Blind Trust

by Raci Ames

  For months she thought the fire had destroyed her life. But she’d barely been living before. Separately, they were three broken pieces. Coming together in pairs hadn’t worked at all. But all three of them together made a complete circle. And Pia wouldn’t have it any other way, ever again.

  WOODLAND CREEK

  Thank you so much for taking the time to read my novella from Woodland Creek!

  All reviews are appreciated.

  If you would like to read more from the Woodland Creek series, please click on the link below:

  Woodland Creek Website

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Raci Ames is the author of sexy romance novels that make your heart race. She write about couples that are gay, straight and everything in between. The one thing you can count on is that love wins. Always.

  Find out more about Raci:

  www.RaciAmes.com

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  SAMPLE – RIDING HER UNICORN

  Here is a sneak peek of Riding Her Unicorn by Ever Coming.

  Pack Rat Central

  “Stay!” Amber yelled in vain at the mound of papers and books toppling over the side of the table. “I told you to effing stay ...” fell from her lips as she crumpled to the floor. After three days of sorting through the cabin, it still looked just as, if not more, disorganized than it had three days earlier when she had first begun.

  Amber wasn’t sure why she had to organize her late mentor’s cabin, but she did. It was beyond a compulsion at this point. She was on a mission. To what end? That, she hadn’t figured out yet. Quite honestly, the first time Amber entered Rosemary’s cabin, it had been just as much of a disaster. The old woman seemed to like living among the clutter. Piles of books here. Piles of papers, there. Herbs hanging everywhere. There was no doubt in Amber’s mind that if the fire inspector ever saw this place, he would deem it a fire hazard.

  Amber had never minded the clutter before Rosemary passed. This little cabin hidden in the woods had felt more like home to her than anywhere else she had lived. Now, however, she felt an urgency to get it organized and clutter free. Amber knew she was falling into her old self comfort strategies, but she had to. Stopping to think about all she had lost was too much.

  Amber had originally come to Woodland Creek hoping to find her jaguar. Her jaguar was in there, she could now feel it, but she never came to the forefront. Amber could and did shift, but she was simply a human in a costume. The Jaguar in her stayed dormant. No jaguar senses. No jaguar instincts. No jaguar. Period. She was just a human running around in fur.

  Rumor had it that the woods in Woodland Creek held more secrets than the FBI, and that one of those secrets was a Unicorn Healer named Rosemary. Unicorn Healers had been thought by many to be the stuff of fairy tales, humans thinking that made sense. They often dismissed anything they couldn’t understand or explain away with science. As for the rest of everyone, Amber never really understood. They knew people could shift and that wizards and witches were real. Why was it such a stretch that unicorns could heal? Not that the unicorns did themselves any PR favors. They basically stayed to themselves.

  Rosemary was a perfect example of that. Once Amber had arrived at Woodland Creek on her barely working, piece of garbage, this is all you can buy with wheels and a motor for three hundred dollars motorcycle, it had taken her six days to find Rosemary. Everyone in town seemed to know who the old woman was, but no one seemed to know what she was or where she lived. The only thing people seemed to know was that the woman would come into Old Town to pick up things from Krieg’s every couple of weeks. They all agreed she was a “nice old lady” but had nothing else to say about her. Amber couldn’t be certain, but she didn’t get the sense that any of them knew that Rosemary was anything other than human.

  Amber had been quickly spending the last of what little money she had at Two Creeks Inn. Patty, the owner, was a nice enough lady and her rates were fair, but Amber had been living paycheck to paycheck before she decided to take charge of her life and fix her inner jaguar. That meant her savings was zilch, and after selling all of her things, she had enough for her crappy motorcycle and a bit of money to get her to Woodland Creek.

  Amber had assumed that finding Rosemary would be easier than it had turned out to be. After all, she had overheard a shifter mention her in the bar she used to work at. If the old woman was famous enough to be chatted about three states away in a predominantly human establishment, surely her own town knew about her. Once again, Amber was wrong. It seemed to be a constant in her life.

  Goodness, even Patty didn’t seem to know about Rosemary, and she seemed to be the town gossip. Amber had heard far more about who was sleeping with whom and whose eyes wandered where than she had ever wanted to. Patty loved to talk, and if it wasn’t gossip, it was about her cats. Poor Patty was the epitome of every inn keeper cliché Amber had ever heard.

  Every day, Amber grabbed a cup of Geek Beans coffee and sat on the bench outside of Krieg’s like a good old stalker. Back in her old town, if she had done that, she would have most definitely been, at the very least questioned, about her odd behavior. The police would have assumed she was either a homeless derelict or a drug dealer. Here in Woodland Creek, there were so many secrets, you could see them floating around. It was probably why people left her alone. They didn’t want people prying into their lives, so they in return didn’t pry.

  By day six, she had only two more days’ worth of money left for her room at the inn, but she was not going to think about that. In her gut, she knew this was where she was supposed to be. It had to be. She refused to give up and live a completely empty and lonely life. She deserved more than that. Thankfully, that was the day she met Rosemary.

  Rosemary seemed to know that Amber was there for her and instead of going into the store, she took a seat beside her, telling her that she had things to pick up and then they would be on their way home. She gave Amber a side hug before instructing her to meet her back there in a half an hour and going into the small store as if nothing interesting had occurred.

  Amber had not even gotten in a word other than “Hi.” Without hesitation she ran back to Two Creeks Inn, checked out, and was back at Kreig’s. It had been no wonder why no one in town knew where the old woman lived. She was in the woods, as many a shifter preferred, but Rosemary used her gift of illusion to hide her cabin. Apparently, even in a town as filled with shifters and other non-humans as Woodland Creek was, it still was not safe for a unicorn. The false rumors of power that could be obtained by procuring a unicorn horn were still rampant.

  That had been six months ago, and while Amber hadn’t found her jaguar, she had found a home. Rosemary welcomed her with open arms and took her in as an apprentice. Amber was pleased that she had a knack for healing and as a result she and Rosemary had become very close. They sold their cures online as natural cures under the guise of a small mom and pop crunchy medicine store. The once a month shipping policy had kept business slow, but all of their customers came back. It was plenty to keep the cabin going, but now that Rosemary was gone, Amber was not only feeling the loneliness even deeper than before she arrived, but she was also on borrowed time.

  This cabin was not hers. The business was not hers. Nothing here, other than a small backpack, a broken motorcycle, and a drawer half filled with clothes, was hers. All of the rest belonged to Rosemary’s relative, whomever that may be. Police Chief Rickman promised to find her relatives to let them know she was gone. He told her until they came forward she was fine staying at the home since it had been her home too. Amber wondered if that was simply because he had no idea where the cabin was.

  It had been two weeks since Rosemary was hit by the drunk driver. No amount of healing could have saved her. The jackass who hit her walked away without a scratch. He had been actually drinking while driving straight from a bottle of cheap vodka. From what the police told her, he was a human on his way through town to get to a lover, who had be
en lovers with a few extra people while visiting friends in Indianapolis. He was so drunk that as Amber watched him swerve and hit Rosemary head on as she stood on the side of the road waiting to cross, Amber thought he had hit her on purpose. Nope, his eyes were so fucking blurry that he thought he was swerving around her. If only she had been closer, maybe she could have pushed her friend out of the way. Instead they had split their errands up that day and fate took Rosemary from her.

  There was no funeral for Rosemary; although, the police chief mentioned something about a town meeting. Not to be left out, Patty was there to see what all the hoopla was about. She made a side comment about the meeting being a hunting party and not to worry about being there for a trial. Good old fashioned shifter justice seemed to be the drunkard’s fate, and Amber was more than fine with that. She only wished she was included because she had enough rage in her that day to take him down on her own. That was probably why she was left out. It was probably for the best. Without her jaguar, she would have all the human emotions a kill would normally face, and that would never set will.

  Wiping the tears from her eyes, Amber stood up. “Well, fuck this wallowing. It is time to get this place as good as new.” Walking around the table she began to pick up the papers that had just fallen everywhere. The only place in the cabin that was usually clutter free was the table, and now that Amber had gone into mission organize mode, it was no longer a clean space. She would, at the minimum, need to get it cleared off by the morning. She had orders to fill. There was no way she was going to allow the business Rosemary had worked so hard to build fall apart before her relatives showed up—if they showed up. The sheriff had not been too forth coming on that one.

  The papers and books in this pile were mostly recipes for salves, powders, and teas. Those were the ones that were most important because they were the cornerstone of the business. Forget this, Amber needed a better method. These piles were just not working. She needed to create a working system. She swore she would never go back to her overachieving organized ways. She lied. This project called for a set of filing boxes, file folders, and a label maker.

  Grabbing her backpack, she headed into town. They didn’t really have the kind of store she needed in town, but with her motorcycle not working, she would have to make do. The university bookstore should have most of what she needed, and she had to pass Geek Beans on the way. Well, not really, but she was going to because she needed a coffee fix if she was going to walk as much as it looked like she would today.

  What’s a Kiss Between Strangers?

  The university had more than what she could have hoped for. They even had stackable plastic file boxes. She was in heaven. Of course, she also had her arms full, and between the boxes, which thankfully nested easily, and the other supplies, her arms were tired well before she had even gotten to the woods. Screw this, she was stopping for a burger at Drakes for an early lunch. Might as well fuel up and give her arms a rest.

  Drakes was hopping, even during this in between meal time. Leave it to her to decide to stop by during family weekend at the university. The place was filled with college students milking their parents for a free meal of yummy goodness. Amber dropped her box outside the front doorway and went in to order a burger and shake to go. She could cop a squat on the edge of the woods. She would be closed to home, and frankly after having lived in solitude for the past six months, she had grown to prefer it. Even now as the loneliness was growing, being in a crowded room made her feel twice as lonely.

  “Just jump in a seat when one opens up.” The waitress didn’t even stop as she said the words. The poor girl looked beyond frazzled. Who could blame her, the place was packed.

  Walking up to the register, Amber grabbed a menu and started to look through it. She always looked at the menu, but at the end always decided on a cheeseburger, no onions, a side of onion rings, and a chocolate malt. The normal waitress always teased her about having onion rings after ordering no onions, prompting them to banter back and forth about the difference between cooked and raw onions. There would be no banter today. In fact, from the sounds coming from the kitchen, her waitress was actually the fry cook today.

  “A seat opened up at the counter.” Once again the waitress walked by. If she was going to get food, she was probably going to have to have a seat. She scanned the counter and found the vacant spot. On one side was a college kid clearly sporting a hangover eating with his oblivious parents and on the other side was a hot guy. No, hot didn’t come close to describing him and she hadn’t even gotten a decent look yet. At least her new spot had a good view.

  Amber squeezed herself onto the stool. She hated sitting at the counter; her butt was too big and her legs were too short. They were clearly designed by a tall skinny dude with no ass. She bumped into the hottie as she twisted to face forward. Just wonderful.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled not looking at him. She was leaving her flirty fill the void with sex ways behind. Rosemary being gone was not going to change that. There was a better way. There had to be.

  “No, it was my fault. I turned around to watch your beauty as you sat beside me. It is I who should be apologizing.” His voice was rich and husky. She didn’t doubt his words. He was interested in her. Well, her body, at least.

  Fuck it. A little flirty fun was not going to have her fall back into her old ways.

  Turning to face him, her eyes locked with his cerulean blue orbs. She couldn’t look away. Heck, she didn’t want to look away.

  “I’m Amber.” She lamely held out her hand, never breaking eye contact.

  His hand slipped in hers and the warmth traveled up her arms. She had been so long without the touch of a man, she had all but forgotten how it felt. He squeezed it instead of the standard shake. “I’m Jason.”

  “Ready to order?” The spell was broken by the waitress. She would normally be mad at the waitress’s obvious inability to see she was interrupting, but the same ineptitude to see what a customer needed had Amber in this seat in the first place, so the woman was completely forgiven.

  Dropping his hand, Amber turned to face the girl. “Umm, yeah. A cheeseburger, medium rare with no onions, a side of onion rings and a chocolate malt. To go, please.”

  “To go?” Jason inquired, his voice sounding almost disappointed.

  “Umm,” she turned to face him, “yeah. I have a pile of things outside, so I was going to have a picnic.”

  “Things?” Jason placed his hand on her knee. Rational thought left her.

  “Yeah, some file boxes, folders, pens, those kinds of things.” Yeah, she sounded super sexy now. Nothing a guy likes better than office supply talk.

  “We could put them in the back of my truck so you don’t have to worry about them.” Jason’s offer was a gentlemanly one, but his voice was so oozing with sex appeal that he might as well have been asking to strip her naked, lay her on the counter, and feast from her pussy as an appetizer the way her panties became instantly soaked.

  “Yeah.” Darn it. Good thing the man wasn’t a shifter or he would surely smell the effect he had on her. Not that her staring and lack of words while blushing was hiding it very well.

  “Amber is eating here. Please hold mine until hers is ready.” His voice was different with the waitress—more friendly and normal, and far less sexy and smoldering. Amber squared her shoulders. There was something intoxicating about having that effect on a man, even if it was fleeting.

  “It won’t taste as good if I leave it under the heat light.” The waitress was right on that one. It would go from yummy goodness to gas station food in only a few minutes.

  “It will be fine.” The waitress nodded in agreement, probably because it was far too busy to argue. “Well, let’s go get your things.” The slight teasing was nice. Before today, she hadn’t really talked to anyone since the accident. It was refreshing. He grabbed her hand and helped her from her seat. “Hopefully, no one will think these are vacant,” he mumbled to hangover boy as he handed him what looked like
a ten dollar bill.

  “They won’t, sir.” The kid’s eyes lit up at the money. There was no way that Jason was a sir—well, maybe in the I have a master and am tied to the bed kind of way, but not in the traditional way. Amber guessed that Jason was twenty-sevenish. Hardly sir material.

  “Thank you.” Jason led her by the hand through the crowd and out the door. A line was now formed in the entrance way, and she could see the glimmer in their eyes hoping there was space at the counter. It was a good thing Jason had paid the kid. They would have definitely lost their spot.

  Outside she took the lead over to where she had dropped her bounty. She dropped his hand and bent down to gather the boxes only to have him reach them first. Such the gentleman. Although, quite frankly there was nothing gentlemanly about the things she wanted him to do to her.

  “I got it.” His sexy voice was back. “My truck is around the back. This place is crowded for a small town.”

  “Yeah, family weekend at the college.” She purposely let him get in front of her. She had to see his ass in those jeans. It did not disappoint.

  She had to focus not to have her hand reach over to it and give it a squeeze. Screw that, she wanted a two hand squeeze that worked its way around to the front. It was official, she was back to horny girl; although, this time it wouldn’t be to fill the void. She knew that never worked. This time it would be just to save herself from carpal tunnel. She could see the doctor’s diagnosis now: Carpal Tunnel caused by over masturbation.

  “It’s right over here.” Jason turned to look over his shoulder. Darn bastard caught her staring, and from the smirk on his face, he liked it.

  “How do I know you are not a serial killer leading me into your web?” Her voice was light. She had no fear of this man, but if this had been a horror movie, she would have either been thrown into the back of a van or stabbed by now.