The Shifter's Mail Order Virgin (Stonybrooke Shifters)

by Leela Ash

  Andrea drank down the potion; it tasted sweet and of berries, and within five minutes the fever had eased and the pains gone.

  “You must take three drops of this with water before and after each meal to protect you. Now I must go, I have been here too long.” And leaving a small vial on the bed, the nun left, locking the door behind her.

  She was in deadly danger. If Helena was trying to kill her, then she would stop at nothing. Geraldina’s potion would only prolong the inevitable. She had been right all along about Helena. Grandma Betty had returned back to the present on the seeming death of Andra, but then again she had the rune. What would happen if Andrea died without it in her hands?

  All night she lay awake, afraid of every noise, of every footstep in case it was Helena’s. She tucked the glass vial under her pillow out of sight. Without the young nun’s help, she would have been dead already. She must keep the faith.

  Chapter 12

  Andrea eventually slept, for when she finally awoke the rain was lashing down at the window. She was also not alone; Helena was standing at the foot of her bed looking like death herself, dressed in a long black habit.

  “I am glad to see that you have had a good night. I am surprised; the doctor thought that you might lose the child again. I have brought you some breakfast to keep up your strength. Some beef tea and bread will do you good, now let me help you.”

  Her hand reached under the pillow. The little vial had gone. Her heart started to beat fast as Helena sat by her side and started to pick up the spoon.

  “What is wrong, my dear? You look like you have lost something. Now drink some of this, it will do you good.”

  Andrea had no choice; if she struggled, then Helena would force her. They were both playing a dangerous game, and Helena currently held the upper hand. Her only hope lay in the hands of Geraldina.

  Soon the beef tea was all gone and Helena smiled as she proffered the last spoonful.

  “There, all done. Now I will leave you to rest. I have told the other nuns not to disturb you today. I will lock the door and take away the key, just to make sure you rest in peace.”

  The key turned in the lock and the sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor until all was still. Was this to be her final fate?

  After half an hour, the fever and the pains started anew and within an hour she was almost unconscious with the pain. Her mind kept blanking out, but she concentrated on the pain to keep her awake. The little song kept playing round and round in her head:

  Long ago and far away

  I dreamed a dream one day

  And now that dream is here beside me.

  The words came and went as she tried to sing them out loud, tried to remember the tune that the little nun had sung.

  Her heart was beating fast, and her breath was rasping in her throat. So this was the end. She thought of Steve and New York, of her Grandma Betty, and of Alex.

  Her eyes began to mist. Death was pulling her towards eternal sleep, and there was nothing she could do. As her senses began to shut down, she was aware of a commotion around her. The door had opened and a shadowy figure was in the room. Maybe it was Death paying her a personal visit? But the face was real. It was Alex; he had returned. He was shouting something out loud to another figure behind him.

  “What have you done? What have you done?” His voice was desperate.

  Soon she could feel a strong arm around her, sitting her up, shaking her, trying to restore life, but it was too late—she was slowly breaking down. The last thing she remembered was a small stone being thrust into her hand before all went black.

  At 30,000 feet in the air, it all came flooding back to her. Geraldine MacDonald had found her that morning slumped over a grave in the little Chapel of St. Oran. She had been overdoing it lately, and the stress had taken its toll. Once she was feeling quite well again, the old woman had given her a book on the genealogy of the McDonald clan and not wanting to be rude, she had taken it along with her name and address and telephone number, just in case she happened to be in the area again.

  At first she had tried to sleep. She had an aisle seat and was at least able to stretch out her legs. Yet every time she almost dozed off, vivid dreams and imaginings would wake her up. She looked in her carry-on bag. She had nothing to read except the book Geraldine had given her so she casually flicked through the pages to pass the time. On the third page she paused as she read the name of Alexhander McDonald. Her heart stopped as the memories came flooding back in every detail. Surely it had been just a terrible dream, brought on by her grieving state? Maybe she had been influenced by her grandma’s diary. She had always had an active imagination.

  She looked at the family tree spread out in the middle pages of the book. There was Alexhander McDonald, married to Andra in 1642. They had a child, Alexhander (dead) in 1644, and another, a girl in 1645. There were no dates of death, only question marks against the entries. The history books couldn’t tell her everything.

  Andrea put a hand against her stomach, remembering the pregnancy. Could it be that she was expecting? She had been sick that morning when she returned to the hotel, and she still felt a little queasy. Deep inside her, it all started to make sense. If it had been just a dream, then she wouldn’t be feeling so strongly. Alex had come through for her in the end, just at the right moment. She fished out the small rune from her jeans pocket and held it in her hand. This tiny object connected her past and present; it was her link to the one man she loved and would return to.

  In the dark room of the nunnery, Alex McDonald held onto the still, warm body of his beloved Andra. The dawn had just started to break, and a weak sun was rising above the mist. He knew that she was safe and that she would come back to him. As long as he kept holding her, she would not die. Their love was eternal.

  THE END

  This exciting story continues with Highland’s Dream, available from Amazon now

  Billionaire Romance

  My New Holiday Billionaire

  Pamela Avery

  Copyright ©2016 by Pamela Avery. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I swear, Sage Tariq, if you shed one more tear over that loser… That’s it! Get up out of that bed!”

  Sage looked up from puffy eyes at her friend of over ten years; Eden Carter was a force to be reckoned with. Eden was pretty, vivacious and knew her own mind with a confidence men seemed to find sexy. She was also one of Sage’s best friends, but right now, she was Sage’s least favorite person in the whole world.

  Sage curled deeper into the fetal position; she wished heartily that she could disappear. She wished Eden would leave her alone; she wished everyone would just leave her alone. It wasn’t every day one’s fiancé dumped them in front of their boss and other colleagues, was it? She was dealing the best way she knew how.

  Okay, so Brent Davies had dropped the bombshell over two weeks ago, but it took longer than that to get over a three-year relationship. Her friends, Eden and Beth, had rallied and taken her on a vacation to ‘get her mind off things’, but considering that tomorrow was the last day of their vacation and she was still tucked up in bed with popcorn and Kleenex, she didn’t think their plan had worked so much.

  “Eden’s right, Sage, you need to get out of bed,” Beth piped up in her lilting voice. “We leave Madrid tomorrow, and so far, you haven’t taken in the sights. Eden and I have certainly had more than our fair share of fun while you’ve been lying here moping at the ceiling all week. Why, the hotel maids are beginning to look at us funny because they obviously think you’re an addled cousin we stashed out of sight in the room while we stuff our faces with lobster and sangrias every night.”

  “Yeah, they probably think we’re Cinderella’s step-sisters without the step-
mother,” Eden grumbled under her breath.

  “I bet they think Step-mother is locked in here with you to make certain you stay put,” Beth tossed in.

  It was too much, Sage burst into laughter, releasing the tension that had been binding her chest as she laughed and laughed and laughed. Beth was a jewel! She was really Elizabeth Adams, but everyone called her Beth. Sage had known her for just five years, but in all that time, she had seen Beth get angry only once; when someone had insisted on calling her Elizabeth despite her stated preference for Beth.

  Beth’s platinum blond hair and big blue eyes, as well as her petite frame and tiny voice, often made people assume she could be pushed around; she usually corrected anyone foolish enough to assume that in her own inimitable style. She also had a dry sense of humor that showed itself at the most unexpected moments; like now.

  Even Eden was convulsed with laughter, her heavy red hair swaying around her face as she doubled over with hilarity; tears of mirth standing in her liquid green eyes.

  As their laughter died, Sage rose to a sitting position, drawing her knees up to her chest as she looked up at her friends. Her blond hair fell around her face in lumpy strings, some of it falling into her big brown eyes.

  “You’re right, guys. I haven’t been much fun, have I?” Sage asked, looking from one to the other.

  “No, you haven’t,” Eden said honestly. “You’ve bawled your eyes out and memorized the ceiling for six days straight. Tonight is our last night here, since our flight back to the States is for tomorrow night. Why don’t we make it fun?”

  Sage nodded, throwing off the duvet. She had dreamed of being in Spain for as long as she could remember, and now that she was, she had wasted the entire vacation. Anger roiled through her as she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She was pretty with a heart-shaped face, big brown doe eyes, long blond hair that hung to her waist, the cutest set of dimples, and huge breasts that had always driven men wild. Her eyes sparkled as she examined her figure. She was very chubby, especially with the extra flesh on her hips, thighs and arms, but she loved her figure and she wouldn’t trade it for anything. She was voluptuous and perhaps slightly over-weight for her height of five foot seven, but she had a perfect hour-glass figure and an amazing carriage, and she was damned if she was going to let any man make her question her own femininity and attractiveness. She only had to walk into a bar sometimes and half the guys went crazy; Eden called her the ‘guy magnet.’

  “Brent Davies was a jerk!” she declared suddenly.

  She saw her friends exchange glances in the mirror.

  “Well, he was,” she insisted. “He broke up with me in the middle of the damn Christmas party, with my boss standing right at my elbow and listening to every word!”

  “And with Jessamine clinging to Brent’s arm!” Eden chipped in.

  Sage’s cheeks darkened with anger. Jessamine was Brent’s best friend who had never made any bones of the fact that she thought she was a better fit for Brent. She had been after the man for all the three years Sage had known him, even though Brent was too wrapped up in his research to notice. When Brent had proposed to Sage a year ago, Jessamine had almost choked on the insincere congratulations she had managed to force out of her throat.

  Then she had slowly gone to work on Brent, planting seeds of doubt and dissatisfaction until nothing Sage did could ever please him anymore. He had begun to find faults with everything; her generous curves, which had driven him crazy in the past, were suddenly ‘excess fat that needed to come off in the gym’; her cooking, which he had always loved, was suddenly ‘too spicy’; her hair was suddenly too blond.

  Sage’s fists clenched, now, in anger as she recalled how Brent had had the temerity to tell her at that Christmas party that her weight was a turn-off for him, with Jess and her perfect size zero hanging on his arm at the time.

  It had taken all of Sage’s strength of character and maturity to keep from collapsing in an ignoble heap at his feet after he spoke those unkind words to her. She had simply kept smiling as though they were discussing the weather, offered him a distracted nod, and then excused herself to her boss before disappearing into the ladies’ room. She had remained there until everyone had left and then she had slowly crept out and staggered to the curb for a taxi to take her home, knowing she would never be able to drive in that state. The tears she had fought so hard to hold in check had immediately started falling when she’d gotten outside and seen Eden and Beth waiting patiently for her on the curb as though they had nowhere else to be. It was four hours after everyone else had left and yet, they had waited. She had been so devastated that night, she just knew she would never have gotten through it if they had not been there.

  They really were the best friends in the whole wide world and she really couldn’t bear to be the reason their vacation was anything but amazing. Eden was a divorce attorney and she rarely got any time off; Beth was a psychologist and the story was much the same. She had to shake off the blues for their sake, she thought.

  “If Brent can move on, so can I,” she whispered softly to her reflection.

  Eden nodded approvingly and whipped out a list, waving it happily in the air.

  “What’s that?” Sage asked, eyeing the paper suspiciously.

  “A list of things to do before the end of the vacation,” Beth laughed, her blue eyes twinkling.

  Sage shut her eyes in despair; she’d been had!

  “What’s on the list?” she asked, reaching for it.

  “No, no, no,” Eden sang, thrusting the paper out of her reach. “First things first, you need to take a shower and then we’ll play it by ear.”

  Two hours later, she was waxed, plucked, and dressed in a leopard print, backless dress her friends had picked out. The dress clung sinfully to every last line of her body and made her feel very much like a femme fatale.

  Eden’s list had fifteen crazy things to do on it and since her friends insisted they had already done all fifteen themselves without her, tonight was her night. She groaned when she saw the first item on the list; great!

  Flash a handsome stranger in the lobby... then make a run for it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Okay, you’re both crazy,” Sage laughed, almost doubling over with hilarity as they stood just outside the hotel, waiting for their limousine.

  She had already done six of the fifteen things on the damn list, including ordering for a limousine, drinking an entire bottle of chardonnay before dinner, going without any underwear, flirting with a bell boy, flashing the cameras in the lift, and hiding her shoes in her bag and coming downstairs barefoot.

  She hadn’t done the first thing, though, and Eden insisted they would not leave the hotel until she had flashed some handsome stranger. So far, all the men she had seen had been with their wives or girlfriends, and while she was here to have fun, she didn’t want to cause trouble for some hapless man. If there was one thing she knew, her breasts were show-stoppers. They were large and round, and men tended to stare at the girls even when they were covered up, never mind when they were exposed. Why, one time, she had gone to the beach with Brent and he had gotten so jealous of all the glances men kept stealing her way that he had whipped out his sweatshirt and demanded she wear it. That was the first and last time he had ever taken her to the beach, even though he knew she loved swimming. If she flashed some man now, and he stopped to stare, she didn’t think his lady would be particularly amused.

  “Don’t be a wuss, Sage. Come on, flash that elderly man and his wife,” Eden suggested, pointing at a pious-looking elderly couple sitting a few feet away.

  Sage shook her head, dimples flashing as she smiled at her friends. “And what would happen if they keel over from the sheer shock of it? I can’t have that on my conscience.”

  Beth laughed throatily, flinging back her blond head as she did so. “Okay, flash that super model’s boyfriend,” she suggested mischievously, pointing at a tattooed couple necking in the lobby of the hotel. They w
ere trying so hard to appear romantic and in love, it was almost painful to watch.

  “No, her breasts are the size of mosquito bites; I don’t want her to develop a complex,” Sage overruled. “Two years from now, she’d be telling Oprah how she developed a drug use problem because some blond woman flashed her guy in a hotel lobby in Spain.”

  Beth snorted with laughter at that one, but Eden sighed and began to complain about the passing time. Sage rolled her eyes, opened her mouth and started to tell Eden that this had all been her idea so she could well wait until she saw whoever she was supposed to shock with her breasts and that was when she saw him.

  He was tall, very tall, with a height of at least six-two; his hair was coal-black and in artful disarray around his head. It was sexily mussed, as though he had just gotten out of bed after rolling around for hours in said bed. His brows were dark, bushy and defined the sheer masculinity of his face, and even from this distance, she could see his eyes were also black as night. He had a pair of firmly chiseled lips, a firm masculine jaw, high cheekbones that strangely defined his masculinity, and a long aristocratic nose that gave his face character. His shoulders were so wide they tempted a woman to just lay her head on them and his chest strained with the promise of raw strength with every step he took.

  He was so handsome he looked like a Greek god in the flesh, Sage thought dazedly as she stared openly at him. He was striding towards the hotel from the parking lot, his eyes glued to the smart-phone in his right hand while his left carried a backpack. He was dressed casually, in jeans and a shirt, but somehow, an invisible aura of power clung to him; he exuded confidence and authority. Barely restrained physical strength was also apparent in every line of movement his body made.