A Damaged Trust (22 page)

“You’re not going to pieces. Come here—no, damn it, on my lap. There, now just relax, love, and let me be strong for a while,” he murmured in her ear. Carrie snuggled closer, tucking one hand under his collar to lay it against his neck. He put his briefly over it and squeezed.

“I’m half-asleep, you know,” she mumbled into his shirt. “I hope I’m not dreaming this.”

“I think I’m having the same dream,” he told her, his chest shaking silently. “When are you going to marry me?”

“When Dad is well enough to attend the ceremony. Is that all right?” She started to draw little circles lightly against the side of his neck with her forefinger. This was what she had been missing all along. This was what her being had craved, this complete letting down of all defenses, this total trust.

“Minx!” he growled, grabbing her hand. “You’d better stop if you don’t want a wedding in the middle of a busy hospital. I won’t be able to wait very long, if you tease me like that!”

Of course, she thought fuzzily, the passionate side of the relationship wasn’t to be sneezed at. She was interrupted by a long, searching, warm kiss, and her hands went behind his neck. It could very well be the basis of everything. She chuckled. “Will you come to Chicago with me until my exhibition?”

“Sure, then we’ll go everywhere, and you can take pictures, and I’ll take pictures of you taking pictures, and we’ll be as happy as sparrows.” Gabe tickled her ear with each word.

“Larks,” she corrected.

“Ostriches, even.”

“I like that, Gabe, especially the ’happy as birds’ bit, but I think I’ll want a little more security and practicality than the two of us traipsing about the world and shooting up film.”

He drawled, “Would you like to get lost on a desert island together?” His mouth was beginning to descend.

Carrie drew back. “I can arrange that,” she said, amused. His eyebrows lifted as he was momentarily diverted, and she explained, “I know a man who owns an honest-to-goodness desert island, I promise!”

His eyes were on her mouth, and he became interested in something else. “No kidding?” he murmured, putting his mouth on hers.

She mouthed against his lips, “Trust me.”

About the Author

Thea Harrison started writing when she was nineteen. In the 1980s and 1990s, she wrote for Harlequin Mills & Boon under the name Amanda Carpenter. The Amanda Carpenter romances have been published in over ten languages, and sold over a million and a half copies worldwide, and are now being reprinted digitally by Samhain Publishing for their Retro Romance line.

For more information, please visit her at: 
www.theaharrison.com
. You can also find her on Facebook at: 
www.facebook.com/TheaHarrison
and on Twitter at:
@TheaHarrison
.

Look for these titles by Amanda Carpenter

Now Available:

A Deeper Dimension

The Wall

A Damaged Trust

Writing as Thea Harrison

Novellas of the Elder Races

True Colors

Natural Evil

Devil’s Gate

Hunter’s Season

Coming Soon:

The Great Escape

Flashback

Rage

Waking Up

Rose-Coloured Love

Reckless

The Gift of Happiness

Caprice

Passage of the Night

Cry Wolf

A Solitary Heart

The Winter King

Writing as Thea Harrison

Novellas of the Elder Races

The Wicked

Two people hiding from the world discover they can’t hide their feelings for each other.

The Wall

© 2013 Amanda Carpenter

On the verge of collapse, famous singer Sara Bertelli escapes from the Hollywood scene by taking refuge at an isolated cabin on Lake Michigan. When she meets a mysterious man while walking on the shore, she worries that he’ll recognize her, but Greg Pierson has secrets of his own.

Drawn closer and closer together, the two lost souls find comfort in each other, and soon share their deepest secrets. But when Greg asks Sara to give up the limelight and live with him in seclusion, she begins to realize just how important performing her music is to her. Will her fame be an insurmountable wall to their relationship?

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Wall:

The beach was very easy to find. The path was rather straight to the point, and after about five minutes Sara caught a whiff of something cool and fresh on the carrying breeze, and her head raised like that of a scenting hound’s, her fine nostrils widening and her eyes searching. Then as she rounded a bend in the path, she saw a patch of blue. Soon the hard-packed earth underneath her feet became loose and shifty and the treeline broke open to harsh grasses rising from rippling dunes. She rounded yet another bend in the path and found herself out on an open beach with a deep blue expanse that travelled as far as the eye could see.

The sound of the waves hitting the shore, the overhead cry of birds, and the incredible fresh quality to the breeze that hit her so gently made her close her eyes for a moment and sigh deeply in appreciation and contentment. She walked out of the protection of the trees and towards the water. Away from the obstruction of the treeline, she took stock of the shoreline from both the northern direction and the southern, resting her knapsack and camera bag at her feet as she surveyed the area with a hand shading her eyes from the noon sun. To the south, which was left of her, off in the misty blue distance she saw the Cook’s nuclear power plant at the edge of the water, and farther from that several small bright patches of colour that proclaimed late season swimmers taking advantage of the unusually warm weather. To the right she saw some distance to a rather high jutting shoreline that dropped some thirty feet into the water and effectively cut the other side off from her sight. It was sufficiently intriguing for her to set off in that direction, her small knapsack and camera bag bumping her knee as she trod along.

Photography had been an interest of hers for years, and now she fully intended to take the time to indulge her hobby. She wanted to get some pictures of the shoreline, and to possibly come back that evening to shoot the sunset on the waters of Lake Michigan. Sara climbed the rise in the shoreline and stood at the top of the small cliff. She stared down at the other side, disappointed. Just at the bottom of the rise, “No Trespassing” signs were posted. After staring at the sign for some minutes and thinking of the people sure to be populating the beach in the other direction, she made up her mind. Chances were that the person who owned the property wouldn’t catch her just this once on the land, and the barren sight of the empty expanse that stretched ahead was just too much to resist. She climbed down the other side of the cliff and continued the way she had originally headed. After a time, reveling in the seclusion of the sandy beach—and knowing full well that a large measure of her enjoyment was derived from the forbidden nature of her jaunt—Sara had an attractive idea. She slid her burden down to the ground and after rolling up her jeans, dropped to her knees in the sand and started to scoop up handfuls in a decisive way. Soon she was engrossed in the makings of a fine sand castle, so reminiscent of the ones from her childhood. She stopped once to look around for a few pieces of wood and a couple of sticks to dig with, and she soon had a deep hole with high, even sides all around. As she worked, the golden sun and fresh air, the interminable sound of lapping waves and incessant cry of wild birds, the pervading quiet under all of the surface sounds, all made her gradually relax. The tension in her neck and shoulder muscles melted away. Her lips began to smile slightly as the wind whipped her dark hair around her neck and into her eyes. She earnestly started on taking out regular block chunks from the top of the wall to make a credible rampart, when a shadow fell across her handiwork.

To the man watching, Sara seemed to be no bigger than a child crouching at play. Her slender legs shone white in the afternoon sunlight, and delicate blue veins wove a tapestry in her small feet. Her long thin fingers moved rapidly and gracefully, the blue veins apparent also on the back of her hands. The dark hair was tangled on her neck.

She stared at the square shadow in front of her with some amusement before addressing it. “You’re probably the owner, aren’t you, or someone vastly important like the sole caretaker in complete charge and authority?” she asked calmly. “Now you’ve spoiled the fun. You were supposed to find my mysterious footprints and a splendid sand castle erected to guard the empty expanse of land from the mischievous and malicious water nymphs who steal babies and pick all the wild flowers…” Just at that moment, a section of her castle wall began to cave in towards the hole, and she scrabbled over frantically. “Yipe! Oh—shoot, it took me forever to get it right, and I haven’t a picture of it yet…oh, thanks!” This last was said as, after an apparent hesitation, the large shadow dropped beside her and two large and deeply tanned hands came alongside hers to firmly press the crumbling sand into place.

A low, pleasantly smooth voice with a curiously hard undertone reached her ears. “I suppose you’ve decided to be hanged as much for a sheep as for a lamb?”

She relaxed slightly, hands hovering overhead as she backed up from the defective wall a little, refraining from looking at the man by her side. What kind of face would go with a voice like that? She wondered in a pleasantly idle speculation. “Something like that,” she laughed softly, the sound of it coming from her throat like a rich purr. She picked up her stick and started again on the uniform blocks on the top of the wall with a great deal of care and precision.

“My mother always told me I should have been an engineer. I was forever nailing things with my blocks and playing with the neighbour boy’s construction set instead of with my dolls.” When she had things to her satisfaction, she slid back in the sand to look at it thoughtfully. Then she turned with a smile to face the stranger. “But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about me.”

His gaze was not directed towards the sand castle but was shot piercingly at her. She let her own mild gaze roam over hard, irregular features set in what she took to be a very bitter expression. Sitting back on her heels, she took more time to assess this unknown person. Her first impression held; lines running down the sides of the man’s mouth were scored deeply, and the firm mouth was held in a way that seemed to be at once stern and unhappy. The eyes that were watching her so speculatively were a dark brown, and they were the hardest eyes that she had ever seen. They hid something inside, repelling her scrutiny like a brick wall. The man appeared to be bulky, but his heavy sweater and jeans as he squatted on his heels might account for that. As she watched him, a light breeze stirred his dark hair into his eyes and a shapely, strong-looking hand swept it back impatiently.

The mutual perusal took a few moments for each of them. Neither had spoken since she had. The strange man was still watching her, and she smiled again at him suddenly, the white flash of her teeth brilliant and surprising. “Do you have a Kleenex, or a handkerchief, or something like that?” she asked him conversationally, digging into her own jeans pocket as she talked. “No, forget it, thanks. I’ve got a folded Kleenex.” She shook it out carefully, took the slender stick that had once served as her digging tool and gently poked the stick through several times, back and forth, through the end of the tissue. Then she stuck it gingerly at the top of the wall. The wall deigned to hold up. “What’s the forfeit for a picture?”

A glance at him found the man strangely tense, watching her with a harsh, mocking light in his eyes that uncomfortably reminded her of a bird of prey watching its victim. “It depends on what you plan on taking a picture of,” was his silky reply, and she stared at him in confoundment.

When it comes to love between a medusa and a Vampyre, it’s every man, woman, and snake for themselves.

Devil’s Gate

© 2012 Thea Harrison

A Novella of the Elder Races

As a coroner, medusa Seremela Telemar has always felt more comfortable chatting over a dead body than over drinks. But when her wild niece, Vetta, runs off to Devil’s Gate, a lawless town that has sprung up overnight in a modern-day gold rush, she knows she has to extricate her before the rebellious girl gets into real trouble. Though she’s confident in her head snakes’ ability to defend her against attackers, Seremela is still a bit nervous about braving this modern-day Wild West by herself.

Vampyre Duncan Turner is not about to let his new co-worker go into that chaos alone. His Vampyric power and lawyer smarts make him the perfect ally, and the fact that he already had his eye on Seremela for more…personal reasons, doesn’t hurt matters. Any romantic thoughts pull up short, however, when they arrive at Devil’s Gate and learn Vetta is set to hang by morning.

Warning: Contains mother effin’ snakes in planes, cars, tents, and beds. Luckily, our hot Vampyre hero doesn’t mind them one bit…

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Devil’s Gate:

Seremela Telemar leaned against the frame of the open balcony doors in her high-rise apartment and looked out at the ocean view. Tropical humidity licked her skin. As soon as she had gotten home, she had opened up the balcony doors, stripped off her work clothes and put on denim shorts and a tank top.

The weather in Miami was playing the blues. Like the singer Nina Simone’s voice, it had a dark, sultry vibe with a bitter edge and an unexpected snap. Massive knots of moody clouds obscured the sun as they roiled over turbulent water, and heavy rain lashed down in vertical sheets. All that was needed was a world-weary man in a Bogart suit, fingering ivory piano keys in an abandoned hotel as he waited for a hurricane.