Burn for Me: A Rancho Del Cielo Romance

by Dee Tenorio

  Enjoy the following excerpt for One Night in Napa:

  Kira’s eyes filled. After a long minute, she switched on her Internet connection. She wanted to know. She didn’t want to know. She couldn’t bear to look. Her knees popped as she stood and stretched. Come on. Her thumbs pattered against the keyboard, impatient. The screen took forever to load, and when it did, the picture looked faded and filmy. “Damn battery.” She held it up to the light.

  “Everything okay?”

  She jumped at Grant’s voice, just over her shoulder. “God. Don’t sneak up on me.”

  He brushed dark curls out of his tired eyes. “Sorry.” He leaned closer, and his breath raised the hairs on the back of her bare neck.

  “Could you possibly not crowd me?”

  He cleared his throat and stepped back again. She shivered at his nearness and wondered if he guessed that the real reason she wanted him away was because she no longer trusted herself not to fall into the comfort he was trying to provide.

  Kira leaned against the counter and squinted at the screen. After a minute, a news report scrolled along the bottom: Morelli Kidnappers Continue With Demands. She shook her head and found another site with an AP bulletin, time-stamped 10:56 p.m.

  “The administration is refusing to give in to the terrorists’ demands to release twelve prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay complex,” she read aloud. “At this time there has been no further discussion by either party. Ambassadors in the countries of…”

  A cold stone lodged inside her stomach, and Kira stopped reading. She blinked to keep her tears at bay. “Refusing?” She looked at Grant and then flung the phone across the room. “How can they re-refuse?” She wrapped her arms around her waist and began to hiccup. “It’s my fa-father—it’s a person’s life they’re talk-talking about. It’s—”

  She couldn’t get any more words out. She wasn’t even sure what she meant to say. War images flashed through her mind: bloody bodies, overturned jeeps, a somber president who praised fallen troops, and mothers who wailed over their sons’ coffins. Hundreds of people die every year, in one war or another. One person means nothing in the big picture. Not even a person the world adores.

  She sank to the floor, legs rubbery. For the first time, the possibility that her father might really die clutched in the back of her throat. Shaking, she leaned over and buried her forehead against her fists on the cold tile.

  “Hey.” She felt a touch on her back. “Hey, hang on there.”

  But Kira had nothing to hang on to. No hope, no good memory. She opened her eyes and stared at the pattern of dark green and gray tile beneath her. It spun, grew lighter and darker by turns, until she thought she’d go mad. Tears dripped. Her head pounded.

  “Kira?” Grant’s hand moved from the small of her back to her shoulder.

  She stiffened, but only for a moment. Then she acquiesced because the pressure at her temples and the tightness in her chest softened as he moved his fingers along her spine. She didn’t speak. She barely moved. She remained prone, because she didn’t have the energy to sit up. Fatigue washed over her in waves.

  Still he sat there with her, silent. His fingers moved in the fringe of hair along her neck. His palm flattened in the space between her shoulder blades, and the heat from his touch seeped into her in slow degrees. Finally she pushed herself to a seated position, in slow jerking movements, until she sagged against the refrigerator with her arms crossed.

  One breath, she told herself. In and out. Just keep breathing. It amazed her how difficult that one act could become, when it seemed as though the entire world crushed her with desperation.

  Just breathe.

  After what seemed like a long time, she opened her eyes. Grant was crouching beside her, a few inches away, and saying nothing. His hands rested on his knees. The breaths came more easily, one after another, and she rubbed a hand over her face. Outside, the rain increased, spitting against the windows.

  “A little better?” His breath feathered her ear, and she shivered at the chill that crept along her skin.

  She nodded. “A little.” She closed her eyes as his fingers brushed her neck, and then her jaw. “That tickles.”

  He didn’t say anything. But he didn’t move away either.

  Kira kept her eyes closed. For a moment, she let herself imagine she was sitting somewhere else. She imagined she was someone else, the someone else she’d tried to become after leaving home. It would be so easy, if I was just a girl and he was just a guy. She wouldn’t be sitting here trying to rationalize every thought and resist every touch. She could flirt. She could turn and wrap her arms around his neck. She could just…be.

  Grant’s arm slipped around her waist, and he leaned closer, pressing his cheek to her temple. Affectionate. Comforting. Kira let the sensation move down her, warming her until her toes burned against the tile underneath them.

  “Can I do anything?”

  For a moment, Kira’s thoughts turned decidedly twisted, and the fine line between the agony of missing her father and the ecstasy of blending into a man blurred. She almost told Grant he could do whatever he wanted, right then and there, wide windows or cold tile or granite countertop be damned. Then she reined in the heat that slipped through her veins.

  “Like what?” Kira looked at him and lifted her chin. But facing him turned out to be a bigger mistake than she’d guessed. Want colored his eyes a deeper shade of blue, and his smile lit something inside her. She swallowed. She knew she only had to reach up with one hand, draw in his mouth with hers, and Grant Walker would wrap those arms around her and lift her, breathless, off her feet.

  So she did.

  Grant hadn’t expected this. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected at all, when he approached Kira and dared to touch her. He’d thought maybe he could ease her anxiety. Maybe even convince her to talk to him some more.

  But every rational thought left his mind when Kira pressed her fragile frame against his and opened his lips with her tongue. His hands slid to her waist and he pulled her to a stand, breathing in a fragrance that reminded him of springtime.

  She murmured something against his mouth that turned him heady. Grant shifted and took a step back, fighting for composure. She reached for him, her eyes so wide that he thought he might slip inside them and not come up for air. His groin ached, and something in the back of his mind thought he should probably stop this before it went somewhere it shouldn’t. But this was Isabella Morelli he had his arms wrapped around. And she—was that a tongue stud exploring his mouth? Cold metal touched his bottom lip, and stars exploded behind his eyes.

  She laced her hands behind his neck and stood on her tiptoes. Her mouth moved to his cheek, his neck, his collarbone.

  “Hey.” With great effort, he pulled away from her.

  She continued to look at him with those dark brown, heavy-lidded eyes.

  “This—I really shouldn’t.” He could barely choke out the sentence.

  The tiniest frown knit her brows together, and she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She locked her gaze with his, and Grant could almost feel her peeling away his shirt and khakis. Jesus, what a look. No wonder the camera loved her.

  “I—” It took near-inhuman strength to loosen his hold on her waist. “I don’t want…”

  “Me?”

  He almost laughed. “Christ, no. You—” You drive me crazy in ways you can’t even imagine. But a bizarre sense of duty, even this close to midnight, knocked against his brain. He didn’t want to fulfill the prophecy he knew waited for him at the Chronicle’s office. He didn’t want to play the predictable role of cavalier Grant Walker, playboy extraordinaire, and think with the wrong brain. Not when he was this close to getting the story of a lifetime.

  He ran a finger along her chin. Yet somehow the story of Isabella Morelli was far less fascinating right now than the curve of her mouth. Or the length of her fingers, especially when they were buried in his hair.

  “I’m a reporter,” he began.


  “So you said.”

  “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Who says you’re taking advantage?”

  A killer’s obsession could destroy their second chance for love

  Obsession

  © 2009 Sharon Cullen

  A Love on the Edge Story

  Only a year ago, Officer Alex Juran and his wife Tess had it all. Love, a solid marriage and a baby on the way. Then in one heartbeat they lost everything.

  Now, Tess is doing her best to move on. She has a thriving business and while she may be lonely at times, she’s proud of the new life she’s built without Alex.

  Two days before their divorce is final, Alex is shot in the line of duty and left for dead. He faces a difficult recovery so Tess finds herself postponing the divorce and offering to care for him until he can live alone again.

  At first, cohabitation is little more than combat. Alex’s incapacitating injuries, the looming divorce, and his inability to remember who shot him have him lashing out at the nearest target: Tess. When someone begins stalking her, he suspects his shooter has returned. Convinced that Tess is in danger, Alex becomes desperate to recover his strength.

  Because no matter how much she’s hurt him in the past, they’ve been given a second chance—and he’ll do anything to protect his wife.

  Warning: This book does not come with a box of Kleenex, so please grab one before you start reading. Contains two people struggling to learn to love again, along with sex, violence and realistic language. And some very hot cops.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Obsession:

  Tess opened her eyes and pushed the hair out of them to look at the clock but it still wasn’t there. “Damn, Alex, it’d be nice to know what time it is.”

  She couldn’t really be angry at him. Not when he’d gone to such lengths to finish her Christmas season for her. If watching him struggle to bake cookies hadn’t told her how much she loved him, then curling up next to his warmth last night had.

  She didn’t know how many times he’d woken her, forcing her to swallow her medicine and drink the fluids the doctor recommended. His thoughtfulness surprised her, and yet she remembered a time, long ago, before careers got in the way, when he’d been the same man he was last night—tender, thoughtful, generous and loving.

  A lone tear leaked out of her clenched eyes. It wouldn’t last. It never did. He’d go back to his career and slowly drift away from her.

  Rolling to her side, she pulled her knees up to her chest and closed her eyes again, willing herself back to the oblivion of sleep.

  Small things broke her concentration. The slam of a car door, the slurp-slurp of Othello drinking out of his water bowl, the low murmur of the television, the soft hiss of the furnace right before it kicked on.

  As sure as sunshine in July, she knew Alex was somewhere in this house. How often had she awoken with that knowledge?

  Not often enough.

  She was reluctant to face him, yet knew she couldn’t hide forever. What would they talk about?

  Face it, Tess, you have nothing in common with your husband.

  They’d been living together for almost two weeks. Two weeks of constant activity between baking, delivering, shuttling him from doctor appointments to physical therapy. Weeks of avoiding the topic of divorce. They hadn’t sat down and had a normal conversation in months. Now she feared they’d forgotten how.

  Thirty minutes later Tess emerged from the bathroom freshly showered and wearing clean flannel pajamas under her robe. Her bones felt like rubber but she was tired of lying in bed so she headed for the living room.

  The flickering of the television screen mingled with the flickering of the tree and fireplace. Alex was slouched in one corner of the couch, his bad leg resting on the coffee table, the other leg bent at the knee. A longneck bottle of beer dangled from his hand. Ragged jeans hugged his thighs and lay loose across his abdomen. A faded gray University of Cincinnati sweatshirt hitched up slightly to reveal a small sliver of skin between the jeans and shirt. His hair looked like he’d been raking his hands through it.

  “You look better.” His brown eyes reflected the fire in the grate.

  “That’s some compliment, coming from you.”

  He smiled and set the beer bottle on the table beside the couch. Using both hands, he grasped his bad knee, lowered his leg to the floor, grabbed his cane and stood. “You’re probably hungry. I’ll fix you something to eat.”

  “I can get it.”

  He hobbled to the kitchen, his gait stiff until he’d walked a few steps. “No problem.”

  Tess followed. “What time is it? I think someone stole my alarm clock.”

  “That would be me. Want to file a report?” He looked over his shoulder and threw her a grin that had her stopping in her tracks and trying to regain her breath. It’d been a long time since she’d seen that grin and Lord, how she’d missed it.

  She cleared her throat and continued on to the kitchen. “What good would it do? You’ve got an in with the cops around here.”

  He laughed—a rich, deep sound that vibrated through her and made her heart ache. They used to laugh like that all the time. Before things fell apart.

  “Did you get the cookies delivered?” She looked around the pristine kitchen. Every speck of flour had been wiped away. Every pan cleaned and stored. The appliances gleamed.

  Alex opened the refrigerator and stuck his head inside. “Yup, all done.”

  Tess glanced at the digital clock on the stove. Eight o’clock. “You managed to make all the deliveries and clean up by eight?”

  Alex backed out of the refrigerator, the makings of a ham sandwich in his hands. “That was yesterday, Tess.”

  “Yesterday? Are you saying I slept over twenty-four hours? That means today is—”

  “Christmas.” He slapped thick slices of ham on rye bread and slathered it with mustard, just the way she liked it.

  “I slept through Christmas Eve? And Christmas day? Oh, Alex, I’m sorry. You were all alone on Christmas.”

  “No need to apologize. I’ve done the same to you once or twice.”

  Taken aback, she just stood there, twisting the belt of her robe in her hands. What could she say? He had abandoned her on many a Christmas Eve, but for him to acknowledge it was a huge step and one that left her confused.

  He reached into the fridge again, pulled out a can of root beer and handed it to her. “You’ll have to carry this. I only have one free hand.”

  Tess followed him into the living room, matching her pace to his. He placed the plate on the coffee table and sank into the couch with a sigh. She stood in front of him, still stunned she’d slept so long and missed most of Christmas.

  Alex held his arm out, indicating the spot next to him where she could curl into his side. “Sit beside me, Tess.”

  She clutched the cold can and looked at his outstretched arm. Her wobbly legs gave out and she sank into the opposite end of the couch.

  Alex’s arm dropped, disappointment evident in the crease of his brow. Tess reached for her plate and ate her sandwich, chewing methodically while not tasting anything.

  They watched It’s a Wonderful Life in silence while the fire crackled in the grate and the dog snored at Tess’s feet. The heat from the flames made her drowsy, but she refused to fall asleep. She wouldn’t abandon Alex on Christmas night too.

  After the credits stopped rolling and an infomercial began, Alex turned the TV off, but he continued to stare at the blank screen, occasionally lifting the beer bottle and taking a swallow.

  The sandwich sat heavy in Tess’s stomach. She took a sip of root beer to calm the churning.

  This is what you dreaded, isn’t it? Not the lack of communication, but the lack of having anything to say to each other.

  Her gaze darted around the room, flitting here and there, everywhere but at Alex. She settled on the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree. Her attention sharpened, focused. Sh
e pushed herself up from the couch and walked with slow, hesitant steps to the tree where she touched the apple-shaped bell, sending a merry tinkling through the still house. Her gaze shifted to the bear pulling a tree behind him and then to the red glass globe painted with the Cincinnati skyline.

  Memories hit her with enough force to double her over in pain. Only the weight of Alex’s watchful gaze kept her back stiff.

  When she swung around to face him, his brown eyes bore into hers, daring her to say something.

  “When did you do this?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “You had no right—”

  “I had every right.”

  “How do you figure? We’re—”

  “Still married.”

  She took an involuntary step back, startled at his angry tone. He had a tight hold on the beer bottle and his shoulders were tense. He acted as if he hadn’t known. Surely his attorney had told him she’d canceled the court date. Surely Alex had known she would never dissolve their marriage while he was in the hospital.

  His lips thinned into a tight line, his eyes narrowed.

  He hadn’t known.

  But he knew now.

  Oh, God.

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