Showing results by narrator "and Erin Mallon" in All Categories

Life can kick us when we are down. In Shawn Speakman's case, he is fighting back. Lacking health insurance and diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2011, Speakman beat the disease as well as the massive medical debt he amassed from its treatment. He did this by publishing Unfettered, an anthology featuring short stories donated by some of the best science fiction and fantasy writers working today. Speakman has again collaborated with celebrated genre authors to publish Unfettered II.

If there was ever a time when Jameson Grant wished he was a different sort of man, it was now. The sort of man who had it in him to accept the promise of tomorrow from a sweet woman. But he wasn’t the kind of man who liked sweet. The former SEAL didn’t like much of anything or anyone.

Royal St. James got her name when she was born. Not because her mother loved her royally, but because Royal was a giant pain in the ass. She’s spent her entire life fighting to live, and the last thing she needs is to deal with some pretty-boy police officer who wouldn’t know a hardship if it came up and bit him in the...you know. Justice Rector wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was raised to work hard and always fight for what he believed in. His father was a cop, and ever since he could remember, he wanted to be one, too.

I'm a city boy, not a cowboy. I'm way out of my league on a horse ranch in Texas. Falling for the sexy horse vet was never my intention. Especially when I find out she could be dating a killer. Sneaking around with her? Not my brightest idea, but someone's got to protect her. It's just one summer. One casual fling. Until it becomes everything but.

Being a doctor in New York City has never been easy. Especially for someone like me, who has a private practice and an incompetent staff who insists on leaving me to fill in for them. When my team finally came to their senses and decided to bring someone more competent into the practice last month, I was actually elated. Until I realized that our new "doctor" was none other than the woman I was supposed to meet for dinner two weeks ago. The same woman who stood me up...

From the pulpy pages of Black Mask Magazine in the 1920s and '30s, through the film noir era of the 1940s, to today, noir fiction has lured many a reader and movie-goer away from the light and into the dark underbelly of society. Names such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain; titles like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Postman Always Rings Twice...these have inhabited our collective consciousness for decades. Humanity, it seems, loves the dark. And within the dark, one figure stands out: that of the femme fatale.

Six years ago, she was just some stranger I woke up next to. By nightfall, I knew she was the one. Or so I thought. Six months later, she destroyed me. And now, we're being forced into a reunion neither of us wants. We may have to play nice, but when the lights are off...so are our masks.

Nash Hartley has always been my everything: Protector. Partner in crime. Best friend. The person who was there for me in my darkest hour. But my heart wanted so much more. So, when I knew for certain Nash didn’t feel the same about me, I tried to move on. What a mistake that turned out to be.

I'm the bastard child, son to the mistress, my father's backup heir to the Kingston empire. He sent me to Harvard. I left and became a Navy SEAL, but I'm back now, and I finished school on my own dime. I'm now the right-hand man to Grayson Bennett, the billionaire who runs the Bennett Empire. I'm now a few months from being a billionaire myself. I don't need my father's company or his love. My "brother" can have it. I will never go back there. I will never be the mistake my father made, the way he was the mistake my mother made.

My cock has an appetite. A huge and very particular appetite: blond, curvy, and preferably not a f--king liar... (Although that's a story for another day.) As a high-profile lawyer, I don't have time to waste on relationships, so I fulfill my needs by anonymously chatting and sleeping with women I meet online. My rules are simple: one dinner. One night. No repeats. This is only casual sex. Nothing more. Nothing less. At least it was until Alyssa...

Agreeing to meet Ryker Lockhart is my first mistake. Rich, handsome, and more than intriguing, he thinks blackmail will bend me to his will. But he’s wrong. I may have done a few things that weren’t exactly legal, but I have my own reasons for that. The last thing I’m going to do is let some high-powered divorce attorney come into my life, have my body, and rule my heart. Not to mention ruin everything that I have carefully built in just a short amount of time.

It started with one innocent look across a room in Paris. He was a lot older than me. A Roman god dressed in an Italian suit, surrounded by an aura I couldn’t resist. When I ran into him again, he effortlessly pulled me under his spell. But little did I know, a night full of carnal pleasure would cost me everything. When Enrico Marchetti wanted something, he didn’t just take it. He possessed it. Now, his sights were set on me. There were secrets this man was keeping. They surrounded him, his dead wife, his children.

I hired her to be my girlfriend. To fix my reputation. To save my career. It's not that I don't want a girlfriend. I do. I want it all. Wife, kids, side-by-side burial plots. The problem is - I can't have any of it. So I've made myself untouchable. The quintessential bachelor of baseball. Because it's not worth the risk. Not even for someone I love. Especially not for someone I love. We made the arrangements. We agreed to a contract. It's iron clad. No sex. No love. No future.

April Hamilton wants you to know she hasn’t been on Craigslist since that time she sold her futon after college. She doesn’t even spend that much time online. And even if she did, she would not be looking up personal ads. But going home alone for her family's summer reunion is an invitation for every single relative to butt into her personal life. She simply can’t handle another blind date with the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker from her hometown. So when she finds the Craigslist ad for a boyfriend-for-hire, she’s ready to pay to play.

Her heart is wild. Only he can capture it. When Cole Ashby is appointed Laurel Creek's interim sheriff, he is determined to prove himself as the best man for the job. A devoted single dad, his goal is to lay steady roots for his young daughter. As the daughter of a Kentucky congressman, Ginger Danforth's life has always been about neat appearances. But inside, she's dying to break free and embrace the sense of adventure that runs through her veins.

Hiding from her ex is exhausting enough, but for Hope Drayden, putting her seven-year-old son through a life on the run and living on the streets has been mentally torturous. When a kind diner owner offers her a job, Hope begins to claw her way toward a new beginning for herself and Billy, one tip at a time. At the request of a friend, medical examiner Calder Stonewall has been looking for Hope and Billy for weeks. When they unexpectedly show up at the scene of a crime, his interest soon becomes personal.

I built myself up from nothing. A product of the foster care system, I learned early on how to fight hard to get what I want. Whether it was starting my first company in college, earning my first billion, or buying my first professional sports team, I know how to get what I want when I want it. Until now. Willow Monahan is fierce, independent, and hot as hell. She also takes great pleasure in shutting down my advances. The younger sister of one of my star players, Willow intrigues me to my very core. And while she may have willingly given me her body, she is hesitant to offer up more.

On the northeast side of town, there is a house. The house was once magical, filled with love and joy and plans for the future. Inside its walls are many things that belong to me - my books, the china from my mother on my wedding day, the beautiful cage once home to two birds, now empty, just like me. And a man. A man who also belongs to me. A man I no longer wish to keep. A man who, no doubt, has not slept, though the sun is rising. Because the house where he waits is where I laid my head to rest every night for eight years. Until last night.

Ten years ago, Whitney Gable caught me off guard with her long legs and grab-you-by-the-balls blue eyes. I didn't know or care what her name was. Like any Riscoff worth the family name, I went after what I wanted. We burned like a flash fire until she married another man. She hates me, and she should. I objected on her wedding day. Now she's home, with those same long legs and man-eater stare, but there's no ring on her finger. They say a Riscoff and a Gable can never live happily ever after, but I'm not done with Whitney Gable.

Kitty Hart has become internet famous as the Kitty Whisperer for her expertise on all things feline, and as a result, her cat-sitting business is booming. But lately, she has a terrible feeling that maybe her life isn’t quite going where it’s supposed to—especially after falling face-first into her newest client. Not exactly the best first impression. Fortunately, Miles Thorn is just as bad at first impressions. Strike one: he doesn’t like cats, especially Prince Francis, the haughty and mischievous Sphynx his mom left in his care.