doctor.”
“Good afternoon, Miss Cartwright.”
She hadn’t misheard. He was speaking with a soft, Scottish brogue, and as he looked her up and down, there wasn’t any recognition in his eyes. He might have been seeing her for the first time.
Eden’s face burned. “My, um, father sent me to see you?”
“Of course. Come inside.”
He gestured behind him to a wood-panelled room. Eden entered, her heart thumping. The space looked like a dance hall with dusty floorboards and wide windows. In the middle of the room stood what looked like a supermarket massage chair, covered by a sheet. In the corner she saw a wooden desk, scattered with paper and adorned with a vase of daffodils.
“Sit in the chair,” he directed.
Eden moved toward the centre of the room. As she sat, Willow—Doctor Williams—studied her with faint interest. His gaze lingered on her breasts and he glanced away, his fingers knotting together. Eden saw a fat gold wedding band on his left hand and her stomach contracted. Was he married?
Her face heated as she realised she was being stupid. Of course, he wasn’t married. His character was. The thought, along with how good he looked in the white coat, had her fighting back a smile. It was game on.
“Would you like a glass of water, Miss Cartwright?”
God, that accent. It made Eden want to call off this charade and pull his face between her legs. She tried some showmanship of her own. Clearing her throat, she adopted her mother’s cut-glass English accent. “No, thank you.”
A faint smile creased Willow’s lips. “Very well. Try to relax. This isn’t an interrogation. I’m here to take care of you.”
Eden’s mouth went dry. She wished she’d accepted the glass of water.
The doctor paced the floorboards, hands behind his back. “Your father tells me you’re having trouble at home.”
“I… I suppose so.”
“What kind of trouble, Miss Cartwright?”
Again, Eden tried not to smile. In real Victorian times, her sister Sienna would be ‘Miss Cartwright.’ She’d be ‘Miss Eden’ until Sienna got married—
Don’t think about that.
She leaned back in what she was now positive was a massage chair. “I don’t know, Doctor. I find it hard to concentrate. I sleep lightly and I’m distracted all the time.”
Willow strode to the edge of his desk and sat on the corner. His coat opened to reveal a fitted shirt, tight enough that Eden could see his pecs.
“Are you lightheaded?” he asked.
“Occasionally.”
“Moody?”
Eden didn’t answer. Yes. Her father thought she was moody. Everyone in her family had thought she was moody because she had more than one mood. Cheerfulness, fake or otherwise, was the only acceptable emotion in the Cartwright house.
“Lass?” Doctor Williams’ voice was edged with impatience. God, this motherfucker could act.
“I suppose I am moody,” she offered.
“Do you cry often?”
Eden hadn’t cried for years, but that probably wasn’t in keeping with her character. “Almost every night.”
He nodded curtly. “Your father is also concerned that you aren’t expressing any interest in young men who are coming to visit you.”
He said it straight-faced, without so much as a gleam in his eyes, but Eden’s cheeks burned with the understanding she and Willow were really, actually playing doctor.
“I-I don’t know how I’m supposed to be around men,” she told him.
“A lot of women just enjoy being looked at.”
Eden gazed out of the nearby window, ignoring the modern buildings, the airplane she could see passing over the city.
Eve Dangerfield has loved romance novels ever since she first swiped her grandmother’s paperbacks. Now she writes her own stories about complicated women and gorgeous-but-slightly-tortured men. Her work has been described as ‘genre-defying,’ ‘insanely hot’ and ‘the defibrillator contemporary romance needs right now’…and not just by herself or those who might need bone marrow…OTHER PEOPLE! She lives in Melbourne with her boy and a bunch of semi-dead plants. She can generally be found making a mess.
According to Hollywood insiders, Harper and Brett Kennedy have the perfect family life—an image that has been carefully cultivated by an army of PR experts at Galaxy Studios. The truth is, their relationship has been on the rocks since Brett cheated when Harper was pregnant with their youngest child. Four years later, he’s still cheating, but this time with the nanny.
When the tabloids find out, a media frenzy ensues, all but making Harper and her kids prisoners in their Pacific Palisades mansion. Needing time out of the spotlight to regroup, Harper rents a cabin in the last place the press or anyone else would ever think to look for her—Gamble, Alaska.
There, she finds peace, solitude, and Digger McKenzie. Will the gruff lodge owner, who goes out of his way to make Harper feel like she doesn’t belong, realize he’s about to miss out on his one chance at happiness? Will Harper’s kids adjust to small-town life and heal from the chaos of their parents’ separation? Will Harper learn how to shoot a bear?
Find out in the deliciously funny and dishy first installment of the Love is a Gamble Mom-Com Series.
As the old folks say, it’s on like Donkey Kong! My manicurist’s street-sweeper’s garbageman saw Brett Kennedy boarding a plane for—wait for it—Alaska.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that reunion. Will there be a reconciliation? Tears? Accusations? Someone on his knees begging for forgiveness? Whatever the scene, I’m sure it was epic.
A teensy bit of advice for Brett: If your angel wife decides to take you back, you might consider offering to have yourself chipped—via the animal shelter.
A little advice for Harper: Gurl, my mama always said, if you lie down with dogs, you’re gonna get fleas. She also said something about not eating where you poop, but I’m not sure that’s relevant here. All I know is that if you take him back, you’re gonna need to wear a flea collar.
I’m going to go lie down and meditate now. I’m going to visualize sweet Harper in a bubble of protective light. She’s surely going to need it in the days ahead.
Dishingly yours,
Ferris Biltmore
Harper
My old life feels like it’s a million miles away. Pulling in front of the diner, I turn the ignition off and sit quietly, trying to focus my thoughts. I take slow, deep breaths, endeavoring to feel myself in my body. But at this very moment in time, I can’t. My life seems unreal to me, like I’m playing a character in a movie.
I read somewhere that’s how grief makes you feel. It’s almost like your soul has been transported out of your skin. It just kind of hovers around you, not quite connecting. I naively thought I could outrun it by coming up here, but apparently, it’s not possible to leave your feelings at home when you board a plane, especially when your husband—aka your problem—follows you. This new phase, of actually having to hand the kids over to Brett, is almost too brutal to bear.
Grabbing my purse, I get out of the cab of the truck and head into the diner. The restaurant is empty, so I find a booth and sit down.
Moira waves from the table she’s bussing. Once she drops a load of dishes into a bussing tub, she comes over to me and sits down. “Honey, it sounds like you had some excitement this morning. It’s all the boys could talk about when they came in for lunch.”
“I’d almost forgotten about the bear,” I tell her. My mind has been fully on my idiot husband showing up.
As if reading my mind, she says, “They also mentioned Brett.” She reaches across the table and takes my hand. Giving it a squeeze, she says, “I’m sorry. That can’t be easy.”
If anyone knows how hard life can be, it’s Moira. Raising three kids on her own while working crazy hours at her diner, I can’t even imagine. “I shouldn’t complain. It’s not like I’m the first woman who’s gone through this.”
“You know the problem is with us strong gals?” she asks while leaning back. Before I can answer, she tells me, “We’re constantly telling ourselves that we shouldn’t complain. We shouldn’t feel bad. We shouldn’t be human. It’s all a load of horse poop, if you ask me.” She slaps her hands against the tabletop hard. “We have got to cut ourselves some slack occasionally.”
“Call me crazy,” I tell her, “but I get the feeling you don’t practice what you preach.”
She laughs bitterly. “No time. But I promise you, when the twins go off to college, I’m going to close the diner for a month and let myself have the biggest pity party that’s ever been.”
“That seems like a long time to wait. What do you say we have that girls’ night we were talking about and feel sorry for ourselves tonight?”
Nodding her head, she strolls over to the door and turns over the “Closed” sign. “Let’s do it.” She walks over to the kitchen window and tells her cook, “I closed up a few minutes early, Lloyd. Go home to your wife and I’ll see you in the morning.”
She comes back to me. “Let’s go over to my place. That way I can put some supper on the table for the kids and give them at least a sense that they have a parent left.” She takes off her apron and throws it on the counter.
“I can’t even imagine how hard it is to raise the boys on your own. You’re doing a great job though. They’re good kids.”
“It’s sure not the childhood I wanted for them,” she says, opening the front door for me.
I wonder again what co-parenting with Brett will look like. It’s my guess he’ll make the time he spends with our kids one big party while I’m left with the job of actually raising them to be decent human beings. “Should I follow you?” I ask.
“I usually walk to work, so I’ll ride with you, if you don’t mind,” Moira says while heading to the truck. Once we’re in the cab, she adds, “So, did that brother of mine drive you crazy?”
I’m not sure how exactly she means that, so I kind of stumble over my response. “Um … no? I mean … I don’t know. No, I mean no.” Good lord.
“So, no?” She laughs loudly.
“He really went above and beyond for us and I’m very grateful. He’s wonderful with the kids.” What else can I say without tipping my hand that I kissed the guy?
There is only one hybrid fae in existence, and that dishonor goes to Lane Callaghan.
After a life spent dodging slurs, threats, and assassination attempts, Lane gave her past the one finger salute and ditched her former fae home for good. The detective agency she and her sisters run on the edge of Las Vegas continues to limp along, with Lane doing more debt collecting and intimidating than investigating, but anything to pay the bills. Between working for low-lifes to bring down even lower-lifes, eating cheesy poofs by the bucket, and flirting with the criminally attractive bartender where she conducts business, life is good.
That ends when a routine job goes sideways, leaving Lane with a sack full of stolen sun shards—the source of sun fae power. Without the shards, the sun fae face giving up their magic completely, or risk death if they use their power. Considering they would rather see her dead, good riddance, as far as Lane’s concerned—except her father and adopted sister are sun fae. Lane must choose—return home to save the fae bastards that almost killed her, or let them burn.
The salty, buttery scent of popcorn filled the house. My favorite soft blankets were piled on the plaid sofa I refused to part with. On the television screen, unnaturally beautiful men and women wearing barely there beach attire and drinking champagne were frozen mid-toast on some tropical beach. My sisters’ bantering voices floated in from the kitchen. Something tugged in my chest, and I blew out a shaky breath. Stars, I didn’t deserve them, and I’d spend every day making sure they never regretted following me from Ta’Vale.
I padded across the wooden floors to the river rock fireplace where the broken arm of the sundial hung above the mantle. My pulse thumped in the base of my throat. Iola said she carried me to my family. I’d never considered what my family suffered seeing me unconscious, impaled on a four-foot length of petrified wood.
Reaching up, I traced the bright red streaks of my lifeblood preserved beneath a thick layer of clear shellac. After the accident, I wouldn’t let them throw it away, and I wouldn’t let them clean it. Instead, I’d insisted on having resin laid over the evidence of my almost-death. Never forget.
They call me monster, but it’s monsters who haunt my nightmares, hands slamming into my back, the inexorable tilt over the side of the sun bridge, the moment of breathlessness when my feet still touched something solid as my body fought the inevitable grip of gravity. The screaming wind against my face, and the ground below rushing to greet me.
The microwave door banged. Seconds later came a curse, and I winced as a piece of our dishware shattered on the floor.
“Y’sindra! Those bowls are too big for you,” Mae screeched. “That’s two this week. I swear I’m replacing everything with plastic.”
“No, it’s not too big, the counter’s slippery.” Their bickering voices overlapped one another, shoving the bitter memories to the back of my brain. I took a deep breath. It was good to be home.
S.L. Choi is an urban fantasy author with a deep love for humor, fast-paced action, and hit-you-in-the-heart feels. She grew up imagining goblins living in the rocks outside her bedroom window, while fairies flew through the flowers. Now she puts those stories to paper. When not writing, she is either photographing the beautiful New England area, hiking, gaming with her equally nerdy husband, or attending to the small furry overlords who rule them both.
