The Wall
Page 19
Coming Soon:
A Damaged Trust
The Great Escape
Flashback
Rage
Waking Up
Rose-Coloured Love
Reckless
The Gift of Happiness
Caprice
Passage of the Night
Cry Wolf
A Solitary Heart
The Winter King
An independent woman, a strong-willed man, and a love neither of them can deny.
A Deeper Dimension
© 2013 Amanda Carpenter
Diana needed no one. She’d survived on her own, put herself through school, and was totally self-sufficient. And now, at twenty-six, she had a successful career in the business world. And despite the fact that her new boss, Alex Mason was dynamic and attractive, she was determined to keep it strictly professional between them.
But when unscrupulous business rivals threaten to destroy all that Alex has built, Diana finds herself falling for the hard-working man she discovers behind his formal façade. And the closer she gets to Alex, the farther she drifts from her hard-fought independence…
Enjoy the following excerpt for A Deeper Dimension:
It was no good pretending that she wasn’t nervous—she was, terribly so. Alexander Mason had been away on one of his many business trips when Owen Bradshaw had conducted the interviews for the job, so Diana had never even met him. She thought back on all she knew about him. Mason, age somewhere around thirty-six, was an industrial and financial genius. He had somehow got hold of an iron ore company; Diana searched her mind for a name: Johnson’s or Jackson’s—Jackmon, that was it. Jackmon Steel had been foundering in the last throes of a dying business when Alexander Mason had bought it. In two years he had produced a profit from the company, although now it was Mason Steel. In the next three years, he had doubled the profits. Now, nine years later, he had an administration building in New York, steel foundries in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and offices in San Francisco. The growth of the business was nothing less than phenomenal. Alexander Mason’s private life was something she could only guess at. Frequently his name appeared in both the financial section and the gossip section in New York newspapers. The man not only worked hard but he played hard too. The papers labelled him as a bit of a playboy and frequently linked his name with those of the female sex. At any rate, Diana had no desire to find out for herself whether he was a playboy or not. She simply didn’t care.
As she had been busy mulling over the intriguing gossip that she had read about Alexander Mason, she was vaguely aware of a buzzer sounding and a murmur of voices. She looked up as Carrie spoke to her. “Alex has completed his call, Diana,” she said in her pleasant voice. “He asked me to let you know that you can go in now,” and she indicated the door to Diana’s left.
“Thank you,” said Diana, wishing she could think of something else to say to her. She deposited her cup in the small waste basket by Carrie’s desk and moved to the door. She schooled her thoughts into severely disciplined channels and smoothed away any expression on her face. Putting her hand on the door handle, she was startled to have it wrenched out of her grip as the door swept open. She was even more startled to find herself looking into the most vivid pair of blue eyes that she had ever seen—and she was looking up! The moment stretched on and she picked up other impressions of chestnut brown hair, an angularly handsome face and a strongly shaped mouth that was beginning to twitch. Her eyes flew to his, but she could see no hint of humour there. She decided she must be imagining it.
The door opened wider and the tall man spoke, “Diana Carrington? Please come in.” He turned and walked away from the door, leaving her to shut it behind her.
Diana watched quietly as he prowled about the office. Her first impression was right about his height; he was a big man, well over six foot, with a broad chest and shoulders that narrowed into trim hips and thighs and long, muscular legs. One of her eyebrows rose ever so faintly as she realised that her perusal was being returned. Other than that, her face had no expression, and she patiently stood waiting. He positioned himself against the front of the desk in a leaning posture and gestured to the chair in front of him. Diana, flicking a glance around her, walked over to the seat and sat down. She crossed her legs deliberately and unhurriedly, made sure she was comfortable, then looked up, surprising a strange look on his face.
He spoke, “By now, I’m sure you’ve realised that I’m Alex Mason.” It was said in a dry voice, tinged with sarcasm. Diana took it to be an introduction and, ignoring the sarcasm, nodded. He went on, “Owen Bradshaw, whom you’ve met and talked to, gave me his notes on your interview and your résumé.” He reached behind him and picked up some papers, then continued, “Diana Carrington, age twenty-six, graduate of Rhydon University in Business Administration—what do you know about steel?” The question was swift and unexpected.
Diana said carefully, “I know a great deal less than you do, Mr. Mason.”
His eyebrows shot down and he growled, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Her eyebrows had shot up at his tone and words. She explained, “I know that you saved a company by difficult strategic manoeuvring, and that you doubled profits in three years, and your company is growing by leaps and bounds. This I can understand, analyse and even chart for you if you wish. I can tell you when you decided to do what you did and why. The business side of this company I can understand—it’s what I studied for years. Steel, as I told Mr. Bradshaw, is as foreign a subject to me as what makes a car run.” This last was said with a touch of self-directed mockery.
His mouth twitched, this time she was sure. He chuckled and commented dryly, “At least that old dog hired someone with a sense of humour.” His face became serious and he continued, speaking concisely, “Steel is an alloy, a mixture, if you like, of several different materials, including iron ore, coal and limestone. Measurement has to be exact, as exact as one thousandth of an ounce. By the time you’re fully trained…” at his choice of words, Diana felt a little like a dog sent to training school. “…you’ll know the prices and quantities of the raw materials we need, the most dependable suppliers, the costs of labour and equipment annually, and you’ll be able to project profit estimates for the year ahead. I want you to start these proposals here and tell me your opinion for a counterproposal for a contract to Nelson Ore…”
Diana accepted the paper folders that he gave her, and for the rest of the morning they argued and deliberated over the various approaches for the contract to their main supplier of iron ore. After that, without a rest, he took her over the entire building, ordered a desk for her use to be moved upstairs in his office, held an emergency conference with Owen Bradshaw about temporary labour to be hired owing to a bout of ’flu going around in one of the factories, and called California to clear up a problem in the San Francisco office. Her mind was whirling by the time they stopped for some quick sandwiches and a cup of coffee. They ate up in his office to save time.
Watching him in between bites in her sandwich, Diana marvelled at his incredible energy. The man fairly sent sparks of electricity into the air, she thought to herself.
“…sandwich?”
She started.
Alex (for that was what she called him in her mind) repeated patiently, “Do you want another sandwich?”
“Thanks, yes.” She took it gratefully, and was unprepared for his chuckle. “What did I do?” she asked, frowning slightly.
“Still a growing girl, aren’t you, my dear?” Alex had a faint smile as he took in her tall frame. “You’re damn near as tall as I am.”
Diana, determined to take his ribbing in her stride, was angry at herself for colouring faintly at the way he was looking at her. She saw his grin widen and realised that he knew what she was thinking. She swallowed a mouthful of sandwich and laconically pronounced, “Six feet in my stockings, sir.” She took another bite of sandwich.
He pretended to look surprised. “Six
feet tall!” he exclaimed with a note of wonder. Then, swiftly, “And don’t ever call me ‘sir’ again in that tone of voice, my girl, or I’ll turn you over my knee—yes, all six feet of you, and whack you over the bottom. I’m a bit bigger than you still.”
She was taken aback. “What in the world!” she gasped. “What was the tone of voice that I used, Mr. Mason?”
Mr. Mason leaned back in his chair. “You quite deliberately tried to put me in my place for teasing you, and you know it.” He surveyed her lazily and continued, “I was never one for learning my place.”
Attempted Murder. Passion. Betrayal. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.
Natural Evil
© 2012 Thea Harrison
Claudia Hunter is on a road trip through the Nevada desert when she sees the body of a dog on the side of the highway. Pulling over to investigate, she quickly determines that the enormous animal is clinging to life. While working to save him with the help of the local vet, Claudia realizes there’s something about the creature that seems more. Other. Wyr. Which makes this case of animal cruelty attempted murder.
Too injured to shape shift, Luis Alvaraz is reluctant to tell Claudia what he knows about his attack, afraid it will only make her a target. But the sheriff is corrupt, and his attackers know Luis is alive and vulnerable. To make matters worse, a sandstorm is sweeping into town, and if they're going to survive the night, Luis will have to place all his trust in Claudia.
Warning: Take a gorgeous man temporarily stuck in the dog house, add a strong, take-no-prisoners woman, mix in encroaching enemies and a raging sandstorm and stir to combine. Enjoy with a freshly opened can of whoop-ass.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Natural Evil:
Claudia couldn’t tell that the sizable lump on the highway shoulder was a body. Not at first.
She was traveling 110 mph on I-80W through a solitary stretch of Nevada. Sage, silvery tan, gold and light brown, splashed across the expanse of desert ringed by snow-covered dark mountains. The pale sky mirrored the land with great swathes of silver-lined gray clouds. The windswept silence was immense as ferocious heat boiled off the pavement and radiated from the afternoon’s piercing yellow-white sun. She had heard it said that the desert spaces of the world were where the Djinn came to dance.
Afterwards, she never could say why she’d stopped to investigate. She’d simply obeyed an impulse, slammed on the brakes and reversed. No other vehicles were visible on either side of the highway, and she was the only thing alive. Or so she’d thought.
Her 1984 BMW came even with the lump. Her heart sank as she stared at it. It was some sort of canine, an unusually large one. Not that she was any judge of breed, but it had to be a domestic animal. It certainly wasn’t a wolf or a coyote. The body was muscular, with a large, powerful chest and a long, heavy bone structure that was still graceful, and a wide, well-proportioned head. The dog had taken some horrific damage. Its neck was thick and swollen, and its dark brown and black coat scored with large raw patches.
She wondered what it was doing in the middle of the desert, if it had been hit or if it had been traveling unsecured in the back of a truck and fallen out. Possibly both. She hoped it had died fast.
One of its huge front paws twitched.
She slammed the BMW into park and grabbed her water bottle before her brain caught up with her actions. As she lunged out of the car, she shed the insulation she had worked so hard to acquire, shifting through an invisible barrier to fully enter into and connect with her surroundings.
She fell to her knees beside the dog. Hell, forget unusually large—it was freakishly massive. She might not know much about dogs, but she knew few breeds reached that size. Bigger than a German shepherd, too heavy for a Great Dane, it had to be some kind of mastiff. Damn, it was not only alive, but it looked like it might be conscious. It was panting fast and shallow, muzzle open and tongue lolling. Its eyes were closed, the surrounding muscles around the eye sockets tense with suffering.
“Good Christ,” she said. The wind roared through miles of solitude and snapped away the words.
She eased a hand under the dog’s head, lifted it and tried to trickle a small amount of water into its mouth. It had a set of wicked chompers, white, strong teeth as long as her fingers. Hard to tell if it noticed or reacted to the water. She thought not.
Claudia was a bit taller than the average woman, with a weight that fluctuated between 140 and 145 pounds. The dog was easily half again her size, perhaps 200 or even 220. No normal human woman could hope to lift that kind of dead weight into the back seat of her car, but Claudia was not quite a normal human woman.
She had a Power that manifested as telekinetic ability, but it was just a spark, so she had to be touching whatever she chose to use it on. She could manage a bit of telepathy if someone was standing close enough to her, and her spark might be enough for her to travel to an Other land, one of those magic-filled places that had formed when time and space had buckled at the Earth’s formation. Might or might not. She didn’t know. She’d never tried.
As far as Power or magical ability went, her telekinesis wasn’t much, but it did allow her to do a few interesting things. For one thing, she might be able to boost her lifting capacity enough so that she could get the dog into the back seat. Unfortunately, its injuries were so severe, she would probably kill it when she tried to move it.
She thought of her .40 caliber Glock. The gun was stored in the trunk of her car along with her suitcases and camping gear. She never underestimated the impact of a single, well-aimed bullet, for good or ill. One shot, one kill, as the sniper in her unit used to say. In this case, it would be a mercy to put the dog out of his misery. Death had to be better than this slow, solitary expiration in the desert.
Putting him down might be a mercy but everything inside her rebelled at the thought. She set her jaw. If the dog didn’t die, she would get it—she glanced down the dog’s body and discovered that not only was he male, but he hadn’t been neutered—she would get him some help.
Once she made the decision, she moved fast. She dug through the canvas bags of camping supplies in her trunk until she located the ground tarp. Refolding the plastic into a smaller size that the dog could still fit on, she left enough room to grasp the edges. Then she laid the tarp on the ground beside the animal.
The next ten minutes felt like enduring a two-year tour of duty. The dog’s suffering was a gravity well that held her anchored to its wretchedness. The wind blasted the bare skin of her arms and face with tiny stinging grains of the scorching pale sand. The sand had crusted the raw edges of the dog’s wounds, until she moved him and the wounds reopened. They bled brilliant, glistening crimson that trickled through the pale ivory-gold of the crusted sand. Normally the two colors looked lovely together.
She talked to the dog, random words of encouragement, and she exercised her extensive vocabulary of swear words as she strained her leg and back muscles along with her telekinesis. At last, she managed to shift him onto the tarp and then into the back seat.
During the worst of it, the dog opened his eyes and looked at her. The intelligence and the bright pain in his eyes were twin spears that shoved into her heart. When she finally slid into the driver’s seat again, she had to clean off her hands and wipe at her own wet eyes before she could see enough to start the engine.
The dog didn’t die.
The Wall
Amanda Carpenter
Two people hiding from the world discover they can’t hide their feelings for each other.
On the verge of collapse, famous singer Sara Bertelli escapes from the Hollywood scene by taking refuge at an isolated cabin on Lake Michigan. When she meets a mysterious man while walking on the shore, she worries that he’ll recognize her, but Greg Pierson has secrets of his own.
Drawn closer and closer together, the two lost souls find comfort in each other, and soon share their deepest secrets. But when Greg asks Sara to give up the limelight and live with him in seclusion, she be
gins to realize just how important performing her music is to her. Will her fame be an insurmountable wall to their relationship?
This Retro Romance reprint was originally published in June 1984 by Harlequin Mills & Boon.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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The Wall
Copyright © 2013 by Amanda Carpenter
ISBN: 978-1-61921-782-9
Edited by Heather Osborn
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Original Publication by Harlequin Mills & Boon: June 1984
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: June 2013
www.samhainpublishing.com