A Forever Kind of Love (11 page)

Dipping his head, he nipped her lower lip. “Oh, we’re going to have another go anyway. A lot of them.”

“Hmmm. Good.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. Then, as he swooped her into his arms, she squeaked, surprised.

“First go starts now.”

Epilogue

The newlywed couple made one stop on their way out of town.

It was a rather strange sort of stop, but it made perfect sense to them.

Zoe left a piece of wedding cake on Roger’s headstone. Blew a kiss to a beautiful part of her past.

Then she turned to her husband…and walked toward her future.

About the Author

Shiloh Walker has been writing since she was a kid. She fell in love with vampires with the book “Bunnicula” and has worked her way up to the more…ah…serious works of fiction. She loves reading and writing anything paranormal, anything fantasy, and nearly every kind of romance. Once upon a time she worked as a nurse, but now she writes full time and lives with her family in the Midwest. She writes paranormal and contemporary romance, as well as romantic suspense. You can find Shiloh at her blog at
www.shilohwalker.com
or via Twitter
www.twitter.com/shilohwalker
.

Look for these titles by Shiloh Walker

Now Available:

The Huntress

No Longer Mine

Beautiful Girl

The Redeeming

Taking Chances

Crazed Hearts

Hunter’s Edge

My Lady

Playing for Keeps

For the Love of Jazz

Vicious Vixen

Always Yours

Talking with the Dead

Legends: Hunters and Heroes

Malachi

Grimm’s Circle

The First Book of Grim

Tarnished Knight

I Thought It Was You

No Prince Charming

Candy Houses

Coming Soon:

Grimm’s Circle

Locked in Silence

One woman, one man, and a love that won’t let either of them go.

No Longer Mine

© 2010 Shiloh Walker

Born on the wrong side of the tracks and dealt a fair share of hardship, Nikki Kline never gives up a fight. Even when her reason to keep going is ripped from her, Nikki tries desperately to hang on. But when the man who broke Nikki’s heart comes back into her life she doesn’t know how much she can take. Especially since that man seems determined to win back her damaged heart.

Wade Lightfoot is a man who knows he’s made more mistakes than most. As much as he would like to repair the damage he’s done to those he loves, Wade also knows there is no going back. But when he sets out to put things right the last thing he’s prepared to find out is that he had a son. A son he’ll never get the chance to meet.

When the truth is out and all the old wounds are bared, it seems impossible that Nikki and Wade will find their way back to each other. But true love is an undeniable force that even past hurts can’t destroy.

This book has been previously published and has been revised from its original release.

Warning: This title contains heartbreaking tragedy, lies and deception, and a scorching passion that nothing can deny.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
No Longer Mine:

It was hot—the kind of heat that wrapped around a person, threatened to suffocate, threatened to choke. Hot, with leaden, overcast skies that seemed to promise rain, but it had been overcast for days and they hadn’t seen a drop.

Nicole Kline was just outside of town when she flipped on the radio and heard the weather report. A storm was coming.

Great.

Not
the ideal day for a run into town, but it was either suffer the heat or suffer the frustration when all she found for dinner was Cheetos and frozen ground beef. If she had paid attention to the weather before they had left home she would have suffered the Cheetos, the frozen ground beef—and her younger brother’s griping.

Yum.

Instead of trying to make the thirty-minute drive back to her home in the hills, she decided to grab her groceries then go to her dad’s and wait it out there.

She made it in and out of the store in under twenty minutes. As she walked outside with her infant son, Jason, perched on her hip, she glanced up at the sky. The sight of the thunderheads piling up overhead made her wince.

Her brother, Shawn, bumped her shoulder with his. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going to get soaked if we wait around too long.”

She made a face. “We’re going to get soaked anyway.” She chucked her son under his chin and smiled at him. Not that he was at all worried about those clouds.

The scent of rain hung heavy on the air.

Looks like the farmers are going to get the rain they want and then some
, Nikki mused as she secured the straps on the baby’s car seat. After she finished securing Jason in his seat, she went around to help her brother finish loading the groceries into the back of the SUV.

Flattened drops of rain splattered the hood of the car as she slid into the driver’s seat. Then Nikki glared at the skies as the clouds burst, dousing the parking lot under a deluge of water.

“Don’t sweat it, Nik,” Shawn advised. “We can just wait it out at Dad’s.”

She sighed. That had been the plan anyway, not that she had told Shawn. Her brother and her father were on the outs for some reason, which was why Shawn had been spending the past few weeks at her place.

She could hear Jason jabbering to himself from the backseat.

“Dogs, dogs, dogs,” he chanted over and over while he played with a tattered stuffed mouse and chewed busily on the remaining ear.

At least that was what she
thought
he was saying.

Flicking Shawn a glance, she ordered, “Put your seatbelt on, will ya?”

Rolling his eyes, he fastened the lap belt and drawled, “Yes’m.” He gave Jason a look in the mirror, circling his finger at his temple. The baby laughed and clapped his hands before launching into a long and detailed jabbering monologue with his friend, Mouse.

Hazel eyes squinted, Nikki stared through the windshield, blocking out the noise of the rain and her son’s jabbering. Even though she drove with the lights on, she couldn’t see much more than fifteen or twenty feet in front of her.

Twenty minutes passed and she still wasn’t at her dad’s. The store wasn’t even ten minutes from there, but that was under normal driving conditions.

Growling with frustration, she snapped, “I can’t see a damn thing in this!”

The rumble of thunder edged closer. Lightning flashed.

“You’re almost there, sis. It’s just up there.”

She spotted the turn off as Shawn spoke. “Almost there, fella,” she said as Jason started shrieking, “Eat! Momma, eat!”

“Just a few minutes, Jas—”

Neither Shawn nor Nikki saw the other car. It came flying around a curve fast—so fast—and hit them from behind. She was thrown forward. Blinding pain sliced through her head and a loud, thunderous crash filled her ears.

A blaring noise rent the air, but above it she heard a baby’s panicked, startled cry.

From the passenger seat next to her, Shawn swore viciously, grabbing for the door handle.

“Jason!” Her voice was garbled, choked. Blood filled her mouth and a red haze clouded her vision.

Instinctively she slammed on the brakes, wrenched the steering wheel to the right towards safety. Off to their left was a steep drop off—

Another jolt struck her SUV, throwing her back. She was pinned against the seat by her safety restraint as the world started to spin before her. Above the roaring in her ears she heard thunder and the screeching sound of metal against metal. Then all was silent.

Chipping away at her resistance, one touch at a time…

The Reluctant Nude

© 2011 Meg Maguire

Fallon Frost’s late foster mother had done so much to heal the wounds of her damaged childhood. So when a lecherous developer plans to bulldoze her old home to make room for a strip mall, the practical, ordered life Fallon has built for herself is threatened.

Then he makes a twisted proposal. He’ll leave the land alone if she poses nude for a sculpture that’ll end up in his collection. Seeing no other choice, she heads for Nova Scotia—only to find something totally unexpected. A sexy, hot-blooded,
infuriating
sculptor.

Guarded, sexually detached Fallon is a challenge Max Emery can’t wait to tackle. Yet with each tap of his chisel, he uncovers a woman who rekindles a dream he thought lost. Home, family…love. And the closer he gets to her core, the harder it becomes to accept that he’s carving her naked body for another man’s eyes.

As progress on the sculpture almost grinds to a halt, their fragile fantasy world collapses under the weight of reality. Threatening Fallon’s one chance to save her foster mother’s land…and any chance she and Max have to find love.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Reluctant Nude:

“When do you think we’ll start the marble?” Fallon was curious to watch the process. She’d come to know the menagerie of marred statues in Max’s garden intimately in the past two weeks. What he did was breathtaking, astounding. She could admit that now. She wanted to see him at work.

“Soon. We are close. Closer. But we’re not quite there yet.”

“You mean the touching bit?” she asked, body tensing. Since bringing it up Max hadn’t pressured her about it, but she’d been living in fear of the inevitable day when it couldn’t be put off any longer.

He nodded. “I know you’re not thrilled, but I hope you trust it is necessary now.”

“Yeah. I do.” She shivered nonetheless. She wasn’t a great fan of being touched, handshakes and the platonic hugging of friends aside. It was probably why her relationships never made it past the three- or four-month mark. She dreaded to think how uncomfortable Max’s touch would be—his eyes alone often felt like a brand on her skin.

“Perhaps this afternoon we will try?” He cocked a cautious eyebrow across the table at her. “It must be soon if you wish to stay on schedule.”

“Yeah, I do.” Fallon frowned. It had become startlingly easy sometimes to forget why she was here, whose statue she would ultimately be posing for. “But don’t expect me to be comfortable or anything. You may have to sculpt me wincing.”

“I am sure I won’t. It is all that energy nonsense I am sure you’re sick of hearing about.” He held his hands up and wiggled his fingers like a close-up magician. “Nothing personal. In your job, when you’re working outside, what is it you do?”

“A lot of plant and animal collection…checking on populations of weeds and algae and mollusks and things, looking to see what’s declining and what’s thriving in a given area.”

“And what if you had to do that with your eyes closed?”

She nodded. “I get it. It’d be really difficult.”

“And
I
understand you do not want to be treated like a specimen. But you see what I’m saying?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled deeply in his wicked way. “So you better keep drinking.” He refreshed her glass and gathered their dirty dishes.

As Max puttered, Fallon sipped her wine and tried to imagine what it would be like, having Max’s hands on her. She shuddered, though not entirely from trepidation.

For over a week now she’d been having dreams about him, the sorts of dreams she’d never been disposed to before. Dreams that had her waking up in cold sweats in the early hours of the morning. Stark visions of this man’s predatory body and dark eyes, rough hands, rough voice. Dreams about commanding him and being commanded.

Across the room she could see the long ridges of muscle flanking each side of his spine, his shoulder blades, his shirt pulled taut against these shapes as he washed dishes. In her dreams those muscles twitched and tightened with other kinds of labor. Fallon hadn’t felt the protracted touch of his skin since they’d shaken hands her first day at the studio, but neither had she forgotten it. Calloused fingers and palms on her bare body. She swallowed.

Max dried his hands on a dishtowel. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” she said, heart pounding. “Can we do this in baby steps? Can I keep my clothes on?”

He nodded.

“Good.” She shrugged her sweater off and stood in jeans and a tee in her usual space near the center of the studio. She trembled harder with each step he took toward her. By the time Max was directly in front of her, Fallon was shaking.

“You look terrified,” he said, hands tucked safely in his pockets.

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you might cry.” As he said it, Fallon felt the pressure mounting in her tear ducts.

“I won’t cry.”

“You can if you want, you know.”

“Well, I don’t,” she snapped, more surly toward him than she’d been all week. “Just get started, already.”

Max slid his hands from his pockets and held them out, inviting her to do the same. Her fingers shook visibly. She held her breath as he sandwiched them gently between his palms, and the heat and roughness of his skin made her flinch.

“This is very hard for you,” he said softly, eyes on their hands as his thumbs rubbed her wrists.

“Yes, it is.” She could admit that. What she couldn’t admit was that it wouldn’t be
nearly
this hard with anyone else on the planet. “Only because it’s been built up so much.”

It felt as though Max had been warming his hands by a fire, his skin was so hot. “I hope it is not triggering any bad memories.”

“No.” It was triggering something much different. A breed of sensation Fallon had spent her entire adult life avoiding.

“You’re very cold.”

“I have low blood pressure,” Fallon offered. “Unless you meant that figuratively.”

“No, just your hands,” he said carefully, focused on their point of contact. His fingertips traced small circles over her knuckles. He slid them up to her forearms, raising all the tiny hairs, raising the fear bubbling in her core. She began to shake hard.

“Oh.” Max’s eyes widened and he yanked his hands away, holding them at a safe distance. “You’re not ready for this,” he said, alarmed. It wasn’t an expression she’d ever seen him wear before.