Category: Books

Graham Emerson Wolves Release Day ( Final Book In Series ) 12/13/16

Kathi BartonLeave a comment
Ramsey had given up on family and love a long time ago, and the sooner she cut all ties with them, the better off she’d be. She was good with a camera, and as long as no one knew who she was, the daughter of the powerful Ram Stockholm, she could keep her cover intact.
Graham had just finished the construction of his house and was looking for any excuse he could find to stay away from people—that included his large family. But everyone had to eat so a trip to the grocery store was necessary. He didn’t, however, have a mate on his shopping list, but there she stood—injured and panicking.
Graham was about as happy as he could be, until three cops came to his property to arrest him and charged him with murder—now the whole family was in an uproar. Graham’s world was crashing around him, he wanted to marry Ramsey, but not like this…. Can they ban together to prove his innocence before it’s too late? Find out in the final chapter of the Emerson Wolves—Graham.
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B&N PaperBack    http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/graham-kathi-s-barton/1125302337?ean=9781629896076
Do you know what you are to me? She shook her head as he whispered to her. His mouth was doing incredible things to her and she wanted more. Mate? Youre my mate. Do you know what that means?

Her body seemed to come alive at his words. She struggled to pull from him and he let her go, but he didn’t back off. She moved back from him as far as the wall and tried to get her mind to function again. She was not going to be his mate, not any man’s.

You have to go. I won’t bother you anymore if you do the same for me. He moved to within a foot of her and she put up her hands. I don’t want you here. Please, you can’t want me as a mate. I don’tI’m not even sure that this isn’t some ploy to get what you want. Or money. Is that it?’ She looked up at him as he started cursing.

Hunter Emerson and his brothers answered the request of a pack looking for a new Alpha and moved to Sommersville. Since they were all Alphas, Hunter didn
t have a clue that he was the new Alpha until he arrived. It didn’t sit well with him at all that a woman on pack land held herself in recluse and wouldn’t answer and pledge herself to the new Alpha. What she could be doing there on that big estate with no one around to witness, His mind reeled with the possibilities?none of them good. 

Slone Morris had an understanding with the local pack?leave her alone and she’d let the pack stay on her land free of charge. It was as simple as that. She didn’t deal well with people. But the new Alpha in town wouldn’t take Fuck off for an answer.

Slone’s past threatened to rear its ugly head at every turn. There was one?someone she thought she trusted?who didn’t want the past dredged back up. He was determined to stop her at all cost?

Luke Emerson has big shoes to fill. He doesn’t know how to be a Mayor of their small town, but with the help of his assistant, Allen, he is damn sure going to give it a good try. From what little he’s seen of the town government it’s corrupt and he’s bound and determined to do something about it.

When they receive a call that Allen’s sister Jack has been critically injured in a fire, Allen falls apart. His sister is all he has left. 

Luke goes with him to the hospital and as soon as Luke catches her scent, he knows she’s his mate, but the doctor is giving her less than a three percent chance to survive . 



Can you save her?  Luke looked over at Allen, who was staring at his sister. I know what you are. I mean, I think I know what you are. You can’t live in our town and not hear things. Are you?


Am I what? Allen looked at him, and Luke felt as if he were staring at his very soul. Neither of them blinked, and when Allen finally looked away, Luke felt as if he’d been released from a tight hug. You want to know an answer to something, then ask me. I’m not going to assume anything right now.

Luke has two choices: convert her to a wolf, or watch her die. He doesn’t even know her, but he can’t lose his mate he’s just found her. But to convert her without her permission, there could be consequences.
Addison Parker is on the run. No matter how fast she runs, or how far she travels she can’t hide from herself, or the gift she’s been cursed with. She can read people’s minds and with a touch can see into their future. That is a secret that she has learned to keep well?everyone always wanted something from her when they learned what she could do. It’s easier to avoid people all together.

Jarrett Emerson is just helping his dad and brother protect an innocent from a perverted wretch. But when a falling brick knocks Addie unconscious, she falls right into Jarrett’s arms. To his surprise he realizes that she is his mate and human…

Addie felt stupid standing there like she was and moved to the sink. Jarrett watched her before he reached for a second glass. Addie had no idea why, but she thought he was nervous. “I’m not going to pounce on you.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew that she’d made a major mistake. He turned so quickly that she backed up and hit her ass on the counter behind her. He didn’t stop there but took the two more steps to have her leaning back to look up at him.

“I’d like nothing more than to have you pounce on me.” His voice was a soft growl that had her thinking all sorts of things that had nothing to do with food. “You’re very beautiful.”

“No, I’m not.” He nodded and halved the distance between them. “You’re too close. I can’t think when you’re this close.”

Jarrett doesn’t want her to leave. If she goes, he goes with her. That’s the way it is with mates. But when a corrupt attorney has other ideas, the Emersons have to regroup to protect what they now consider their own….
Dawn Whitfield is on the run, and if her uncle catches her this time she knows he won’t just beat her…he’ll kill her. Her best bet is to keep moving, and at all cost keep hidden.

Addie Parker finds the shackled young woman and sets her up in an old house hidden from everything. And that’s where Dawn stays for eight lonely years.

Ellis Emerson is in a rut. He can’t seem to do anything right. He thinks he’s found his mate, but can’t get close enough to her to be sure… And that’s a huge distraction that’s turned their construction job from a week ahead of schedule with a huge bonus, to barely three days ahead. And when Addie asks him to assemble a small crew to fix one of her houses, his foreman, Dan, is all for Ellis getting away for a while.

Ellis finds his skittish mate hiding away in Addie’s home, but will she let her guard down long enough for him to convince her that their destiny is each other? Or will her Uncle Basil step in and finally take her prisoner again? Find out in the next installment of Emerson Wolves?Ellis.
No matter how hard she tried, Kimber Gray always seemed to manage to get knocked back down a peg or two. She was a top rate chef and graduated at the top of her class, but no matter how hard she tried no one would acknowledge it. Now, blackballed in the only profession she knew, she was a failure to the one that mattered most–her daughter, Hannah. With no recourse left to her, she’d have to grovel and beg her aunt for help.

Lee Emerson was glad to be back home for a while. He loved what he did, being a food critic and helping failing restaurants was a dream job come true. But he was tired of the traveling and just wanted to take care of things around the house and relax for a change. 

Slone, Hunter’s mate, wanted to open a fancy restaurant and have Lee run it. He wasn’t so sure about that, but he’d love nothing better than to hire that chef that had prepared the last meal he’d had in France before he left. It was the best meal he’d ever eaten, and he had been disappointed when he found out the man had left before he could tell him so. The slush claiming to cook the meal, wasn’t the cook and he’d bet his last dollar on it.

Kimber had had it. Her aunt had gone too far this time, and there was no way she’d expose her little girl to such meanness again. They’d live on the street first, and she was trying to tell Slone that she wasn’t a charity case. That she could provide for her daughter somehow, when the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen cornered her, snarling that he’d protect her with his life.

Ah, hell no. Who in the hell did he think he was?

EMERSON WOLF SERIES –
 2016
Mystery Signed PaperBacks
So Far  are July 2016
Kerry Erickson
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Robin Dennison
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Aug’s Winners 2016
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Shane’s Release News Letter winners are
Karey Smith
Tracy Kolberg
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Mystery Package Winner
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More Mystery PaperBack winners are
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Oranment & Card Winner 
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For the new winners if you have not gotten your signed  mystery paperback please
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Happy Reading ,
Hello! My name is Kathi Barton and I’m a award winning, best selling author of dark fantasy erotic paranormal romance . I have been married to my very best friend Paul, a potter, for at times seems several lifetimes – in a good way, honey. And together we have three wonderful children and then the ones we brought into the world – Paul and Dale Barton, Jason and Wendy Barton and Danielle and Ben Conklin. They have given us eight of the greatest treasures on Earth. They don’t live at home seven days a week! No, seriously, eight grandchildren – Gavin, Spring, Ben, Trinity, Sarah, Kelly, Kian and Bailee


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www.goodreads.com/author/show/4787929.Kathi_S_BartonFirst signing in 2017

ATTENTION AUTHORS & READERS
Join us for ARC NOLA 2017
Jan 27th & 28th, 2017
Holiday Inn Superdome (Just 3 blocks to the French Quarter!)
Ticket Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/arc-nola-2017-tickets-22804931163

Reader tickets only $15.00 for both days
Book Signing is FREE and open to the public

Author spots still available
Each 1/2 table includes 1 free reader ticket the author can give away.

Where Authors and Readers come together for fun in the French Quarter.

Friday is registration and small group outings into the French Quarter.
Plan what you would like to offer as an outing for the readers.

Saturday
Speed-date the authors in the morning.
Lunch break
Afternoon FREE to the public book signing
Another evening in the French Quarter

Sunday
Travel home

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There are so many incredible restaurants in the French Quarter;
I have left meal options up to the attendees.
Authors may want to organize small groups for lunch or dinner outings.

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Prologue
“I tell you, Ram, that daughter of yours is a hoot. I just asked her what she thought of all this, and she said that the money from what was going to be tossed out when this was over could have fed an entire village for a week.”  Ram Stockholm looked around the room for his daughter. “When did you speak to her? I thought her and Chad had left for their honeymoon already.” There was no way his daughter would say that about her own wedding. At least he hoped not. But she was a little stressed out right now. Christ, they’d spent a fortune on this thing, and to have her upset wasn’t going to happen. Not that his baby girl didn’t deserve it, but to say something like this to William Frank was terrible.  “No, no. I meant Ramsey. To tell you the truth, Ram, I had no idea you had another child, much less one as beautiful as she is. But she’s the spitting image of you now that I think on it.” Ram wondered about Ramsey, his youngest child, as William continued. “Like I said, a beautiful little thing, but a mite outspoken. I’d wondered why you didn’t have her up there with her sister, but I’m assuming that the two of them don’t get along.” “They don’t. Where did you see her go? I’d like to speak to her.” William laughed and pointed to the large open doors at the back of the large room. “Excuse me.” If William answered him, he didn’t hear him. Ramsey wasn’t going to ruin her sisters’ day by complaining about something that was none of her business. But as soon as he stepped out on the deck to talk to her, he stilled. When the hell had she grown up? The dark blue dress she had on made the paleness of her porcelain skin almost glow. With her hair done up in one of those complicated twists, it gave her neck a gracefulness that would make most men he knew drool. She was tall too, Ram just realized, and rail thin. He cleared his throat before going out all the way. When Ramsey turned his way, Ram thought that he’d made a mistake…this could not be his child. “Hello, Dad.”  Ram moved out to stand beside her. He was speechless. Not only was this his child, but she’d grown up before…well, she had. “I just talked to William. He said you were a hoot.” Ramsey looked at him, confused. “William Frank. His son is going to Yale right now. I guess you told him we spent too much on this wedding. Why would you say something like that?” “I didn’t. Well, I did, but not like that. He asked me if I was going to have an extravagant wedding like this in a few years, and I told him no. If I ever get married, I want it simple, and the money spent on all this could go to some charity to feed the hungry. There are quite a few of them right here in our own town.” She looked at him as she continued. “Deidra is pissed at me again.” “Don’t talk like that. You’re not old enough to use that kind of language.” She laughed, a harsh sound that seemed to him like she too was upset. “What did you do to her this time, Ramsey?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew that he’d made a mistake. But the two of them, along with Gregory, their brother, had been fighting since the day that Ramsey was brought home from the hospital, or so it seemed. He just wanted peace and quiet. He never got it when they were all together. And now that he thought about it, he’d not seen them all together in a good long time. Ramsey had been…well, he had no idea where she’d been of late. “First of all, I’m nineteen. Secondly, I didn’t do anything other than to show up here. She seems to think that I’m going to embarrass her because I’m not in the wedding party. And people—her kind, she called them—would ask questions.” Ram started to ask her why she wasn’t in the party, but Ramsey spoke again. “She didn’t ask me to be in it, if you were going to ask me. And when I asked her about it, she told me that I would never fit in. Deidra said that she wanted people in her party that were nice and beautiful, something that I’m certainly not.” “I’ll talk to her.” He would too. He thought this feuding had gone on long enough. “To be honest with you, Ramsey, I almost didn’t know who you were when I came out here. And where have you been hiding yourself? You look lovely.” “Thanks.”  He nodded, then followed her when she moved to sit in one of the chairs that had been brought for people to use. The country club where Deidra’s wedding reception was being held was very accommodating. But he supposed that had to do with his money rather than who he might be. They sat there for several moments before Ramsey spoke again. “I’m leaving, Dad.” He offered to get her a car to take her home. He asked her to tell the butler that they’d be along shortly. When she looked at him with the oddest look on her face, he wondered what he’d said wrong now. He was still trying to get over the fact that she was really nineteen. “I don’t live at home, and I wasn’t planning on going there anyway. I haven’t lived there for some time now. Dad, do you know anything about me? What I do for a living? Where I live?” He was embarrassed that he didn’t know the answer to any of those things. And the worst part of it was, William wasn’t the first person to ask him about Ramsey, saying that they had no idea he had a third child. What have I done? he asked himself. And where the hell had all the time gone? Gregory was the oldest, and had gotten into college on a sports scholarship. He’d been struggling in high school, so it had come as a surprise to know that a college was willing to take him. Gregory had always been more of a player than a scholar. Now he was living at home again, with nothing to show for his six years at a very expensive and prestigious university. Deidra had been, like her mother before her, the prom queen every year since she’d gotten to junior high. Before that she’d been in countless pageants, and had won most of those as well. She was pretty, and vain enough to make them work for her. Now at twenty five she was newly married to a man that Ram didn’t like, and hated to have around for any reason. But his baby had wanted him, and he’d done everything in his power to make sure she had what she wanted…or, he supposed, what his wife had wanted for her. He’d
been involved in their lives. From the time they were old enough to enter things, sometimes even before that, he and his wife Krista had been there for them. But not Ramsey. He couldn’t remember a single moment, sports event, or even a play that he’d gone to for his youngest child. “I’ve never…I’m sorry to say, I don’t know any of those things.” He looked away from her knowing face and continued. “I can’t remember one single play that we attended that you were in. Not a game of any sort that you might have been in. Nor do I remember having any sort of graduation party when you got out of school last year.” He looked at her then. “I’m drawing a blank as to what I got you for your sixteenth birthday. What I got you for your eighteenth or any in-between, and I haven’t the slightest idea what you’ve been up to since you got out of school.” “I graduated from high school six years ago. So no, you didn’t have a party for me. I think that Deidra said it would mess up her summer plans with her friends or something like that. I just finished up my last year of college last month, and I’m nearly done with my master’s degree as well. I moved out when Mom told me to because I was bothering Deidra too much and it was getting on her nerves. That would have been right after I turned seventeen and was nearly finished with college. I work for….” She stood up and he did as well. “It doesn’t matter now. But I’m going away. And…I have a job opportunity and I’m going to take it.” “Going away to where? And what are you going to do for this company?” Her laugh hurt him. “Ramsey, I’m so sorry. I wish I could tell you that I do remember all of this, but I don’t want to lie to you. I feel like this is all my fault. Don’t leave. Please. I’d like for you to move back home and for us to get to know one another. It’s not too late, is it?” “You mean because Deidra is gone now, you wouldn’t mind me being there?” Ram felt as if she’d stabbed him in the heart. But if she thought that she’d hurt him, he couldn’t see it on her face. And it was nothing less than he deserved. “No thanks. I think…I think that after all this time, it would just be an embarrassment for all of us.” “Ramsey, let me make this up to you. Please don’t go like this. I’ve messed up badly, but this is…we’re family, after all.” She only stood there with her back to him. Ram wanted to take her into his arms and hold her, but he didn’t know how. In all honesty, he didn’t remember a single time when he’d hugged his baby. “Will you at least call me sometimes? Weekly?” “I don’t know. I’ll try.” She turned then and looked at him. “My plane leaves at six in the morning. I’ve taken care of my house and all my bills, so there is no reason for you to be bothered by that. And I’ve sold off all the things that I no longer need. So…well, I guess this is goodbye for a while.” As she walked away and out of his life, all Ram could think about was that he’d wasted a lot of his life and hers not getting to know her. It both saddened him and made him hate himself that he’d done this to her. Not just him, but all of them had. Sitting down on the chair again, he thought of all the times he and his wife would talk about Deidra and Gregory. What they were doing. How they were doing in school. Conversations about Ramsey were few and far between. And worse yet, when they did speak of her, mostly his wife, it was about how she was nothing like them and how she’d never fit in
properly with them. That if she were more like her brother and sister, perhaps they’d take her to more places. Ram would never forgive himself.  ~~~ Ramsey drove home wondering if she’d done the right thing. Her original plan had been to simply leave without telling them, but then her dad had come out to talk to her and she’d told him. It wouldn’t be like them to miss her or anything. In fact, she was pretty sure that not one of them would have given her a second thought. But her dad had hurt her, and she thought that she wanted to hurt him back for a change. Well, she was sure she had, and herself as well. Going into her little house, she thought of the cases that she’d packed over the last week. She had no idea if she’d be back here again, but really couldn’t see any reason to return. So what she didn’t put into storage—and she’d stored very little—had been given away, sold, or just donated to whoever had wanted it. Which again, wasn’t all that much. She’d sold her house the week before, and had thirty days to leave before the new owners would be taking it. Ramsey had already sold most of her furniture, and all she had left was the bed that she’d been sleeping in and a single dresser. There were no mementos in the house that she was taking. No pictures of her family because she didn’t have any, and there were no pets in her life. Ramsey had made such a tiny footprint in her life so far, and she was looking forward to making more.  Putting all her cameras away except the one that she’d taken to Deidra’s wedding, she made her way to the darkroom. Her plane didn’t leave until late tomorrow night, but she’d told her dad differently because she didn’t want him to think they could get together beforehand. Ramsey had meant nothing to them before this, and she saw no reason to try and cram a lifetime of conversations and hugs into her last day. Neither of them would be very comfortable with that, and she was pretty sure it would piss off her mother. The woman had never really liked her, not even as a child. Ramsey had long since given up on trying to do something that would get her noticed, and had gone on with her life as if they’d never been a part of it. The pictures that she’d taken at her sister’s wedding were all on a clip, and she ran them through the computer to see which ones she wanted to print. While it downloaded them onto the hard-drive, she went to change into more comfy clothes. Ramsey had no idea if her sister would ever see the pictures that she’d taken, or even if she’d want them. Sending them to her father, she decided suddenly, was the best way to get them to her, and she hoped that he’d at least look. The camera, or what she could do with it, was her passion. Just as she was hanging the last of the prints up to dry, Ramsey heard her phone ringing. Turning on the lights overhead, she made her way to it as she dried her hands. She knew who it was before she picked it up, and decided that as soon as possible she was going to change her number. This guy was a pain in the ass. And if he’d known who she was and who he worked for, he’d back the fuck off. “I just heard that you’re leaving. When did this take place? I’d very much like to have you come in before you leave, Miss Holms. The job that I have for you is still open.” Ramsey looked through the mail as he continued talking, wondering if the change of her
name when she worked was enough to distance her from her family. “I have a noon opening, and also one at two. Which one can I put you down for?” “Neither.” He laughed a little on the other end. Ramsey put the mail, mostly credit card applications, in the trash and pulled a paper bowl from the sleeve to have some cereal. “I really have to go, Mr. Carter. I have things to do.” “Wait. This is the job of a lifetime, Miss…can I call you Ramsey? This is the job of a lifetime. This is a large paper and very prestigious. Think of what doors it could open for you in the long-term.” She didn’t answer him but yawned. “Ramsey, tell me what I need to do to have you come here and work for us.” “There is nothing you can do. I do not want to work for you. I have a job, one that I wanted and worked hard for. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find someone else.” She hung up as he was speaking. Then when she was sure that he wasn’t going to be on the other end, she put a block on his number and sent it directly to her voicemail. He’d more than likely still call and fill up the message box, but for now she was happy.  The stupid man worked for her father, as he owned the paper that Mr. Carter thought she should come to work for. And not only that, but the job that he wanted her to take? She’d been doing it all the way through college to make ends meet. It had always surprised her that not once in all that time had she ever run across her family. After making sure that everything was turned off in the darkroom, she made her way to her room after eating the last of her cereal. The bed wasn’t made, of course, but she didn’t care. Taking the last of her suitcases off it, Ramsey stripped down and laid out on the messy bed. She was asleep almost immediately.  Two hours later she was awake and refreshed. Taking a long hot shower, Ramsey thought of where she might be going. And when she got there, what she was going to do first. Ramsey didn’t have a job to go to like everyone thought. She’d said that to her dad to make sure he didn’t worry. Moot point, she supposed, since he’d not cared before. But she was going somewhere. Ramsey didn’t even have a destination in mind, not really, but she was going to South Africa. And she was going to take pictures of everything. And a lot of them. By six that night she had everything printed and the pictures—which she’d made extras of for her dad—in a box. Affixing a label to the box, she put it near her luggage so she’d remember to mail it. Sitting down on the floor in the kitchen, she tried to remember if she had everything she was going to need. At seven she picked up the last of her things and was headed out the door and locking it up when someone came up behind her. Lucky for him, or maybe herself, she was able to stop herself from knocking her dad on his ass. Ramsey asked him what he was doing there. “I’m a very resourceful man when I need to be, Ramsey. And I realized that if you left today, without me even talking to you once more, I wouldn’t get to see you again. I think…well, you have no reason to want me in your life, but I would very much like for you to try and have me in it.” He took the biggest suitcase from her and put it in his car. “I paid the driver that was here. I’ll make sure you get to the airport on time.”
“Why are you doing this? I thought we cleared things up last night.” She was still standing on her stoop when he came back for the other piece of luggage. “Dad? What are you really doing here?” “How about if we have dinner before you go? I know you have time. We can even eat in the airport if you want. I just…I’d like to have dinner with you before you go. I don’t deserve this chance, and Lord knows that you have every reason to tell me to go to hell, but I need this, Ramsey.” She asked him why again. “Because I need to connect with you, and will take whatever…. No, that’s not quite right. I do want to be with you tonight, but I also wanted to make sure you knew how serious I was about you calling me. I thought…I hoped that I could convince you that I love you.” “I love you too, but this is unnecessary. Besides, I was just going to grab a burger at the airport, then wait for my flight. Dad, what does Mom think about you being here?” When he looked away, she knew. “She told you not to come here, didn’t she? It’s all right, Dad. Whatever she said, I’m sure she was right.” “She said you were trying for attention. You weren’t going anywhere, but acting out because you weren’t the center of attention at the wedding. I told her she couldn’t have been more wrong. You’ve never wanted to be there before. That’s more Deidra’s style, not yours.” He took the box from her and noticed that it had his name on it. “What’s this?” “I took some pictures at the wedding and thought she’d want them. Or you might. I don’t care. I don’t even know why I took them other than I wanted to do it. It was just…I don’t understand any of this.” He laughed, and it sounded so sad that she had to brace herself when the pain tore at her heart. “You should go back home before Mom gets upset.” “She already is. And it’s doubtful that she’s going to be in any better mood from now on.” He shut the trunk of his car and turned to her. “Where are you going, Ramsey? Please let me know that much. Not that I deserve it, but I’d like to know.” “My first stop is in South Africa. The next…I don’t know. I don’t have a plan or a job. I just know that I can’t be here and not be in your lives anymore.” He nodded as if he already knew that. “Dad, it’s all right. I’ve told myself that you had the other two, and Mom has often told me that I wasn’t planned. It’s fine.” “But it’s not. It’s not fine at all. Not for me. I screwed up. Now I want to…I don’t know what I want, but I know that I want to get to know you. Start over, I guess.”  Ramsey looked at the big moving van coming down the street. Going to her dad’s car, she wasn’t surprised that he opened the door for her. He was old world all the way to his little bow tie he always wore. When he got in on the driver’s side, she told him she was ready and they drove off. Ramsey tried her best not to see the van pulling up in front of her little house so they could strip out the rest of her things. The darkroom would be picked up later that day by someone from the high school as a donation to their art department. And that would be it. Everything that she’d been would be gone in a matter of hours. It would be as if Ramsey Stockholm had never been. The trip to the airport didn’t take long. Her dad asked her questions and she answered them. Not anything too personal, she realized, but he was trying. When he
parked, he took most of her luggage and she her carry-on things. He had the box of pictures under his arm, and when she asked him about that, he laughed. “I want to see them while you’re here so that I can tell you what a great job you did.” He laughed again when she told him they might be crap. “Nah, I don’t think so. I found out you’re pretty famous with your camera. I mean, you are R. S. Holms, aren’t you? I had no idea.” “No one does. And I’d like to keep it that way.” He nodded as they made their way through the line to have her luggage checked. “Those pictures aren’t your normal wedding kind of thing. Most of them are candid shots that I had fun taking. You really might think they’re crap when you see them.” “I highly doubt that. You’re quite famous as a photographer, aren’t you? The article I read about you, they don’t know who you are, do they? No one even knows that you’re a female.” She shook her head. “I’m glad I looked. I almost skipped over the article because it said you weren’t who I was looking for. Why did you change it?” “My personal life is just that. Personal. And if I put out there that I was who I am, I think any doors that would have opened for me when I started taking pictures would have been because of your last name. This is all mine, not the family’s.” She wondered if she might have hurt him again, but he smiled at her. “I wanted to do this on my own, and I did it.” “You certainly did, and I understand that.” She wasn’t sure he did but said nothing. “While our name means a great deal around the world, you just wanted to make it without my help. I’m proud of you for that.” “Thank you.”  After her luggage was tagged and taken away, they decided to have dinner at one of the nicer restaurants in the place. Ramsey had about three hours before her plane took off, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to sit with her dad while waiting. He seemed to genuinely want to be with her, but she was sure that he’d get bored after a while and want to cut it short. When he ordered his dinner then she hers, he pulled out the box and opened it. The very first picture was of Deidra standing in her room with her sweat pants and tee shirt on, with her wedding gown hanging from the hook on the wall. He pulled it from the box and studied it. “That dress alone could have fed an entire village.” She laughed when he did. “I guess I’m odd when I think that the money could have been better spent. Like on a house or something. But I guess they have their own ideas of what is going to work in their own lives. What that is, I have no idea, but that’s what she said to me. I don’t care for Chad all that much anyway.” “To be honest with you, neither do I. And we did buy them a house, but…well, Chad, I found out, has a bit of a gambling problem, and I made him a deal. I’ll use what I paid for the house to pay the debt off, and he’ll be on his own.” He shook his head. “I have a feeling that this is never going to be the end of it for them. And Gregory is…well, I don’t want to talk about them right now.”
He had made his way through about half the pictures when their dinner came. Ramsey had the grilled salmon with grilled scallops on the side, plus a huge baked potato. Her dad, a steak and potatoes man, had ordered a beautiful porterhouse with the same potato with butter and sour cream. No salads for either of them. When he looked at the last picture in the box, she felt herself getting uncomfortable. He stared at the last one for so long that she wanted to ask him what was wrong with it. Her dad looked at her with tears in his eyes and she felt her heart twist. “The only family picture in the world that is half assed. You should have been in this with us. Obviously you were there. Why didn’t you join us?” She just shook her head and he nodded as if he might know. “Was it your mom or Deidra that told you to step out of the picture? I have no doubt, after this, that it could have been both of them.” “I understand why she didn’t want me there. It was Deidra’s day, not mine.” That wasn’t really what was said to her, but it was less painfully said her way. “But the picture turned out nicely, didn’t it?” “It did. I believe that these pictures are going to be much nicer than the ones we paid that man too much money to take. But I want to know. What did your mother say to you, Ramsey? I need to know.” She didn’t want to tell him. But then she thought what the hell, I’m leaving and more than likely won’t be back. “Ramsey?” “She told me it was for the family and not for upstarts like me. I started to point out that I was her daughter too when she…she slapped me. Told me that she wished I’d not been born. I unbalanced her life. Unbalanced? How did I…? I had no say in being born. Why does she say things like that to me?” She turned away from him to finish. “To be honest with you, it was the deciding factor in my leaving without saying a word to any of you. I don’t know why I even told…yes I do. I wanted to hurt you like you all have hurt me my entire life. That’s the only reason that I even told you I was going.” “I don’t know why she’d say those things to you. I really don’t. But I am glad that you told me. It afforded me this, this opportunity to see if I could patch things up—even if it is nearly too late—between us.” He pushed his plate away too. Her appetite was gone, as it appeared his was. “She said that I was a fool to try and mend the fences with you, even if that was what I was going to do. She blamed you for this and so many things that I don’t even know how she thought you were a part of. I never realized the extent of her hatred for you. Saying that all you wanted was for…well, you know what she said. All the attention. Then when I told her I was going to talk to you, she had a fit and ended up in bed with one of her headaches. I didn’t stay to listen to her anymore. Gregory said he’d keep an eye on her for me.” “She hates me, Dad.” He didn’t say anything, and for that she was grateful.  The rest of the meal was spent not mentioning the family. Ramsey thought that was about as depressing as it could get. When her flight was called, he walked her to the barriers and pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry. So very sorry, honey.” She told him not to worry about it. “I will, and I still am. But I want you to take this. It’s a credit card with just your name on it. You can…if you want to come home sometime or anything, just use it. And I have a number there
that I want you to use. It’s…well, it’s mine and mine alone. If you can’t get me that way, then use the house phone. But I want you to call me. Weekly if you can.” “I don’t need this, Dad.” He pushed it back at her when she tried to give it back. “Dad, you don’t have to do this for me to call you. I will.” “It’s not why I’m doing it. I want you to have a backup plan. A way to come home to me if you need me.” She wanted to tell him she needed him years ago, but said nothing. “I wasn’t there for you for nineteen years, Ramsey, but I want to be now.” Nodding, she was moving to the gates when he called her back. This hug she returned, and felt better when they parted ways. Ramsey cried all the way to her first stop, and got off the plane with a heavy and saddened heart.

Drew Justice Series Release Day & Giveaway 11/14/16

Kathi BartonLeave a comment
Drew: Justice Series 
Paranormal Erotic Romance
Ryder Mackenzie didn’t remember much about what happened to her. All she knew was she hurt in more places than she could remember. Mac barely remembered going over the falls and hitting the rocks below to save the little girl. But now that she’d been to the other side, the ghosts wouldn’t leave her alone.
Drew Mullins was a haunted man, quite literally. His mother tortured him as a child and seemed bound and determined to continue doing so seventeen years after her death. Drew, being a necromancer, was having a hard time avoiding her because she didn’t know she was dead.
Between Mac having the little girl’s father haunting her and Drew dealing with his mother’s ghost, they both were a mess. But in each other they found what had been missing in their lives—love.
But when the thirst for revenge heats up, can Steele and his group find a solution? At least one where no one else ends up dead?
B&N   Coming Soon 
Amazon USA   https://www.amazon.com/Drew-Justice-Erotic-Paranormal-Romance-ebook/dp/B01M6BR4PY/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478549716&sr=8-1&keywords=kathi+s+barton
Amazon UK  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drew-Justice-Erotic-Paranormal-Romance-ebook/dp/B01M6BR4PY/ref=sr_1_5_twi_kin_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478549836&sr=8-5&keywords=kathi+s+barton
Steele Bennett was born with a gift, but he sees it more as a curse―he can see and speak with spirits. And when he loses his twin sister at seventeen, he wants to turn his back on life―block his heart so that he never has to feel the sharp pain of loss again… 

The small bar Kari Briggs runs is failing fast. She hasn’t seen the owner in three months, past due notices are piling high, and her last paycheck bounced twice. And if she doesn’t pay the delivery guy soon, there’ll be no more supplies. 
She has trouble enough controlling her cat, so the last thing she needs tonight is trouble. But those guys at the bar won’t listen and take it outside. Deciding to take matters into her own hands, she is shocked when a tall stranger grips her arms from behind and her cat wants to roll over and purr.
From the moment Steele touches her, she knows he’s her mate. And Steele thinks he can just get her out of his system with sex and a lot of it―he won’t mark her and she can’t mark him―no permanent attachments. But that’s not how it works with a shifter, she will die if her cat can’t get what she needs from him. She will love him because she has no choice―he is her mate―but that is a secret she is willing to take to her grave…



Nick Stark had known Addison West for quite some time. Although they’d never met in person they shared the same nightmare?both were unwilling participants. However, through these dreams they had formed a bond between them. And a telepathic connection. So when out of the blue, Addie contacted Nick and told him she had seen some things that she shouldn’t have and she was next on the killer’s list, Nick didn’t hesitate to come to her rescue.


Nick had known for some time that Addie was to be his?why else would they share the same dream? But he was in no hurry to form emotional attachments. Never having much in the way of a decent family life, he didn’t know much about love. And with the deep emotional scars he bore from an abusive childhood, he didn’t want to bring that burden onto another soul?especially Addie.

Addie had her own baggage. Her father had been forcing her to marry an abusive man?he told her it was her duty as his daughter to obey him. Addie wasn’t having any part of it, so she ran…. She had been hiding for the last five years.

Nick may not have wanted any attachments but he couldn’t ignore the beauty he’d rescued. But there were things he had to tell her…about all of them…about Steele Bennett’s group. He wasn’t sure how she fit into all this….



Mitch Riley was a haunted man, and being a necromancer didn’t have much to do with what haunted him. A troubled childhood left him withdrawn and short tempered, so when he received a summons that he was being sued by the foster parents who had abused him, he didn’t take it well at all. And their attorney? None other than a vamp. There was nothing much worse than a vamp in Mitch’s opinion.
Victoria Graham, or Vinnie her mother had nicknamed her, wasn’t expecting the man her clients were suing to be her mate, and a necromancer. She would have refused the case had she known she’d be walking into a den of necromancers. She had grown up on horror stories that necromancers were the one thing that could kill her kind, and it was clear the man hated her very existence…. But when he touched her, she’d lost control of her magic…and her mind too apparently.
Landon Logan is a man haunted by a tragedy that he blames himself for but didn’t do. No one can convince him otherwise–especially his well-meaning Grandda who happens to be dead. Landon is a necromancer.


Dillon Malone has a few abilities of her own. She can “find” things by touching the owner or touching something the owner has touched. This makes her a wanted woman.

Landon is so angry at his good-for-nothing parents that he storms out of their house with their maid in tow. Dillon is happy to leave with this brooding young man and soon discovers that the handsome hunk is her other half.

Dillon’s happiness is short lived when her past reaches out to bite her, and she and Landon become pawns in her father’s evil scheme. When Dillon’s father has Steele’s new baby kidnapped, all bets are off.









JUSTICE SERIES
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Hello! My name is Kathi Barton and I’m a award winning, best selling author of dark fantasy erotic paranormal romance . I have been married to my very best friend Paul, a potter, for at times seems several lifetimes – in a good way, honey. And together we have three wonderful children and then the ones we brought into the world – Paul and Dale Barton, Jason and Wendy Barton and Danielle and Ben Conklin. They have given us eight of the greatest treasures on Earth. They don’t live at home seven days a week! No, seriously, eight grandchildren – Gavin, Spring, Ben, Trinity, Sarah, Kelly, Kian and Bailee


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Chapter 1  
Addie put the phone back on the hook and sat down. Since she’d gotten up she’d been trying to reach out to her friend, Mac, and hadn’t gotten a single answer, or a call back when she left her messages. She was coming here in a few days, to hang out with her and to meet her new friends. But now, trying to get in touch with Mac and not having any success made her worry. Something was wrong, she just knew it. Going to find Nick, she wasn’t surprised to find Landon and Steele in the office with him. Nick stood up when she entered the room and gave her his seat. The man was a constant worry wart, especially since she’d found out she was expecting. She wasn’t sure she could make it the last few months without bashing his head in. “Here, honey, please have a seat. And put your feet up on the stool. Did you get in touch with her?” Addie told him that she’d not as she sat down in his chair, but she didn’t put her feet up. There was only so much pampering she could take right now. “I know that you’re worried. I think you need to call her place of business. Didn’t you tell me she works for some sort of boating company?” “Extreme. And she doesn’t just work for them, but owns the company. Few people know that. I’m pretty sure not even the people that work for her are aware they work for her, not just with her. But, no, I’ve not called yet. I wanted to ask you first. I don’t want her to think I’m over protective of her. She accused me of that in college when we were younger.” Addie rubbed her growing belly as she continued. “It’s not like her to not call me back. I know that it’s silly, but I’m afraid something has happened to her. But I don’t want to feel stupid for calling her work and embarrassing her. Do you understand?” “Call them.” When Steele nodded in agreement with Nick, she thought she’d do it. But later. “No, not later, now. Call them and ask where she is. You know that you’re not sleeping well worrying over this. She will get a good laugh out of it and so will you, but you won’t worry any more. Just go ahead and call and see what might be going on. It might be something simple, like her phone is down or something like that.” Getting up, she went to her own office. If she was going to feel stupid for calling for no reason other than Mac was really busy, she’d rather do it where no one could hear her. Picking up the phone and dialing the number she’d memorized yesterday, she wasn’t surprised when the answering machine picked up. But she was no less worried either. “Hello. You’re going to think this is really silly, but I’m trying to get in touch with Ryder Mackenzie. Mac. She goes by Mac. Anyway, my name is Addie Stark and she was supposed to call me back and—” “Hello? Don’t hang up. Please, just hang on while I try to turn this off.” The woman, she thought it was Sandy Miller who worked for Mac, cursed a few times as buttons were pushed. “I’m not very good at this thing. Mac usually…please call back if I hang up on us.” After telling the woman that she would, the line went dead. Addie sat there for several minutes trying to reason with her fingers to dial the numbers again when it rang. Picking up the phone carefully, she heard more cursing and knew it was Sandy again. 
“I’m so sorry. I’m not the office type. Cameras yes, but…I just came in here to pick up the money and heard you. There’s nobody around to help me out on this thing.” Addie told her it was all right. “Mac is…She’s in the hospital, has been since yesterday late. Mac is…I mean she…they don’t really expect her to make it. She took a terrible fall over the falls near where she lives, and…and…poor baby….” The sobbing was what got her. The woman was sobbing so hard that it sounded as if she were tearing her heart out. Addie felt her own eyes fill with tears, then run over as she thought of her friend lying dead. Mac was such a vibrant and full of life woman. Knowing that she was hurt and might not make it…well, Addie knew that she’d feel it forever if she were to pass. Her sorrow became more as Sandy told her what she knew. “She’d told me she was going on home, and I never thought no more about it until I heard the scanner going off and her telling them that she had three in the water. A little kid, she said. They didn’t have any life jackets on them, so…oh, that poor little thing. I turned the cameras around to find her and saw it. Just saw that kayak go right over with her hanging onto that child. I think there was some man trying to help her save the girl, but…well, he died too. Mac said that…she said that she was going after her. I knew as soon as I heard there was a little one involved that she’d go and try and save her. But those falls, even for someone like her, experienced and all, they’re a bit much, especially this time of year. She and that little girl went right over, and I never saw them again until I made my way to the hospital.” Addie was crying hard now, knowing that Mac would hurt herself to save anyone, but especially a little kid. As the story unfolded, Addie could almost see it happening. “Those people on the raft, they were all screaming at the police when they got there. Took them a good five minutes to get them calmed enough to tell them where she’d gone over. By then…well, it was damned near too late for all of them.” “The child, is she all right?” Sandy said that she was broken up pretty good, but was expected to make a full recovery. “And the others, what happened to them?” “Both parents are gone. The mister, Adam was his name, he broke his neck. They think he might have been dead before he ended up on the bottom of the falls, but we don’t know for sure. His wife Cindy, little Becky’s mother, she drowned. Again, they don’t know for sure when that happened. Like I said, them falls, they’re unforgiving if you don’t know how to run them.” Addie wanted to ask about Mac’s injuries, but was afraid to. But Sandy spoke before she could. “Mac was beaten up, near dead when they got to her. Her head was split open by the rocks, and they’re worried about what sort of damage…they’re worried about brain damage. Broke both her arms and crushed her leg. The doctor told me that she’d be lucky if she walked again without a cane. Then he broke down. Imagine that, a doctor breaking down, and he told me that she wasn’t going to live out the night, not the way she was right now. That was…she’s my little girl and she’s been hanging on since. They had to…I won’t let them just let her go. She’ll never forgive me for doing that. Not one to hang on, she told me more than once. But they brought her back for us. The staff there at the critical care, they don’t…I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without her. She’s all I have…I love her like my own.” 
“I’m coming there.” Addie stood up, then sat down when she thought of what she had to do. “I’ll be there in the morning if not tonight. Can you find me a place to stay? Please? I need to be there for her.” “Oh honey, that would be wonderful for us. Me too. Yes, that’s good. Yes, of course you need to be here. And I’d like that too. She talked of nothing else but seeing you. It’s why I picked up the machine. And you come on out here. You can stay in her place if you want. It’s a big place, but she loves it. That pup of hers will be more than glad to see someone besides me.” Addie wasn’t sure about a puppy. All she cared about right now was seeing her friend and maybe trying to figure out a way to bring her around. “I’ll have someone pick you up at the hangar. Not much of an airport, but we make due.”  Addie hung up a few minutes later, after taking notes on not only where to go but how to get to the house if she ended up staying there. Still not sure what she was going to do once she got there, Addie went to find Nick. She was leaving right now if she could arrange it. ~~~ Drew wandered around the house again, ending up near his own room. He wasn’t sure yet what he was supposed to do with his new house, but he was making headway, he thought. The house was so big that at times he felt smothered by it. Stupid he supposed, but that was the feelings he got. And if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure he liked this place. It was…dark, he thought, was a good word for it. Dark and not suited to him at all. Anna, his cook, and right now the only person he saw much of, was in the kitchen for the most part while he was there, and he’d finally convinced her to stay in the pool house instead of driving back and forth every day. Most days they both ate in the kitchen, as he just couldn’t stand the thought of her carrying what food she thought was good for him between the dining room and the kitchen like he was something special. Smiling at that thought, he went out onto the deck that was off his bedroom. It was the one thing he’d loved about the house. The way the deck, all covered and filled with the most comfortable furniture, seemed to invite a person to come and have a seat. Kick off their shoes, as he had done when he’d sat down, and relax. He wondered if the previous owners of the house, Landon’s parents, had ever had an occasion to relax at all between stealing from people and making everyone’s life hard. He supposed that he should have taken the master suite when he moved in. But it was bigger by far than one floor of his other home. Not to mention he had yet to go through the personal things in the room, and Landon had told him there was nothing there he wanted of his parents. He guessed he could hire someone to do it, but he had no idea how to even begin that task. Putting his feet up on the stool that matched the rest of the furniture, he looked out over the wooded area behind his house. The deer came out about now, and he had made it a habit when he was home to watch them. It was relaxing, and he never thought much when he watched them romp and play. Yesterday there had been a small one with them, and he had enjoyed watching it get its feet under it. The buck, a big boy with about a dozen points, just watched him. Drew wondered if he’d learn to trust him soon. 
“Drew?” He looked up at the sound of his name, afraid, not for the first time since he’d moved in when he heard his name in such an unfamiliar place. Instead of being his mother coming to haunt him again, it was Anna. “Are you all right, sir? I didn’t mean to startle you like that. I said your name a couple of times.” “It’s fine. My fault entirely. I’m all right, I promise. You just…I was startled, that’s all. What is it I can do for you?” She looked out over the woods then back at him. He knew that she thought him a little off. If she only knew how off he really was, she’d more than likely go running into the woods to get away from him. “I was watching the family of deer that come around. They have a way of making even the worst day nicer with their ways, don’t you think?” “Yes, I think so as well. I saw them as well two nights ago, and slept better knowing they were here for some reason.” He waited for her to continue, and thought perhaps she was telling him she was quitting. “There’s someone here to see you. Miss Vinnie and Miss Addie. They’re in the parlor. I told them you’d be along shortly. I can tell them you need a few moments if you’d like.” “No. I’ll come along now. Thank you. And if you have any cookies, I know that Addie loves them.” She blushed and told him she had some, and some scones too if she was of a mind to try them. “I’m sure that she’d love that. Thank you.” Drew knew that Anna was aware of what they all were. Vinnie was a vampire, and Kari, Steele’s wife, was a panther shifter. Then there were the rest of them, all necromancers with a little extra that came in handy when they worked. As he made his way to the big room, he wondered what they needed. Right now he’d do just about anything to stem the boredom. He’d never been one to sit idle, because the memories invaded even his waking thoughts. And since he was off for the rest of the week, he had to find something to do or go nuts…well, nuttier. Entering the room, he smiled at them as if he had not a care in the world. Addie was adorable with her belly starting to show. She was about four months now, and he could see that she was extremely happy. So was Nick. All he ever talked about was the new baby. Drew was sort of jealous of him getting that experience, as he knew that he never would. “Ladies. Have you come to help me figure out the house? I sure could…. What’s happened?” He could tell by their faces that something was wrong, and he immediately thought of the men that he worked with. He sat down when Vinnie stared to pace. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be good. “Nick is going away on a call, as I’m sure you know, and we’re in sort of a pickle. I’ve always wanted to use that phrase. Anyway, we need your help.” He nodded at Addie, knowing from the call this morning that the others were going to be awhile. And they wouldn’t let him go to them. It was a new rotation thing they were doing, so that they could spend more time with families and not be so burnt out all the time. One week off, two on was how it had been set up. Drew hated it.  “There’s been an accident with a friend of Addie’s. She needs to go there and…it’s not good.” Drew asked Vinnie what he could do. “I can watch over her in the evenings, 
but the day time, I can’t as you well know. Can you come with us? Nick said that he’d rather we both went rather than her be alone during the day.” “You know I’ll do anything for you guys.” He would, too. “When do you want to leave? I’m assuming now. All I need to do is throw a few things into a bag and I’m set.” “Yes, that would be wonderful. We have the plane on standby. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone…my friend, Mac, she was hurt pretty bad when her kayak went over the falls while she was…while she was trying to rescue a little girl. She…the little girl’s parents drowned and…I need to be with her; Mac, not the child.” “I’ll go and pack now.” He stood up and then moved to the door just as Anna was coming in with a tray of cookies and tea. Drew asked them to let her know what was going on as he left them to pack up.  Tossing things into his duffel, he thought of the friendship that he had with these people. All of them were family, and he’d do just about anything they asked of him when they needed him. He didn’t share with them most of the things going on in his life as they did. He trusted them, but not with knowing his secret. It was bad enough that he had had to live through what his mother had done to him; he didn’t think he could stand to see their pity when they looked at him. Drew had always been a very private person, and it hadn’t changed much when he became an adult. He wondered if they thought of him as a friend, as someone they could trust, and thought perhaps they did. He worked with the men on the team, and he liked them a great deal. But he was a loner. He didn’t like it very much, but it was all he knew. Keeping busy was what kept him from thinking, and thinking was a dangerous thing for him. His childhood and his life had made him that way. He’d always been alone, and deterred people from asking too many questions. Questions that Drew didn’t want to answer. Then there was the added fact that he was scarred. Not just in his mind, but his body as well. Badly. Mostly the worst of them were on his back and the back of his legs; the ones on the rest of his torso were faded, as they hadn’t been nearly as bad. It was what caused him so much pain when he got up in the morning or after standing or sitting in one position for too long. And long ago he knew that if he didn’t kick the pain pills he’d be as drugged up as his mother had been most of her life. Drew didn’t want to end his life that way. So now, he simply suffered. Andrew? His entire body stiffened at the sound of the voice. It was distant, but he knew it anyway. Turning slowly around the room, he looked for his mother, only to find himself alone in the big bedroom. But he knew as surely as he was standing there, she was close. Andrew, where the hell are you, boy? Not answering her seemed the best way to keep her at bay. Stuffing the rest of his things in the duffle, he tried to think what he had to do to rid himself of her if she found him again. The need to have her banished, kept away from him, nearly took him to his knees. Even after all she’d done to him and continued to do to him, she was still his mother. But even as he zipped up the bag and headed out, he knew he was never going to be able to make his mother go away forever. Because he was still that ten year old little boy. 
“Are you ready?” Telling Vinnie that he was, she looked at him oddly. He wondered if she could see his mother, or if any of them could, and that made him feel exposed. He hadn’t thought they could, but with Vinnie, who knew? And he was hard pressed to ask her if she could or not. But Vinnie only turned and went to his front door, met there by Anna. Drew thought about asking Vinnie for help with his mom, but didn’t. Fear and pride made him keep his mouth shut. “I packed some cookies and tea for the trip. I know that your plane must have all these things, but I so worry about you.” Anna gave him the large plastic container, filled to the top with cookies and wrapped scones, and the thermos of tea. “Sugar is there, as well as cream if you need it. Not sure how the rest of you take your tea.”  After she hugged Addie and Vinnie and left them, Drew went to the big car that Addie and Nick had only just recently purchased. Since she handed him the keys, he put his bag in the back of it with the other two pieces of luggage and got in the driver’s seat. Just as he was ready to start it up to go, his cell phone rang. It was Nick. “Thank you for doing this for me.” He told him it was no problem, he was glad to help out. “She’s really stressed out about this. If she…this woman, I guess she’s really bad off. I had a couple of the guys here go and check on her, and Addie is going to be devastated when she sees her. I guess they were right in saying she might not make it.” “Addie told me that the secretary said that they didn’t expect her to make it past the first night. Perhaps her hanging on this way, it’s a good sign.” Addie got in the back with Vinnie. It was darker back there, because even though it was nearly dark, the sun still burned Vinnie a little. Being a vampire had some difficult rules attached to it. “The little girl’s parents, should I be looking for them there? I mean, they might want to hang out with their daughter for a little while.” “I never thought of that. But I would keep a look out for them. I don’t know what sort of people they were alive, but we both know that things change when they figure out they’re dead. The little girl is deep in a coma, but I’m not sure if it’s drug induced or just from all the injuries. She is only alive because of Addie’s friend, I guess. They have her head cam and it shows pretty much everything that happened to the two of them when they went over the falls.” Drew wondered if Addie would want to see that, and thought she might be better off not. It had to be pretty horrific. “Anyway, I want you to call me if you need anything. Steele got you guys a nice hotel, and I guess Vinnie has a place she can stay while out there too. There is the woman’s house too. There is a dog; I’m not sure what it is, but he’ll need some looking over too. I can’t thank you guys enough for helping me out.” “I’m glad to have something to do, to be honest.” He put the phone on the holder and stuck his earphones in. One thing he did not do was drive and hold onto his phone at the same time. He wouldn’t even answer it until he pulled over to do so. Drew might not like his life overly much, but he’d not take out others just to end his. “Is there anything else I might need to know out there? I mean for Addie. She’s pretty upset.” “Not that I know of. She’s been talking about this girl for a while now. They’ve met at least once a year since they got out of college. Her family is gone. I think she might only have the people she works with. She owns this company, Extreme. There are several 
of them across the United States, so I think she’s done well for herself.” Drew was impressed with that. Not that as a woman she’d done well, but that she wasn’t any older than Addie and was successful. “She’s also somewhat of a loner. Not like you, but pretty close. If she’s not working, then she’s at home. And Addie wanted me to see if you’d take care of the dog. I’m not sure what kind it is, but Sandy, the woman who works for Mac, said he’s all right. Addie didn’t feel right staying at her house. She said it would be too painful.” “I’ll take care of it. And you know I love being alone.” He knew that he’d sounded defensive, but Nick only laughed. “I’ll let you know when we get there. And I’ll take care of the dog too.” “Like I said, I really appreciate this. And should this girl pass, I’ll drop everything here and make it out. I’ve already made some arrangements with Steele.” Drew told him he’d replace him. “Thanks for doing this for me. For us. Hopefully it will turn out all right for everyone.” In Drew’s experience it rarely turned out well. Most of the time, if it could go to shit for him, it did. He closed out the connection and drove them to the airport. Everything was set, and they were up in the air within twenty minutes of getting everything stowed away. Drew thought about what he had now compared to what he’d had as a kid. Since working for Steele and the rest he had a car, credit cards for company trips, and a home. Money enough to spend should he do so carefully. Clothing enough that he was warm when needed. A television that didn’t only work when it wanted to, and enough food in the house that he was never hungry unless he wanted to be. Shirts and pants, dressy when needed or casual when working, were also provided. His personal items—socks, shoes, and other items such as underwear and tee’s—were his own to buy, and he rarely spent much on those. And now, thanks to Landon and his wife, he had a house bigger than he needed, and servants too. He still wasn’t sure what to do with all that, but it was his, and no one else’s. Closing his eyes for the trip, Drew felt himself drift off. As his body relaxed his mind became fertile. His mother was just there, memories of her fighting with his need to vanquish her from his mind. As he drifted deeper into sleep, his mother was welcoming him to her horror. “Do you have any idea how much I despise you right now?” The ten year old Drew whimpered. “Shut up. Just shut up. If I could afford it, I’d end you right now and be done with you.”  He never answered her; to speak to her when she was stoned, as she had been, would have been bad. To have done so would have given her another reason to hurt him. And she did enough of that without his help. Instead, he sat there on the floor with his towel under his body, so the blood from his latest injuries wouldn’t ruin the carpet beneath him. His mother wanted to make sure they made a good impression when the welfare people came by to check on him. They did it less and less as he had gotten older, and he doubted very much that any of them cared what sort of state the house was in so long as he was there and still breathing.  
She didn’t love him. He’d figured that out long ago. And even if he hadn’t figured it out, it wouldn’t have mattered. She told him almost hourly how much she despised him. He was her means to get what she wanted, whatever that was. Her anger at him was legendary. But this time, she was madder than he’d ever seen her. And getting angrier by the second. He was sure she’d broken his nose. His jaw, on a previous beating, had been bruised badly, but not broken. Now it was painful to move, even if he did want to speak to her. Drew looked at her when she screamed his name. “Pay attention to me, you moron. Or so help me, I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t ever forget. No one will look at you with pity again, by God.” She had hit him then, his arms tied above his head to her canopy bed. Pain made him sick, dizzy even, as he had no way of getting down. Not until she let him, cutting at the ropes until he just simply dropped to the floor. Drew had hung there before, more times than he wanted to remember. She would tie him there, beat him over a couple of days, then let him down, telling him how it had been his fault that she’d been driven to beat him. Again. As he had drifted off, his entire being worn out, his adult mind tried to tell him to get away, to run, to hide. But it did him no good; what was to come was coming no matter what he did now, even if he could have gotten away. “Drew?”  His name, said so softly, startled him. The dream, the memory really, had him in its clutches tightly, and he knew she was coming for him. As soon as he was touched, a small hand to his shoulder, Drew fought, lashed out at whoever was trying to hurt him. When he realized that he’d been dreaming and that his mother wasn’t there, Drew knew that he’d made a major mistake. Staring down at the face under him, Drew tried to think what had happened. How Vinnie had a bloodied mouth, her lip already swelling. Her hands were above her head, palms out. She didn’t move, said nothing as they lay there. It was the voice behind him that had him knowing he’d fucked up, and had done something terrible. He was going to have to explain what he’d done, as if he even knew how to. “Drew, are you okay?” Was he? No. And would never be if he didn’t get over this fear of his mother. “Drew, please answer me and let Vinnie breathe. I’m scared that you’re hurting her.” His hands were curled around her throat. The bruising there was already making itself known to him. Letting go, his fingers loosening even as the grip of the memories did, he felt his heart twist, and his mind begin to work. Fear slid over him as a shirt did when he was fresh from his shower. “I’m so sorry.” Sliding his heavier body off hers, he lay there, curling his body into a fetal position and trying to wrap his mind around what he had just done. “I had a bad dream. I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I’m very sorry.” “Who is she?” He thought of his mother when Vinnie asked him the question. He wasn’t even aware he’d answered her aloud until she spoke again. “Is your mother dead, 
Drew? Does she haunt you even now? Is she the person that you were thinking about when you came into the living room today?” “It was her. She never leaves me alone. But yes, she’s dead. And does she haunt me?” He laughed bitterly, knowing that he would have to tell her in order to make up for what he’d done. “Every waking moment of my life, even when I’m not asleep.” Drew didn’t know how long he lay there. He knew that they had landed, the vibration of the engines running now gone. The women spoke quietly, but still he didn’t move. The need to get up, run, and hide had him fighting for some sort of control over himself.  After a while, when he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer, he sat up and stared at them. Not sure what he needed to say, he opened his mouth, hoping for something brilliant, when Addie spoke first. “It’s really late, so Vinnie will be with me now. Why don’t you go to the house, Mac’s house, and see to her puppy and rest? I heard you tell Nick you’d help with that. Then in the morning, you can bring me breakfast and hang out with me. Okay?” Drew nodded and waited for either of them to ask questions. When they both stood and went to the exit, he let out a long breath. He didn’t think he was off the hook, but he did buy himself some much needed time. Taking a cab to the address given to him by Addie, Drew knew a new kind of fear. They knew he was haunted, and worse yet, by whom. He wondered what they were going to tell the others, knowing that they would. Drew also wondered which one of them would call him first and tell him he was fucking nuts.   

Anthony Bentley Legacy Release Day 10/31/16

Kathi BartonLeave a comment

Coleen had heard just about all she wanted to hear from her grandmother about the Bentleys—no one could be that nice. There had to be an angle there somewhere. People just didn’t help other people for nothing—not in this day and age.

Tony Bentley wasn’t expecting to find his mate, and as a Were Panther he could even understand her reluctance. He was, after all, a Bentley, and the poor woman had been taken through the ringer, but she was his mate, and he wasn’t about to take no for an answer. 

Coleen’s ex had left her in a heap of debt, and she couldn’t allow herself to bring that kind of baggage into a relationship. She’d work through it somehow—without the help of the mighty Bentleys. 

B&N http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1125006975?ean=2940157135782
Amazon USA  https://www.amazon.com/Anthony-Bentley-Legacy-Paranormal-Romance-ebook/dp/B01MDPGGOV/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1477311140&sr=8-1&keywords=anthony++by+kathi+s+barton
Amazon UK  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anthony-Bentley-Legacy-Paranormal-Romance-ebook/dp/B01MDPGGOV/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1477311337&sr=8-1&keywords=anthony+by+kathis+s+barton
KOBO https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/anthony-9
I Books https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/anthony/id1169834521?mt=11
SmashWord  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/675908
PaperBack  https://www.createspace.com/6676478
Micah Bentley is a third generation cop and a panther. He always wanted to be a homicide detective like his dad, but kept getting passed up for the job because he was too good at what he currently did working the beat. Micah has a gift, he can read people’s minds. Such a gift could be a help and a hindrance on a job. He could pluck the information he needs right out of someone’s mind, but knowing they’re guilty and proving it are two different things. But when his dad is killed off duty it has him rethinking his career choice.
Regina Webster, Reggie to her friends, is just trying to make ends meet by working three jobs to keep her head above water, and also take care of her invalid brother. She doesn’t have time for socializing with bossy men like Micah Bentley who butt into her life making everything concerning her his business. She doesn’t know anything about this mate thing he keeps spouting off about, she just wants him to leave her alone.
Due to a random act of violence, she finds herself suddenly homeless: no home, no money, no car and suffering from a gunshot wound to boot. Reggie has no choice but to accept a helping hand from the Bentleys at―least until she can get back on her feet.
Trouble has Reggie marked, and this time they take Micah’s mom too. Micah knows they’re in trouble, but when the bad guys don’t go where they’re expected it’s a race against the clock…
Christiana McKenzie, Chris to her friends, was at her wits end. She and her sister, Angel, were born witches. Their mother had warned them that to use their powers would bring on another witch hunt, and they’d risk being burned, just like their ancestors. Her sister didn’t heed their mother’s warning and now Angel was dead. Angel had lived long enough to tell Chris that she’d left something for her with a man by the name of Bentley, then she died. Chris had to track down this Bentley no matter the cost….
Joseph Bentley almost had everything finished: the house, the barn…everything. In a few weeks it would be finished and he would be able to move into the house and get the ranch going. But the progress wasn’t going fast enough to suit him―he was lonely. 
Micah had come out to tell him that the sister of the girl that died to protect him was coming to see him, and he was hoping that the nightmares since the incident would stop. Micah wanted him to come out to the main house and be there when she arrived. But the limo delivered the woman to Joey’s house instead of Micah’s. Joey couldn’t believe it, the hostile woman was his mate…and more than he could have ever hoped for….
Whether or not Chris wanted a mate or not was irrelevant, Joey wasn’t letting her out of his sight. And when she found out that her mother had lied to her―she wasn’t an ordinary witch―and that others would come to try to possess her. If they couldn’t do that, then they would kill her to possess her powers―she needed help.
The Bentleys ban together to save one of their own, but will it be enough? Can they even fight the powerful magic that’s targeting Chris and Joey?

Christiana McKenzie, Chris to her friends, was at her wits end. She and her sister, Angel, were born witches. Their mother had warned them that to use their powers would bring on another witch hunt, and they’d risk being burned, just like their ancestors. Her sister didn’t heed their mother’s warning and now Angel was dead. Angel had lived long enough to tell Chris that she’d left something for her with a man by the name of Bentley, then she died. Chris had to track down this Bentley no matter the cost….
Joseph Bentley almost had everything finished: the house, the barn…everything. In a few weeks it would be finished and he would be able to move into the house and get the ranch going. But the progress wasn’t going fast enough to suit him―he was lonely. 
Micah had come out to tell him that the sister of the girl that died to protect him was coming to see him, and he was hoping that the nightmares since the incident would stop. Micah wanted him to come out to the main house and be there when she arrived. But the limo delivered the woman to Joey’s house instead of Micah’s. Joey couldn’t believe it, the hostile woman was his mate…and more than he could have ever hoped for….
Whether or not Chris wanted a mate or not was irrelevant, Joey wasn’t letting her out of his sight. And when she found out that her mother had lied to her―she wasn’t an ordinary witch―and that others would come to try to possess her. If they couldn’t do that, then they would kill her to possess her powers―she needed help.
The Bentleys ban together to save one of their own, but will it be enough? Can they even fight the powerful magic that’s targeting Chris and Joey?

Nolan finally had a practice of his own, and soon his brother Burke would be leaving the hospital and joining him. Now, if the rest of the family would mind their own business, Nolan would be much happier…or not. He was sulking over his dilemma when his nurse told him he had a patient, a hurt kid who wasn’t doing much talking.
Rylee nearly collapsed with worry when she found out her nephew had been hurt. She wasn’t sure if she was cut out to be a parent. She loved her nephew, Shane, dearly and had taken on his care when her sister died, but how she’d missed the warning signs was beyond her. He was being bullied at school daily and she knew nothing about it until he’d been cut with a knife. 
“I didn’t know.” Her entire body sagged at her confession. “He said he had it handled. And I thought he did. It’s my fault he’s beaten up like this. I should have…I’m not any good at this parenting thing.”
Nolan reached for her just as Shane moved on the bed. He wasn’t sure what the kid could do, banged up the way that he was, but as soon as Nolan touched her, he knew what she was to him. Her body, warm and strong, leaned into his even as he buried his nose into her neck. Christ, his body screamed at him, she was his. Licking her throat, tasting her, he could hear her moan, but when his head was jerked up by his hair, all he could do was stare at her.
THE BENTLEY LEGACY 
1. MICAH – http://smarturl.it/micah 


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Meet Kathi Barton, author of best selling novels such as the Force of Nature series and Ryland of the Golden Streak series. She lives in Nashport, Ohio with her husband Paul Barton, an amazing and talented potter. Kathi likes to spend time with her eight grandchildren. she writes to relax and have fun. Also, she and Paul can be found at auctions in the summer months.

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Coleen signed her name to the last page and closed the thick file that had been handed to her. The man across from her, Harry Mercer, hadn’t been a bastard; he could have been, but he was nice to her. She thought that might have hurt most of all. When he asked her if she had any questions, she wanted to ask him why her, but she knew he’d have no more answers to that than she did. “No. I’m going to go live with my grandma, try to get my life together and get a job. They’re taking most of my money, so I’ll have to live very frugally until I win the lottery.” She meant it as a joke but it failed miserably, much as her life had. “How can I make arrangements to pay you back?” “I told you, I’ve made an arrangement with the firm I work for, and this will be a probono case. You have enough to worry about right now, Ms. Greer. And don’t forget, you have to have whomever you work for contact us so that we can make arrangements for the money to come here. And then we’ll disperse the payments that we’ve lined out for you. You’ll be all right. How about we go and celebrate that this is going to be behind you soon?” She told him she just wanted to get out of town. “When do you leave? Not right away, I hope.” “Today. I’ve had to sell my house and my things, so I don’t have anything left here. Grandma has room for me for the time being, and she’ll need help with my brother’s little girl.” She smiled when she thought of the little tike. “She’s a handful, Grandma said. Sweet, but a little energetic for a seventy-year-old to handle.” “I bet she is.” Coleen realized that she was taking up this man’s time, and he’d given her a lot over the last few weeks. “Coleen, are you going to be all right? I know that you didn’t cause any of this, but the law is the law. I think we’re lucky that I was handed this information rather than some other firm. They might have taken you to the cleaners. If you have any questions now or later, just call me. No other lawyer is going to be able to answer them like I can.” “I understand. I thought we were divorced. Apparently I should have looked better at the paperwork he sent me back.” The man nodded and smiled. She didn’t think this was funny, but he might have just been thinking how sad she was. “Thank you so much. You’ve been very kind. I’m not…it’s been a long time since someone has gone out of their way to be nice to me.” As she left the big building, she did wonder what she was going to do now. Her car was loaded with her entire life. And she had just enough money in her purse to pay for gas and as little food as she could eat to get to her next landing spot. Micky hadn’t been a bastard when they’d been married, but this had simply come out of nowhere. The man had been a fruitcake, sure, but she’d never have thought him to have had the brains to have pulled this shit. And now that he was dead, she couldn’t go and find out what he’d been thinking. No one had said a word about the divorce paperwork. She hadn’t thought a thing about it until she’d been summoned to the courthouse under the guise of being the only 
living relative to one Mick Greer. When she’d produced copies of the divorce papers that she’d filed to show that she had nothing to do with his debt, they had produced the paperwork that had been filed at the courthouse. It had been fake; nothing about it even made sense. It looked as if Micky had rambled on for several pages about a baseball game that he’d bet on, then about the house that he’d wanted to buy with the money had he won. No one had checked it at the courthouse when she’d taken it to be filed, and she was still legally married. For as much as she found that hard to believe, it was the debt that he’d run up in her name that had floored her. She had no cell phone…the service had been cut off days ago. There wasn’t any way for her to call Grandma and let her know she was coming either. Her money would have to last her the week it would take her to drive there. And calling her would be too costly. So Coleen got into her car and started her trip. Why she had married Micky was a mystery to her. She had been working in Vegas at the time as a dealer, trying to save up her money, and had woken up not only married to the man who had bothered her all night, but also in a house that wasn’t hers…as well as naked. When she tried to get away from him, she realized that she was trapped. Quite literally. He’d cuffed her to the bed. His plan, he’d told her, was to marry her—well, any dealer—and have them stack the tables in his favor. When she’d told him she couldn’t and wouldn’t do that, he’d slapped her, and did so repeatedly over the next several days. When she finally was able to get away from him, he’d tracked her down and told her again what she needed to do for him, and when she’d refused this time, he ended up sending her to the emergency room. Coleen spent the next four weeks hiding and being hurt. It wasn’t until she was able to get to the station house and press charges that she was able to get the divorce started. It had taken her another year and a half to get him to sign the papers. Then seven months later he was dead.  She had figured out at some point he was a little off. He’d had lists of things that he wanted her to do for him. One of them was to rob a bank, and another had been for her to run in the Miss Universe pageant. It took her an hour to make him understand that by marrying her, he’d fucked that up. She was no longer single. Micky wasn’t a bad man, just not very smart. That’s why this entire thing with the bills had surprised her. Turning up the radio to drown out her thoughts, she tried to think at what point she’d become such an idiot. Coleen had gone to college, graduated with honors with a culinary degree, and had been on her way to making a name for herself. She only worked part time at the casino to make some extra money for herself to buy her first home. Then after she’d gotten that, she’d wanted a newer car. That had never happened, along with a lot of other plans that she’d had. All because she’d been the fancy, as he’d called her, to a man that had no idea what he was up to most of the time. And now he’d ruined her from the grave without giving her any idea why he’d done it. Coleen wasn’t sure if she’d really been his fancy or someone that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it was the only reason she could come up with for him marrying her. She oftentimes wondered if he’d drugged her too. Not even the chapel that she’d supposedly gone to could believe it when she’d been brought in. The man who 
ran the place, an Elvis impersonator, had told her she had seemed intoxicated and not really into her new husband. There were no recordings of the nuptials, and the marriage had been filed correctly. Coleen wondered, not for the first time, if things would ever go her way. “I’ll never trust another man, that’s for sure.” She looked at the radio when it just popped twice and went out. “See? Can’t even trust a fucking car.” Coleen drove until she was simply too tired to go on. Pulling into a rest area, she made her way to the bathroom with her things and cleaned up. It was the best she could do, she knew that; but she still would love to have had a nice deep tub with a million bubbles. After brushing her teeth, she made her way back to her car to sleep for a few hours. At the rate she was going, she was going to need to be hosed off outside when she got to Ohio before her grandma would allow her into the house. As soon as she closed her eyes, the tears started. They were useless, she knew that. As much as she hated to shed them, there was just no stopping them these days. She wasn’t depressed, but really sad. How had things come to this? It was a question that she had no answer for. Coleen wasn’t even sure there was one. For the next fifteen years, more if she didn’t get a job soon, the law firm would be taking more than half of what she made. It didn’t matter if there were tips involved; she’d have to declare a percentage of whatever the check would be even if she didn’t make that much in tips to cover it. Micky had put her in debt for over a hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars. Lucky for her, or them, they only wanted to collect half. Like she had twenty-six thousand dollars just laying around. “And let’s not forget the funeral costs. The fucking bastard even stuck me for that.” Why he’d needed the best of everything was beyond her, but Harry had shown her what the bill had come to, as well as a prearrangement form that he’d filled out at some point. That was another thing that surprised her. Micky had seemed to live in the now, not ever thinking of the future.  Who was going to give a shit if he was in an oak casket with silk trim when he was in the dirt? That was another twenty-three thousand dollars, because he’d decided that instead of just calling hours like a normal person would have, he wanted a wake, with steak and lobster served to his mourners. Had Coleen had any idea she would have put a stop to it. But at the time she thought she wasn’t his wife and was not responsible for his bill. Selling her home and cashing in all her money had only paid a few bills. The rest, every charge card that he’d forged her name to, every charge that he’d put to every store along the strip, was now something that she’d be paying forever, it would seem. All because she was pretty, he’d said.  As the sun was coming up on yet another fucked up day, she gathered her things and went to the bathroom to clean up again. Coleen got a soda from the vending machine, and looked longingly at the overpriced candy bars there. Turning her back on them, she went to her car and started out again. Her plan was to eat only at lunch, and then at a buffet. It was cheating, she knew, taking carry out at those kinds of restaurants, but it might be the only way she could eat decently for the next week. 
It was going to be a very long week too. And she’d be on the road for Christmas, which was only a few days away. Crying again as she started out, she realized that she needed to get a grip on herself. She wasn’t a whiney person, had never been one to let people walk all over her, but she was as stressed as she’d ever been, and felt like the weight of the world was around her neck. Coleen just wanted one or two things to go her way. She thought even that was too much to ask. ~~~ “Christmas is in three days. Are you ready for it?” Tony wasn’t sure how he was supposed to be ready when all he had to do was show up with some gifts and be cheerful, but he nodded at Micah. “Did you even decorate your house?” “I just moved in about an hour ago, so no, I’ve not decorated. And since it’s just me living there, I don’t really care to go to the trouble of putting up a tree by myself and then having the job of taking it down again.” Micah nodded and Tony realized he was distracted. “Did you get the elephant that I sent you? I also managed to snag a snake or two. They should arrive by courier sometime on Christmas morning. I think Reggie will love it, don’t you?” “Yes, yes. What did you get for Grandma and Grandda? Did you get the luggage set that I told you about?” Tony thought this was just too much fun. He told him he’d gotten them four sets. And that he’d made sure they were the ugliest colors that the store had had. “And did you wrap them or have them wrapped? I want this to be perfect.” “It’s going to fail. All of it is going down the tubes with you right at the end of it. They’re going to be calling the holiday fucked up day rather than Christmas after this, all because you failed.” Micah looked at him as if he’d just found out he was there. “Are you back now? If you’re going to berate me about something, the least you can do is pay attention to me.” “It’s the girls’ first Christmas, and we just heard that the little boy that we were going to take for the holidays might come to us permanently. His parents just don’t want him.” Tony told him congratulations, but he still wasn’t sure that Micah was paying attention to him. “How can someone just say, ‘I don’t want a part of my body’ like that? I mean, it’s their child. Created by them with passion. I just don’t understand how anyone can do that. She was leaving the hospital and said she wasn’t going to take him at all.” “The child will be better off with you guys anyway…you know that as well as I do. And he’ll be loved, not just by you but all of us.” Micah nodded. “What’s really eating at you? You’re acting like a man who is going to the gallows, not getting ready for the best time of the year.” Micah didn’t look as if he was going to answer, but Tony could wait him out. Something was bothering him, and until he got some help with it, he was going to stew himself into being sick. Tony had been doing that a lot himself lately…worrying about shit he had no control over. “Before I forget to tell you, Bethany and Amanda said to tell you that they’re going to join us for Christmas Eve dinner. That was really great of Reggie to invite them.” Micah nodded and said he liked them both. “Did you get her anything? Amanda, I mean?” 
“I did. I’m sure all of us did. She’s come right into our hearts like she belonged there. Her dad is going to get to come back early too. Hardship discharge. Reggie is swinging it for him. And he’s going to be honorably discharged too. Don’t tell them, it’s a surprise to them all.” Tony knew that it was hard on the elderly woman raising a little girl. He’d been talking to Bethany a lot lately. The woman was really worried about her granddaughter too, the one coming home soon. “Did you get the cell phone delivered to Coleen, her granddaughter, like you said you were going to?” “Yes. We have no idea where she might be, but I had one sent to each of the bigger cities along the route she told Bethany she was taking. They’ll use them for something if they don’t find her, but they’re watching for her. I have a friend that is supposed to give her some cash, and I’ve reimbursed him for taking it to all the places where the phones are. I don’t know if the police will find her, but hopefully she’ll hook up with them and not break down on some secondary road. I can’t imagine going on a trip that far without some sort of way to contact people.” Micah said had he known, they could have sent the plane for her. “Yeah, I thought of that too. Hopefully she’ll be able to contact Bethany soon and she’ll feel better. Now tell me what has you all twisted up. It’s not just this little boy either.” Bethany had shared with him how broke her granddaughter was. And why. Her exhusband had done a number on her. She’d had to sell her home and everything of value that she’d owned, and it still hadn’t been enough. Even the cell phone had cost much more than Coleen could handle at the moment. But when she arrived, if she did, there was not just a place for her to live, but a job too if she wanted it. The news that she had some cooking experience had made Elroy Baker jump right on hiring her, sight unseen. He just hoped the man wasn’t taking on more than he could handle with this girl. Tony didn’t much care for the new chef, and thought him a lush. “I’ve been worried over Mom.” Tony asked him what had been going on with Mom. “She’s doing too much. I think she might be spreading herself too thin, and I’m worried that she’ll get sick.” “I think she’s happy working at Faerie Tales and Dreams, don’t you?” Micah said she was but that was not what he meant. “Then I don’t understand why you’d think she’s overworking herself.” “She also works at the shelter, at the school, as well as helping us out with the girls when she’s here. Did you know that she and Grandma had a fight the other day?” Tony said that he’d been unpacking and not heard. “Grandma wanted Mom to slow down and to take it easy. I guess they were working on the Christmas thing for the pack when Mom just keeled over. Grandma said it scared her to death. Mom insisted she was fine, but Grandma was too worried to let it go and made a big deal out of it, and Mom blew up at her. I asked Mom about it and she got angry with me too.” “You have Chris or one of the others look?” Micah shook his head. “I’d be talking to someone who can have a look without Mom knowing. I know that it’s underhanded, but it worries me too that she fell over. Was she hurt or anything?” “No, she just said she was tired and got a little dizzy. I know that we’re all immortal, but that doesn’t lessen the fact that she’s our mom and not well.” Tony agreed. “I was 
wondering, since you’re almost the baby and all, if you’d go and talk to her. She likes you a great deal more than she does me right now.” “Oh, so you want me thrown under the Mom bus. I see how you are.” Micah said he was worried. “I am too, but what if she takes all my gifts back? I saw my name on a lot of those packages under that tree. I’d love to be strong enough to open them.” “I’ll make sure you get them.” They both laughed. “So you’ll do it? You’ll talk to her and find out what’s going on for us?” “Yes, I will…but you owe me.” Micah told him anything. “You might not think that’s such a good idea when I figure out what it might be.” “To know that Mom is only tired and not sick, I’ll do it. Even dance naked in the streets if that is what you want.” Tony thought that had some merit to it, but only smiled. “Christ, you have no idea how much better this has made me feel already.” “She might just tell me to fuck off too.” Micah said he didn’t think she would. “Why? Because you think she has some sort of different love for me? I’m pretty sure that she loves us all equally.” “She does, but you’re her baby boy. Well, second baby boy. She has special feelings for you on that score.” Tony told him he was full of shit. “That too.” When he left for his new home, he thought about his mom. She was the best, always there for them, and kept them straight. Any of them could go to her for anything and she’d tell them not what they wanted to hear, but what they needed to hear about whatever problem they had. Tony decided to go and see her, just to see if she was really doing all right. He pulled up in front of Faeries Tales and Dreams, where he knew she’d be; or would be soon enough. The nursery/greenhouse was busy. He’d known it would be even before it had opened. Being the week before Christmas and a new place in town, people were coming in to see what sort of things they might be able to get last minute. His mom was at the cash register ringing out a woman who had two carts full of things. He kissed his mom on the cheek and started to wrap the pretty little ornaments in the tissue paper on the counter. “Maybeth, you remember my boy, Tony. Tony, this is Sarah’s mom. She just came in to see if we had any more of the furniture for the gardens.” Tony thought it looked like she might have cleaned them out, she had so many of them. “I was just telling her about the summer items we have coming in. You going to put any pots on your porch?” “I don’t know right now.” He started to tell her just what he’d told Micah, he’d just moved in, but he looked at her face. She was making a sale and he was fucking it up for her. “Yes. I want to get them, but I’m not sure how many right now. I’ve got a big wrap around porch that I think can hold about two dozen; don’t you think, Mom?” “Oh yes, and around your back deck too.” He nodded, not sure what went on a back deck that didn’t go on the front, but she smiled at him. “You should see his home, Maybeth. It’s a beautiful sight to behold. I’m hoping that he’ll have some decorations up for next Christmas; we have so many here to choose from.”  He looked around. The place looked like a grocery store when a big storm was going to hit. The shelves were a little bare; the trees that had been decorated were devoid of 
much more than a few items. The shelves for the faerie items, a huge hit for the nursery, were mostly empty as well; even the displays had been picked clean. He looked again at the cart that his mom had yet to empty. The woman had spent a great deal of money here, and his mom had been responsible for it, he knew it. After Maybeth left with a promise of being called when the new shipments came in, he hugged his mom.  “You came here just to give me a hug?” He told her of course. “Yes, well, pull the other leg. I’m not buying it. Which one sent you, Micah or Reggie? Or was it your grandma? I’m sort of upset with her too.” He sat on the counter and smiled at her. “Spill it, young man, I’m too busy to mess with you.” “You have no idea what my house looks like, because every time I want you to come out, you’re off on some project. And when I invited you to lunch yesterday, you didn’t show.” She told him she’d forgotten, but had been busy. “Yes, I’m beginning to see that you’re really busy. With other people.” “Don’t try that guilt on me. I have a life too. Or I’m trying to make me one. So what if I fell over? It’s not that big of a deal. I’m sure you have as well at some point lately.” He told her that he’d not fallen since he was a baby, and she knew it. “I’m just trying to be helpful to Pip and her new venture.” “Micah wanted me to come and see what’s up. I think he thought I’d come here, talk to you a bit, and you’d just tell me. You won’t, so I’m not even going to try that way. But I am going to find out what’s going on. And you are not trying to help Pip. You’re avoiding things, and I want to know why.” He could see her temper rising, but he didn’t let it get to him. She was his mom and like the rest, he was worried about her. “Mom, that’s not going to work with me and you know it. You can bluster and be pissy all you want, but I’m going to know why you’re avoiding us and getting sicker by the day for overworking yourself.” “Micah and Joey have their families all set. Nolan and Rylee get along so well that I’m not sure that they even finish a sentence when they’re together. Burke loves his new job and his mate, as it should be. He takes such good care that she’s happy and not depressed all the time, and I love him all the more for it. Garth is out making money hand over fist. You have a new home that is all complete and not in need of a mother’s touch. Even your grandparents have their own things going on. Howie has his own business ventures going on. Since the nursery opened Katie has been in more flower clubs than I knew existed. And here I stand, all by myself, feeling like I’ve missed the boat somewhere along the line.” He told her he loved her very much. “And I love all of you, but I miss your father.” That surprised him. His dad had been gone almost twenty-two years, and she was now missing him? Tony knew there was more, a lot more, but he stood up and hugged her to him. “My home needs you very much. I have the things I want in it, but it feels cold and lonely. It’s why I wanted you to come out. I have boxes everywhere, but I don’t want to unpack. I feel lonely too.” He lifted his mom’s chin up and looked at her. “Why are you missing Dad so much right now, Mom?” 
“He would be so happy with all that you boys are doing. He’d be helping with decorations in the yard like he used to do. There would be menus going around, things that you boys like the most, and how we were going to incorporate them into the meal. The grandchildren would be spoiled with gifts; not that I haven’t done that, but I find myself thinking of him with each purchase and it saddens me.” Tony felt his own sadness take him a little. “I’m trying to keep busy so that it doesn’t hurt so much that I feel like a fifth wheel right now.” “Oh, Mom, you are anything but a fifth wheel. You hold us together; you have always held us together. Dad would be so proud of you.” She wiped at his tears and hers. “Mom, I love you so much. I don’t know what I’d do without you in my life. And that being said, I need for you to take a break, come to my house, and show me how to put a lap blanket on the back of my couch so that it looks homey, not staged. How to put my canisters on the counter so that they don’t look like I stood across the room and tossed them there. And for the love of all that is holy, can you please tell me what I’m supposed to do with five bedrooms, and a living room that looks like I could host a thousand people in it?” “Oh, my dear boy, you are the very best.” He told her that he knew that. “I’m sorry. I guess I should tell everyone else that I’m sorry too.” “Nah, let them stew around about it for a while. But I really think you should take it easy. Not quit working, because I know how much fun you’re having, but come back to us. We need you to.” She nodded. “And since I know there is someone here that can take over for you, why don’t you come out to my house, have some dinner, and help me out? I hate the way my house feels so cold.” “You just need a woman’s touch.” He nodded. “I’m sorry, baby. I truly am. But I’ll help you out. No telling when you might find the right girl.” He had to tell her, soon he knew, that his own mate had died. As she went back to find someone to take over for her, he looked around again and had to smile. The trees were already redecorated and the shelves looked as full as they’d been on opening day. Magic could really make a place look good, he thought. He wondered what it would look like when spring rolled around. Christ, this place would be beautiful.


Danburn The English Dragon Release Day & Giveaway 6/13/16

Kathi BartonLeave a comment
Danburn English is the ninth earl of the English castle. He and his dragon alter ego have been on this earth for a very long time. Danburn is accustom to his orders being followed to the letter, no questions asked, so when this feisty young woman bucks his authority he is beyond angry.
Kendrick Barrera can’t seem to get caught up. Every time she turns around, her sister is in trouble again. Now, because of her sister’s new mess, she’s being evicted and has nowhere to go.
Danburn’s intentions were to defend her honor, but when Kendrick intervenes, she steps in front of a punch intended for her mouthy landlord. Now Danburn has to step back and take a good long look at himself, and he doesn’t much like what he sees.
Kendrick doesn’t care for the overbearing lord of the manor and makes no bones about telling him so either. No one, especially him, is going to tell her what to do or how to act or dress.
There is something about the feisty woman that has touched Danburn’s heart. She has a rare honesty and bravery that has him take notice. A woman like that is hard to find and should be protected and cherished. The chemistry is there, they’ve both felt it, but controlling his mouth just might get in the way of winning Kendrick’s heart….

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Amazon USA  https://www.amazon.com/Danburn-English-Paranormal-Shifter-Romance-ebook/dp/B01GLQA3R6/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465473497&sr=8-1&keywords=Danburn+By+Kathi+S+Barton

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Chapter 1
Danburn moved to the side of the large lake and stripped off his boots. It wasn’t
necessary for him to take his clothing off, but he wanted to just sit in the grass for a few
minutes before he headed home. He looked over at the large castle and smiled. Some home,
he thought. It was bigger than the hotel he’d just left a few days ago.
He stood at the very edge of the water and calmed his inner beast. He was hungry
for some time of his own, and Danburn had been promising it to him for weeks now. It
would give him what he wanted, or Danburn would suffer at his hands. It wouldn’t be
painful, not really, but it would be annoying. And home was the only place that Danburn
could give him the freedom that they both so craved.
Diving into the water, he felt his beast take him. Not all at once, but enough to know
that his beast was just as anxious as he was to be free. Parallel with the water, he felt him
take all of him, and as soon as he hit the water, there was nothing left of the man he had
been.
The water was deeper than it looked. Much like the castle, there were hidden coves
and outlets in this lake that no one except a few that he trusted knew about. Danburn
swam the distance of the entire lake before flipping and making his way back to swim
beneath the earth into the deepest part of it.
Swimming like this wasn’t the same as flying, but it was close. The beast, a dragon,
was much larger than Danburn by nearly ten times, and weighed several tons. His wings
alone were as wide as several football fields laid end to end, and his tail was nearly fifty
feet long, covered in thick spikes and dark scales. Danburn had never understood the
dynamics of what he was and what he could become, but he did enjoy the way it made
him feel.
He was in need of some air several hours later, and slowly rose his snout to the
surface of the water to take a breath. As he was breathing in the oxygen, he caught a scent
that startled him. Fresh blood. And a great deal of it. Moving to the reeds behind him,
Danburn lifted his big head out of the water to look around, knowing that he would be
well camouflaged if anyone were to look in his direction. There was not a measure of
sound, not a ripple of movement, on the water or around him.
The scent was stronger now, but he could see nothing out of the ordinary. He
continued to search just to make sure that nothing was going to come back and bite him
in the ass later. It was, after all, his property, and usually everyone knew better than to
trespass on his land. As he watched, something moved at the corner of his vision. It was
then that he saw what his nose had already told him.
The woman was making her way to the water, slowly looking around as much as he
was for something to come upon her. He could see that she was hurt. The blood stained
the water even as she made her way to the deeper part, which was several hundred yards
from where he was. Danburn looked around again when she ducked under the water,
knowing that she’d not be able to stay under long because of her being human. He could
taste it in the scent of her blood as she hid below the surface.
A man—or now that he could see them, men—were walking to where she was.
Danburn didn’t want to interfere, especially in his current form, so he waited. When one
of the men lifted a rifle, pointing it in the direction the woman had gone, Danburn dipped
beneath the water just as the shot was fired.
When he saw her, it appeared she’d been hit. Her eyes were closed, not in death, but
in pain. Blood pooled around them both as he reached her. Grabbing her gently with his
clawed hand, he pulled her body to his and swam to the underground tunnel of his home.
He knew that someone would be there. His friend and go-to man, Noah, would be there
if no one else was. Emerging from the water, he handed the limp woman to Noah and
dove back into the waters without a word. He had to make sure that she was safe,
whoever she was, as well as his home.
Two of the four men were in the water when he emerged from the reeds. Danburn
didn’t even bother trying to figure out what they were doing there, or even what they
had wanted the woman for, but pulled them both under the water and held them there
until they no longer struggled. When he was satisfied that they were no longer a threat,
he moved to the surface again and waited for someone, either man, to come into the water
to retrieve the now floating bodies of their comrades.
They were being very cautious, but he was a very patient man and could wait them
out for hours. Just as one of the men moved to the edge of the water, he heard the sounds
of the sirens coming. Noah, he thought, had called someone for him. As the men
scrambled away, leaving the dead for him to deal with, Danburn sank beneath the surface
again and headed back to the cove where he’d taken the woman.
Noah was there, as was his personal physician, Pierce Cunningham. Noah said
nothing as he held out a towel for him when he shifted to his body and climbed out of
the water, shaking a few of his scales into the depths to replenish what he’d done to it.
Leaving the dead behind would harm the lake only a little, but he hated doing it. Noah
fussed at him then, telling him he should have taken better care. Noah was sometimes
worse than his mother could be when it came to him.
“I couldn’t let her die, you know.” Nothing but a small huff of a sound. As he took
the towel and dried his legs, he was handed a shirt and tie. “We have a guest?”
“Yes. A party. In your mother’s honor. I’m not sure what we’re to do with this injured
woman, but I’m just glad that we have no guests coming. I don’t think it would bode well
for you if anyone found out.” Danburn paused in getting dressed and looked at the
woman, then back at Noah. “Pierce is doing the best he can with her. The beating she
took was bad, but Pierce said that with a little rest she’ll be good as new. The gunshot
wounds, however, will need some tending to.”
“Wounds? As in more than one?” Noah told him there were two total on her person.
“I only heard the one shot. I had no idea that…by the way, there are two bodies in the
lake. They drowned.”
Noah tisked at him, and Danburn had to hide a smile. The man was such a prude. As
he pulled on his pants, not bothering with the underwear held out for him, he asked Noah
what the police were called for.
“I’ve no idea, my lord.” He was in trouble if Noah was calling him lord. “Perhaps
they heard of a large dragon swimming in the waterways and drowning people, and
someone took it upon themselves to call the law. Or perhaps they think that having a shot
up woman in their realm is something else that they might fumble into, and half blindly
find the culprit.”
“You’re in a mood, aren’t you?” Noah snatched the towel from him and walked
away. “I’m fine, in the event you were going to ask. No shots to my poor body.”
“We should be so lucky, my lord.”
Danburn was still laughing as he made his way to the upper levels. He made sure
that the woman was cared for and put into one of the many bedrooms, but out of sight of
the household. He had no idea who she was, but no one physically hurt women—and
that was all there was to it.
When he entered the living room, his mother stood up and came to him.
“You smell of lake water.” He kissed her on the cheek and told her she smelled
wonderful. “Good save, but it does not negate that while I was here wasting away,
waiting for you to come and wish me a happy birthday, you were having a nice dip in
the water. Danburn, you know I hate it when you’re late.”
“I know, Mom, but this couldn’t be helped.” He told her what he’d come upon, and
she wanted to see the woman right away. “Pierce is working with her. He’s to come and
get me if there are any problems with her when she wakes. He said she took a hell of a
beating.”
“You didn’t really kill those men, did you? Right on your own lake?” He told her that
there was little choice in that too. “I’m sure that once their bodies are found there will be
questions. Do you know who the other two were?”
“No, but I know what they look like and what they smell like.” Dinner was
announced, and he escorted her into the dining room. There would be cake later, after
her favorite meal of lobster and steak, then he’d give her his gifts. He might have
forgotten about what the date was, but he never forgot her birthday.
Dinner was a quiet affair with just the two of them. He did try to get Noah to come
and have cake with them, but he only glared, something that he was quite good at, and
told them that he’d have some later, with the rest of the staff.
No one could put themselves in a class better than Noah did. The man was pompous
as well as correct, but Danburn loved him with all of his heart. And he was pretty sure
that Noah loved him as well. The two of them had been together for as long as Danburn
had been alive, and that had been a long time.
“I’ve been thinking of taking a trip.” He didn’t mention that he had the same idea for
her in the form of a cruise, but only nodded at his mom’s statement. “With you closing
up the house here, I just don’t think I can stand to be around to see it. We’ve been here
for so long, Danburn, that I don’t know what I’ll do without being able to come here.”
“I’m closing the house, not tearing it down. And I’ve told you several times, you can
live here for as long as you want. I just need to be closer to my work.” She nodded, but
he could see the sadness there. “Mom, what is it really? Is it Dad? Do you not want to
leave him?”
He knew that his mom went to talk to his dad daily. He’d died some two hundred
years ago when he’d let an infection get into one of his wings and it had spread to his
heart before they could do anything about it. Even as immortals there were things that
could kill them, and poisoning of the blood was the biggest one.
“I can talk to him anywhere, but yes, that’s part of it.” She sat down before the blazing
fire and looked at it instead of him as she continued. “I love this place. I understand that
you need to be closer to your job and all. But this is home to me. And to you. I wish…there
are times when I wish I had taken my own home instead of coming here to yours. I should
have thought that if you found a mate, she’d want to run her own home and not have me
around.”
“Don’t say that, Mom. Please don’t. I’m not going to have a mate this late in my life.
And even if I do, if she doesn’t like you, there is no way I’m going to love her. I’m not
going to sell this place or leave it to ruin. I just think it’ll be better in the long run for me
to settle elsewhere. At least for the time being.” He didn’t tell her the real reason, but he
had a feeling that she knew. The house was lonely without his dad there. He’d been a
rock in his otherwise turbulent life. “Why don’t you let me give you my gifts? I know that
you’ve been trying to get information from Noah.”
“Yes. And he’s as stubborn as you are.” After winking at her, he went to get the boxes.
There were several of them; he would find things for her throughout the year and send
them here to give to her for this occasion. “Oh, so many. Danburn, you spoil me rotten,
you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, but you make it so easy.” She hugged him to her, longer and tighter than
normal, and he pulled her to him when she started to back away. “I love you, Mom. And
will forever.”
Long after she went up to bed, he sat in the den watching the fire. He’d been to check
on the woman, and there was no change in her. He’d also asked Noah to find out where
the police were going, and so far there was nothing on that either. Only that they’d gone
to the property near him, the one where he knew the new owner was up to no good. Not
until someone knocked on the front door did he realize how late it had become. Or that
it had started raining.
~~~
Kendrick felt like a drowned rat. Her hair was plastered to her head, and her coat
was as soaked clear through. The boots she had on, usually made for this sort of weather,
had gotten a leak in them a few days ago, and she’d thought for sure she’d be able to
afford a new pair by now. Then her sister…. Well, it is always Louisa, now isn’t it? Kendrick
thought. One thing or another was always befalling her sister. Reaching for the giant
knocker on the door again, she nearly screamed when a man suddenly opened the door
and stared at her.
“I was wondering if I could use your phone.” He stood there so still she wondered
for a moment if he was real. “I broke down a few miles back, and I dropped my phone in
a puddle and it no longer works.”
Lie, she told herself as her face heated up at the fib. The phone didn’t work because
Louisa had stolen her money for the bill and it had gone dead for lack of payment. Like
her boots and her now overdue rent, there was no money to take care of even the simplest
things, including food. Louisa was going to ruin her more than she already had.
As the man continued to stare at her, she had the most overwhelming urge to snap
her fingers in front of him to see if he was sleepwalking.
“Or not. I guess we can just stand here, staring at each other until one of us dies from
the cold and wet. I’m thinking it’ll be me, since you’re all snug as a bug in the house.” He
still did nothing. “Christ. Is there someone here that speaks? Any language? I know a few
that we can try out.”
“The master of the house has gone to bed.” Well, big fucking deal. She didn’t want
the master of anything, just a fucking phone. “If you were to wait here, I’ll retrieve the
phone for you and you may use it.”
The door closed so fast that she had no time to tell him to forget it. She stood there
for several seconds, wondering why she was even bothering about this, then turned and
made her way back to the driveway. Fuck this shit. Louisa was on her own.
Three hours ago, Louisa had called her and told her that she was in trouble, which
by Kendrick’s estimation happened about four times a day. It was out of the pan and into
the fire for her sister. Just trying to figure out how she did it was usually more of an effort
than she cared to make any more. But the call had come, and she’d driven her piece of
shit car to where Louisa said she was, to bail her out if she could. There was no money,
so if that was going to be it, Louisa was going to have to deal with it on her own. But who
the fuck knew there really was an English castle here?
The night was so nasty and cold that she wished now that she’d stayed home. No
matter what she did for Louisa, it was never enough, nor did it keep her out of the next
bout of trouble. But when she’d mentioned guns and men, like an idiot, Kendrick had
dropped everything to come to her rescue. And more than likely had lost yet another job
because she couldn’t stay until the end of her shift. Life with her sister was as bad is it
came, she thought.
“I should have my head examined. Again.” She huddled into her soaking wet coat
and stomped her way back to the main road to her broken down car. “Come and get me,
she said. They have guns and they’re going to kill me. Perhaps I’d get some peace and
quiet if they did.”
Stopping in her tracks, Kendrick felt herself start to cry at what she’d said. There was
no way she’d leave Louisa to get shot just so she’d leave her alone. She loved her sister
more than she did herself at times. But it was becoming too much. She was broke, thanks
to her, late on all her bills, again thanks to her sister, and she’d not had a decent meal in
longer than she could remember. Her belly seconded that comment by growling loudly.
Louisa was a good person when she wanted to be…mostly when she needed
something or someone to do something for her. Her troubles, Kendrick knew, happened
because she was so demanding, and when someone told her that she was going to get
this or that for her troubles, she believed them. Kendrick had learned her lessons at the
hand of a very nasty person, namely her own mother, and knew that trusting anyone
could get you killed. Or worse.
“Beat me once, shame on you. Beat me a couple of dozen more times, and I have to
learn to run and hide better.” She stood in the middle of the field, not having a clue where
she was, and then heard a sound behind her. “Fuck.”
Diving into the brush closest to her, she lay as still as she could, trying not to think
about what might be sharing the place with her as two men walked by her. One of them,
she knew, was the quiet man at the door.
“I was bringing her the phone. Why would she leave when I told her that I would
bring her the phone?” The other man said nothing but grunted. “It’s not my fault that she
has not the sense of a toad to get in out of the rain. I guess I could have talked to her more,
but I was so shocked to see her there that I was rendered speechless for too long.” She
wanted to get up and tell him had he invited her in, she’d not have been in the rain, but
said nothing.
The two of them were just passing her when they stopped suddenly. Sure that they’d
found her, she wished now that she’d brought some sort of weapon with her. A rock
would have made her feel better than she did at the moment.
“She’s here. I can smell her.” The other man lifted his nose to the air, and Kendrick
had a feeling that he really could smell her. She’d left work so quickly to get to Louisa
that she’d not had time to change her clothing. She knew she smelled of french fries and
greasy meat. “You look over there and I’ll go this way. And for Christ’s sake, Noah, don’t
step on her. Danburn is pissed enough about this.”
“Yes. I will try. She didn’t appear to be injured. But I will be careful.” The other man—
Sniffer, she decided to call him—told him to hush. As Sniffer made his way toward her,
she closed her eyes and wished she was home in her own bed, wished it as hard as she’d
wished for a great many things lately.
Peeking beneath her lashes, she knew that someone was standing over her. She saw
his boots first. And the insane thought of how expensive they looked and how totally out
of her league they were was running through her mind when he bent his knee to become
eye level with her. He didn’t say anything but put out his hand to her, which she refused
to take.
“I just wanted to call someone. I don’t know who it might have been, but I thought
someone could help me out.” He said nothing but kept his hand where it was. “Why
don’t you pretend that you didn’t find me? I’ll go back to my car and sit there until either
this monsoon takes me away or the sun comes up. I’m sure this Danburn person wouldn’t
care a fig if you just left me here.”
“It won’t work. He’s very stubborn. And until one of us shows up with you, my boss
will make us keep looking for you. He is, at this moment, looking in the opposite direction
that you took, by the way. Did you know that you are about five feet from the lake?” She
didn’t even bother turning. It would be her luck that it was just a ploy to catch her off
guard…or maybe there really was a lake behind her. One with a great big monster in it.
“There is one. It’s deeper than it looks, and holds all sorts of secrets that you are better
off not knowing.”
“Right now I wouldn’t care if something lurking it in came out and gobbled me up.
I’m so fucked right now.” He nodded, but said nothing more. “I don’t suppose you know
a woman by the name of Louisa Barrera, do you? She’s my sister, and the reason I’m out
here this late at night.” He told her that he did not. “Well, it was worth a shot.”
Standing up on her own, she watched the man as he put two fingers into his mouth
and made the most amazing sound she’d ever heard. Being called a simple whistle wasn’t
enough. It was perfectly pitched and loud enough to wake the dead. The man from the
doorway came toward them with a small flashlight. It occurred to her then that she had
one in her glove box, but the battery was more than likely dead. Why should that work
out for her?
“You should have waited, miss. I was returning with the phone.” She wanted to say
something along the lines of she hadn’t felt welcome, but didn’t. “The master of the house
is most upset with you. He said he has enough going on right now, and he’s right.
Danburn is usually right.”
“Me? Why is he upset with me? I didn’t do anything but ask to use the phone. You
guys came out in the rain to find me. And I doubt very much he’s always right. Bossy
more than likely, but not always right.” She was sloshing back with them in the event
that one of them would offer to give her a lift back to her car, which she’d only just
realized was in the opposite direction from where they were headed. “I think we’re going
the wrong way. I just want to go home now. I’ll find her in the morning. Why I believed
her when she said that men with guns were after her, I have no idea.”
“Guns? Your sister told you there were men with guns after her? Well, if that’s the
case, I think we might know her after all.” She stopped moving when Sniffer spoke. She
was still standing there when he turned and looked at her. “Blonde with dark eyes. A
mark on her left arm that looks like someone touched it with a curling iron?”
“I have no idea what color her hair is now. It’s been a couple of days since I’ve
actually…. Never mind. The mark, it was a branding iron. One of her boyfriends thought
it would be cool if they branded each other. She was first, and he chickened out when she
screamed and fainted. Where is she? Dead? Please tell me she’s all right.” He assured her
that when he’d left to find her she was fine. “I can take her now if you’ll just let me use
the phone to call in a favor. My car won’t…it’s too far for me to take her back by walking.”
“She’s been shot.” Kendrick felt her knees just give out, and something—or she
supposed someone—scooped her up before she fell. The voice of the man, strong and
angry, made her struggle against him, but he commanded her to be still and she did.
“What were you thinking walking around in the rain like a fool? You could have been
killed or drowned. Do you have the sense that God gave you?” She struggled again and
he told her to be still. “If you fall now, I will simply have Noah get the car and run you
over several times for scaring the household.”
“You are a charmer, aren’t you? I bet all the women around just fall at your feet from
the way nice things just roll off your forked tongue. Let me go, you buffoon. I just want
to get my sister and get the hell away from you people.” He laughed, and Kendrick
wanted to hit him, but they were suddenly standing in the hallway of the most beautiful
area she’d ever been in. “Where the hell am I? Dead?”
“No, you are not dead. There is something decidedly wrong with you, isn’t there?”
She looked at him then, really looked, and wished to Christ she hadn’t. Men like him,
handsome and sexy, were not something one like her saw much of. If ever. “This is my
home. And you are an unwelcome intruder. Had you not upset my household, I would
be sleeping in my bed, not soaked to the skin looking for you in the rain.”
“Danburn!” The woman’s voice coming from the staircase sounded shocked. It took
all the energy Kendrick had to tear her eyes away from the hunk of nasty beauty to look
at her. “Nous ne traitons pas invité cette façon. Quel est ton problème?”
“I’m not a guest, but an intruder, as he called me. And if you’re going to speak a
different language to chew him out, you should know that I can speak more than most
people.” Kendrick looked at the man, then back at the woman. “As for what is wrong
with him. I would say that he’s not any different than he normally is, a nasty
dispositioned prick that got up on the wrong side of the bed today, and is taking it out
on the people around him like it’s his job. Like he does daily.”
The woman laughed and reached out her hand. “Hello, my dear. I’m the nasty
dispositioned prick’s mother, Lady English. I’m to understand from Noah that your sister
is here. Let me take you to her.”
As they moved by the big man, Kendrick couldn’t help herself. She stuck her tongue
out at him and flipped him off. There was going to be hell to pay for that, she was sure,
but right now she felt like she’d won a small battle. And she had a feeling that there were
going to be a few more battles before this was done.

Burke Bentley Book Four Release Blitz 5/30/16

Kathi Barton2 Comments
Burke Bentley’s decision to quit the hospital and go into practice with his brother was the best decision he’d ever made. With the daily pressures gone, he could do what he loved to do most –be a doctor.

Piper Cordale, Pip to her friends, just wanted to bust her friend out and go. She didn’t handle people well and needed to be on her way, but fate had other things in store for her. Her friend’s gorgeous doctor, Burke, insisted that he was her mate. Pip didn’t have a mate, nor did she want one. The chore of breathing in and out was hard enough.

But when she saw Burke’s nephew, Shane, sitting all alone, she reached out to him, and they formed an instant bond. She was fae and told the boy if he ever needed her, all he needed to do was call out and she’d be there.

When the unthinkable happens, and Shane and his brother Walter are targeted by a madman, can Pip reach his side fast enough? Is she strong enough to save them both?

The Bentleys must band together like never before to protect their young and pray that it’s enough….

Buy Links 

                                                   Happy Reading 
                                                    Kathi  S Barton 
THE BENTLEY LEGACY 
1. MICAH – http://smarturl.it/micah 
Chapter 1
Burke stretched his neck and heard it pop twice before he leaned back in his chair. The ding of his computer, telling him he had an email, didn’t even faze him. He was beyond exhausted, but as happy as he’d ever been in his life. He looked up when he felt someone in the room with him. Nolan smiled as he sat down across from him.
“What did he weigh?” Burke just slid the file over to him without moving much. “Wow, you were almost dead on. Nine pounds, ten and a half ounces. Christ, you might have hit the all-time record with this one.”
“He was a bear to get free.” Burke smiled again. “His daddy is about to bust his shirt, he is so proud. But I have a feeling that Momma is going to be saying no a lot more now that they have a son. Seven little girls and now a boy. I don’t envy that little guy.”
Burke had been worried for a bit when the baby had been breach. But the mom, a tiger, had told him to fix it. Burke did and then twelve minutes later, little Cartwright James had come into the world screaming his head off.
“You’re settling in okay, right? I know it was hard for you at first.” Burke nodded at Nolan and told him he thought he was. “When you came out of your office that first visit, I thought you were having a heart attack.”
“I did too, to be honest. I wasn’t used to people being so frank about why they were there. And then when he showed me his arm and told me that he’d cut it doing something so mundane as chopping wood on his farm, it was all I could do not to call the cops, thinking of foul play.” Burke sat up in his chair when his computer dinged again. “I’ve been getting emails since Monday from the hospital. I’ve only read the first couple of them, but it looks like they’re wanting me to come back at any cost. What do you suppose is going on?”
“I heard from Mom that there was a shake up about some of the surgeons. Something about a rotation schedule. To be honest, didn’t really listen. What are they wanting you to do? Come back part time?” He told him what the one email said. “They want you to come back as chief of the hospital’s emergency room? Wow, there really must be some shit going down. What are you going to tell them?”
“Nothing. I mean, as I said, I’ve not read more than a few of them, but even after the first one, I knew that I’d never go back. I love this job. I like what I’m doing. And I know that I’ve only been doing it for about a month, but I feel like I’ve found my dream job.” Burke heard the computer again and turned off his speakers. “Mom told me that next week we’re going over to her house for a little pre-Thanksgiving test tasting. I have no idea what that even means.”
“It means that she’s going to try and cook up something strange and she wants us to approve it. I hate pre-whatever meals.” Nolan stood up. “I have two more patients tonight, then I’m done. What about you?”
“I’m done. I have a few notes to make, but I have nothing to rush home for just now, and I thought I’d hang a few more things up. I finally got my things out of storage yesterday.” Nolan nodded and told him not to be late tonight. “Nolan? Will you do me a
favor? I’d like to find me a house. Nothing on the scale that you guys have, but something sedate and sort of smallish. Do you happen to know of a realtor, or someone selling?”
“We don’t do smallish and sedate in this family. Haven’t you learned that by now?” Burke was afraid he’d say that. “But it would be my pleasure. Do you have any ideas? Other than I’m assuming close to home?”
“Yes, close to home. I don’t want to build. I have no desire to pick out carpets and wall shit. Just a house I can go to when I want to unwind, as well as a nice yard. Shane gave me a list, but I think the kid has it in his head that all of us Bentleys need giant homes. The two that he showed me were as big as your house.”
Nolan laughed as he made his way out the door. But when he stopped and looked at him, Burke felt his cat run along his skin. “Are you happy, Burke? I don’t mean with coming to work with me, but in general terms, are you happy?”
“I think so. I’m lonely most of the time. Not so much anymore because I can see the family more because I have a better schedule. Did you know that Walter has been popping over a lot? Well, he and Shane sometimes, too. And I’m telling you right now, that car you helped him buy has that kid thinking he’s king of the world. And I guess he comes home from college a little more too since he got it.” He knew he’d not answered his brother’s question, not really, and changed the subject before he could ask him anything else. “I’ll see you at Mom’s at six for dinner. Then maybe we can go on a run if you and Rylee aren’t too busy.” Nolan told him it was a date.
When he was alone, Burke pulled out the boxes that he’d brought in on Monday. Then he got himself a bottle of water and his tool box. He smiled when he looked at the name that was engraved on the top. It had been his dad’s, one that Burke had gotten for him when he’d been about ten. Running his fingers over the crooked letters that spelled out Dad, he thought of his father again.
Burke and his father had been close. Not as close as he and Micah had been, but almost. His dad, Grandda, and he would meet up once a week to go fishing, even if his dad had to miss a little overtime to do it. It had become their time. Then one day, it had only been him and his grandda.
“He loved you.” Burke told Grandda that he knew that. Burke’s father had been killed a couple of years before, right around Thanksgiving. This time of year as a matter of fact. “Didn’t think I’d outlive him, never dreamed of it. And here I am, sitting with my grandson, feeling both our grief overwhelming us.”
“Grandda, I think he knew that he was going to die.” His grandda had nodded but said nothing as they both sat there with their poles forgotten in the water. “He told me that if I did nothing else in life, that I should be happy. No matter if I wanted to be a homeless man. Just so long as I did something that made me feel good and happy.”
“He sure did love what he did.” Burke knew that as well. “My boy Micah told me once that being a cop like I had been was one of his greatest pleasures in life, besides marrying your momma and having you boys. I wish all the time that he’d not been killed and that he was right here with us. I worry about your momma too.”
“She’s really sad. And I hear her crying all the time too.” Grandda had nodded and blew his nose in his handkerchief. “I don’t think she wants to live anymore. Her heart is just too broken.”
“No, but she will. Now she will.”
Burke had heard them talking. Mom was telling his grandma and grandda that she wasn’t fit to be their momma anymore. She didn’t have it in her to want to go on. Grandma had sobbed hard, and Grandda got mad at her. Burke wasn’t sure what had happened after that. He’d been called away by one of his brothers.
And she had gotten better after that. Flourished even more since the grandchildren had come along, as well as the three wives of his brothers. Burke took out the first framed picture and smiled. It was the one they’d taken at the charity event last month, all of them standing in their finest and happy. There were others of them as a family…the babies, as well as Shane, were in them. But this one, the one taken of them sitting at the table all together and smiling when someone asked them to turn to them…Burke thought it was his favorite.
Burke was just putting the nail in the wall for the last framed picture when there was a knock at the door. Telling his assistant, Margaret, to come in, he turned to her when she didn’t speak. The man at the door with a knife to Margaret’s throat had him reaching for not just Micah, but all of his family to tell them what was going on.
You know him? He told Garth that he did not. We’re coming. I’m with Tony, and Micah and Reggie are close too.
The man started talking to him, using Margaret as his shield. “You go over there.” Burke did what he was told and moved with his hands up. “Where is she? I want you to bring her right on out here now.”
“Her who?” When he hit Margaret with the knife butt, Burke felt his cat run along his skin. “I’m trying to be helpful here, but I don’t know who you might be talking about. And that being said, I can’t bring her without that information.”
“Captain McClure. I want her now.” It took him several seconds to remember who he was talking about. Rylee, Nolan’s wife. “You tell her that she needs to come and see what she’s done to me.”
“All right. I’ll do that for you if you let Margaret go. She’s done nothing to you.” He told Nolan what was going on and he asked for the man’s name. “You just tell me who you are and I’ll call her right now. No funny business.”
“You fucking damn well right there won’t be no funny business. I want her here, and if you think I’m giving over this woman, then you’re stupider than them bastards at the hospital.” He told Nolan what he’d said. “My name is Franklin. They won’t treat me no more.”
“What is it you need treating for, Mr. Franklin?” He told him that his first name was Franklin. “All right then, Franklin, what is it that you need treatment for?”
“I got me a wound.” Burke nodded as he made his way to his desk. There was nothing there that he could use against a knife, but he was going to be calm and cool about this. “They said that it’s not nothing they did, so they ain’t gonna help me out.”
“Can I look at it? I’m not sure what you thought that McClure could help you with, but I’m a doctor.” He nodded and held the knife tighter to Margaret throat. “You hurt her and I won’t have anyone to help me treat you. And I won’t, either, if you don’t let her go.”
“She said that we could get fixed up. But that guy down there said no. He said that it wasn’t related to the army.” Burke asked him what place he’d gone. “Down to the new place that has been helping us out. You know, the Micah Bentley place.”
“Yes, I know the place. I work there, as well as one of my brothers. He’s the one that started it.” Franklin looked as if he didn’t believe him. “Nolan, he’s my brother and a good doctor too. He did that for you. And if someone turned you away, I’ll find out why for you.”
“I hurt.” Burke nodded and moved a little closer. Franklin was looking weaker now, his face pale. Burke could feel something wrong with him but not what. It wasn’t until he felt Chris touch his mind that he knew.
He has something on his spine, a cut along with a few other injuries. He had to escape. But to be honest, I don’t know what that means. His mind is all jumbled up. They won’t treat him because he’s got other issues. Mostly that his mind is hurting. They thought him too depressed to help. But the doctor there is being dealt with as we speak. Your mom is there at the clinic now. Burke could almost feel sorry for whoever it had been. Your brothers are nearly there, but I’ve told everyone to wait. You have this under control, don’t you, Burke?
He told her he hoped so, but to send in Rylee if that was okay with Nolan. The man was a human, and he might not know that he was a panther. Instead of pretending to use the phone, he told him that he’d contacted his brother.
“I want McClure here. She told me I’d be all right.” He told him how he was related to her. “Oh. Then she’s coming here?”
“Yes, but I won’t let her come in here until you let Margaret go. You’re scaring her, and I really like her. I need her to work with me.” Franklin said he was right sorry. “I know you are. Just let her go and I’ll have a look at your back. Then when Rylee gets here, you can talk to her.”
He staggered back from Margaret, who turned and slapped Franklin. When he just stood there, his face looking sort of sad, Burke asked her to set up a room for them. She nodded once and started out of the room.
“You do something like that to me again, Franklin, and you will think that Rylee is sweet on you when I’m finished with your old body.” Franklin looked at him when Margaret left the room. “Rylee is on her way.”
“I think that nurse is mad at me.” Burke nodded. “I want you to know that I only came here on account’a I knew the Captain was here sometimes. I heard tell that she hangs out here. Guess nobody knew that she had herself a husband that worked here too.”
“She’s married to my brother, Nolan.” He knew he was repeating himself, but Burke was trying to get his thoughts together. When Margaret came back to say that Rylee was here, Burke put out his hand. “I want the knife. And any other weapon you have on you. I’ll not have you trying to hurt her when’s she’s done us both a favor.”
“I like her.” Burke said he did as well. And when he put the knife in his hand, he asked him if there was more. “They took it from me when I went to the hospital once. Said I was unfit to carry any more. I was fit to carry when I had a bullet in me and they was needing me overseas, but now that I need to get some help, I’m unfit.”
“You come on along then and we’ll work in this.” He saw Rylee just as he was guiding Franklin into the room. He asked for one minute and she nodded. Burke went in and saw that Margaret had gotten his shirt off already. Burke wasn’t prepared for what he saw on the man.
~~~
Pip searched up and down the long building, trying her best not to cry. Franklin had been missing for four days now, and she was sure that he’d been arrested again or murdered. When the young man who had been trying to keep up with her finally did, she asked him again if he’d heard that he was here.
“His name isn’t on the list, miss. You said he could write, and he’s just not there.” She’d been confused by that when he’d asked her if he could write his name. He explained that there were plenty of men there that could not. “Mrs. Bentley is with the doctors now or I’d ask them if they—miss, you can’t go in there.”
She’d seen the room earlier where a bunch of people were closed off in a room. Pip knew they were mostly doctors and other staff. Why they were having a meeting now was sort of mind boggling to her since there were people everywhere that needed help. But she was missing the only man she’d ever loved, and one of them had to know where he was.
The door opened easily. She’d been sure it would have been locked. And when she walked in, she almost had the feeling that they were expecting her. Which wasn’t possible, as she’d only just gotten into town. A woman sitting at the head of the table was laughing, but the older woman who looked to be in charge just stared.
“I’m trying to find out if my uncle has been here. I heard from someone at the VA that he’d been…well, he escaped. They’re not very good at keeping him safe, and I’ve tried my best to get them to understand that he hates to be tied down, but they don’t listen. I’ve had to take on two jobs as well as move here to try and get him to be signed over to me.” She looked around the room. “I’ve shared too much. But I need to find him.”
“What’s his name?” She told the older woman. “Ah. We were just talking about him. Come on in, dear, and have a seat. And so you know, we know just where he is and he’s in good hands.”
“I want to go to him. Now if you don’t mind.” The woman nodded but didn’t move. “Perhaps you didn’t get it. I want to go get him and take care of him. Wherever he is, it can’t be safer than when he’s with me.”
“He’s with my son, Burke, who is taking care of him. He broke into Burke’s offices and demanded to see a woman by the name of Captain McClure. That would be my daughter-in-law, Rylee.” She asked what this man was doing for him. “He’s a doctor. Burke said that he’s doing some minor surgery on him now, and that he’d have him brought here in about thirty minutes.”
Before she could think that she was light headed, she was sitting in a chair with her head between her knees. The shoes in front of her were expensive and looked comfortable. For a moment she wondered what it would cost to have something like that, and heard someone laugh. Pushing against the hand that held her, she looked at the face of the younger woman that had been seated.
“You all right now?” Pip nodded. “Here, you drink this juice and I’ll tell you what I know. Franklin Bradshaw was here earlier today. And yesterday, from what we’ve been able to piece together. He was turned away both times.” Pip emptied the tall glass of orange juice and realized it was fresh with pulp, the best kind.
“Why? I mean, you have your doors open for anyone, correct? Not that he should have been out and about on his own, but I thought this place was for people like him, vets.” The woman nodded. “I’m Piper Cordale, everyone just calls me Pip.”
“Chris Bentley.” Pip looked around then back at the woman. “Yes, my family owns and runs this place. That’s why we’re taking care that your uncle gets the best care now and that the people who turned him away are dealt with. Not everyone is cut out for helping the lost.”
“I’ve been trying to help him, but he’s a lot to handle. I suppose he’d say the same thing about me.” Chris nodded. “And you should know that I’m not his niece but his friend. For some reason it’s easier to get someone to listen to me when I say that I’m related to him. Franklin hasn’t anyone left, and I’ve been trying to make things easier for him.”
“At what cost to you?” Pip said nothing but played with the condensation on the now full glass. “Does he know what you are?”
“No. I don’t think so. I mean, he might have at one time, but his mind is a little fuzzy at time on details.” Chris said nothing. “That other woman, she said that her son was working on him. Can you tell me what happened to him?”
“He was injured when he tried to get away from the hospital. Burke said that in addition to the wound at his back, he also had bruising around his wrists and ankles. He said it looked to him like they tied him down.” She said they had to at times to keep him from hurting himself. “No, that’s not why they do it and you know it. It’s why you’re trying to get him to come live with you. Please don’t lie to me, Pip. We won’t have a good relationship if you do.”
Pip looked at her. “I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I really don’t think we’re going to be best of buds, do you? I mean, you know as well as I do that I’m broke.” Chris cocked a brow at her. “Yes, I know what you are and who you are. And I’m also pretty sure you can read my mind. Not that I have much in the way of secrets. But if you want to know something then don’t rape my mind. Ask me.”
“All right. And the only thing that I got from your head was about my shoes. By the way, they’re very comfortable. When I touched you, all your emotions came to me and I can’t stop those. Also, I wanted to make sure that you were all right as well.” Pip nodded. “You’re not, are you? All right, I mean.”
“No. I have issues as well. Chronic Major Depression, or CMD as my file says on it. It’s what brought the two of us together all those years ago.” Chris asked her how. “I was
ready to jump. I had no idea he was there as well, on the building I mean. And when I lifted my hands off the railing that I’d been holding onto, he grabbed me from behind. No matter how much I fought him to be let go, he hung onto me like it was his business. I wasn’t able to shake him for another year and a half.”
“But that didn’t stop you, did it?” Pip pulled her sleeves down over her wrists and said nothing. “Franklin told Nolan that you were his niece just now. He asked me to have you be there when they come in.”
“Is he going to be all right?” Chris said that he was now. “I need him in my life as much as he does me, I guess. If anything were to happen to him…. I just don’t want anything to happen to him, that’s all.”
“Is it what you are that has you so depressed?” Pip just shrugged as she emptied the glass of juice again, only to have it full when she sat it on the table. “If you want something different, I can get it for you.”
“Cranberry.” The glass, which had been full of orange juice, was now filled with a dark red, blood like juice. Picking it up, Pip moaned as the flavor and the richness rolled over her tongue. Almost as soon as she set the glass down, it was full again. “Thank you.”
“You could have done it on your own.” Pip just shook her head. The depression, coming in waves more and more lately, nearly had her falling to the floor. But a touch from Chris and she could feel it dissipate. Not leave her; there was only one way for that to happen, but it did lessen a little. “How long have you been off your meds?”
“Five years, six months, and twenty-nine days. Since I lost my insurance, along with my job, when I couldn’t function at work when they fucked with my dosage. It happens at times. The place where I got my medicines wasn’t the best of places, and I don’t think they got the dosages just right when I picked them up. It had happened before.” Pip smiled at Chris. “I guess it’s what you are that makes it so I can’t lie to you.”
“No, you don’t want to lie to me.” Chris stood, and so did Pip. “They’re here. Nolan, my brother-in-law, is with Burke and would like for you to hang back a little until they get Franklin in a room. He’s afraid that if you show, he’ll get upset again.” Pip nodded. “Rylee is with Franklin as well. He knows her from the service.”
“His boss, I guess.” Pip sat down again when Chris told her she’d be back. The glass filled when she’d emptied it again. She was going to be buzzing soon if she didn’t stop. But as a faerie that hadn’t had any for a while, she was getting it while the getting was good. And she had a feeling that despite what Chris had hinted at earlier, she’d not be seeing the grand witch again.

Landon Justice Series book Four Release Day 5/16/16

Kathi BartonLeave a comment

Synopsis

Landon Logan is a man haunted by a tragedy that he blames himself for but didn’t do. No one can convince him otherwise–especially his well-meaning Grandda who happens to be dead. Landon is a necromancer.

Dillon Malone has a few abilities of her own. She can “find” things by touching the owner or touching something the owner has touched. This makes her a wanted woman.

Landon is so angry at his good-for-nothing parents that he storms out of their house with their maid in tow. Dillon is happy to leave with this brooding young man and soon discovers that the handsome hunk is her other half.

Dillon’s happiness is short lived when her past reaches out to bite her, and she and Landon become pawns in her father’s evil scheme. When Dillon’s father has Steele’s new baby kidnapped, all bets are off.


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Chapter One 

Landon could see the people below him walking around the quad like nothing was going on. There was a lot going on so far as he could see, and it made him nuts to think that no one else in the world could see and hear what he could. He glanced over at the letter he’d gotten from his parents’ attorney this morning and then back out the window. Happy birthday to me, he thought.
It occurred to him then, and not for the first time, that he should just jump. End his life. It wasn’t much of one…even at nine he knew that. And now…he figured that everyone might be a little better off if he did. He knew now that his parents thought so. They seldom, if ever, had anything to do with him other than to tell him what a disappointment he was to them, and that they wished they’d given him away as soon as he took his first breath. They certainly knew how to make him feel good. Picking up the letter again, he read it aloud.
“I’m to inform you, Landon Michael Logan the Sixth, that your parents have taken steps to not allow you back into the family home. Should you try, you will be arrested on sight. If you attempt to contact my clients, you will be arrested and charged with trespassing. They have, in their words, written you out of their lives.
“Provisions have been made for your care. You will be allowed to finish your school years there at the academy, and so long as your grades are not below par, you will continue to have money in your account should you need it, but this is limited to what they feel is necessary, not you. Tuition, as well as your books, will be paid for out of that fund as well.
“At this time you have not been taken out of their will. They feel that doing so will make it so that, should they pass away too soon, you will not be cared for in a manner in which they have said. In addition, they feel it would be an embarrassment to their good name should they cut you out without anything and people were to find out about it. But there are rules that apply to you for the rest of your youth that you must abide by, or there will be nothing. You will not, however, inherit anything from their estate.”
Landon knew that his name, or that of his parents, would have opened any doors for him should he want it to. But for him, it had only been a name. Nothing much to brag on, and certainly nothing prideful about it as with other families he’d seen at school since he’d been here. As long as he didn’t ask for or expect any comfort or love from the two people in the world who were supposed to provide it for him, Landon had hoped that they’d forget about him. Apparently, they had not. His father was abusive, both physically as well as verbally, and his mother a tyrant, only out to get what she could from others and never give a dime back, even when it was expected of her. His parents were the perfect couple for each other as far as Landon was concerned. Picking up where he left off, he read the rest of the letter.
“At that time you turn eighteen you will be given a lump sum of cash. This money will be all that you will receive from the estate. You will not under any circumstances tell anyone of this settlement, nor will you ask for more. There simply is nothing for you.
Then when you are twenty-five you will receive the rest of your money as has been willed to you by your grandfather. In the event that your parents should die at any time before the dates mentioned in this letter, this accounting will be carried out by their attorney and there will be no more funding after such time. At this time, you are their child in name only. A full accounting of the rules will come to you when it is time.”
If they died? He was pretty sure that they would if any of the things around him were any indication. There were dead walking around all the time. Landon looked over at the man who was standing there staring at him. His grandfather, he’d told him the first time he’d come to him, was the only man in the world that Landon had ever trusted.
“They disown you?” Landon nodded. “Selfish shits. What do they think you’re going to do as a kid? Find you a job or something? Not likely. I didn’t leave them that money…I didn’t leave it so they could be cold and heartless to you.”
“I’m pretty sure they think they have enough reasons. You know what kind of person I’ve been.” His grandda, a Landon too, only shook his head. Landon looked out the window again and continued. “I’m thinking of joining you. I just don’t know what I have to live for anymore. I think Mother and Father would be much—”
“You’ll do no such thing. Why do you want to go and do something stupid like that? You think they’re going to mourn you? They will not. They’d have to have a heart to do that, don’t you think?” Landon said he was tired of it all. “Yeah, I know that feeling. Got me a terrible case of the tiredness until I realized that you could see and have a nice conversation with me. What am I to do if you’re not around? Now that I got you here and I’m not ready to stop talking to you as yet.”
Landon watched a boy he knew running across the quad, with a bunch of the older boys chasing him. Two weeks ago that had been him. Since then he’d been hiding out in his room, only leaving when he absolutely had to.
“They’re not nice here. I mean, I’m not either, I guess, but they’re cruel to each other and even to themselves. I’m betting that not one person would care. I even doubt anyone here would notice me for days after I was gone. It wouldn’t be me that brings them looking, but the smell of it.”
“That’s enough there, Landon. I don’t want you feeling sorry for yourself. You should just get your ass to class and forget all that other crap. You know I got me a powerful need to see what lies that history teacher is telling you kids. If I was alive, I’d tear him a new ass, let me tell you.” Landon smiled and thought that a smile shouldn’t be painful like this one was. “Landon, son, don’t do it.”
He pulled the gun out of his pocket and held it in his hands. He heard the sharp intake of breath and wondered what his grandda would do if he were just to look him in the eye and use it. Landon had bought it several days ago, and had been surprised at how easy it had been to do so. His grandda came to stand beside him and Landon put it out to him, knowing that he couldn’t touch it, wanting him to see how serious he was about ending his life.
“They don’t like me. They never have. I know that I’ve not been the best of kids, but I only wanted them to see me. See that I’m a person too. But they never did, not when I was good nor when I was bad. I can’t take this anymore, Grandda.” His grandda told
him that he could see him. “It’s not the same. I wanted them to say they love me. That they want me in their lives. But what do they do? They send me a letter from their attorney and have him tell me that I’m not to ever come home again.”
The longer he stood there saying nothing, the more appeal it had to just put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. He knew that he could do it. He’d even read up on how his head would look when he was done. Not that it mattered really, but he did want to just end his life. Looking up at his grandda when he said his name, Landon knew that it was time.
“Goodbye, Grandda. I’m so glad that I had you in my life.” Putting the small gun to his head, he closed his eyes. Pulling the trigger was as easy as opening the door, and he knew that he’d be dead long before he hit the floor. But nothing happened. Pulling the trigger again and again, he opened his eyes to see his grandda looking at him.
“Got me ways of making sure you’re safe.” He asked him what he meant. “Took me a person and had him come in and take the bullets out for you when I saw that you had it. Can’t lose you, boy, you know that. You’re all I have in this here entire world, dead or alive. I can’t let you do this because of them. I had him take them out and put the gun back where you had it. Throwing them bullets away was the best thing I’ve done for anyone in a very long time. I can’t be letting you do this to yourself, Landon. You’re my grandson and I have a need for you to be around for a bit longer.”
Landon threw the gun at the ghost. He, of course, didn’t move, but Landon’s anger spiraled out of control. As he began tearing things up, curtains from the windows, his sheets from his bed, he began screaming how his life was his own and no one else’s. Then he saw the candle. Grabbing it up, he looked for matches as his grandda begged him to stop.
He wasn’t sure what happened then. Landon woke up with his head spinning and the room he was in filled with smoke. The curtains were burning, as were his sheets and his books, and the letter from his parents’ attorney was there as well. As he started for it, to…he had no idea, he heard the first screams and knew that the fire had spread. He’d caused the building to fill with smoke and now people were going to die. Because of him.
Landon had no idea how he’d gotten into the hallway. He was sick with the pain in his head, and his arm was hurting as well. Tumbling a few times as he tried to make his way down the smoke filled hall, he started pounding on doors to see if someone needed help out. The third door he came to was hot, but he opened it anyway. Pushing hard on the door nearly had him passing out, but he finally managed to get it open enough to see the boy lying in front of it.
Dragging the boy out by his legs wasn’t easy. He was heavy for one thing, and Landon was sick now. Throwing up twice as he moved down the hall, he noticed that there was blood in his puke, and that scared him. Not that he wasn’t ready to die, but that the boy with him would as well. Getting him to the stairs, he sat down, trying to get his bearings. Two boys came up the stairs toward him, their hands full of something that looked like trash bags. He pleaded with them to help him.
“Help me get him out of here.” They said they had things to do. “But he’ll die. I can’t let him die like this. Just help me get him out of here.”
“Sucks to be you, I guess.” They were laughing as they made their way around him and to the next flight of stairs. Landon had no idea who they were or why they were in this part of the building, but he could see that they’d escaped being burned by the fire and soot had gotten them. Their bodies were dark with it.
“Follow me.” He looked at his grandda as he stood over him, his body floating just about a foot from the stairs that he was on. “Going down with your burden is going to be easier than going up. Just make sure that you pull him by his arms and not his legs. You don’t want to hurt his head any more than it already is. Come on, son, you can do this. I’ll get you out.”
“I hurt him.” His grandda asked him how he figured that. “I set the fire. He wouldn’t have been hurt if I had just jumped like I wanted to.”
“You didn’t do this, Landon. Not you. Them others, they did this, not you.” Landon nodded and said that he had the candle and it had caused it. “No, you didn’t. You might have been in the blast when it…why do you think you had a thing to do with this fire?”
“I set it. It’s what I was going to do when you hit me.” He told him he’d never touched him, that he’d been knocked out of the room before Landon had found the matches, that the explosion or whatever it had been had done it. “I must have found them then. I set fire to my room.”
“You didn’t, I tell you. You didn’t do anything.” Landon picked up the boy’s legs and started down the stairs again, knowing that he was going to go to prison for this. And wouldn’t that just make his parents thrilled. “You didn’t do this, boy, I swear to you.”
The next explosion rocked him. Hitting his head again, Landon knew a new kind of fear. The staircase was filled with flames now, and he was going to be burned alive, he just knew it.
~~~
Landon sat up in the bed. The dream of that fateful day as a child coming back to haunt him every night was taking its toll on him. His body was covered in sweat, and he could hear the echo of his screams in his head. Whether or not he had vocalized them, he wasn’t sure. But it was bad enough that they were in his head. Again. Sitting on his bed, the shaking began and he pulled a blanket from the floor, soaked now with his sweat.
Wrapping the blanket around him to keep the chills at bay some, Landon made his way to the bathroom to warm up. He nearly fell twice on his way, and had to go to his knees once when the tremors nearly had him throwing up. His body was frozen now, his head pounding so hard that he had trouble thinking beyond getting warm. Once he was in the bathroom, he turned the water to its hottest setting, and with his back to where the mirror usually hung, he leaned against the tile wall.
“I’m here, boy.” He nodded, knowing that his grandda would never leave him no matter what he’d done now or back then. “You gotta talk to somebody, Landon. You can’t keep this up. You’re killing yourself.”
“I’m fine.” Grandda snorted. It was no less than he expected of him. “You never did tell me how you like the house. Did you find your way around all right?”
“I like it right fine, and don’t change the subject. Get yourself cleaned up and come on out here, and we’ll have ourselves a pow-wow, you and me.”
There was no point in arguing with him. His grandda had been telling him what to do since he’d been about three and no one else was talking to him. Or listening to him. When he realized that not everyone could see what he could, Landon had lashed out, hurting those that might have helped him but letting his anger at being alone most of his young life keep everyone away. He’d figured that would keep his heart safer. Not that it had.
Stepping into the hot water, he was warmed immediately. From experience he knew that he’d be doing the same thing again tomorrow, so he turned the water to a relatively cooler temperature so that in the morning his skin wouldn’t be tender from his abuse today. Scrubbing his body several times, Landon leaned against the wall and thought about his life.
He was nearly twenty-nine years old, next week as a matter of fact. And it had been almost twenty years to the day since he’d blown up the building he’d been staying in, as well as two kids that he talked to daily, ones that haunted him still. And in all that time, since he’d been released from the hospital a month later, he’d not spoken a word to his mom and dad. That was until recently, when their attorney had reached out. They wanted to speak to him.
Getting out after washing his body again, he dried off, still not looking in the mirror. He would have had it removed as he had in every other place he’d been in, but he’d not figured out how to do it. Someone had adhered it to the wall, and other than busting it to get it down, he had yet to get it out of this room. Landon figured that he didn’t need any more bad luck.
Looking at his body was a constant reminder of that day. The scars, old and faded, seemed as fresh and raw as they had then. No pain was there any longer, but he did feel it all the same. Steele had been the only one to see them, and he’d told him that they were barely noticeable. But Landon knew they were there. And always would be.
Going to his bedroom again, he opened the huge closet and had to grin at what was there. Or in this case, what wasn’t there. The thing was as big as most bedrooms, holding not just things on hangers, but drawers for shoes and cufflinks, as well as watches and under things such as tee shirts and his boxers. Right now it had three tee-shirts hanging there, two pair of jeans that had seen better days, as well as a black suit in a bag that he’d not opened in more years than he could remember. Pulling out the worst looking of the shirts, he pulled it over his head after he’d put on his boxers and a pair of jeans. This was his attire on his day off. He headed to the kitchen, where he knew his grandda was waiting.
~~~
Logan, what most people called him, watched his only grandson move around the kitchen ignoring him. He was fine with that…for now. As Landon pulled out a big box of those flakes of corn he liked to eat, Logan suggested gently that he get him a banana to go with it.
“No thanks.” They both eyed the fruit that had been in the bowl turning darker and darker since Addie had brought it to him a few days ago. “I have to go into town today. Are you going to be joining me?”
“I don’t think so.” Logan was sort of afraid of the town. There wasn’t really anything there that would hurt him, but he didn’t like all the people. It was why he’d never met any of the others that Landon worked with. Logan just did not like the living. He’d barely tolerated them when he was one of them and avoided them even now. But he didn’t want the same for his grandson.
After he ate, Logan watched Landon put his things away and clean up the counter. He’d been alone too long, Logan thought. The boy was a better housekeeper than most women he knew. And when he finished drying his one bowl and spoon, Logan looked at the sad state of affairs that was his cabinets.
“You gonna get you some dishes today? Maybe a pot or two. I heard you telling that other man, Mitch, that you wanted him to come on by and have some dinner with you. What you planning to do, share the one plate you have and that bowl?” Landon said nothing, but Logan was used to that. That was another thing he didn’t care for, his grandson being so lonely. “You call that attorney back?”
That got a reaction. Not the one he wanted, but enough that Logan could see that he was thinking about it. He needed to get this resolved if for no other reason than to show his mom and dad that he wasn’t nearly as bad as they’d always thought. Or worse yet, as bad as they always told him he was. Landon was a good man; a great one as far as he was concerned.
“I didn’t plan on it. In fact, I’d forgotten all about it.” Sure he had, thought Logan, and I can pull a rabbit out of my ass. “I’ll call them tomorrow.”
“You’ll do it now. You might have won one of them clearing house things, and they might give it away should you don’t call and claim it.” They both knew it was his parents, and Logan had a feeling he might know what they were gonna say. He’d been visiting them too. “Landon, call the man and get it done.”
“I don’t want to.” He sounded five, and before Logan could point that out to him, Landon continued. “They want to see me. And then they want to sit me in a chair and point out all the things I’ve done since I saw them last. Twenty years is going to be a long list, don’t you think? I’m not ready for that. I don’t know that I ever will be.”
“You’re a damned grown man. What do you think you would do if they try to sit you in the corner like a child? You answer me that.” Landon said he had no answer. “Didn’t think so. You don’t like the way they’re treating you, then you can leave. But you’ve no way of knowing shit unless you go there and talk to them. For all you know, they could be wanting to welcome you back with open arms.”
“You know that’s not ever going to happen.” Logan knew that too. But a man could hope, couldn’t he? His son and that wife of his had done them both wrong. “And what do I do, Grandda, when they ask me what I’ve been doing with my life? Do I tell them I start each day with you harping on me? Do I say that I work with a bunch of men just like me that talk to the dead? I’m sure that’ll go over just fine.”
“I don’t know why not. You’ve made a living at it. And from where I’m sitting you’ve done a fine job at that too. Not the living part, but the money part. Why, you never have touched that money they paid you. Building yourself up from nothing, now look at you.” Landon snorted. “You don’t no more live than them ghosts you help. Hell son, when was the last time you were laid? I’m thinking it’s been a long while.”
“I’m not talking about my sex life with you. Especially not you. Christ.” He got up and put a load of wash in the washer as he continued. “In the event you didn’t notice, I just purchased this house and it’s taking up a great deal of my time.”
It was two more pairs of those ratty jeans he wore and five work shirts. He’d hang them on the bar when they were washed up and pull them down when he needed them. Work shirts never made it to the upper levels all that often.
“Yeah, I can see that. Laundry and dishes. Yesterday you run that vacuum cleaner until I plum thought you were going to wear a hole in the carpets. Then you dusted. If you ever want to change jobs in the future, you can make a right fine domestic.” Landon said nothing, but the shirt in his hand wasn’t going to survive the anger he was holding in much longer. So of course, Logan decided to push him a little harder. “You should get you one of them blow up dolls to screw. That way you can shove it in the closet when you’re satisfied and not have to think about it anymore. Much like you do most of your friends.”
The shirt ripped and hung limply in his hands. Logan wanted to get up and hug the boy. Hold him like he was sure no one had done in more years than was right. Logan watched his grandson struggle with his temper and his hurt.
“If I go and do this, you’ll go with me? See what they really are so that I can move on with my life?” He said that he would. There was no point in telling him that this might not turn out the way he thought, because they both knew better. But Logan was forever hopeful. “All right, but you’ll meet the others too. It’s a fair trade for what you’ve been doing to me all these years.”
“I can do that. But what about them boys? You gonna do something about them too?” Logan wanted to tell him to vanish them, but knew that he’d not do it. Landon had been tormented by the Bobbsey Twins, as Logan called them, since the fire.
“I don’t know. You know that they come and go as they please.” He did at that. Never here more than it took for them to upset Landon. Then they’d move on to some other trouble. And it mattered little to any of them that Logan knew just what had happened that day, and it had not been the way that Landon thought. And those damned boys knew it too.
The phone call from that pansy lawyer had upset Landon. Logan wanted to go through the device and choke the living shit out of the person on the other end. But he just sat there knowing that someday, not only would Landon listen to him about that day, but his son and daughter-in-law would as well. He’d been there. Logan had seen what had gone on that day and what had happened to cause it all. And it was not Landon. It had never been the boy. He also knew why he wasn’t there for his only grandchild, and he was gonna enjoy seeing their reactions to that coming out too.
Landon called to set up the talk. That’s what he knew it was gonna be too, a talk. He hoped that Landon would get in a few words of his own. Maybe a fuck you or a fuck off would be nice as well. Landon sat down when he closed his phone.
“I have to go there at one. They have an appointment open for me and I’m to meet him at the parents’ house. I have an appointment to go to my parents’ house.” Logan stood up to leave with him, not that it mattered. He could pretty much go where he wanted when he wanted to. “You really don’t have to go, Grandda. I was only…I was pissed off, and I didn’t mean you’d have to go. There isn’t any point in both of us having to suffer.”
“I want to. I need to.” Landon looked like he was going to say more. But Logan had a feeling he didn’t want to know what it might be. “I can see how well that son of mine aged. I’m thinking not so well. What do you think?”
“I think I’d rather you just pull my nails out with a pair of plyers than to go and see them both. And if you want to know the truth, I’m sort of sick about going there.” Logan knew that as well. “When this is done and you see what you need to see from them, you don’t bring them up to me again. Promise.”
“I promise, but on the condition that you have an open mind and don’t be going in there with your head up your ass.” Landon said he wasn’t make any kind of promises. “Then I guess I can’t either.”
As they made their way out of the house and to his truck, Logan had a shiver of dread. What if, his mind kept saying, and the list was too long for him to try and work out. What if Landon’s parents were as cruel as they’d always been? What if they were only bringing him there to hurt him again? The closer he got to the house, waiting on Landon, the more dread he felt. This was a mistake, he knew it. He just hoped the letter that he’d sent out would help his grandson more than he could.

EliJah Release Blitz Calhoun Series Book Two & Winner Announce 5/2/16

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Synopsis

Noelle was in somewhat of a pickle. She had researched the Calhoun firm―Elijah Calhoun in particular―before she made the appointment, but she was having second and third thoughts about hiring the firm after she got there. All her research indicated she could trust them, but big men scared the hell out of her, and the place was full of them.
Elijah had been running a tad late for work, so his brother Trent took his first appointment. Elijah never dreamed that the woman he had an appointment with was his future mate…and she needed his protection.
Noelle’s stepfather wasn’t their only problem. Elijah’s brother Sterling’s nightmares had gotten worse and somehow the creature that had marked him was controlling his actions as well…no one was safe….

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Chapter 1

Helenia stood in front of the mirror. She liked this new look. The younger people used so much color in their lives that she was sure that they’d had her in mind when they came up with it. The pink of her blouse, the green of her pants…she thought perhaps that she could get used to this style, unlike the other decades when women wore long billowing clothing and wigs that itched. Not to mention shoes that pinched so badly that she would sometimes go barefoot under her clothing so no one would know. Not that she cared, but it still gave her a sense of freedom. And Helenia was going to be free forever.

She was still trying to decide which other outfit she was going to keep when she felt the movement of air around her. Standing as still as she could, pulling shadows from every corner around her to hide herself, she turned and looked around when she knew no one could see her. Not humans at any rate.

“Hello, Helenia. It’s been a very long time.” Dante flicked at her shoulder when they both knew there was nothing on her. When he did so again, she grabbed his hand and held him tightly in her grip until he dropped to his knees. “You always did overreact. Let me go, Helenia. I do not care for being treated this way.”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you touched me.” She bent his hand back more until she heard the bones break. His screams went unnoticed by her and the patrons of the store. They were invisible to anyone but other supernaturals. “What are you doing here? You know that I do not like you well enough to have you around me even for a moment.”

“They’re hunting you.” She let him go and asked him who was hunting her. “The Board of Vampires, they’re looking for you. They have every vampire looking for any information about you, and there’s a bonus if they have an idea where you might be staying.”

“And you? You thought to collect on it, Dante? I should hope that you’re smarter than that. To know that to try and profit off of my demise, you’ll be dead before the next sunset. I have no more use for them than they do for me. I like it that way.” She looked around and saw that two others were watching them, vampires younger than Dante and not even close to being anywhere near as old as she was, and far less powerful. “Did you come with others? To hope to trap me?”

He stood then, his wrist healed already, and looked to where she was looking. He must have fed before coming to catch her, she thought, but it would do him no good. The two others, both males, started toward them.

“I don’t know them. They more than likely heard about the bounty on your head, and decided to collect too.” She asked him how much it was. “Twenty-five thousand points.”

“So much?” He nodded. “And all for me? What do they think is going to happen when they send babies for me? That I shall sit idly by and let them take me in?”

Vampires for the most part had no use for money. She had a great deal of it; over the centuries she’d managed to steal a great deal of not just cash, but gems and other valuables that humans used. But after a while, usually after a couple of centuries, a vampire would realize that having it for no other reason other than it was easy to come by held no appeal. She had hers to get humans, stupid animals, to do things for her.

So the Board had been giving out points, or credits, to use when they had committed some crime or had not followed a rule in the strictest sense of the word. Helenia had long since stopped trying to gather points. She was so far in the hole now that even if she got a thousand a day, it would not put a dent in her bad deeds.

“Noah is after you as well.” She looked at Dante just as the two babies, the younger vampires, were closing in. “He is the one that called the Board on you, from what I understand.”

“I thought him dead. He is such a pussy, even for as old as he is. Christ, to think that he finally grew some balls and turned me in. Not that it will do any of them any good. I am stronger than he is by far.” Helenia hadn’t had any dealings with Noah, but she knew what he was. A vampire that stayed alone and followed most of the rules.

The babies were nearly to her when she lifted her hand and blasted one of them with her power. He was nothing more than ash on the shoes of the people who continued to walk the sidewalks in the mall as if he’d never been. She supposed, as far as they knew, he had not. The second man, stupider than the first, lunged at her, and she simply snapped his neck. If this was the best that the Board had, she was going to live for another thousand years, easily. His ash dusted the outfit that she had on.

“I swear to you, Dante, there is no hope for nice things anymore. I get me something pretty to wear and these idiots just come along and mess it up.” He said nothing but looked around. She wondered if he was expecting more babies to come for her, and just grabbed three of the outfits she’d been looking at and left the shop. Dante was right behind her.

“What do you plan to do? Go back to your lair?” She said nothing as she moved in and out of shops picking what she wanted and sending it to her home across town. It was much easier than going around with a large bag in her hands, and it wasn’t as if she needed to keep any receipts. Helenia hadn’t paid for anything in decades. “I was wondering if you need someone to be with. I’m between homes right now.”

“Do you suppose that these shoes will match the dress that I got? No matter.” They disappeared as well. “No, I don’t want you around me. I prefer my own company to that of idiots.”

Two more stores, mostly clothing then a jewelry store, and she had all that she wanted for now. Honestly, Dante had soured it for her by telling her about the Board. She turned to him when he asked her again where she was going now.

“I should have thought that you’d know better than to try and collect on my being jailed, my friend.” He tried to look shocked, but it looked mostly like fear to her. “To think that after all this time, you still think me stupid. When all along, it was you.”

Helenia let her magic go and let her body return to its true self. She felt empowered by it, the shield off her face and her body released. Dante started to step away from her,

but she put her long claws into his chest and felt his beating heart. When he cried out, she pulled his heart from his chest, feeling the power of it like a shock to her system.

“So pretty, don’t you think?” She wanted him to see her eating it, taking the still warm thing to her mouth, but he disappeared, just like the other two had. Frowning, she dusted the ash off her hands from his heart when it, too, was gone. “Did you honestly think that I’d tell you anything, you moron?”

Going to her lair, she put the things that she’d taken in the trash. Like her outing today, they’d been ruined by Dante and his news. She could think of any number of reasons that the Board was after her, but it didn’t really matter. Helenia lived by her own rules. And soon she’d be in charge of everything, including the humans, and it wouldn’t matter at all what they wanted. She looked at her calendar and realized how long it had been in years since that night. He would be ready for her now, her blood rendering him weak enough that she could take his seed.

It seemed longer when she thought of the last time that she’d seen him. An alpha. Watching him all night long with the people he’d traveled with, she knew that he was going to be the one to help her create an army of monsters like her. Helenia smiled. She was under no delusions that she was anything but a monster. She had worked hard in creating herself to be one. And now that she was perfect, she wanted to make more in her image. And the alpha was going to help her.

Everyone knew that wolves carried a gene that was far superior to any other shifter. Vampires had it as well, in great abundance. But a wolf also had the ability to shift and to be stronger still with his other beast. It was this beast, the wolf, that she was counting on. Her creations would be wolf beasts, and she would control them all.

Making her way to the labs that she’d set up years ago, she knew that the man she’d put there, Basil something, would still be sleeping. He’d been asking to go home; his family apparently couldn’t do anything without him there. And if anything had happened to him between then and now, she’d have to start all over. So putting him into a deep sleep had been better for everyone, mostly for her own peace of mind. And his family was no longer around to make demands on him, so that had been a plus for both of them.

As she made her way by one of the big buildings, she saw an ad in the window. Staring at it for a long time, she finally stopped someone to ask them the date. There was no way she’d messed up that badly.

“October tenth.” She told him to tell her the year and when he answered her, she nearly fell backward. It hadn’t been one year as she’d thought, but four. Fuck. There was no telling what her alpha had gotten into since then.

~~~

Noelle was intimidated by the big office, mostly because of the guards in the lobby. They were big and armed. Not that she planned on doing anything wrong, but she had a fear of men that were big.

But she was running out of time and this man, the one she was coming to see, had been the one that had come up on her search as the most trustworthy. She hoped so.

When she stood in front of the big desk, she had to clear her throat twice before she could make any sound come out of her mouth. Nerves were making her sick.

“I’d like to see Mr. Calhoun please.” The woman asked her if she had an appointment. “I do. For today at ten.”

It was just shy of nine, but Noelle hated to be late. When the woman asked her to have a seat and that she’d call him, Noelle went to sit on one of the big chairs that looked like a family of five could have used. She watched the people coming and going.

An older man came in and started talking loudly about the weather. She was sure that he talked that way all the time, loud and with a great deal of humor. And everyone here seemed to know him. He stopped by the desk as she had, but he wasn’t asked about appointments but sent up to the elevator with a smile. Noelle wanted someone to like her that way.

Noelle had, for the most part, been alone all her life. She worked and socialized when she had to, but she preferred her own company to that of other people. It more than likely was because of her family and the way that they’d jump out of the smallest places to hurt her.

When her name was called, Noelle made her way to the desk. It was just after nine-thirty by then, and she had to pee. But this had to be done today. Mr. Calhoun’s secretary said that this was his last appointment before December, and that would be too late. Going up in the elevator with the guard, she held tightly onto her plastic bag and hoped she was doing the right thing.

“Hello, Miss Alexander. Mr. Elijah Calhoun isn’t in yet, but his brother Trent is. He wanted to know if he could help you.” She knew that name as well. But he was no longer working here, she’d heard. Noelle asked her about it. “He helps out when necessary. And since Elijah is running slightly behind, he thought he’d help him out.”

Nodding, she was shown into a large office. As soon as she saw them, the older gentleman and the big man behind the desk, she wanted to run. They were too much and too big. Noelle turned to leave and the older man spoke.

“Come on now, sweetie. You’re not gonna deny an old man a chance to sit with a pretty girl, are you? And Trent here, he is just glad to see me today because he won’t have to eat all them delicious biscuits that his lovely wife made him. I’m his daddy, TJ Calhoun, and we’re about as harmless as they come.” She looked at him, then at the steaming plate on the desk. “Come on back and have a seat, and let us see what we can do for you.”

“I won some money.” She didn’t know why she’d blurted it out like that. Noelle had been holding that secret for five and a half months now. “I don’t want anyone to know that I did.”

“All right then. Why don’t you have a seat and we’ll figure this out?” Trent stood up, and she moved closer to the door behind her. When he sat down, she watched him carefully. “I won’t hurt you, Miss Alexander. I promise you that.”

Nodding but still not moving, she wondered why she was even doing this. She’d been making it on her own, without the money in her bag, for years now. This money, all of it that she’d won, would make it better for her, but she was terrified of what it might

bring too. But to have a house of her own with a yard was something that she’d been thinking about for years.

Making her way to the chair, she sat with her bag in her hand and tried to think. “I was sixteen when my stepfather left me at a party. He and my stepmother had other children of their own, and they felt that my check from the welfare office would suit them better if they didn’t have me around needing any of it. Sucking them dry is what they said I was doing to them.” She glanced at the elder Calhoun when he made a noise, and felt her face heat up. He asked her how she was both their stepchild. “My mom died after marrying him. Then he remarried a few months later and she had children of her own. I didn’t know it at the time, but they were his children, both of them. Ron is twenty now, and Daniel is two years older. I’m telling you this so you understand why I’m…I’m afraid, Mr. Calhoun. I don’t want them to come back and try to hurt me again.”

“You think they will?” She was sure of it and said as much. “I see. And this money that you won. I’m assuming that it’s a great deal. That it’s not just a scratch offs.”

“I have those as well. When I would win some money, I would put it back in an envelope until it was close to expiring. I never cashed it all in, just enough to get by on. It was my emergency money, I guess. Every week I would buy one scratch off and one of the bigger lottery money tickets. I haven’t stopped that since I won. The article I read at the library said to go about your business like nothing happened. So I did.” He asked her how much she’d won. “The Powerball. I won the one from five and a half months ago.”

Neither of them said anything for several seconds. Then TJ laughed, and looked at his son when Trent asked him what was going on. His dad was still laughing as he explained to Trent.

“She won the big one. The forty-million-dollar jackpot, didn’t you, love?” She nodded and dug the tickets that she wanted to cash in from her bag. “Holy milk balls, Trent, she’s the winner that they’ve all been looking for.”

She looked at Trent when he asked her if that was true. “Yes. I won and I have to turn in my ticket or it’s going to go away.” He took the envelopes that she’d put into the plastic bag she used as a purse most of the time. It was all she had to carry it around in, and felt silly for it being so mundane. “I read about your firm at the library and everyone said that you can be trusted. I don’t want anyone to know who I am.”

“All right, let me look a few things up here. Just…I have to call in our attorney to help me get this right for you.” She shook her head, but he said it would be fine. “It’s my brother, Tanner Calhoun. Did you read about him too?”

“Please don’t make fun of me.” She wanted to snatch her things back from him, but he stood up again and she sat still. “I’ve never hurt anyone. I work and keep to myself and don’t bother any of them. But they come and take whatever I have on me and then beat me for it. I’m not sure what they’d do about this money. More than likely kill me.” She looked at them both before speaking again. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want the money.”

When he sat in the chair next to her, she whimpered. Men, big ones, scared her. Trent didn’t move, but TJ got up and walked out of the room. She had no idea what he was

going to do, probably call the police now that they had her tickets, but she didn’t care. She wanted to go back to her place.

“You say your family takes your money and they hurt you? Have you ever called the police? Filed a report on them? We can do that now if you want, Noelle. I can do it for you.” His voice was soft, full of something that she’d never heard from anyone when they were talking to her. Compassion. “Tell me so that I can find them and beat the living shit out of them. My wife, Joe? She’ll have to visit me in jail, but I think she’ll think it was worth it to see you safe.” She laughed when he did. “There you go. See, I might be big, but I’m as gentle as a puppy.”

“My stepfather is Howard Merrill. My stepmother wasn’t any better. Her name was Gloria Merrill, but she died a few years back. I think she was in a car accident or something. I can’t afford the newspaper all the time.” She looked at Trent and felt…she wasn’t sure what she felt except no longer afraid, for some reason. “He thinks I made him lose his job. I guess in a way I did. But when he lost his job, he lost everything else too. Like my government money. He didn’t get his pension either, which I suppose is the way it should be with him being fired and all.”

“You think that he’ll try to take your money that you won.” She nodded, then shook her head. “Ah, so you think that he’ll take your life while he’s at it.”

“He will. Like I said, he feels that I owe him for some reason. He’s not been happy with me for a long time.” That was an understatement. “I have a place that I’ve been living in for a while. But I want my own home. A yard. I really want a yard.”

“I understand that more than you can imagine. I’ve talked to…had my dad talk to Tanner, and he’s on his way in. He works for a friend of ours, but he said he’d help us out. I know investments better than I do the letter of the law for this sort of thing. And my wife is coming in as well. She said that she was going to come by today, and she should be here soon. I want to try and get this worked out for you so that you can get you a house as well as be safe.”

“I know what you are.” He said nothing, and she looked at her hands in her lap. “I know that you and your family are wolves. I can’t always tell what a person is, but I can tell when someone isn’t human. I am, but I know that you’re not.”

“No, I’m not. Are you…is that why you’re afraid of me? Is your stepfather a wolf?” She shook her head and told him that her family was human as well. “But one of them hurt you, a wolf or some other shifter.”

“Yes.” He didn’t pry, and she didn’t feel it was necessary to explain. He was going to help her get her money, and that would be the end of their relationship. “There are other tickets too. Not as much as the big one, but I’d like to have that money as well. It’s what I can pay you with.”

“I’m not going to charge you for helping you, Miss Alexander. I think you’ve been hurt enough.” She wanted to cry, to beg him to hold her. There was something so comforting about him that she wanted to let him take care of her. But she knew better than to trust that kind of feeling. “Tanner is here. I don’t want you to be alarmed when he comes in. He has a tendency to not knock, but to come in like he’s been shot from a rocket.”

The door to the office slammed back against the wall. The man who came into the room was talking, as if whatever conversation he’d been having with Trent the last time he’d seen him was still going on. He spoke to Trent about changes in the market and how he was getting his office set up slowly. He looked at her and stopped talking.

“Well, hello there. Aren’t you about the prettiest little thing?” She shook her head and felt her fear double. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. But you are very pretty. I’m Tanner Calhoun. Trent said you need someone to advise you on some lottery winnings.”

When he sat down on the edge of the desk, she had a feeling that Trent had told him to back off. Tanner grinned at her before he asked her about the ticket. She knew then that she might be able to do this. These men wasted no time in getting to the point.

After he was shown the ticket, he asked her a lot of questions about it. The other tickets, mounting to just under ten thousand dollars, were given to the secretary to verify. Tanner said it wasn’t as if they didn’t trust her, but they wanted to make sure they weren’t going to have any problems when they were taken in. The big ticket was put in a safe so that no one could take it from her now that a few people knew about it. A copy of it was made for her to keep, as well as a receipt stating that they had it in their safe for her.

“Does your stepfather have any idea that you’ve got any money? I mean, from your winnings? Did he lend you money for anything? Pay your rent somewhere, or any of your bills? At any time, did anyone help you out with a bill or something?” She told Tanner no, that she didn’t tell anyone. “And your bills? You paid those with your own money, nothing ever coming from him?”

“I’ve made sure that I made my own way. I’ve never been on welfare either…I promised myself that I’d be independent as much as I could. And my stepfather was better at taking than he was at giving. Never the tickets. I never had them on me when they, my stepbrothers or him, found me.” She looked at her hands again. “My stepbrothers weren’t like that when I lived at home with them. They were spoiled, but they never bothered me. I’m still not sure that they do this because they want to.”

“I’m sorry about that. No one should treat anyone badly, especially not a female. But knowing that about him makes it so much easier now. And the fact that you bought it after you left home and were out of his care means he has no claims on it at all. Those are things that I want to keep from happening.”

For the next hour she went over the paperwork. By the time she was finished, not only was she exhausted, but she was also richer. The money from the tickets had been taken all over town and cashed in by different members of the family, so that nothing was ever going to come back on her. She’d never had so much cash on her at any time in her life. And then Joe, Trent’s wife, showed up.

“Hello, Noelle. It’s been a very long time.” Noelle looked at the door, then back at the woman who had been there the day she’d been kicked out of her family. “Don’t. Please don’t run. Noah will be so happy to see you.”

“He won’t.” Joe said that he would. “I hurt him that day. He might…he’ll want to hurt me back.”

“No, he won’t. He looked for you for years after you left. And he’ll be glad to see you, I promise.” She looked at the door again, wondering if it was too late to take it all back. “I know your scent now, Noelle. You won’t be able to hide again. But I promise you, Noah never wanted you hurt by this either. I’m not sure how you think you hurt him, but I’ve spoken to him. He’s glad to know that you’ve come back around.”

Terror like she’d not felt for a very long time skimmed along her skin. Her hands hurt from clenching them. Her head hurt from trying to sort through all the things that were running through her head. She’d hurt Noah because her father had been an important man in his business. Howard had told her that when and if he ever found her that Noah would make her pay for making one of his best employees have to be fired.

The door opened again and she screamed. She had no idea who might have come in or why, but her terror was too much. And when someone grabbed her, Noelle lost whatever hold she had on her fear, and the darkness swallowed her up.

Kenton The McCade Dragon Release Day & Winner Announced 3/7/16

Kathi BartonLeave a comment
Emma Gentry felt like she was losing her mind. From the time she had picked up the pretty ring to examine it, she’d been hearing a voice in her head. When she ran from the demolished building, she’d slipped the ring on her finger so that she wouldn’t drop it, now she couldn’t get it off. She was in dire need of medical attention, but the voice wouldn’t let her stop to get help. There were others looking for the ring and would kill her for it. Emma was on the run.


Kenton McCade was the doctor in the family. When found Emma in his office treating a badly infected wound on her leg, he had to help her. The infection had spread and she was near death.


Kenton and his brothers were dragon shifters born without the ability to shift into their other half. The magic, it seemed, lay dormant in a sleeping dragon that was tied to six pieces of jewelry. When the ring found its way to Emma, her touch had woken the sleeping beast. When Emma touched Kenton’s sigil on his chest, he shifted to his beast for the first time. But the beast from the ring would not be complete until all the jewelry found its way to their rightful dragons….


Emma was still on the run…they need her to survive…but Emma trusted no one…
B&N  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/kenton-kathi-s-barton/1123475328?ean=2940157628093
 B&N Paperback http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/kenton-kathi-s-barton/1123473099?
ean=9781629894386
Winner of a mystery paperback is  L Smith please check your email  on how to claim the paperback and make sure you check your spam folder and congrats 

Chapter 1
“I need you to tell me what this is worth.” Emma looked up at the man that held out a little box to her. If it was in her power, Emma would gladly have punched him in the nose. But she also knew that he’d hit her back, and it would be ten times more painful than anything she could do to him. “Now, Emma. And he said for you not to dally. He needs it now.”
“So, you do it. I’m in the middle of something else you told me to do.” She knew as well as he did that Bart could tell the worth of an item almost as well as she could. Not quite as good as she could; practice had made her better and faster at it. But they’d both been trained to know how to do it. “I’m in the middle of—”
She should have known better. Whenever she pointed something obvious out to her brother, he would resort to violence if he didn’t care for her answer. Which was usually all the time. Emma wondered if she’d ever learn and doubted it. Now she found herself on the floor with her mouth bloodied and her head hurting. Not the first time for that either.
He put the box on the desk, then pulled out his gun and laid it on her desk with it as if that was all he needed to make her comply. The punch to her face had done that pretty good, she thought. Emma wished she could pick the gun up and blow his fucking head off. Instead, she lifted her hurting body up and got back to her desk. Emma didn’t even bother wiping the blood off. He’d just hit her again to show he could.
Picking up the small box, she opened it. Inside was a small blue bag, tied at the top with an equally blue string. There were no markings on the bag or the box, but she knew quality when she felt it. And this bag wasn’t it. She started to ask Bart what kind of joke this was when she realized that he’d not answer her. He’d more than likely do what she’d wanted to do to him and shoot her. She’d be dead and he’d be standing over her demanding that she get up and do what he’d told her to do. There was no love lost between the two of them, and hadn’t been for a very long time.
Dumping the contents out into her hand, she was first surprised at the weight of the ring, then at how big it was. But the ring itself was what had her holding her breath. It was simply the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. The work on it—and there was a great deal of it—had been done with a steady hand and an even better eye, for the art looked to her like the person who had made this loved the person who was to receive it. For a second she wondered if she would ever have someone love her that much. She looked up at Bart when he snorted at her. He looked pissed.
“It’s just a band. Nothing but a damned gold band that is worth less than my fucking shoes. I wonder if it’s even gold plated. Fuckers.” She looked at the ring, then back at him as he continued. “Fucking bastard said it was worth millions. It’s not even worth the box it came in. Why the hell do I even bother with robbing people if they’re going to lie to me about what I’m taking? Huh? And then to have fought so hard to
keep it? As if it was worth his own life? Dumbass probably believed that it was worth the money I was told it was.”
“Are you kidding me? This isn’t just a band, dumbass. This is a work of art.” She started to show him, but Bart picked up his gun and slid it back into his holster before slamming his hands down on the table, his face level with her. She leapt back from him. Which, she supposed, was what he had wanted her to do anyway. Then he laughed at her. “Don’t hurt me, Bart. Please? I’ll tell Daddy.”
“Like he gives a shit about you. I mean, look where he has you working. In the basement of a piece of shit building that has nothing to go for it but a toilet that is ten feet away.” He snorted again. “Go to him, Emma, see if I’m not right. And when he tells you to go away, I’m going to come back down here and blow your fucking brains out for bothering him. We have more important things to do than to listen to you whine about how badly you’re being treated.”
After he left her, she put the ring back in the little bag and started working on the chains that had been tangled up when Bart had simply tossed them into a bank bag. He’d told her when she asked him that it wasn’t his job to make sure that things were neat and tidy, that she would be out of a fucking job if he did. She estimated that she had about ten hours in untangling the chains so far and she wasn’t any closer to getting them straight than she had been before. Emma was pretty sure that he’d done it on purpose. It was something he loved doing, making her job more difficult.
Her father and brother had dumped her down here six years ago, pulling her from college and telling her that she had to earn her keep. Of course Emma hadn’t seen her father in all this time. Words, harsh and mean, had come from him via her brother. She was going to have to find another job soon. This one just wasn’t making it for her any longer. Of course, she blamed that on Bart too. He took money from her cash envelope every week, and he was taking more and more all the time. He called it a living tax. If he didn’t get it, she didn’t live. And she believed him too.
The ring called to her. She knew that was silly. Rings or other things didn’t talk, but she could almost hear it telling her that it didn’t belong to her and that she needed to return it to the owner. She would love to do that, but she wasn’t going to. Not that she’d have the chance to get out of this place with the thing. Being patted down and wanded every time she left would have made it impossible, but she knew that if found out, she’d be dead. Emma looked over at the desk next to hers.
Sebastian Logan had been her friend and co-worker, and the nicest man she’d ever known. Polite, hardworking, and a man who had loved his family more than he did his own life. And it was what had gotten him killed.
A diamond ring had been brought in a month ago. Bart, of course, had deemed it unworthy and had told her and Sebastian they could have it. She’d thought it was pretty but thought that Sebastian could sell it for a few dollars, and knew that it would help out in their situation. His only child was sick and that money would have gone a long way in helping him. So he’d taken the ring home to sell.
He’d come in the next day, saying that he’d gotten enough to buy a prescription that was much needed, and they had both sat down to work. An hour later, Bart and his
friend, Mark Whitaker, had come in to question Sebastian about it. Apparently a fence that they knew had mentioned that Sebastian had brought it in.
“You said I could have it. You told us it was worthless and that we could have it. Tell him, Emma. Tell him he said that.” Bart, of course, denied that, and even told Emma that their father wanted to make an example of Sebastian. Bart had pulled his gun free and had killed her friend right there in front of her, despite her begging him to let it go.
Blood had sprayed over her face and clothing. Bart had set Mark in front of her for the rest of the day while Sebastian was lying in his own blood, and told her that if she wiped her face he would put the blood back. But this time it would be her own.
All Emma wanted to do was get out of there and be her own person. Live her life as she wanted on her own terms. As soon as she could save enough money to get away, anyway. Looking at the ring again, she wondered what would happen if she were to get it to its owner. What sort of reward would there be? Because at the rate she was saving money, she’d be too old to run when she did manage to get enough to go on.
At ten after twelve, she pulled out her lunch. It was only a jelly sandwich; the peanut butter had run out a few days ago. Emma wanted to cry about what her life had become, and knew that it was as set in stone as the sword was that she’d read about so long ago.
“Put that shit away. I want you to look this over.” She only glanced at the paperwork that Bart had tossed in front of her. Her lunch time was her time, not his. She’d told him that before. Not that it mattered, but she had told him. “Now, Emma. I want to get it to Dad before the end of the day, and you fucking around is gonna make me late.”
“I’m eating. And in the event that you missed that part, I’m entitled to have one hour for my lunch. So come back when I’m done.” He drew his fist back and she tilted out her chin. “Hit me, and see if I don’t go home because of it. Go ahead, Bart, knock me around and you’ll never get this.”
“He wants it now.” Emma took a bite of her sandwich and said nothing. “You fucking cunt. You think this is going to win you any points with me? Who do you think is going to run this place when Dad finally kicks the bucket? You? Not fucking likely.”
He slammed his fists on the table again, a thing he did when he wasn’t winning an argument. Well, she’d had a shitty day so far, and right now she really did want him to hit her. She would go to her father this time.
Sweeping everything off her desk in his fit of anger, he stood over her, watching. Emma reached for the little box and the ring that had fallen out of it by bending over and leaning under her desk. Just at that moment an explosion rocked the room. There wasn’t time to think, not even to wonder what Bart had done now.
Emma felt it singe her arms and legs even as the ring slipped over the tip of her finger. She and the desk went flying back; she felt it hit her several times as heat poured into the room with her. Screams filled the air…not just hers, but her brother’s as well. Then everything went black.
Wake up. She felt rather than heard someone telling her to wake. The pain over her body told her that she’d be better off just letting things fade out again, but the voice in her head…it felt like it told her again to wake up.
“I hurt.” The voice, calmer now, told her that she’d be better if she got up and moved. “I don’t think so. I think I’m broken.”
You are not broken. Not too badly, that is. Come on now, get out of this place before the others come to find you. She had no idea why that would be a bad thing when the voice spoke again. Should they find you, then all will be lost. Come on now, Emma, you must get moving. Moving will be good for us both. No one must find you here with me.
“Both? Who is here with me? Hello?” No answer. But then she thought there shouldn’t be because as far as she knew, there was only one of her. Giggling hurt a little, so she tried to tell herself that she really did need to move.
Every time she moved something off her, there seemed to be tons more atop her. Wood and bricks. Glass surrounded her, and it seemed to be in her as well. The desk, she knew, had more than likely saved her life. Had she been sitting at it instead of nearly under it, she would have been killed. She did pause a moment to wonder if Bart had made it, but found that she really didn’t care. Bart was on his own for now.
The debris was thick around her too. Papers were everywhere, most of them still smoldering. The chair that she’d been in was a broken mess imbedded in the wall above her head.
Once she cleared herself of what she could to move, Emma could see the street beyond. Whatever had blown up had taken out the five floors above her sublevel work station. Gingerly, she made her way to the opening, only to be stopped by the voice again
No, no, not that way. Go to the back of the ruin. I’ll guide you. She turned then, not even sure why she was listening to the voice instead of common sense, but she was hurting too badly to argue with herself right now. There were people out there in front of her. She had no idea what she’d find behind her. But she made her way out the way the voice told her.
It seemed to take her too long to get out. Falling twice, she bumped her head again and had to lay there for a long time to let the dizziness stop. Emma was sick too, her belly not liking the way her vision kept going in and out all the time. And she knew that the long gash in her leg wasn’t good. The blood pouring from it was thick with dirt.
As soon as she was out of the building, she lay back against the one across from it and looked at where she’d been. There was no way she should have survived that, and she was sure that anyone else in the building hadn’t. Emma wondered who besides her brother and her were there, if anyone. And again, she wondered how the hell she had survived.
The building had been one of the oldest downtown. At five stories, it had once been the home to a textile company that had gone under in the twenties. Her father had acquired the building, along with several more, a few years ago, and had taken this one to use as an office of sorts. It was a front, like most of her father’s businesses, Bart had told her.
Emma didn’t know. Her brother never put her dad in the best picture when he talked about him. He was ruthless, a murderer, and even a thug when necessary. If he was as Bart said, he had changed a great deal since her mother had died a few years back.
The building now looked like it had never been there. A deep hole—a crater, she figured it would be called—was where it had once been. Nothing had survived on either side of it either. The two buildings that were used as storage units for whatever her father had acquired were leveled. Even the one across from the building had suffered some major damage. Emma watched as the first firetruck pulled up in front of the mess.
Your father is dead, I’m afraid. She nodded at the voice, then regretted that immediately. Your brother is alive, but he is badly burned. He and another man, his bodyguard, will be pulled from the wreckage soon, but they will not mention you are here. But they will come for you now. The others will come.
“Who will? Why?” The voice told her that it was because of him. “Him who? I don’t know anyone. I don’t date, I’m not allowed. I don’t even know why I have this voice talking to me. Do you? Am I…I don’t know, am I dead too?”
You are not dead, Emma, but they come for me. And the rest of us now that I’m awake. There will be more coming now that I’ve been found. She stood up then, determined to go and see if someone could patch her up. You do and they’ll kill you where you stand.
“Why? What did I do? This was…it was more than likely a gas explosion.” The voice told her she knew better. “No, I don’t. I don’t know a damned thing. For all I know, I could be lying there dead in that thing and this is all a dream.”
I’m not a dream, Emma Gentry. I am part of the dragon in the ring. Emma stopped moving and looked down at her hand. There it was, the ring. Just on the tip of her finger. When you slipped it upon your finger, I knew then that you were the one to carry me. The one that would take me to my owner. You will, won’t you? Take me home to the one that awaits me? The rest of me will follow now that I have found you.
“No. In the event you didn’t notice, I’m out of work, no money, and I don’t even know what is wrong with me that I can hear you talking to me. I’m hurting, injured, and you won’t let me go and find someone to fix me up.” He told her that she was the one, and that he would see that she had such riches if she did this for him. “The one what? I’m just a woman trying to get along in this world my family brought me into. Can’t you just leave me alone? Please?”
I can keep you safe. And if you promise to take me to my owner, I will help you in ways that you will need. I will, as I have said, make you a queen that will never have to worry for money again. I am but a part of the whole. A dragon that must be brought together with the other pieces of my set. Emma just wanted to take a nap. Forever. No, you will need to keep moving. The man that your brother stole me from, he will come for you because of the ring. He will want you dead because of the ring.
“Why?” He didn’t answer her and she realized that she’d been asking that a lot to the unknown. “Fine. I’m going to do this for you, but you’re going to have to do something for me. I want you to not do a damned thing for me unless it’s to guide me. I
know better than most that nothing in this world comes without consequences. So tell me where to go and nothing else.”
Nothing? She told him again that she didn’t want to owe him anything when this was done. All right. But I think that you will come to regret that soon enough.
She already did. Moving in the direction that he told her, she felt like she’d broken more bones than she knew she had. While he told her that she needed to go north, Emma told him that she needed to go to her home. There she’d get cleaned up and retrieve the last of her funds. She had no idea where she was going, but wherever it was, it wasn’t going to be a free ride. Emma thought that whoever was coming for her would think she was dead long enough for her to get out of her apartment to rid herself of the voice.
Emma knew on some level that the voice was her own. There simply wasn’t any way for her to be talking to the dragon of the ring. She wanted out and this was her subconscious getting her there. So what if the world thought her dead? She was fine with that as well. Emma Gentry was dead as far as she was concerned too, and she’d have to come up with a name that would work. As she showered and changed, cleaning up as much of the wounds on her body that she could, Emma thought of what her life would be now.
“Anything I want.” She smiled at herself and winced. The cuts on her face made even doing the simplest things hard. She did worry over the wound in her leg, but at least it was clean, and the bleeding had stopped as well…for now. As she moved out of her home, she looked around. There was nothing there, not one thing she would miss. This Emma was dead.
~~~
“Twenty-four dead and several dozen more injured in the blast that is still under investigation. There was some talk of gas leaks, but that was ruled out when it was said that the building called Shipley Textile was the epicenter of the explosion, and there were no gas lines to that building.”
Baldwin Franks wanted to throw something at the television but refrained. He was a man that prided himself on control. But the newsperson was not giving him the answers that he craved. He wanted to know if Bartholomew Gentry and his son had survived, not the dozens of nameless fucks that meant nothing to him. When the news anchor paused, pushing her finger to her ear, he wanted to scream at her that no one believed that she was listening to a fucking thing, but then she turned to the scene behind her.
“There is news just in that Mr. Bart Gentry, Junior has been pulled from the wreckage, along with another man by the name of Whitaker. That is all that we know right now. Mr. Gentry is the son of Bartholomew Gentry, Senior, a man who owned a great many of the buildings in the downtown area. Mr. Gentry and his son have been under a great deal of scrutiny for the last several years, starting with the death of the senior Mr. Gentry’s wife, Anderson Franks Gentry, some years ago. Mr. Gentry, Senior’s body, along with five more, was pulled from the building about an hour ago, I’m told.”
Baldwin leaned back in his chair as the anchor continued about the things she had little to no real information about. Gentry Senior was dead. Baldwin thought that they both should have been dead, but was sure that the man who’d survived, a man he’d come to hate more than anything, would land on his feet. Or in this case, flat on his back. The sooner the entire family was dead, the happier he’d be. They’d killed his little girl.
He looked over at his man, Steward Jefferies, and told him to get someone on it. Steward’s phone rang before he could answer Baldwin.
As the other man listened to his call, Baldwin thought of all the ways he’d wanted to make both Gentry men suffer. There had been times when he’d had Bart in his sights, but something would always come up. This time he knew he’d taken drastic measures, but the man was just where he wanted him. It was way past time to kill Bart, and he was going to be the one to do it, even if he had to do it in front of a bunch of cops.
When Steward hung up, he looked pale as he leaned back in his chair. Baldwin was almost afraid to ask him what it was, but wasn’t going to seem as if he cared. He not only was in control of things around him, he also never gave the appearance of caring much about it.
“Apparently Emma Gentry isn’t dead, as we’d been told, and was in the building when it blew.” Baldwin nearly screamed out his frustrations. Would this family never fucking end? “So far they’ve not found a trace of her in the number of dead, and she’s not on the injury list, either, that they can find. I don’t…someone saw her climbing out of the sublevel of the basement just as the police arrived. I have a man on it.”
“How do you know it was my granddaughter and not some rat climbing out of her hole after a night of fucking whatever had a dick?” Steward stood up and went to his briefcase. Pulling out the file that was on top, he handed it to him. “What is this?”
“I told you several days ago that there was rumor that Emma was alive and hiding out somewhere. We could never confirm nor deny that information, so you told me to keep on it. I had someone follow her and she lives…lived in a poor neighborhood that catered more to the people that her father worked with than his type of wealth. There wasn’t any reason to believe that she was this person, due to her living conditions, and I nearly tossed it away as just that, rumors. But then we got a picture of her just this morning. I forgot until just this minute that I had it.” Baldwin looked at the picture and felt his heart twist up in his chest. “They have some of her DNA that I’m running, but so far I’ve not heard back. But the girl in this picture looks like your daughter Anderson, doesn’t she? I don’t know why she’s been hiding out the way she has, but I intend to find out.”
“Yes.” Baldwin looked at the blurred picture of the woman. Even with the poor quality of the picture, he knew that it was her. “Call them up, rush it. I want to know now.”
He looked at Steward when he said nothing. There was more, he just knew it, and when he got the information, his well-controlled temper was going to detonate. He told him to tell him.
“The ring was in the building.” The fucking ring. The motherfucking ring was there and not where it was supposed to be. Which was with him. “Bart, the younger, took it from the courier this morning. Killed him and three other men while they were en route to us. He took not just the ring, which was the most valuable piece, but he also took the money they were bringing here. I’m guessing that it, as well as the cash, was in the building when it went up. I’m going to have his home searched, of course, but I’d not hold out much hope. The kid, for all his stupidity, seemed to know just when to lay low.”
“Why wasn’t I told about this before now?” Steward told him that he’d only just found out too. “And how do we know that it’s him? And not some random fuck that is going to die too?”
“He left you a note. Well, not you, but the person he was robbing.” Baldwin asked him what it said. “It says thank you for the money, that he really did appreciate it, and that when you sent some more this way for him, to make sure that you made the pick-up easier, as in boxes and not suitcases.”
Baldwin was happy to know that Bart had no idea what he’d found in the ring. Few ever would, and when he had all the pieces, he’d be the wealthiest and the strongest man in the world. He had only to find all six pieces to make that happen.
The legend, one as old as the earth, had fallen in his lap some time ago and he’d been searching for the pieces since. He and two other people, enemies of his, were the only ones that had an inkling as to what the jewels were really for.
“Kill him.” Steward nodded and asked about the girl. “Her too. If she is Gentry’s daughter, then she’s just as guilty for killing my daughter as the rest of them.” No witnesses were the only way to ensure that he got what he wanted in this.
It hurt him to say that, almost as much as it had when he’d been told that his lovely little girl, Anderson, had been killed when they’d thought she was her husband in the car. But the entire family needed to be purged from the earth, and if he had to murder his own flesh and blood to do so, then he would. When Steward left him, Baldwin picked up the picture again and looked at it. It was as if he were looking at his little girl again before she’d been pulled into the life of crime with her husband.
Anderson had been…well, willful didn’t begin to cover what his little girl had been. She had a mind of her own, and damn the person that had any other opinion than hers. Even he had butted heads with her from time to time, and had, in the end, decided that it was easier to give in than to fight with her. That was how she’d ended up married to his worst enemy. Bartholomew had been a thorn in his side then, and had been placed on his list of ones who needed to die when his daughter had called him from the accident she’d been in that night so long ago.
“Someone hit me. I think…I’m hurt badly.” He asked her who’d done it, his mind not fully awake when the call had come to his home in the middle of the night. “Bartholomew. Help me. I don’t know yet what’s going on, but I don’t want to die.”
Baldwin could hear the sirens then, the men coming to rescue his little girl, knowing that it was going to be too late for her. She told him that she was sorry that she
couldn’t hang on for him. Then the line had gone dead; his little girl was gone from him forever.

Colin McCulloughs Jamboree Release Blitz 2/22/16

Kathi BartonLeave a comment

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Colin McCullough gets the phone call that all military families dread?his brother Hawkins has been shot. Colin only wants to thank Hawkins’s commanding officer for saving his brother’s life, but he can never seem to get past the guards in the hospital’s hallway to personally thank the man.

Major Lauren Burcher is all Army and head of a special task team usually sent in to clean things up. This time, her team is ambushed by friendlies, and Lauren and her best man Hawkins McCullough barely make it out alive?they were set up. Someone wants them both dead.

Another attempt on Lauren’s life in the hospital fails miserably, and when Colin scoops her up in his arms to place her back in the hospital bed, he finds a gun pointed at his forehead at point blank range. In that moment he realizes this bad-assed scary woman is his mate.

Lauren wants no part of this mate business. Relationships get messy and this jerk is bossy as hell. And Lauren doesn’t take orders…she gives them. But it will take all of them, his family and hers, to keep her and Hawkins alive….

 

 

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Prologue
Run. The single word screamed through her mind over and over while she lay hidden in her hiding place under the bed. They were at it again. Her parents never let the setting of the sun go by without hitting and screaming at one another, usually both. Sometimes her as well.
At twelve, RaeAnn just wanted to be safe. And even as young as she was, she knew other families weren’t like hers. She wished every day that she’d not been born…at least not to these people.
The door to her room slammed back against the wall and startled a small whimper from her. Putting her hand over her mouth, she tried her best to not make another sound. Even breathing hard would bring her pain from them. The dark shadow could be either of them. Both her parents had a large build, long hair, and thick, mean hands.
“Girl!” her father screamed. “Come on out here. See to your mother so we can go to bed. You hear me? I said to get your skinny ass out here and fix her face up. It’s bleeding from some kinda cut.”
RaeAnn wouldn’t help either of them by coming out of her hiding place. She’d learned her lesson the hard way about giving aid to one or both of them. Once she’d done what they wanted her to do, they’d find some little flaw with it and would knock her around until she was in worse shape than they had been. When the bed over her was suddenly gone, she held her breath harder, hoping that he’d not come any closer to her hiding place.
RaeAnn had skipped school over the course of several weeks to make this hiding space for herself, working until she was too exhausted to go on most days. Her parents were gone, no doubt to find somewhere that was giving something away, or digging through the dumpster to find a few thrown-away things that they could sell for a quick buck or two. They worked harder at that than they ever had at a job, she thought. But it was long enough for her to have gotten all the work done she needed without them knowing what she was about. Her hidey hole was perfect, so long as they didn’t come too far into her room.
She’d taken up the floorboards. Most were rotted anyway and had been easy to remove. Then she’d dug out the dirt, just enough that she could use old bricks that had been stolen long ago to shore up the floor of the hole. Then she’d taken the dirt and filled old pop and beer cans to make up the rest of the walls around her when the bricks were gone. The place beneath her bed had less wind coming in than the room that she slept in, too.
“Girl, where the fuck are you?” He stomped into the room deeper, holding the dripping knife he had in his hand like he still meant business. Still she didn’t move, even when a drop of whatever was wet on the knife dripped down on her cheek. RaeAnn knew that it was blood, his or her mother’s, but she didn’t move an inch to even wipe it from her. It was simply too dangerous right now.
He was standing on the last solid board before he got to the ones she’d had to makeshift to get her place ready; the first of many that she’d not removed to hide because it had been too solid for her to move without any tools, which she supposed was a good thing. One more, even half a step, and he’d be on top of her. His weight would crash upon her when he broke through to her.
Run, her mind screamed at her. Run now! But even if she did, there was no safe place for her to go. No neighbors that would offer her help, and certainly no one close enough that she could get to before one or both of her parents caught up with her again. Living in the middle of nowhere as they did, and using a long since abandoned house, there were little to no luxuries for her to use as a source of comfort.
No power and no heat. Water for some reason was plentiful, but it was ice cold even in the dead of summer, and even colder when there was snow on the ground, as there was now. Its source, as far as she could tell, was an underground well. A long hose from it to the house had given them at least some way to clean themselves…if her parents ever tried, that was.
They used lanterns for light mostly, but there was seldom money left over after beer and pop was bought to supply them with much more than a thimbleful of lantern oil. Candles, mostly birthday ones and some scented ones that would stink up the place rather than improve on the odors, would be what she’d do her homework by.
“Where is she?” Her mother stood in the doorway, her hulking frame blocking out the little moonlight that came in through the broken window in the living room. “She run off again?”
“Don’t see her, do you? Fucking moron. What the fuck is wrong with you? Ain’t you done heard me calling out for her to come and help you out? She’s not in here now, is she?” Her mom called her father an asshole and they were at it again. This time in her room.
As they tumbled out, their fists hitting whatever was close enough to them, she heard them grunting in pain. Nothing was safe. RaeAnn cried silently as they continued to fight. Nothing in her room was worth worrying about, nor was there anything that she treasured.
It wasn’t long before the silence became enough that she knew they’d either killed each other, which she prayed would happen nightly, or they’d finally tired themselves out. RaeAnn didn’t move. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that the coast was clear just yet. Another ploy that she’d been caught in. She would wait them out, even if it took all night.
RaeAnn must have dozed off at some point. Her room was deadly silent, the place bright with the sun. There wasn’t any sound coming from the rest of the house, so she moved her body first, trying to work out the sore places before she stood up. If she had to run, she wanted to be as ready as she could be.
They were gone. She could see that now. Lifting herself out of the hole, she could see beyond to the other room. The shack was only the three rooms, not even a bathroom inside the place other than a commode that rarely worked and the hose that was brought in from the well in a curtained off area in the living room to wash-up with
when it was necessary. RaeAnn did a wash up every day, but she knew that her parents did only when it was too much for them to sleep together. Moving out of the house, she kept an eye out for them.
She had no coat or shoes that she could put on despite the cold weather. They were both somewhere in the house, she knew that. But she could only use them when she was going to school, and had to remove them both and turn them in every day to whoever was there when she got home. It was like the library, she thought…only on loan to her until she could no longer wear them. Which was pretty much where she was with both pieces of clothing now.
Not bothering to grab up anything, RaeAnn made her way out of the house and took off at a run toward the woods. She had no idea what was this way. The bus picked her up about a mile from the house in the opposite direction, but she figured that this was her best bet at getting away. This time, RaeAnn thought, she was staying away from them.
Her feet were hurting when she’d gone no more than an hour from the house. But she didn’t stop. Stopping now would get her caught, so she kept her eye on the mountain in front of her—her guiding light, so to speak—and kept going. She’d make it or die, which was a good possibility right now. RaeAnn was cold and starving, but she was freer now than she’d ever been.
It had been dark for some time when she came upon the barn. Cows and a bull had been in a field that she’d gone around, and she’d kept an eye on the massive bull that seemed to move along with her but yet never came at her. When the barn’s light went off, RaeAnn stood by the tree she was nearest as a few deer moved, then the light flickered on again. As she watched, the light went off and on twice more before the deer moved on, and she knew they were the cause of it.
Slipping into the barn had been easy. It was a good deal warmer than it was outside, and the snow had just begun to fall again. Several inches blanketed the ground already, and RaeAnn knew that she was making the perfect path for her parents to find her. But right now, she was too hungry and hurting too badly to care if they found her or not. She moved to the bales of hay and lay down on the parts that were broken off. RaeAnn knew that she should keep moving, but decided that she could do so better if she had a little nap.
~~~
Peter kissed his lovely wife on the cheek as he made his way out to the barn. They had a lot of things to do today, and one of them was to put together the new baby bed that had arrived just yesterday. In three months they’d be parents, and he was as tickled about that as he could be.
As soon as he opened the barn door, he knew something was wrong. A girl was standing at the feed bin to one of his prized cows, talking. And she was eating the feed and telling the poor cow staring at her that she was so sorry, but her belly was too empty for her to not take what she could. Peter cleared his throat as gently as he could, and fell back when she came at him with a pitchfork. As it was, he was pinned tightly against the barn wall as she stared at him with more fear than he had.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.” Nothing, just that…it took him a few seconds to realize that she was fevered. “You need me to call someone for you? I can. My wife is just in the house and I can have her call your parents for—”
“I won’t go back.” He nodded, not sure what she meant, but right now he’d agree with her if she told him he was a woman. “I won’t go back. Please don’t make me.”
“All right.” He reached for his wife and told her what was going on. He also told her to bring her medical bag. He thought the girl was sick and his wife might be able to help her before he called the police. “My wife is coming out now. She’s a doctor and can help you.”
“I don’t want to go back there. Don’t make me, please.” The door opened and he didn’t look to see if it was his wife or not. The girl still had the fork at his chest, and he knew that if something startled her, he’d never see his child being born. “I won’t go back.”
“I won’t make you. You just have to let me go now.” He looked her over, trying to see if there were any other weapons on her that he needed to know about, and saw the blood on her bare feet. “Where are your shoes? And coat?”
“It’s not a school day.” He had no idea what she meant by that, but she continued before he could ask. “I can’t have them unless it’s a school day. Please don’t make me go back.”
“Put that down right now.” Peter closed his eyes when Mary spoke harshly to the girl. “What do you think you’re doing? I said put it down.”
The glazed look turned from him to look at his wife. Peter wanted to knock the fork away, but he knew that being stupid right now would get them both killed. The girl’s hand started to tremble and the fork came closer to his chest.
“I don’t want to go back.” Mary told the girl that she wasn’t going anywhere, that she needed to put the fork down. The girl looked at it like she only just realized that she had it, and it lowered to the floor. “I can just go now. I can just leave and you don’t have to worry about me coming back. I’m not going back there again.”
“Come on now, you just sit right down and let me have a look at those cuts.” Mary spoke softly now as she took the fork from the girl completely and handed it to him. “Peter, go on up to the house and run a bath…well, make that a shower. And find me something that I can soak her poor feet in.”
Nodding, he didn’t want to leave his very pregnant wife with this child, but she seemed to have things under control at the moment. There was something very off about the girl and it frightened him, not just a little. But Mary told him she was just fine and for him to put the kettle on too.
“I don’t think we have time for tea, Mary. This girl tried to kill me.” Mary only patted him on the cheek and told him to go on now. He was in the house filling the kettle before he realized she’d out moved him. Again.
Ever since he’d met her, thinking her well out of his league, she’d been out moving him. He’d say something and she’d sort of agree with him, but he’d end up doing it her way anyway. Usually she was right…well, she was always right. Like them buying this
farm and raising cattle. Some of them big things, others not so much, but she’d bring him around to her way of thinking before he knew what hit him. She was good at that.
When he went back out to the barn, the girl was asleep. Mary told him she’d given her something for pain, and her exhaustion and starvation had taken her under. He looked at the girl now and could see that wherever she’d come from, it had been a long hard way.
“I don’t think she’s eaten a proper meal in a good long time, if ever. And she kept telling me that she’d not go back. I was wondering if you’d do me a favor.” He knew what she wanted and he wasn’t going to do it. “We have to know if they’re in worse shape than she is. What if someone came to wherever it is she was living and killed her whole family, and she got away?”
“That’s pretty farfetched, even for you.” She did that smile thing again, the thing that made him fall in love with her the moment he’d first seen her. Even before he realized she was his mate. “You want me to go and find where she’s been and see if her family is dead. They could be the ones that were abusing the poor thing; you know that, right?”
“I do.” He started peeling off his shirt. “When you get back, I’ll have you a thick stack of pancakes and some bacon all ready for you. And if you run into trouble, you can call me and I’ll come and rescue you.”
“I don’t care for you much right now.” She laughed, and he bent to pick up the girl when Mary started to. “I’ll take her in the house, but I want you to stay away from her until I get back. Promise?”
“I’ll try to keep away from her.” As they made their way into the house, his burden, he just realized, was lighter than most of the animals they had on the property. Peter decided that he didn’t mind so much that Mary was smarter than him. He loved her that much. He asked Mary how the girl had fared this long. “She’s been starved, Peter. And I don’t think this is a recent thing. Look at her feet and hands. She’s been running for a long distance for some reason, and it frightens me to think she was out there all night without anything to keep her warm or fed.”
“I’ll go and see what I can find.” He laid the girl on the bed and then looked at Mary. “Don’t let her hurt you, love. You’re all I have in the world.”
“We’ll be fine, I promise.”
Peter let his cat take him. His jaguar was glad for the change and stretched twice as he made his way to the kitchen to leave. Again he told Mary to be careful, and she promised him she would. Peter had the girl’s scent, but he only had to follow the footpaths in the snow to find where she’d come from. The blood mixed with the wet falling snow was like a calling card for his cat.
He’d gone perhaps five or six miles when he came upon the building. He was sure that the girl had come from there. Her scent had let him right to it. But to call it a home…Peter was sure that his falling down shed at home had fewer holes in the roof, and the wood would hold out a bit more of the cold too.
Peter didn’t get any closer to it than ten feet because there were humans inside, but he knew that he had to eventually. The scent was fresh blood, and he needed to be
assured that no one else inside was hurt. He was sure, as sure as anything he’d ever felt, that the girl at his house had spent if not her whole life there, then the biggest part of it. His heart broke for her.
The loud voices were violent in nature, and he knew that the sounds coming from the house were people fighting, not just verbally but physically as well. As he made his way closer to the house, he kept an eye out for anyone coming out of the falling down building. Peter didn’t want to get in the middle of anything that was going on right now.
The child had come from this house; he knew it when he crossed over the broken steps onto the porch. There was no doubt about it. And the scents also told him that the people living there had had contact with her. They were related, the three of them, and he was pretty sure that the girl was running from them. As they fell out of the house and into the yard, still hitting each other, Peter made his way into the house through the broken door at the back of the wrap-around porch that had seen better days.
Peter nearly left again, thinking that this could not be a place where people were living, a home. Or what was left of one. But he made his way around the bigger room and found that the girl had been in there a great deal. Then he made his way to one of the other rooms that shot off from the larger one in the middle.
It was hers. He knew that from how strong he could smell her. The bed was broken and shattered against the wall and the floorboards had been ripped up at some point, and he knew that was where she’d hidden before leaving. Peter looked around the room and could see that while it was dirty, it was better kept than the room he’d just left.
There were no pictures on the walls, no girly things to indicate that a child lived there. The bed had a threadbare blanket on it, and no pillow to speak of. The mattress was thinner than his overcoat that he wore in the fall, and the neat stack of clothing in the corner was small and pitiful even for a child. Not even a dresser to put things on, much less inside of it. He moved to the deep hole and looked inside.
Haven. That was all he could think of when he saw what she’d done. Because to Peter, there was little doubt that she’d done this to keep herself safe. Looking around again, he tried to imagine living there. Hearing those people still screaming at each other in the yard, he could not fathom how a person could stand this every day of their life. Moving back through the bedroom, he looked into what he thought was used as a living room.
A couch that was held up on one end with a cinder block sagged dangerously in the middle. The person who chanced sitting there would spill out onto the floor if they weren’t careful as to how they sat. No television graced the walls, and that was when he realized there was no hum of power in the house. The heat, too, was off, if there had ever been any, and he was chilled when an errant breeze blew through the open door.
A curtain was hanging across an area in front of him. Moving slowly toward it, testing the floors as he went, Peter was almost afraid to see what was there; the bathroom, or a makeshift one. A commode sat over a too large hole in the floor, with no plumbing to speak of, and that thought made his belly slightly ill. A hose hung from a
hole in the wall with a dirty towel next to it. The dripping water was freezing in a long stream beneath it, and looked as lethal as any knife or tool he had at his home.
Backing out of the room with the toilet and to his right, he moved through the curtain into another bedroom. A mattress on the floor looked as flat as a board, and probably no more comfortable. Several pillows of varying thickness, from paper thin to almost an inch thick, were at the head of it. Against the walls, all the way around, were piles of junk.
Broken games, torn books, heaters that had been torn apart—for parts, he assumed—and tossed aside instead of dealt with were in the trash. Newspapers that were yellowed with age. Boxes of dented canned goods that he knew were bad even from where he stood. Open bags of chips and popcorn were spread everywhere. Candy bar wrappers and junk food galore littered nearly every available surface of the nasty floor, along with dirty stacks of clothing, stiff with dirt and filth.
Cardboard, like in the other two rooms, covered the windows. There was a little plastic on one of them, but it had long since broken free of the push pins that held it there. It flapped in the wind much like the pretty flag that his wife had in the yard that had their last name on it. Burcher.
Peter? I can feel that you’re upset. What did you find? He didn’t want her to know, but knew also that keeping it from her would eat him alive. He told her what he’d found and who the people were the girl was hiding from. Oh, that poor little thing. To live like that. What do you think we should do?
Peter wanted to tell her that he was going to kill them both, tear their throats out and leave them for the rats and buzzards to fill their bellies on. The feeling was something that he’d never had before, not in all his twenty-seven years. But he also knew that he’d regret it, even if he felt good about it now.
Don’t call the police. Don’t tell anyone that she’s there. And if she wakes and tells you that she’s not going back, you assure her that she isn’t. Not so long as I’m alive she won’t. He heard the couple on the lawn again and moved to the window to get a good look at them. These people deserve to die out here. Where no one will know who they are. And they don’t deserve to have that little girl. People like them should be…Mary, I want to kill them both where they are.
Come home to us. He said he was on his way and looked at the kerosene heater that burned in the living room. The heat, what little the heater was giving off, was being whisked away by the cold that blew through the house like it wasn’t even there. He moved the pillow that had fallen to the floor just a little closer to it. To his way of thinking, if they found it, great; if not, what were they out? Nothing as far as he could see. As he left the house, he decided that he hoped they didn’t find it. He thought they should suffer as much as the child had that was in his home.
“Where is that fucking girl? RaeAnn, damn you girl, when I find you, you’re going to hurt for a damned month this time.” Peter paused to listen to the man yelling again. “RaeAnn Richards, I’m going to beat your ass again. See if I don’t.”
You won’t, Peter thought as he moved out of the broken window. The flame started to flare up just as he heard the man outside stomping his way up and onto the porch
before hearing the jingle of keys somewhere. Hiding deep in the trees, Peter watched the man make his way to a part of the yard he’d not noticed to the big car that had been covered with dead branches and trees. As soon as the engine roared to life, Peter knew that by the time they returned, the house or whatever it was would be gone, and so would all traces of the girl he and Mary were going to raise as their own.
Peter made his way back to his house. He was feeling better about what he’d done to the house with every step he took. It wasn’t fit to live in, he thought, and now that it was gone, perhaps the people there would move away and forget they had a little girl. Although he was pretty sure they’d done that already. After shifting to his human side and dressing, Peter kissed his wife and told her what he’d done.
“Good.” He cocked a brow at her, thinking that she’d be at least a little upset with him over it. “Damned people. They should be horsewhipped.”
His wife never cursed, and to hear her to do so now made him realize that something more had happened. He asked her about it and she burst into tears. Taking her to the bedroom where RaeAnn still slept, he watched in horror as she pulled back the blanket that laid over her and showed him what she’d discovered.
“They branded her. Who does something like that? They put a hot iron to her skin and burned it. Just like she was one of our cows.” He ran his finger over the newly burned skin and felt his heart break. “There are scars on her back too. Like they’d beaten her with a whip. And her feet, they’re going to take a long time to heal. The poor thing. I don’t want to let her go, Peter. We have to keep her here and safe.”
“We are. We will.” He heard the sirens screaming by the farm and smiled. He knew it would be a total loss, and he was even more glad he’d done it now. “Her name is RaeAnn Richards. When she wakes up and is feeling better, I’ll have someone fix up the paperwork with her a new name and identity on it.”
“Good. She’ll be a Burcher and we’ll love her as our own.” Peter hoped it would be that way, but for all they knew the girl was just as bad as her parents. Then he thought of the hole she’d made.
“She’ll be a good girl. And we’ll make sure she has what she needs too.” Yes, Peter thought as he held Mary, she’d be a good addition to their family. Now he had to figure out how to tell her that her new parents were jaguars

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cormac HARRISON AMBUSH book two Release Blitz & Winner Announced 2/8/16

Kathi BartonLeave a comment
Cormac Harrison, Mac to his family and friends, has a good thing going. He has a brand new home, a successful business, and is truly happy with the direction his life is heading.


Andi Collins can’t seem to catch a break. The last time she’d encountered her father, she’d ended up in the hospital. Now, Stormy Harrison, is giving her a break and helping her get back on her feet. So when this big handsome man tells her that she’s his mate she’s scared to death.


Mate. She’d heard the term before. And what it meant. She would belong to him. Not just him, but whoever he wanted to sell her to. Andi reached for the door handle, thinking that rolling from a moving car would be better than being passed around like a napkin at a banquet hall.


“Don’t do that.” He reached for her hand just as she touched the handle. “Please, just listen to me and I’ll explain.”


“I don’t need you to explain. I know what mate means. My friends at school, they told me what happens when you become a mate to men. And what they didn’t tell me, my father and aunt explained the rest. Mates use you, and then when they’ve had enough, they pass you around to all the other men they know. I won’t have it.”


The car suddenly stopped. Her seatbelt cut into her neck, and she nearly hit her head on the dash it stopped so abruptly.

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Chapter 1  
“It says right here that this is the way we are supposed to do it. Not the way you’re showing us. I need for you to back away from the equipment and let me do it my way. That’s what is going to work,” Elton grumbled. Mac wondered if he found Stormy and asked her to shoot this man, if she would do it. Of course she would, he thought. And would smile while doing it. “You can’t tell me that your way is better when I know better. You’re just trying to mess things up for me.” “Oh, but I can and I am. There is nothing saying that we can’t improve on the way this line is run. And this way, the way that you’ve been doing it up until now, is why this business is losing money. And losing money is the best way for them to close down and for you to be out of a job.” The man only huffed at him, pointing out yet again that the instructions said that his way was the most efficient way. “Yes, it might have been, fourteen years ago when you had this equipment put in. But short of putting in an entire new work line, you’re going to have to trust me on this. I know better.” “So you say, but I’m under the opinion that you don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know why you were hired in the first place. You know nothing about this production line, and as soon as I can convince my bosses—and I will—that you have this all screwed up, we’re going to go back to doing it the correct way anyway.” Mac stood up straighter and felt his cat run along his skin. “You can get huffy with me all you want, but I know what is best for this company. I’ve been working here since their father opened the doors, and I’ll be working here long after they’re bored with it and go about their business.” Mac said nothing, but moved away from the man as he pulled out his phone. He had to talk to someone who was reasonable, and dialed the first number on his phone. When Storm answered, he had to smile. From the sound of her voice, she wasn’t having any better of a time than he was.  “Did you know that when you put a box on the line that there are all kinds of infrared lights that can read not only what’s in the box, but even where the fuck it’s supposed to be going? That the system is specifically made to do just that?” He told her he did, as a matter of fact. “Well, smart ass, did you know why it’s not working here at Ship It? The reason why we were called in to fix it?” “The machines aren’t calibrated? The lights are too bright around it to let it be read properly? There are any number of reasons for it not to work.” She snorted at him, something that he’d come to love about her. It conveyed so much, her snort. “Why is it not working at Ship It?” “They turned it off. I mean, like they just went to the line, tore out all the wiring, and then turned it off at the computer system when it kept telling them that it didn’t work. Not only that it wasn’t working, but also exactly where it wasn’t working. And now you have to ask me why they would turn off a multimillion dollar piece of very important equipment when they advertise that that’s what they use to get your packages to you on time?” He started to laugh, telling her he had no idea. “It didn’t 
match their uniform shirts that they’re required to wear when they work. The red—and this is no fucking lie—the red clashed so badly with the orange shirts that the owner’s daughter complained. Because she picked the color and hated the way it looked when the boxes went by. How fucking stupid do you have to be? I’m not kidding you. It’s a good thing you made me leave my gun at my house when you sent me here. Otherwise, we’d be calling in the big time lawyers that I’d need for a lawsuit. Someone would have been dead about ten minutes ago. What’s up with you? Did you tell them what they have to do to improve their work situation?” “Pretty much the same thing you’re running into there. This guy in charge while the family is still learning the ropes said that his way is right because that’s the way they’ve been doing it for years. I’m pretty sure that this guy doesn’t even own a computer or a smart phone. It wasn’t the way he was raised or some shit.” Mac moved to his temporary office at the plant and began gathering his things. Time to meet up with the family soon, and he had to get back home anyway. “I’m going to take the next flight out after I get finished with the family. If they want us to come here again, it’s going to be when that guy is gone. Or they’re fucked.” “Good luck. And don’t forget about tomorrow. I have that meeting with my attorneys and you have to sign the paperwork on the building we’re buying there.” He nodded, then told her he’d be there. “Also, my friend is going to start working tomorrow, too, full-time. If you have a minute, go by the Home Cooking and see if she’s settling in all right for me. Riordan and I won’t be home until day after tomorrow, as we have to swing by the White House for a minute.” He thought of that. Swing by the White House like it was right on the way home from the grocery. Stormy would even be able to go on up to the family residence once she was there, and hell, more than likely she and Riordan would be having dinner there with the president, and maybe even a drink or two.  “I’ll take care of it for you on this end. Where am I meeting the attorneys for the building? And I can’t tell you again how much I hate that you’ve done this. I could have just gotten a loan for it on my own. You didn’t have to buy it for the shop I have in mind.” She snorted again and he smiled. “I wonder if when you have children that’ll be their answer to everything you ask them, too.” “More than likely. But since your mom and dad are telling me now that they’re going to be baby-sitting every chance they get, I’m pretty sure that your mom will get them out of the habit. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to not tell them to do it around her as much as they can. You know, just for fun.” Mac didn’t doubt that for a single minute.  Mac had to meet with the new owners of one of the oldest toy firms in the downtown area of Atlanta. They’d been shipping out retro toys for the last several decades, getting them cheaply and helping fill a lot of stores opening up with their new line. But they were behind in their shipment dates, so much so that they’d called him to see what was wrong with their line. It only took him ten minutes of working the line to know what the problem was. But Mac had worked for the two weeks he said he would. The bottle neck in the entire operations was due to one man.  
He was shown to the office of Byron and Noreen Stokes as soon as he entered the building. “We were hoping to see you before you left. I understand that you’ve been working on getting our lines right. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble for you.” Byron smiled at him. “Elton Coltrane called a few minutes ago. He said that you’d left there in a huff and that he didn’t think you’d figured out anything. I’m pretty sure that you’d be a little more professional than just leaving when you couldn’t find what was wrong. I’m sure you tried.” “Is that what Elton told you? That I didn’t find anything wrong?” Bryon looked at his sister and then back at him, nodding. “I see. Well, I am a professional, as you said, but if you have some time, I’d like to go over my findings with you.” “Of course.”  Mac was led to a large conference room with a table big enough for his family to have dinner at. Noreen was the younger of the two siblings, but Mac knew that she was the one with the business sense while her brother was the one with the big ideas. Which blended well with the two of them. She’d also been the one to talk to him all those weeks ago. He handed them both the printouts that he’d brought with him. “I want you to know that I’m impressed with your line of product and your pricing system. The receiving department is top-notch as well. The way you bring in the goods and catalog them means that anyone coming into this building can pull up a number for the product and go right to the warehouse to find where it is. You have a good team of inventory control as well.” Noreen said that her father had always been a stickler for keeping things organized. “It shows in your work here. The line is good. A little outdated, but will run you for a few more years before I would recommend that you replace it. I would suggest that you put in a labeling system that also runs your lines. That way when you have a box go to the store, you can be assured that that’s where it went.” “Why do I think that the ‘but’ you’re about to tell us is going to be costly?” Mac told him not at all. “The way that Elton talked, you were disappointed in the way things were going here and that he thought you were going to tell us it was a lost cause. He seemed to think that you were under the impression that we should just close up and be done with the entire thing. We can’t do that, if that’s what you’re going to say. Our father built this company on nothing but a handshake. If we can make it work, that’s what we’ll do.”  “I see. You paid me to give you the truth. And I think, in detail, you were told that I’m a man that seldom beats around the bush about things. And if you can’t handle that, we won’t be able to work together, correct?” Again the two of them looked at each other before nodding. “All right then…you want this company to prosper and continue to be a viable company, then fire Elton. I mean, not tomorrow or next week, but today, this minute.” “Really? Elton? I mean, I know that he’s sort of set in his ways, but he’s been working with us since Dad died. Seriously, I don’t think we could have gotten this far without him. And I know that my dad thought a great deal of him. I mean, he did have 
his issues with him, but he’s been working here for all of our lives.” Mac nodded. “I don’t even know if we can fire him. I mean, he and Dad were good friends, and he’s been at all our birthday parties since…. I’m sorry, Mr. Harrison, but I think you should reconsider that suggestion. He’s a good man and works very hard.” “Fine.” Mac stood up and gathered his things, including the paperwork that he’d given them. As he was putting everything back into his briefcase, he told them what he was going to do. “There won’t be any charge for me coming here other than expenses, and my secretary will see that you’re given a full accounting of—” “Wait. I mean…you’re just going to stop there? You’re not going to suggest anything else for us? You were there for two weeks. Surely you had to have found the real reason for our production lines to go so slowly.” Mac told them he had, it was Elton. “You mean to tell me that one man, a single man, is responsible for us losing sixty-four percent of our production time line?” “No.” Mac pulled on his jacket and picked up his things. He could tell that they were relieved, but it was going to be short lived as soon as he spoke again. He almost hated to tell them. “Elton is responsible for eighty-six percent of your slow down. And if he’s not taken off the line and forced into retirement, then you will lose more every day until you fail. And you will, at the rate you’re going.” Mac was nearly to the door outside when he heard someone call his name. It was Elton. Mac had had enough of the man for one day, so went out to get in the car and go home, but Elton followed him. And the man looked like he had received his Christmas bonus as well as a tax refund all in the last ten minutes. Elton walked up to him as he waited for his car and put out his hand to shake it. Mac just looked at it, then at the man he’d left hanging. “I could have told you that they’d not do anything about me. I’m sure that you told them that it was me that was hurting things. I’m their go-to man when they need answers. And they don’t know shit about what I do or what goes on down on the line, and that’s the way I want it. I’m not going to let them change a damned thing, just so you know. When they fail—and I’ve no doubt that it’ll be sooner rather than later—I will own a nice business.” Mac didn’t look at the couple that walked up behind Elton, nor did they speak. He did, however, ask Elton what he was talking about. “The will. I know for a fact that it states that once the business closes down that all the original members of the staff will be able to purchase the company for what the fair market value is. And when this is done, the fair market will be considerably less than what it is today, don’t you think?” “So you want this company to fail. After all the work that Mr. Stokes put into making this a valuable firm for his children, you’re going to let it fail so you can take it from them.” Elton smiled and nodded. “And what are you going to do with it once you own it? Call in some help and get it up and going again? That’s not very fair of you, now is it?” “Their daddy left them all the money. All of it. He didn’t even consider us people who did all the work for him.” Elton laughed as he continued. “There was a time I might have been willing to get things going in the right direction, but they called in 
professional help instead of asking me what the fuck was wrong with things. I could have told them that, don’t you think?” “You mean that you shut down the lines four times a day when you want to take a nap? That you have been known to sabotage the boxes before they were loaded on the truck so that the customers would be pissed enough to cancel orders?” Elton nodded. “I guess you have a hard heart there, Elton. Whatever will you do now?” “Do? I won’t have to do anything. They kicked your ass out, didn’t they?” Mac said nothing, but he knew that Noreen was pissed off. Byron moved back, heading to the building. “What are you going to do, Mr. Harrison? I’m sure that this is a blow to your little company too, isn’t it? Not being able to make this work for them. But I’m glad to see you leaving with your tail between your legs. It does my heart good to see another firm fail. It’s what I live for.” “I think I did all right here, if you want to know the truth, Elton. Just fine indeed.” His limo pulled up just as security was coming out of the building. “You, however…I don’t think you’re going to be cashing in on anything. You have a good day, Elton. I’m sure that things are about to look…well, differently for you.” Security was talking to Elton as his car pulled away. Mac could have gone back in, he supposed, talked to the Stokes about the rest of his findings, small things that he was sure that they would find once Elton was gone. But he wanted to go home. Now. He had a new home he was having fun in, a new sister in Riordan’s wife that was working with him, and he wanted to go and see his mom and dad. ~~~ “You find her yet?” George Collins looked up at his son, Jim, and felt a twist that touched his heart. How a man could have such an idiot for a kid, he thought. A moron that didn’t know shit from anything. He wished now after all these years that he’d taken his sister Hester’s advice and just left him somewhere. Now he was too old for that shit and he was stuck with him. “That bitch that called the law on me, thinking that I had no rights to my own daughter, will be next. I don’t cotton to being treated that way by nobody. You hear me?” “Yes, sir, I’ve been looking. If they stowed her away, they sure ain’t saying much. Aunt Hester, she’s about to have ten kinds of fits over this. She said you should have taken better care not to get caught.” George nodded. He sure should have. “When she comes down here, I’m telling you right now heads are going to be split if she don’t get her way. She said for you to get home.” His sister, Hester Casey, was a force, she was. He loved her to the end of time, but she was a mite on the scary side when she was upset. Even when she was in a fairly good mood, he tried his best to keep away from her. George was afraid of her, plain and simple. Not just a little either; she’d beaten him so badly he almost couldn’t lift up his beer when the mood struck her. “You tell her that you got this. Tell her that I’m okay and that once we get Andi back home, we’re gonna chain her to the floor like she done told us we should have months ago. She might not have any money coming in, but we’ll have food cooked for 
us.” Jim asked him how they was gonna have food if Andi didn’t work. “You just let me worry on that, fool. I don’t rightly know just yet, but I’ll get it figured out.” Six months ago they’d had their welfare cut. Not just him, but Hester and Jim too. The government got it in their head that they had to work some for the money. Hell, if he wanted to work, he’d find him a job. But so far as he was concerned, when you start paying somebody for not working, you can’t just up and take that from them. It just wasn’t the way that things were done in his family. None of them had found gainful employment yet, whatever the fuck that was, and he wasn’t about to go look for it either. Not that Jim could. He was as stupid as they came. But George’s family was on a protest. They weren’t gonna find them a job until the government got their shit together and put things back the way they were. George had been stuck in jail for three days now. He was getting food regular like. Not nearly as much as he wanted, but he was getting it. No beers either. They had some fool rule about that. Why a man couldn’t be enjoying his leisure was beyond him. He looked up at his son and wondered if it was too late to do something about getting rid of him. Probably.  “Dad, they said you might be going back to jail, the one real far away. That having that gun was against the rules. I thought you said to me that rules don’t work on us. That we was special or something.” He told Jim he wasn’t gonna go nowheres so long as he was breathing. “But if you do, what’s gonna happen to me? I can’t be living with Aunt Hester. She don’t like me none. I was thinking when we find Andi I might go see if she’ll let me stay with her. She’s gotta be nicer to me than Aunt Hester is, don’t you think?” “Nobody likes you, son. You’re stupid and you ain’t worth the sex that we had to make your ass. Your momma, God rest her lazy-assed soul, she done should have known better than to birth you and that ignorant daughter. Now look at me, stuck here and nobody to help me out.” George stood up and glared at his son, who backed away. “You find Andi, tell her to get her ass down here and tell them folks that she fell again. And that the gun was hers. I ain’t going back to jail. I ain’t, you hear me?” After Jim left him to have another look for his sister, George thought of his lot in life. He wasn’t stupid, but he was lazy. He’d admit that to anyone who asked him. And he didn’t care much for his daughter or his son, but he’d been given them and he had to suffer with having them. His wife, he’d tolerated her some, but she’d given him Jim and then a useless daughter, then up and left him with them like he wanted to be taking care of them for the rest of his life. Hester…well, Hester was his big sister, and he knew better than to mess with her. “Mr. Collins?” He nearly missed hearing his name and stood up in his cell to see who might be thinking he was a mister anything. “Are you Mr. Collins? George Collins?” “I am. What you want? In case you missed it, if you’re selling something, I ain’t got me no money. If you’re lawyering up for somebody, can’t help you there. I don’t rat out my buddies.” The man said nothing. There was something about him that just told you 
that he was untouchable, and that had George moving back when the man walked up to the bars. “What is it you want of me?” “I’m here to tell you that Andi Collins is off-limits to you and your family. She’s in a good place, and you’re to stop harassing her from now on.” George just stared at the man. “And if you’re caught within one foot of her, I’m going to bring a hell down on you so hard you won’t be able to lift a hand to bring whatever shit food you eat to your mouth.” “You can’t tell me what to do with my own kid. I know my rights. I brought her into this fucking world, and she’ll do as she’s told.” The man said nothing. “Who the fuck do you think you are, anyways? I know she ain’t bringing the law down on me. ‘Cause if she can afford you, in your expensive suit, then she’d better be getting her ass down here and bailing me out. I’m her daddy, damn it.” The man only stared at him. George wanted to flip him off, his favorite pastime when things didn’t go his way, but he had a feeling that if he even lifted his hand to do so, then he’d be hurting bad. Worster than he was right now. “Stay away from her or pay the price.” As the man walked away, George could feel his bravery coming back to him. But before he could open his mouth to curse at the man, he was standing in front of George with his hand around his throat, lifting him up off the floor. The man changed. Not just his body but his face, and even his fingernails at his throat seemed to bite deep into his neck. George looked into his eyes then; they sort of captured him. The man’s eyes had darkened to an almost black, and George felt his bladder just let go when he saw the fangs there on his lip. “Stormy said that if I wanted, I could play. I might just yet anyway. Would you like that?” George shook his head. “Too bad. Go near Andi again and I will kill you. Not a threat, you dumb fucking idiot, but a promise. You know that I’m telling you the truth too, don’t you, moron?” “Yes.” George wanted to cry. He knew something, a feeling of fear like he’d never felt before. “I won’t bother her no more.” “Good. See that you don’t.” As he was dropped to the floor, the man straightened his suit sleeves and then his tie. “You might want to tell your son and that sister of yours to behave too. I’m not in the mood to have to come back out in the sunlight to wipe this family out of their miserable existence. And you’d do well to remember that if I have to come back, you will be dead. Understand me?” George nodded. Long after the man had left him, George stayed on the floor. Lots of things were going through his mind as he lay there. The man had had fangs. He wanted to think that was just a figment of his addled head, but he had a feeling that they were as real as rain. And the man had lifted him up like he was nothing more than a bothersome flea. George knew that he was big. Not muscled—those had never been a part of his body in any way—but just plain fat. When he was younger, he’d been heavy. As he grew, so did not only his waistline but his entire body. George figured he weighed a good four hundred pounds. And the man had lifted him up with a single hand. But the 
longer he lay here, just thinking and letting his mind wander, the less and less of the man he could remember. “I gotta stay away from my daughter. I don’t know why, but I gotta.” Nodding to himself, he stood up. He’d pissed himself…not the first time. But this time he could almost smell the fear in his urine. “Couldn’t get off the floor, that’s all. Happened before, when that chair of mine wouldn’t lift me right. Can’t be nothing more than that.”  He knew that there was something there that he had to remember besides not bothering Andi again. Fangs? Nobody had fangs except them people faking it, like he’d seen on television. He also had a feeling that he’d been flying too. But that wasn’t right either, was it? Sitting on the bed, unmindful of his wet pants, he frowned. When he thought of Andi again, he felt a little pain in his head when he thought of making her ass pay, but it went away after a minute or two. “She’s gonna pay. That she is.” Nodding, stretched out on the bed, he felt sticky. And when he moved around, the bed groaned. It was scary there for a minute. The bed he was using creaked a bit more than he liked. Sitting on the side of the bed, he pulled off his pants and underwear and took them to the sink. He’d get more later, but these were just stinky. Laying them on the sink, he went back to his bed. He had some thinking to do.