Rocks (19 page)

She raised one eyebrow and smirked. “What? Turning chicken? I don’t want to ever take that bloody train to Holyhead ever again. If we fly, we can get it to Uncle Coilin all that much quicker. Anyhow, I told you: it’s safe.”

Hayden could feel beads of sweat forming across his brow. “Where is it?” he hissed.

“In my purse.” Without looking at him, she began to walk carefully to passport control. Shaking his head he started to follow her but then stopped short.

“Wait a minute, you haven’t got a purse.”

She stopped and winked at him and he rushed to catch up with her. Clutching his shirt, she pulled herself up on tiptoe to whisper in his hear.

“My purse is where I keep my most precious items
—you know, like your cock and the Wallenstein diamond.”

He stared at her blankly for a few moments then his mouth fell open.

“What the... You’ve got it
inside
you?”

“Safest place for it. I mean, they’ve got no reason to strip search me and in any case, it would have to be a woman
—and I’ve never let a woman touch me down there. Today, I’m the world’s most expensive mule. Damn! We could probably sneak in a couple of grand’s worth of coke if we tried. Ten grand if we use that delectable ass of yours as well.” She winked at him.

Hayden slapped his head and looked up at the
ceiling
. “What have I let myself in for?” he muttered.

“Having second thoughts?” she asked slyly.

“What, about hitching up with a psycho bitch? No, none at all. Nope. Can’t think why you’d ask.”

She patted his cheek then tugged at his hair so that he’d lower his face for her to kiss him. “Not psycho, sweetheart. Perhaps borderline bipolar and definitely someone with attention deficit issues, but other than that my
mental health functions perfectly.”

Somewhat reluctantly, he followed. “Let’s hope you don’t meet some handsome idiot. He’ll end up with a sore cock and several million Euros richer.”

“I like it when you’re jealous, Hayden,” she said, smiling sweetly at him.

“I see you don’t deny you’re a bitch.”

“No more than you deny you’re a bastard. We’re made for each other. Come on, let’s go. A beautiful future awaits us.”

The Crystal Fragments Trilogy

When the heart is stronger than stone.

This brings together all three Crystal Fragments books into one volume. When Kris Avelar runs away from another failed love affair to an isolated cottage in Scotland, her desire to be alone is nothing compared to that of the stranger she meets: Daniel Logan. Tall, handsome, but also scarred by more than the marks which line his face, his attempts to push her away only inspire her to greater curiosity about him—a curiosity that will lead to dark and forbidden desires as she enters his private world.

As she discovers that this mysterious stranger is actually Daniel Stone, the charming and urbane founder of Stone Enterprises, she seeks to discover more about him—just as he becomes increasingly obsessed with her. Yet if Kris is the most perfect lover that Daniel has known since the death of his wife, she is not the first, and others will seek to come between the two of them and their happiness.

When Daniel is caught up by his own dangerous past, Kris sets out to save him and to show that while everyone else will turn against him, she is determined never to let him down—or let him go. It is at that time that she discovers that her own submission, what she has thought of as a weakness inside her, is actually the source of her greatest strength.

The trilogy includes:

Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission

Fragile Crystal: Rubies and Rivalries

Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire

Orfeo

The road to heaven leads through hell.

They called him the black Orpheus, a New Orleans singer whose voice could instill desire in the angels themselves or tame the darkest demons. But nothing inspired Orfeo more than the rich and beautiful mistress of Xanadu, Ardyce, the woman who came to hear him sing each and every night.

Determined to make her his, thus begins a sensuous seduction and passionate romance. Orfeo's desires must face another challenge, however: the lusts of Earl, the criminal kingpin of New Orleans' underworld. When his love is stolen away Orfeo descends into that underworld to rescue her, seeking the only woman he cares for before a hurricane sweeps across the city and the levees break, throwing everything they have ever known into chaos and destruction.

The Long Last Summer (as Miriam Lawless)

A tale of innocence and of experience.

At the beginning of the long, hot summer of 1976, two young boys—Jake and Mark—are riding out into the fields that lie beyond the small mining town which is all they have known for their brief lives. The eldest of the two, Jake, wishes to show his brother something of the innocent pleasure that he has begun to discover in the wider world.

For their young mother, Kitty, such pleasures are tinged with the bitterest experience that for one of them this may be the last summer that he will ever know. As doctors fight to combat the disease that also took Jake and Mark’s father, so Kitty struggles as a single woman to raise her children in a provincial town where the close embrace of a community also represses all her desires to better herself.

For Doctor Reuben Heppner, the struggle to cure a young boy is a means to leave behind the messy chaos of his own divorce and redeem himself, but with Kitty Donahue he also starts to believe that her happiness will be the key to both their salvation. And yet as the summer burns on so tempers and desires begin to blaze with a heat that threatens to destroy everything, for even the longest summer must come to an end.