Showing posts with label Series books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Series books. Show all posts

Monday, May 16, 2016

Thicker Than Blood an excerpt from Charlotte's Chance

Charlotte started going into detail about doing Brenda’s house, which she had finished a week ago.  Badly.  It had been her worst work yet.  That had a lot more to do with her being a frazzled wreck than anything else.  It had all seemed like such a good idea taking care of Sandra’s things, looking in on her apartment, and seeing to Penelope at the kennel.  She had accessed her accounts, and opened online bill pay funneling the money directly from her account to her creditors.  She had needed to move several thousands from her savings to her checking.  But the woman had an almost trust fund balance in her savings from royalties from her grandfather’s shipping empire.   It hadn’t even put a dent in things.  Charlotte had gone by her apartment and watered her plants a week and a half ago, and that’s when things had started getting interesting.

Charlotte had left Brenda’s feeling pretty good about the way the room was going.  She had made a brief stop by Penelope’s kennel, which had been on the way, to pay the bill.  Sandra had given her an emergency ATM card years ago just in case.  Charlotte had locked it in the safe in the house. 

Sandra had the safe installed when she had first purchased the house eight years ago while she had been studying for her doctorate in Oklahoma.  According to Sandra Oklahoma City was dead on the weekends.  So she would travel to Dallas every Friday afternoon to stay for the weekend, and then head back to Oklahoma on Mondays.  Being tired of hotels she had spent her savings on a house in Richardson.  A few years after she had returned to Dallas by way of Scotland she had been ready to get rid of the house.

Only pure coincidence could explain just why Charlotte had been in the market for a house.  Her business had started going so well after she had met Brenda who would recommend her for all of the high money projects that she had worked on.  So it was time for Charlotte to get out of the one bedroom apartment in North Dallas, and put money into property.

Charlotte and Sandra had been casual friends from their initial meeting in the nightclub.  On weekends they would get together and talk about their pet project W.A.R.M. Soon Charlotte had brought in Brenda, and then Sandra had introduced them to Deborah and Rachel.  Suddenly Sandra had been selling her house, and their friendship had taken on a new dynamic.

It had been a funny scene because Sandra had put the house on the market. Charlotte had seen the ad, and called it up.  When she had met up with Charlotte, and not some stranger wanting to buy her house, Sandra had smiled and said she knew a sign when she saw one.  If Charlotte wanted the house it was hers.  Sandra had brokered the thing herself so that closing costs and realtor commissions wouldn’t make the house beyond Charlotte’s reach. 

This had led to she and Charlotte becoming even closer as Sandra helped Charlotte fulfill a dream she had since she had been small; having her own home.  They had been like sisters since.  Being an only child, Sandra had fancied the idea of having a younger sister, and always treated Charlotte like that.  She would tell Charlotte things first, secrets about herself, and what was happening in her life.  Asking her opinion on matters, something that the outwardly self-confident doctor didn’t like to admit needing help with.  At those times she could look at Sandra, and know that this woman would do anything for her without a second thought.

It was those kinds of things that had made Charlotte uncommonly loyal to Sandra.  As Charlotte knew first hand, sometimes your own family didn’t care about your happiness as much as they cared about their own personal gain. She loved all of her family dearly, but she could count on one hand the members of her family that would’ve moved heaven and earth to make her dreams come true; the ones who already had which were her mother, brother, and grandmother. The three of them together by begging, borrowing, and pleading had made sure that Charlotte had gotten through school at the Savannah School of Art and Design.

Her grandmother wasn’t a wealthy woman.  She and the late Dougal McConnell had come to America from Scotland with nothing but three shirts, two pairs of pants, a couple of dresses, and a few family heirlooms.  So the family had never had anything but a strong work ethic, and a desire to earn their keep.  Her mother and brother had individual trusts put in place by his father, her first husband Jonathan Clangston.  They weren’t plentiful, but they made it possible for her mother to retire two years ago, and for her brother to carry on his international affairs without much fuss.  Everyone had lived a little less than comfortable when they had decided together that Charlotte’s career goals were worthwhile; her mother even more so with the added burden of providing care for her elderly diabetic mother.

Her mother’s two sisters loved her, but they had children of their own.  Bernice and Carolyn were older than Anna Marie, and they balanced husbands, children, grandchildren, and helped Anna Marie care for their mother: children, and grandchildren that Charlotte only saw every few years at family reunions.  She always felt bad about the fact that she wouldn’t even recognize the whole lot of them if they met up somewhere, and she was quite sure that it was the same for them with her.

Her father’s family was a joke.  Just a clan of Irish and Welsh that found it nigh near impossible to conduct themselves within the confines of the law.  Even worse they would steal the shirt off of the back of a blood relative without batting an eyelash.  It seems that they had been in America for centuries robbing and cheating their way through life.  So bad that even the Irish mobs wouldn’t have them.  They had no honor at all. 


That aspect of Charlotte’s blood made her very aware of loyalty, and the importance of keeping your word no matter what.  It was one of her grandmother’s rules. Only on penalty of death should someone be forsworn, and Charlotte believed in that.  She had promised Sandra when she had helped her get her house that if there were ever a time that she should need help she would not need to look any further. 


Available on AmazonBarnes&Noble, and Goodreads

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Charlotte's Chance Teaser

Charlotte left her office locking the front door with her purse held high on her shoulder.  She made it to the elevator, and frowned as the door opened just as she was about to press the down button.  The blonde haired wiry man inside didn’t move immediately, but the look he leveled at her from his narrow blue eyes said volumes to what he intended if she boarded.  Charlotte took two steps back, and the man bolted from the back of the elevator.  She turned, and ran for the stairwell. 

He was right behind her having cleared the elevator successfully. Almost in surround sound she could hear the heavy fall of his feet behind her.  No matter how much she wanted to, she didn’t look back as she burst through the door into the stairwell.  The stairwell was stark white, and went down in a circular motion almost.  You could look over the edge of the handrails, and see the three floors below.

Charlotte knew that she couldn’t just flat out run the man so she threw her weight against the door she had just burst through. She heard the man’s bellow of pain from getting his arm hinged in the door.  Frantically Charlotte dug through her purse for her keys as the door started to push her into the corner behind it.  She pulled the pepper spray, and guessed where to aim.  Sticking her arm around the door she sprayed in circles hoping that it was somewhere near the asshole’s eyes.

The pressure on the door eased, and she heard the cursing, and yelling indicating that she had guessed right.  Rushing past the man wiping his eyes at the door she started flying down the stairs as fast as she could using the handrails for leverage as she hopped the corners.   Just like she used to do when she was younger, and trying to outrun her older, longer legged brother.  She almost tripped over her own two feet in her haste to get away.  Behind her were the solid thuds of his feet hitting the steps a beat or two after her.

She reached the first floor, and was about to head out to get help from Harold.  But the door flew open as she jumped the last two steps to the landing.  Thomas in his ball cap, and oversized clothes filled the space shoving her forcefully into the corner of the space behind him, and closing the doorway in the same motion.  Charlotte watched in dazed car wreck fashion as Thomas used the man’s flight to run him into the closed door.  His now limp body fell with a crash to the ground.   Thomas flipped out his cell phone, dialed a number, and then put it on the ground.  In a practiced gesture he pulled out a pair of handcuffs, fell to one knee, and cuffed the man lying on the ground before them in seconds.  Then his golden eyes lanced Charlotte’s from beneath the brim of his plain brown low worn hat.

In the next moment he leaned over to her, and wrapped an arm around her waist as one large hand pushed against the wall behind her.  He stood up smoothly pulling her to her feet, and out of the corner. The action brought her body nearly flush with his.  Her nostrils flared filling with the scents that comprised him at that moment.  A heady musky masculine smell mixed with the scents of the air, and grass outside.  It pulled her in, this strange mix of man, rain, and freshly cut grass.

“Are you alright?”  His silky voice poured over her huskily as he slid his other arm around her waist.  
His fingertips were just a hair’s breath away from her bare skin as they ruched the turtleneck sweater that she hadn’t bothered to tuck back in up a little.

The bulky heels of her boots gave her enough height that the top of her head was level with his eyes.  

She nodded, tilting her head up so her eyes couldn’t leave his.  Her arms were pressed between their bodies putting her elbows in her gut, and crowding her hands under her chin. The most natural thing in the world to do was flatten her palms against the warmth and solid comfort of his chest.  The second she placed her hands on him though, he pushed her away.

“Don’t say anything to the guard. Go home. I’ll meet you there.” He said urgently his eyes searching her face as he pushed her beyond the circle of his arms.  Oddly he pushed a wisp of her hair out of her eyes then shoved her out of the stairwell door.

Charlotte tried to carry on like she hadn’t just run down four flights of stairs from a mad man that was trying to do God knows what to her.  She passed by Harold, and stopped, coming back.  He would think it was odd if she didn’t speak to him.

“I hope that the call I sent up did you some good Miss Charlotte.”

A bubble of nervous laughter pealed from Charlotte. “Yes it did. Thank you so much for that.”

The weathered mustached man nodded satisfied. “Glad to help. You have a good one.”

She started away not really sure she was actually pulling this off.  “You too Harold. I’m on vacation so I won’t be back for a couple of weeks.”

The weathered face broke into a grin that made him look ten years younger. “Have a great time Miss Charlotte. Hard working woman like you; it’s good to get away every once in a while.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” she muttered as she passively watched two men in suits enter the stairwell. 

After a few moments her eyes briefly connected with the intense golden gaze of Thomas Glendel. Smoothly he walked away from the stairwell, and out of the lobby door with the ease of air, and without one hint of wasted effort or motion.  Oddly it made her recall the way he had handled Deborah in the hospital.  Then Charlotte had likened him to a jaguar, all sinew, and tightly corded muscle. 

In the stairwell he had lifted her almost deadweight from the floor with an ease that attested to the power he held in that tightly coiled frame.  Then add the fact that he himself hadn’t even been stabilized when he’d done it.  He had pushed her away like they were strangers, and nearly in the same instant pushed that strand of hair from her eyes as if they had known each other forever.  What an odd and interesting man.  The thought was repeated from when he had walked her back from the hospital parking lot with Sandra’s luggage.

“Bye Harold.” Charlotte turned, and followed the oddity out.


Available on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and Goodreads

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Charlotte's Chance

Near the end of Chapter Six:

'It was a very near thing because they had almost made it out of the club.  Sparked by whatever insane notion, she stopped on the dance floor as “World in My Eyes” by Depeche Mode started to play.  All of a sudden she was 19 again, hanging out in one of these places for the last time, as she knew she was heading to design school.  That night she had let everything go.  She had danced her heart out, drank too much, and flirted too hard.  She would remember that night till her dying day as being one of the best nights of her life. 

The day after tomorrow she could be dead.  It wasn’t just a morbid thought any more.  It could be the truth.  Just like that this trip could be over.  She was in the company of one of the most delicious men she had ever had the chance to encounter.  Even if her over wrought moral code wouldn’t let her sleep with him, it would let her dance with him.  It would not only let her dance with him, it would even allow her to dance dirty with him.  She looked back at Thomas, and started to dance. She began moving slowly, seductively.  For a few moments he just watched her not moving, and not saying anything.  Then he pulled her into himself. 

Most people who witnessed what happened on the dance floor would call it what it was, vertical non-penetration sex set to song.  But it was a gothic club; there was a lot of that going on.  Most of the time he let her set the rhythm, and then he would take over by pulling her hips in the direction he wanted. When the song ended she had her arms around his neck, her body pressed intimately to his, and his hands on her ass as she nearly rode his thigh.  His hands slowly slid up, and lifted his hood just enough that she could see his lips. He then he lifted her veil only enough to settle his lips over hers.

She moaned into his mouth when he pushed his tongue between her teeth as the original German version of “99 Luftballons” played overhead. Her arms tightened around his neck as his hands trailed down her back pressing her even closer than when they had danced.  Suddenly he pulled back his eyes closed.

“Slap me,” he ordered in a husky but sharp tone.

Charlotte frowned, but more at the fact that he wasn’t kissing her anymore. She opened her mouth, and he cut her off before she got any words out.

“Just do it, hard.”

So she wasn’t waiting till they got back.  She pulled back, and wailed across his face as hard as she could.
He grabbed her hand, and they finally made it out of the club.  Thomas had needed that slap.  While he had been kissing her he hadn’t been able to find one single solitary good reason why he shouldn’t just pin her against the nearest wall, and have her.  However he had been reasonable enough to understand that not being able to think of a single good reason not to take her against some random nearby wall was very unreasonable.  Charlotte muddled his mind when she was being a good girl.  Naughty Charlotte was sending him into premature meltdown, and he needed to get her secured, and back to her old self quickly or his self-control wouldn’t last the night.

“I’m sorry” Charlotte whispered in the quiet of the long drive back to their base of operations.

Thomas was a little distracted making sure they weren’t being tailed, but he did eventually respond. “For?”

“I was an unmerciful tease tonight.”

“Yes, but you were supposed to be.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Got reminded of who you used to be. It’s unsettling.”

She paused, and nodded knowing that he was right, and that really had been her problem. “I’ve come a long way. I don’t want to start back peddling.  But with you---,” she stopped herself.

“Charlie, I’m not going to judge you, not now, not ever.  There’s a saying about whores, stones, and glass whorehouses that I’m sure you’re familiar with.”

Despite herself, and the twinge of self-hate she was feeling, Charlotte giggled a little.  Then started to laugh in earnest. “I fogged up your glasses pretty good huh?”

They came to a red light, and he looked over at her until she locked her eyes with his. “There aren’t words to describe the type of desire you make me feel. You respond to me without being ashamed of your own reaction, and that’s hot enough.  But when you bait me without feeling guilty or without being apologetic it’s like tossing out the Bunsen burner for a flame-thrower.  I was nearly unmanned.”

The light changed, and the force of his golden eyes was pulled away from her.  Charlotte tried unsuccessfully to suppress the shudder of sheer desire and awareness that flooded through her at his words.

“I can’t be the only woman that’s ever tried to entice you.”

His eyes didn’t leave the road as he answered. “You are the only one that has done this for the most basic reason.  It’s not because you want me to save you, protect you, or back your play.  You already have that from me. You bait me because you want me to want you for the sake of your own desire.”

Charlotte understood now why this was uncharted territory for him.  Honestly she had never had a man just desire her for the sake of desiring her.  There had been guys that had cared for her, but it hadn’t been insane love or even nearly unmanageable desire.  There had been the guys that had just wanted to get laid, and for them any woman would do.  Then as her self-esteem had done a real noise dive there were the guys that had wanted her to support them because of her business.  Charlotte had been in love, and in lust before, but she had never felt the type of emotions that Thomas Glendel made her feel. As they spent more and more time with each other she was starting to understand that he could say the same for her.

“Thomas—” she started.

“I meant what I said tonight. We’ll get to it.”


~ CHARLOTTE'S CHANCE Book 2 of The W.A.R.M. Front Series Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.


Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Excerpt from Charlotte's Chance

Charlotte left her office locking the front door with her purse held high on her shoulder.  She made it to the elevator, and frowned as the door opened just as she was about to press the down button.  The blonde haired wiry man inside didn’t move immediately, but the look he leveled at her from his narrow blue eyes said volumes to what he intended if she boarded.  Charlotte took two steps back, and the man bolted from the back of the elevator.  She turned, and ran for the stairwell. 
He was right behind her having cleared the elevator successfully. Almost in surround sound she could hear the heavy fall of his feet behind her.  No matter how much she wanted to, she didn’t look back as she burst through the door into the stairwell.  The stairwell was stark white, and went down in a circular motion almost.  You could look over the edge of the handrails, and see the three floors below.
Charlotte knew that she couldn’t just flat out run the man so she threw her weight against the door she had just burst through. She heard the man’s bellow of pain from getting his arm hinged in the door.  Frantically Charlotte dug through her purse for her keys as the door started to push her into the corner behind it.  She pulled the pepper spray, and guessed where to aim.  Sticking her arm around the door she sprayed in circles hoping that it was somewhere near the asshole’s eyes.
The pressure on the door eased, and she heard the cursing, and yelling indicating that she had guessed right.  Rushing past the man wiping his eyes at the door she started flying down the stairs as fast as she could using the handrails for leverage as she hopped the corners.   Just like she used to do when she was younger, and trying to outrun her older, longer legged brother.  She almost tripped over her own two feet in her haste to get away.  Behind her were the solid thuds of his feet hitting the steps a beat or two after her.
She reached the first floor, and was about to head out to get help from Harold.  But the door flew open as she jumped the last two steps to the landing.  Thomas in his ball cap, and oversized clothes filled the space shoving her forcefully into the corner of the space behind him, and closing the doorway in the same motion.  Charlotte watched in dazed car wreck fashion as Thomas used the man’s flight to run him into the closed door.  His now limp body fell with a crash to the ground.   Thomas flipped out his cell phone, dialed a number, and then put it on the ground.  In a practiced gesture he pulled out a pair of handcuffs, fell to one knee, and cuffed the man lying on the ground before them in seconds.  Then his golden eyes lanced Charlotte’s from beneath the brim of his plain brown low worn hat.
In the next moment he leaned over to her, and wrapped an arm around her waist as one large hand pushed against the wall behind her.  He stood up smoothly pulling her to her feet, and out of the corner. The action brought her body nearly flush with his.  Her nostrils flared filling with the scents that comprised him at that moment.  A heady musky masculine smell mixed with the scents of the air, and grass outside.  It pulled her in, this strange mix of man, rain, and freshly cut grass.
“Are you alright?”  His silky voice poured over her huskily as he slid his other arm around her waist.  His fingertips were just a hair’s breath away from her bare skin as they ruched the turtleneck sweater that she hadn’t bothered to tuck back in up a little.
The bulky heels of her boots gave her enough height that the top of her head was level with his eyes.  She nodded, tilting her head up so her eyes couldn’t leave his.  Her arms were pressed between their bodies putting her elbows in her gut, and crowding her hands under her chin. The most natural thing in the world to do was flatten her palms against the warmth and solid comfort of his chest.  The second she placed her hands on him though, he pushed her away.
“Don’t say anything to the guard. Go home. I’ll meet you there.” He said urgently his eyes searching her face as he pushed her beyond the circle of his arms.  Oddly he pushed a wisp of her hair out of her eyes then shoved her out of the stairwell door.
Charlotte tried to carry on like she hadn’t just run down four flights of stairs from a mad man that was trying to do God knows what to her.  She passed by Harold, and stopped, coming back.  He would think it was odd if she didn’t speak to him.
“I hope that the call I sent up did you some good Miss Charlotte.”
A bubble of nervous laughter pealed from Charlotte. “Yes it did. Thank you so much for that.”
The weathered mustached man nodded satisfied. “Glad to help. You have a good one.”
She started away not really sure she was actually pulling this off.  “You too Harold. I’m on vacation so I won’t be back for a couple of weeks.”
The weathered face broke into a grin that made him look ten years younger. “Have a great time Miss Charlotte. Hard working woman like you; it’s good to get away every once in a while.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” she muttered as she passively watched two men in suits enter the stairwell. 
After a few moments her eyes briefly connected with the intense golden gaze of Thomas Glendel. Smoothly he walked away from the stairwell, and out of the lobby door with the ease of air, and without one hint of wasted effort or motion.  Oddly it made her recall the way he had handled Deborah in the hospital.  Then Charlotte had likened him to a jaguar, all sinew, and tightly corded muscle. 
In the stairwell he had lifted her almost deadweight from the floor with an ease that attested to the power he held in that tightly coiled frame.  Then add the fact that he himself hadn’t even been stabilized when he’d done it.  He had pushed her away like they were strangers, and nearly in the same instant pushed that strand of hair from her eyes as if they had known each other forever.  What an odd and interesting man.  The thought was repeated from when he had walked her back from the hospital parking lot with Sandra’s luggage.
“Bye Harold.” Charlotte turned, and followed the oddity out.


Get Charlotte's Chance on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, or Smashwords