My two-part dark fantasy/romance, Night Shift, is now available at AllRomanceEbooks.com, where it’s hit the Top 10 list for Short Stories. Here’s a little taster:
Animal Control Officer Rebecah Pearsall hates working the night shift, especially in the run up to Christmas. With a full moon rising over Seattle, even more crazy people than usual roaming the streets, and an on-off romance with her boss to contend with, who needs more complications? But an encounter behind the local pizzeria brings Rebecah into contact with the strangest dog she’s ever seen–and Gabe, who really isn’t your average black-leather-clad elf….
Night Shift: Part One is available from Wild Child Publishing, Fictionwise, and now from AllRomanceEbooks.com
Best Seller at AllRomanceEbooks.com, Short Story category!
Excerpt:
She blinked. There stood a tall guy with a shock of wavy black hair that skimmed his ears and the kind of looks striking enough to lend new meaning to the phrase ‘perfect stranger’. A terrible delicacy touched his features: large, deep-set eyes whose whites glinted in the dim light, a long, aquiline nose of the sort usually found on marble statues, and cheekbones that could have sliced bacon. His skin looked pale, translucent white against the shadows, and his mouth curled into a soft semi-smile. As if in defiance of the unwritten law that said no man should look quite that pretty, he moved with a lazy, rubber-band gait, a near-swagger that Rebecah had seen adopted by countless wannabe macho men in bars and in front of their wives. She’d always thought it made them look ridiculous. Now she understood why: they clearly didn’t have what this guy did beneath his clothes.
A black leather jacket—well-worn and supple, unadorned by studs, buckles or prints—hung open over his black t-shirt, which itself clung to the outline of his chest. Broad shoulders tapered, by way of some very interesting geography, to a pair of slim hips slung with a tooled leather belt, its buckle a simple brass oval wrought with a Celtic knotwork design. Legs that appeared to go on forever, encased in black leather pants of a decidedly workmanlike nature (none of your rock-star jazz here), ended in heavy bike boots and—Rebecah realized, with some alarm—they really shouldn’t mean he could move with such grace, speed, or stealth.
A thought prodded at the part of her brain not currently occupied by staring, and she licked her lips.
“H-how do you…? Who—”
The black-clad figure held up one slim, pale hand.
“Spare me,” he said laconically. “Who am I? Call me Gabe. How do I know your name? I know a lot about you. That particular info I could have picked up almost anywhere…asked your neighbors, followed you to work, taken a peek in your garbage. And the Internet—oh, gotta love the Internet! Identity, information…such a commodity these days.”
He moved as he spoke, a rolling prowl of a walk that suggested his muscles probably rippled under his skin like oiled frogs. Rebecah tried her hardest to push the image out of her head. This guy had come out of nowhere, clearly Captain Crazy, and yet she’d started thinking about him in the buff. She ought to be pulling out her cell phone and getting ready to dial for the police, or at least switching her keys around so the blades poked out between her fingers and could make an impromptu weapon-cum-DNA collector.
Suddenly, he dropped to his knees on the sidewalk, a huge grin on his face.
What connects an Animal Control Officer, a hound with bright red ears, and an elf dressed in black leathers? Rebecah Pearsall is about to find out, and it has nothing to do with Santa’s workshop.
This Christmas, Rebecah has to make a choice that shouldn’t even exist. Trouble is, it could be the most important decision of her life.
Night Shift: Part Two is available from Wild Child Publishing, Fictionwise, and now from AllRomanceEbooks.com
Best Seller at AllRomanceEbooks.com, Short Story category!
Excerpt
Rebecah caught her usual six hours’ sleep, with no ill effects or weirdnesses to report. No befuddled dreams peopled by things that couldn’t exist and, thankfully, no persistent thoughts of the man in the black leathers. She woke, feeling incredibly stupid about the previous night, and bummed around the apartment for a while wondering what to do about it. She ended up calling Dean.
They met for breakfast—the regular person’s dinner—at a diner not far from the shelter. Multi-colored lametta glittered at the counters, with fake snow stenciled onto the windows, and tinny Christmas pop songs piped through the cooking smells and general chatter of the patrons. Naturally, Dean asked about the hound. He didn’t seem that surprised to hear Rebecah’s story, though she left out the parts about Gabe being jaw-droppingly gorgeous…and the promise he’d whispered against her cheek. Dean seemed genuinely concerned, nonetheless. Particularly that the guy had shown up outside her apartment.
“Do you think he followed you?”
“Must have, I guess.” Rebecah shrugged. “There’s really no other way he could have known.”
Dean sighed. “You see? This is why…. I mean, I’m always telling you to be careful, right?”
Rebecah nodded and poked her fork at the plate. She’d lost all appetite for the salad he expected her to address. Dean’s tone softened, and she looked up.
“And you know I worry about you, don’t you? You know I…I care.”
Can we please not do this now?
Rebecah crumpled her mouth into a smile. He reached across the diner table and took her hand, his touch awkward and uncertain, but so full of warmth. She recognized it; this was like the way he touched starving dogs…though he seemed so much more confident with them.
Blue eyes that held so many questions and so many answers. His gaze bored into her, but all Rebecah could think of were lost hours down in the garden. The beautiful, brittle laughter on the breeze.
God! I’m going insane. Too many patrols in the moonlight; brain’s been fried on crazy juice. I’ll end up like Mr. Werewolf…finish my days scrapping over sandwiches and half-eaten pizza crusts.
Dean squeezed her fingers. “Becah, I don’t think you’re really all right. This guy, he didn’t try to—”
“What? No, he didn’t do anything. I told you, he just took his dog. I-I know I should have made sure he came down to the shelter and filled out the paperwork, but….”
Irritation leached through her. Could Dean really not extend beyond those boundaries? ‘What did he do’—as if, because she happened to be a woman, everything was dominated by some male cause and effect? No. They didn’t work like that. They were…different.
Rebecah backed away from the thought, from the memories.
No. Not…not now.
Thank you to everyone who has bought Night Shift at ARe (or elsewhere!) ~MK
