A Paranormal Easter: 14 Paranormal & Fantasy Romance Novellas

by Tiffany Carby

  Standing in the middle of the darkened foyer at the foot of the stairs, I listened intently. I knew the sound had come from outside. What I didn’t know was whether it had come from the front of the house or from the back. Then I heard it again—from the back. Of course. Why wouldn’t it be? Didn’t most horror movies start with a barely awake young woman making her way out back to investigate a creepy sound? This was just what I needed—an axe-wielding maniac to shoot with my twelve-gauge in the middle of the night.

  Navigating my very large, overly equipped kitchen, I neared the backdoor. All I could think about was what would happen if my guests woke up to find me dead in here. My freshly baked pies that I’d spent the whole evening working on wouldn’t be worth a damn then. That was all part of running your own bed-and-breakfast though. Most of your time was spent cooking for others or cleaning up after them—or, in this case, shooting would-be maniacs in the middle of the night.

  At the backdoor, I took a deep breath. The last thing I wanted to do was step outside directly into danger. No, I was smarter than that. My daddy had taught me a few things, and how to take care of myself had been one of them. I used the barrel of the shotgun to pull back the apple-and-coffee-cup inspired drapery just enough to see out.

  There, under the small light by my storage shed, I saw what the commotion was about. Three men, big and dressed all in black, were in the process of beating the living hell out of another guy. I couldn’t make out faces from my vantage point, but it was clear that the guy on the ground was about to lose this fight in a big way. I briefly wondered why this would be happening up here in the boonies away from everyone. The only ones here besides me were out-of-towners. Still, I couldn’t just stand here and watch some poor guy get beaten literally to death. Instead, I stiffened, feeling my backbone lock into place, and then reached down and unlocked the door.

  As the backdoor swung open, the eyes of the men in black all turned to me. The sight made me want to shrink back, scream, cry, and maybe even pray a little. They weren’t eyes that you would call normal. No, they were completely black, absent of all color but quite clear with their focus, which was now on me. I cocked the gun, aiming at the one nearest me.

  “Look, I have no idea who you are or what you’re doing here, but your best option is to leave now, before you get hurt,” I told them, quite proud of myself for keeping the fear out of my voice. I sounded pretty badass.

  The mouth of the man nearest me opened. I expected a string of cuss words, or at least a good threat. Instead, he hissed at me—literally hissed, like some hard-up tomcat prowling the streets. What the hell was happening? My badass feeling was quickly deteriorating. Something wasn’t right here.

  “Get the hell out of my backyard,” I said once more, this time far less fearlessly.

  “Shoot,” I heard a soft, almost melodic voice whisper. I glanced to the man on the ground. It was obvious it had come from him.

  I don’t know why I did it. It was as if I suddenly knew whatever he had said was true. I trusted him almost immediately. Without another thought, I took aim and pulled the trigger. The man in black that I shot disintegrated in midair. There was no blood, no body—nothing. It was as if he had never been there. The two who were with him hissed menacingly at me and then vanished.

  My shock, as well as my racing heartbeat, held me tight to the spot where I stood. I had never seen anything like that. People couldn’t just disappear. Maybe this was still a dream? Maybe I was still in my warm bed, dreaming of disappearing men and colorless eyes? It wouldn’t surprise me.

  “Harley,” the man on the ground whispered, quickly pulling my attention back to the situation at hand.

  “How do you know my name?” I asked. It was a fair question. I ran a bed-and-breakfast in the mountains. It wasn’t like I was wearing my name on my pajamas or anything.

  “I’ll explain, but for now, will you help me?” he almost pleaded as his head fell back.

  Swallowing hard, I stepped off the porch and onto the ground. It was still cold out. March in Tennessee wasn’t usually warm and blustery, but this winter had been a harsh one. Crossing the frost-laden grass, I looked down at the guy who had just gotten his ass kicked.

  “Wow,” I muttered.

  That was the only thing I could think to say. His face was beautiful. He was the most gorgeous guy I had ever seen, and he was bleeding. Using the barrel of the gun, I nudged him slightly. It was clear he was out. Although I wasn’t sure how smart of an idea it was, I turned and hurried back to the kitchen, depositing the twelve-gauge. Once I returned to him, I wrapped my arms under his neck and pulled him up into a seated position. He groaned.

  “You have to help me out here, guy. I can’t carry you,” I told him as I patted his face softly to try and jostle him. Slowly his eyes fluttered open. They were the most intense color of gold I had ever seen. “What are you?” I asked. I knew in my heart he wasn’t normal.

  A soft smile touched his lips. “That doesn’t matter.” He sighed as he struggled to pull himself up. With my help, he succeeded.

  “I have an empty room upstairs. It won’t be easy, but I think we can get you up there. That is, if you stay conscious.”

  He looked at me again and smiled. I felt my tension ease. The fear I had been feeling drifted away. Looking into his golden eyes, I felt as if I were floating. A feeling of weightlessness overcame me. I didn’t have a problem in the world while I was near him. Then he blinked.

  Shaking my head, I looked around me. I was no longer in the backyard. I was upstairs in one of the guest rooms. The charcoal-grey comforter and white drapes told me we were in room 9, the vacant one, but how?

  “Thank you, Harley,” the man said as he lay back on the bed. Within seconds, I saw the rise and fall of his chest and knew he was asleep.

  Perplexed by what had happened, I rushed downstairs to find the back door shut and locked. The gun remained by the door, but the safety was once again on. I glanced toward the stairwell and wondered what the hell had just happened. A man from my backyard had just turned a normally boring weeknight into something I couldn’t quite describe. I knew sleep wouldn’t happen, especially since all I wanted to do was watch over him.

  2

  I could already hear the voices upstairs as I rushed through the kitchen, wishing I had taken the advice of my friend Sarah, who had suggested that I hire someone to help me with cooking on the weekends. Mountain Whispers Bed and Breakfast had been my grandmother’s and then my mother’s, and now this baby was mine.

  In the beginning, Grams had seen it as a place to take in wayward travelers and hikers to keep them safe from what these East Tennessee mountains could inflict upon them. Mom had revitalized the place. She had advertised, pushed the business, and expanded. Within two years of running the bed-and-breakfast, she had made it into a money-maker, which in turn had helped the Williams family out tremendously. The family—my aunts, cousins, uncles, the whole shebang—had all seemed to have a hand in Mountain Whispers Bed and Breakfast. They had all wanted the money; Mom had seen that as well as the rest of us—she hadn’t been blind—but she had also used it to her advantage.

  With all the additional help, she had expanded further than your run-of-the-mill bed-and-breakfast. Talk of her homemade goodies had spread far and wide. She had begun taking orders online for boxes of cookies, pies, and more. You name it, she baked it. She had made lots of money from the tourists…and had become a local sensation.

  Things had been great for a while. Mom and Dad had had money, which meant I’d had money. They had paid for me to go to college, which I had gladly accepted. Once I was gone, the last thing I had wanted to think about was these mountains. I’d had freedom. I could be out and about in big cities. I could party with my new friends or hit the books and ace my upcoming test; the decision was all mine. Until everything changed.

  I had been in my dorm room studying the night Mom called. The conversation had been short. She had been seeing a doctor in Knoxville. She had bee
n feeling tired, rundown, and had lost a bit of weight. The doctor had done several tests to try and find an answer. It was cancer, and it was bad. She had begged me to stay at school. I told her I would. While we talked, I was already packing my bags. Yes, I lied to my mother, but I’d known by the tone of her voice that she needed me.

  The whole process had gone quickly. She was in the late stages, and her body hadn’t been able to fight it. Although she had tried chemotherapy, it had just prolonged the inevitable. I had been there till the end. I was there holding one hand, while Dad held the other, as she took her last breath. It was the hardest day of my life and the start of everything around us unraveling.

  My aunt had expected Mountain Whispers to become hers. My mom hadn’t seen it that way though. When the lawyer told us I had inherited the house, the property, and everything that had to do with the business, the family that had been around us since Mom’s ideas started booming suddenly vanished. Hateful phone calls, a contested will, and even accusations of tampering with said will all drove a wedge between the Williams family—my mom’s side of the family—and the Morgan family, which consisted of me and my dad. We were suddenly on our own.

  Looking back on how everything had happened, I was glad the rest of the family had taken off like they did. Yes, learning my way around the world of Mountain Whispers Bed and Breakfast had been difficult. There were many times I had wanted to give up, but I had a reason to keep fighting. I wanted to make my mom proud. I wanted to keep her legacy going. It had been a rough road, but I’d done it. Sales had gone back up, I’d practiced her recipes until I was ready to pull my hair out, and things had settled back into a normal flow. Sure, it was harder for me since I didn’t have a trove of money-hungry family members offering to do whatever I needed of them, but I made it work.

  Letting a sigh escape me, I looked down at the extra-large bowl of eggs I had been whisking for the past several minutes as my mind wandered. This was typical. No matter what I was doing, I could find something else to think about. I’d burned more cookies than I cared to admit because of it. Shaking it off, I poured the eggs into the pan and then tried to rush myself through a breakfast of champions for my guests, who would be hungry.

  As I sat down at the twelve-seater dining room table, I had to force my mind to focus. The man lying upstairs kept attempting to invade my thoughts. Several things from last night seemed odd. The last thing I needed to do was allow myself to dwell on all of them. No, I had a job to do. Once it was done, I would go check on my uninvited guest and try to get some answers—that was, if he had any. From the looks of him last night, he wasn’t in good standing with the hissing assholes who’d been beating him down in my backyard.

  I heard someone enter the dining room, and I threw myself into perfect hostess mode. Yes, I would have preferred to be upstairs, using a damp cloth to wipe away the dried blood and dirt from the perfect man that lay in the bed of my vacant room, but a girl had to take care of business before she could allow herself the pleasure of eye candy.

  Once breakfast had been finished and the kitchen had been cleaned, I found myself standing at the top of the stairs, staring toward the room where he slept. The last time I had checked in on him had been a bit before five a.m. He’d been sleeping comfortably, a slight smile on his face. It was almost as if nothing had happened last night.

  It was now nine. Squaring my shoulders, I took a deep breath, adjusted the tray I held in one hand, and made my way toward the door. I knocked sharply. Hearing no reply, I opened the door and stepped inside.

  “Hello, Harley,” his smooth, velvety voice practically purred.

  I bit my bottom lip as I took in the sight before me. He was propped against the white oak headboard, the bed coverings pulled up to just below his belly button. His chest was smooth, his skin lightly tanned. His abs were perfectly chiseled, leaving me with a craving to reach out and trace each one slowly. His hair was lighter than it had seemed last night. It was dirty-blond and hung down to his shoulders. His face was practically indescribable. His skin was smooth, with a strong jawline and full, quite-noticeable lips. His eyes, however, were something beyond imagination. They were golden, like the gold you would find at the end of a rainbow.

  “I’m sorry if I have frightened you,” he said, making me realize that I was standing there looking like a fool as I gaped openly at how hot he was.

  “It’s all right,” I said, trying to quickly pull myself back together. The cocky smile on his face told me I was failing miserably. “I brought you something to eat. I was hoping it would help you regain your strength.”

  “That would be lovely,” he answered enthusiastically as he reached for the tray.

  I stared at his face, the same one that had taken an intense beating just a few hours ago. It was completely healed. There wasn’t even a scratch.

  “You aren’t hurt anymore,” I said as I handed him the tray and then stepped back nervously. Something about this man wasn’t normal.

  “No, I am not.” He smiled once more before he picked up the fork and began shoveling eggs into his mouth as if he were starving.

  I was used to people liking my cooking—hell, I’d been taught by a southern legend—but this was a bit more. After every few bites, he would lean his head back and moan softly. He was truly savoring each bite. The look of bliss that settled onto his face when he bit into his bacon seemed surreal.

  “What is this?” he asked, quickly popping the last of the piece into his mouth and snatching up another. “It is amazing.”

  “You’ve never tried bacon before?” I asked. Perhaps he was a vegetarian or something.

  “There is quite a bit I have never tried before, Harley. This, however, is tantalizing. I could eat it all day.”

  “That wouldn’t be good on the ticker.” I smiled as I patted my chest where my heart was. “I’m glad you like it though.”

  “That I do,” he answered as another piece found its way into his mouth. Before long, the entire plate was clean.

  “What’s your name?” I inquired as he drained his glass of orange juice in one long gulp.

  He took his napkin and thoroughly cleaned his mouth and hands before placing it neatly on the plate in front of him. With yet another bright smile, he handed me the tray and then carefully smoothed the covers that were over his bottom half.

  “My name is Sebastian,” he finally answered. Then he lifted his golden eyes up to look at me. His gaze once again mesmerized me. “I have come here for you. There is quite a bit you need to know.”

  “I’m listening.” Seeing his head slowly shake, I said, “You tell me you’ve come here for me, but you won’t tell me why?”

  “It is complicated. It is not something we should discuss when others may interrupt us.”

  I took notice of his precise way of speaking. He wasn’t from around here, that was for sure.

  “When?”

  “Soon. I will be strong enough very soon. Then I will tell you everything.”

  I nodded my head slowly. I didn’t like waiting, but I had seen what he’d gone through last night. His need for a bit of rest was understandable.

  “Rest up. I’ll bring you up some dinner later this evening, and we’ll talk then,” I told him, allowing my voice to take a stern tone.

  “Of course,” he answered as he lowered himself back into the bed and pulled the covers up tightly around him. I said nothing else. I turned and made my way out of the room, pulling the door shut behind me. Once out in the hallway, I exhaled slowly, hoping to get a grip on my hormones that seemed to have a mind of their own when I was around him. He would tell me everything tonight, or he would be leaving my place. I didn’t care how hot he made me.

  3

  With the knowledge of an impending conversation with Sebastian, the hottie upstairs, my day dragged by. It seemed as if everything was taking more time than it truly should. I wanted to rush through everything, hurry up to the room he was in, pull my chair to the bed, and listen intently to hi
s dreamy voice. However, life has a knack of getting in the way.

  Keeping up with running both Mountain Whispers Bed and Breakfast and Mom’s bakery business, Mountain Treasures, wasn’t easy. Today was one of those days when I would have loved to have called it quits and tell all the people hounding me on the phone—as well as online—to stuff it. I couldn’t do that though. I needed the money. So did Dad. Although he’d moved away, I still tried to take care of him as much as I could. He claimed I was too dependable for a twenty-four-year-old and that one day I would snap and run. He had no idea how many times that thought had crossed my mind. I couldn’t do that to Mom though. I had told myself I would honor her memory, and that was exactly what I was going to do.

  Once all the orders were in and pick-ups had been made, I made dinner for the guests. As usual, I found myself in the middle of a massive clean-up while waiting on cookies to finish baking. Mrs. Henderson, the librarian in Somerset, the closest town to the bed-and-breakfast, had her annual story day scheduled for tomorrow at eleven a.m. She always ordered a ton of cookies to give to the kids once the story was read. I couldn’t blame her for waiting till after. It was always best to send the children home with a sugar rush instead of attempting to read to them while they were hyper.

  Hearing the timer go off, I made my way over to the oven, pulled out the cookies, and placed the pan on the cooling rack. The smell was amazing. The scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies now mingled with the aroma of the already finished peanut butter cookies, making an enticing mixture.

  “Something smells delicious,” I heard a voice say softly behind me.