Passionate Kisses

by Various

  "Thanks. I'll take you up on that." I move to the bathroom, having finished repairing his packing job.

  Ryan follows me. "Have you thought about what schools to apply to?"

  "Not really. But if I do well the first time I sit for the LSAT, I can apply next January for the early rounds. I'll have a much better chance of getting in wherever I apply." I scoop up my scattered makeup.

  "This is awesome. I think you'd make a great lawyer."

  I freeze.

  "Really?" I ask, shocked. That is the first time he’s shared his opinion.

  "Yeah, really. You’re tenacious, smart, and quick." He looks right at me when he says this. My heart skips.

  "Thanks," I say, and can’t stop the smile spreading across my face.

  I go back to cleaning up and organizing, and Ryan wanders out of the bedroom. When the last of it is buttoned up in the suitcase and the bed is made, I wheel my stuff to the front of the apartment. I find Ryan in the kitchen, cleaning out the refrigerator.

  "Now what are you doing?" I ask him, embarrassed at what he might find in there.

  "Well, Young, the fridge was starting to stink, and if we’re not going be here anyway, thought I'd help you out and toss everything before we leave."

  He's cleaning my fridge? I'm speechless.

  He throws some cartons away with a flourish and shuts the door.

  "Let me just toss this in the bin. Are you almost ready?" He holds up the trash bag, bulging from God knows what.

  "Yeah. I'll just turn off the lights and lock up." I check the windows and turn off all the lights. Just as I'm wheeling my suitcase out the front door, Ryan is back to help me.

  It feels good, the two of us. I'm excited to be going to his house. I've never been there. He takes my case and kisses me briefly on the lips.

  "Hey," he says.

  "Hey," I say back.

  I shut and lock the door.

  We leave my car there for the time being; maybe we'll pick it up later tonight. All my stuff fits nicely in Ryan's Jeep, and it’s more comfortable anyway. I snuggle into the seat while he drives.

  "So. I've never been to your house, you know," I say, almost shyly.

  "You haven't?" He seems a little taken aback.

  "No. You never invited me over before now."

  "Well. Sorry, my error." He waits a minute or so, focusing on driving.

  "So. Anything else happen this last week I should know about?" he asks, almost cynically.

  "Oh yeah, one other thing. I'm quitting my job and applying for internships at law firms. Know of any?" I say, as nonchalantly as possible.

  He doesn't speak, he just looks at me for longer than he should, then back to the road. Then his face splits into a huge grin.

  "Yeah. I see that you’re the kind of woman who needs constant contact to keep up with," he says, amused.

  "Well, a lot can happen in a week, you know."

  "Well, not for normal people," he scoffs.

  "Who says I’m anywhere near normal?" I laugh at him. "And last week was not a normal week! Thank God!"

  "Oh, so this kind of thing won’t happen again? You know, where in less than week you make a series of life changing decisions?” he asks, sarcastically.

  "Oh, no. I would never promise such a thing. It was sort of cathartic, it all happening at once like that. I liked it. That may be my new modus operandi." Now I’m really laughing.

  He puts a hand on my thigh as we wind our way down the back streets of Atherton. I don't know where we’re going, but wherever it is, it's going be nice.

  "You know what, Young. You're fun," Ryan says, squeezing my leg.

  I close my eyes and take in the moment.

  "Thanks, Cole. Back atcha!"

  Awake

  Book 2

  How far over the edge would you go for love?

  Passion and adventure go hand in hand with Ryan and Nora, but as Ryan taps into his deep well of desires, will he once again push Nora too far? While he struggles to find his place in the family law firm, his love for Nora grows. Ryan finally admits his deepest, darkest secret, now Nora must decide just how far she will let Ryan take her into his universe.

  Awake coming Fall 2014

  About the Author

  Sydney Holmes writes contemporary romance with an erotic flair, or as she likes to say, “Hot and spicy romance that keeps you up at night!” She believes there is nothing more exciting than reading a hot, sexy tale about two people searching for themselves and getting lost in each other.

  Sydney is married to a wonderful man and they have two children. Sydney graduated from The George Washington University with a BS in Political Science and holds a Master’s Degree in Education. She lives near the ocean in California and travels as often as she can.

  To learn more about Sydney, please visit her website at www.SydneyHolmes.com

  Or, check her out on Facebook www.FaceBook.com/SydneyHolmesAuthor

  And, follow her on Twitter @SydHolmesAuthor

  For periodic updates, news, events, book releases, and sneak peaks please join Sydney’s mailing list at www.SydneyHolmes.com/contact-sydney

  Beacon of Love

  By

  Allie Boniface

  Caught between the stars and the sand,

  Between a view of the sky and the sea,

  I reach for the moon,

  I cast its light in your eyes

  So that forever after you will remember

  How it was the first moment I loved you.

  Not from there, but from here

  Not from the top but from the bottom

  Across the never-ending water you will find the treasure

  I have bought for you, my heart.

  I have buried it deep below

  Every day you seek it

  And every day you see it–

  One day, my love, my only, it will be ours.

  This beacon of love will guide us home

  And forever, my sweet, shelter us from the storm.

  Chapter 1

  Sophie picked up her notepad and looked over the points she’d jotted earlier in the day. Her driver slowed the car to a crawl as rain poured down around them, dark and heavy, the thick, eggy kind of drops that thudded ominously against everything they hit and sounded as though they might turn to hail at any moment.

  Reason for the murders?

  Lights or voices or both?

  Woman on the beach?

  She doodled around the margins and added another thought at the bottom of her list: possible set-up? She wasn’t a sleuth, she wasn’t supposed to be and she knew it, but every time they arrived at a new location, she couldn’t help but feel a little Nancy Drew-like. I can’t just stand in front of the camera and talk about rumors, she’d told Lon more than once. I need to walk around, ask some questions at the local diner, find out for myself. People will trust me more if they think I’m not just in and out to shoot a half-hour TV episode.

  The car lurched to the left, then bottomed out altogether as it came to a stop. Her files slid off the seat and onto the floor. So much for her list.

  The driver glanced into his rear view mirror. “You okay?”

  Sophie didn’t answer. Instead she pressed her nose to the glass and tried to read the sign at the edge of the road. Apparently they’d stopped just short of the town limits. Welcome to Lindsey Point. Home of–what did that say? She leaned forward and squinted, suddenly catching sight of a second sign, smaller and half-obscured by tall grass and weeds.

  Except it wasn’t really a sign at all, more like one of those roadside memorials, a short white cross stuck into the ground, surrounded by a few bedraggled flowers and a soggy lump that might have been a stuffed animal a while ago. In the center of the cross was a square of wood with a date on it. Small, dark print. Sophie tried, but she couldn’t read it. Probably a kid, teenage driver texting or drinking or something. Or maybe a family, a parent and child, by the looks of the toy and the miniature size of the cross. Gooseflesh
broke out on her arms. She’d criss-crossed the country a hundred times, seen handfuls of these crosses by the side of the road or wired to trees or fence posts, and still they spiked her curiosity. Marks of death and sadness. Impromptu altars. Fascinating.

  After a long moment, her gaze moved back to the tall, formal sign, neatly lettered and rising a few feet above the cross. Welcome to Lindsey Point. Home of the Most Famous Lighthouse on the East Coast. Right. The lighthouse. The reason she was here.

  “‘Most famous’?” Maine to Florida, over two thousand miles of coastline, and Lindsey Point, Connecticut, was making that kind of claim? Sophie’s smile crooked. At least the town didn’t suffer from a self-esteem issue.

  Lightning blasted the sky and illuminated everything for a moment–spidery tree branches, a handful of lonely-looking houses, a stretch of cloud-scarred darkness that opened above the ocean. The car moved forward a few yards before it stopped again.

  “Ah, miss?”

  Sophie tore her gaze from the welcome sign and the cross and the trees and the mottled, angry sky. Oh, no. Oh, shit. About a quarter-mile up, an enormous tree had fallen across the road. The only road into this Godforsaken coastal town three hours from her Greenwich Village apartment.

  “Looks like we might be here a while,” the driver said.

  Blue spinning lights passed them as he spoke, and a pickup truck bumped along the shoulder, followed by a battered sedan. Mud spattered the cross and the sad stuffed animal.

  “Can you see how far away we are?”

  A few lights blinked through the trees, suggesting civilization. If they weren’t too far from town, she’d get out and walk. She needed the air.

  He tapped the GPS screen. “Looks like about a half-mile from Main Street. Big bend in the road, and then we hit Lindsey Point proper. Your bed and breakfast is on the other side of town, though. And the lighthouse–”

  “I didn’t mean the lighthouse.” The words tumbled out before she could stop them. Sophie Smartass, her friends in college had called her, and they weren’t far off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “’S all right, ma’am.”

  Ma’am. Terrific. A few minutes ago, certainly at the start of this trip, she’d been a miss. A decently dressed, single, thirty-two-year-old miss with designer shoes and a designer purse and the address of a Connecticut town she needed to get to. Now she was a haggard, tired ma’am.

  “I’m sorry.” She could probably shove both Louis Vuitton shoes into her mouth if she tried, but even Sophie Smartass knew when enough was enough.

  “Would you like me to call the inn?” he offered.

  She shook her head. “I have the number. I will, if I need to. If we don’t move in a few minutes.” Her gaze moved to the cross once more, and she grabbed her notepad from the floor and drew the symbol on her list as a reminder for later. If she had any time, she’d do a little research. Might not be related to the lighthouse story, but she’d find out who had died there, all the same. Memory and mourning–they were rich topics, ripe around the edges, tough to touch, but when she did, she almost always found something worth digging into. Provided the people here were open to some digging.

  She glanced at her watch. Almost seven. She hadn’t heard thunder in the last ten minutes or so, and the rain had pretty much stopped. She craned her neck. It couldn’t take long to drag a tree out of the way, could it? Wrap a chain around it, hook it up to some big truck, and floor the gas. Maybe by nine she’d be neck-deep in soft sheets, with her head on a feather pillow and this whole long day behind her.

  Someone rapped on the driver’s window. “Hello?” The voice, flattened with a distinct New England accent, repeated itself. “Hello in there?” Only it sounded like ther-ah, with an extra syllable tacked on the end.

  The driver lowered his window. “Yes?”

  A giant face filled the window, with wide, red cheeks and a large mouth and cow-like brown eyes with lashes that looked like they belonged on a girl. Dark curls, too many of them, flopped onto the man’s face. He placed two enormous hands on the side of the car to lean farther in. Good God, he must be close to seven feet tall.

  “Road’s blocked,” he said, as if they hadn't already seen the tree.

  “For how long?” the driver asked.

  The man shrugged, a motion involving a broad chest and enormous shoulders that moved out of Sophie’s view and then back again. “Not sure. Crew’s on its way. Just wanted to let you know.” With that, he disappeared.

  “Hey!” Sophie rapped on the glass, but he walked away before she could get his attention.

  She dropped back and folded her arms. Wonderful. She’d done enough shows in small towns to know the “crew” was likely made up of half-drunken volunteer firefighters and a retired schoolteacher or two and could take anywhere from five minutes to five hours to show up.

  “Think there’s another road in?” she asked.

  “Already checked. Don’t think so, not unless we want to go down to Bluffet Edge and drive around from the north. That’ll be a good hour out of the way.” Pause. “Unless that’s what you’d prefer, ma’am?”

  Again with the ma’am. “Just Sophie. Please.”

  “Anyway, I think they’re telling us something.” The driver gestured to the road ahead, where another emergency truck had pulled onto the shoulder. A man was waving his arms at them and mouthing something. “To turn around, looks like.”

  “What? No.” She lowered her window and checked for rain. “No way. We’re a half-mile away. We’re not going all the way back to–” She tried to think of the last actual town, with lights and restaurants and hotels, they’d passed through. “We’re not turning around.” She opened her door, placed one foot on the ground, and almost fell onto her ass.

  “Ma’am, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  But Sophie threw both arms onto the roof of the car to catch herself. “I’m all right.” She stopped to get her breath and her balance. “I’m going to walk up a little ways, see if I can find out what’s going on. I’ll come right back, I promise.”

  “But–”

  Sophie shut the door behind her. Lon would kill her if he knew she was tromping around in the dark, slipping and sliding and about to break an arm or an ankle. Your job is to stay beautiful and all in one piece, okay? Don’t go climbing around on rocks–the Badlands episode, not a good memory at all–or walk the high wire at the local fair–the Adirondacks power-outage debacle. Just stand where I tell you to stand and look gorgeous for the camera.

  Sometimes she hated Lon.

  At least the rain had stopped, though in places the mud sucked onto the bottom of her shoes and made the going slow. Stupid decision, she thought about ten strides in, but the air felt good on her face, better than being trapped in the claustrophobic backseat.

  “Hey!” The man waving his arms pointed at her. “Stop walking! Right there. Stop!”

  Sophie kept going.

  At that, he dropped his arms and strode toward her, the giant from earlier. Actually, out here he wasn’t quite as huge as he’d seemed before. He wasn’t seven feet tall but closer to six and a half, and his mouth looked kinder, not like he wanted to swallow up the entire contents of a banquet table in one sitting. In fact, standing on the road, face to face with her, he seemed almost–

  “Didn’t you see me?” He put one hand on her shoulder and pinned her in place. “Didn’t you see the truck up there? And the power lines?”

  The truck? Yes. The power lines? No. But now that she looked, a heavy black cable blocked the road.

  “You can’t just go walking around in your–” His gaze dropped to her shoes, expensive flats with gold and black zebra stripes that looked terrific on camera but a little out of place on a muddy country road.

  She lifted her chin and dared him to say something cutting. Something sarcastic. She’d heard it all before.

  “You should go back and wait in your car,” he finished gruffly. “It’s safer there.”
He pushed the hair from his forehead, which did nothing to stop the rain from dripping down his face. His eyes, large and brown and curious, rested on hers a moment longer before he turned and walked away without another word.

  “Hey, um, excuse me?”

  He turned.

  “What’s your name?” Make nice. Lon’s voice echoed in her head. If this guy was a local–and of course he was, what else would he be?–maybe he’d agree to sit down with her before the shoot, give her some inside info about the town. Introduce her to others who knew a thing or two about the lighthouse hauntings.

  “What’s yours?”

  Heat seared her cheeks. “I’m Sophie. Smithwaite.” She waited for recognition to cross his face. Surely he’d heard of her? She’d been the host of this travel show for over two years. It landed on Top Ten lists on a regular basis. She’d filmed three major ads in the last six months. And there was the feature article she’d done in Men’s Monthly last fall, tasteful and fully clothed, of course, but coy and flirtatious and sure to win them more single male viewers, according to Lon. This guy didn’t recognize her from any of those? At the very least, hadn’t he heard they were going to be shooting in Lindsey Point this week?

  But his expression didn’t change. “Lucas Oakes,” he finally said. Nothing else. No words of welcome, no smile, not even another warning about staying safe in the storm. He just turned and walked away, leaving Sophie standing in the mud, tired, pissed off, and wishing more than anything she’d never heard of Lindsey Point or its damned haunted lighthouse.

  Chapter 2

  “’Bout time you got here.” Finn filled a beer mug and slid it across the bar.

  “Had to help out over on County Route Ten. Line came down.”

  “I heard.” Finn scrubbed the bar with a towel before flipping it over his shoulder and pouring himself a beer. “You see the TV crew?”