A Deeper Dimension

by Amanda Carpenter

  “But I don’t know what I want to do,” Diana protested, her eyes following the cracks in the pavement. “And I’ve got to live somehow before we’re married.”

  “Would you like to start your own business?” Alex suggested. “You certainly have the ability to.”

  “My own business,” Diana echoed. She frowned. “Where would I get the money for it?”

  Alex looked up at the sky, his eyes twinkling with delight. He suggested nonchalantly, “You could always ask for a loan from your fiancé, you know. I hear he’s pretty reasonable about terms.”

  Diana looked surprised. She hadn’t even thought of him! “Good heavens—you! Don’t look so amused, of course I forgot you had money. And what did you mean about that remark about ‘terms’? No, forget it! I don’t want to know!” Talking and laughing, they made their way to the cars and parted after making plans to meet later that night.

  A knock at the door had Diana racing to throw it open, confident as to who it would be. She was right; it was Alex, lean and long as he lazily propped one shoulder against the doorjamb and looked down at her with a smile. His hair was tousled and carelessly brushed off his brow and his eyes glowed a fiery blue as they raked down Diana’s figure-hugging slacks and woolly sweater. Two deep grooves carved the sides of his mouth as his grin widened. He had taken in the slight flush on her cheeks that had washed up during his perusal.

  “May I come in?” he asked quietly, his voice deep in the silence.

  Diana moved jerkily away from the door. “Of course,” she said, laughing a little unsteadily. “Have a seat, and I’ll go to make some coffee.” She headed for the kitchen, intent on getting out of the room.

  “Hey, hey, not so fast!” Alex moved quickly and caught Diana’s wrist, pulling her back to him and into the circle of his arms. “You haven’t kissed me yet.” With that, he lowered his head and touched Diana’s lips with a light feathery kiss. Diana closed her eyes and moved up her head to deepen the kiss, but Alex moved away, ending it before it had really begun. “Didn’t you say something about coffee?” he asked, laughing down at her face as she looked at him with disappointment.

  Diana sniffed, “It would be more interesting in the kitchen, anyway.” She squealed as Alex slapped her sharply on the behind. “I’m going, all right!” She disappeared.

  She put the coffee automatically in the machine as she thought of Alex in the next room. “Make yourself comfortable,” she called out, finishing the coffee-making procedure with efficient movements. She poked her head out of the kitchen doorway and saw Alex seated in a big chair in the living room. “Did you want something to eat?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Not really, unless you did.” She shook her head too and disappeared again.

  Carrying the loaded tray into the living room, she set it down on the small table by the sofa and saw the box. She stopped.

  Alex, watching her reactions, said quietly, “I went shopping for it after we talked. I wanted to surprise you with something special. If you don’t like it, we can take it back and pick something out together.”

  Diana shook her head, still staring at the small black box without touching it. She jumped when Alex touched her arm. He motioned for her to pick it up and she did slowly, almost as if she were afraid the box would bite her. She opened the lid and gasped. Flashes of light seemed to come from within the little box and she turned it back and forth to make the ring catch the light. There was a large diamond in the centre of the ring, with two smaller diamonds in a swirling design on either side of the centre. It was a slim and elegant ring, made for slim and elegant hands.

  Alex took the box and the ring, then pulled the ring from its resting place and slid it on Diana’s ring finger on her left hand. She stared fascinated at the winking bright diamond in the centre of the ring. It was a perfect fit.

  After a moment, Alex asked, “Do you like it?” She turned to him, her eyes shining.

  “Do I like it?” she repeated. “Of course I like it—no, I take that back. I love it!” She moved over to him and put her arms around him, kissing him unrestrainedly. She whispered, “It’s perfect, you couldn’t have picked a more beautiful ring.”

  Alex slid his arms around her and pulled back his head to look into her eyes. “I’m glad,” he said simply. “I wanted you to like it.”

  Diana nodded, speaking thoughtfully, “Only now we have to think of a date for the wedding.”

  “A wedding date!” he exclaimed. “I thought you wanted a little time to yourself before we rushed into marriage?”

  “I do, I do,” she assured him. “But I was thinking in a matter of five or six months or so, and that’s not a lot of time to plan a wedding.”

  Alex threw back his head and laughed. “And I thought you meant to wait a year or two and I was wondering how I was going to stand waiting that long! Oh, Diana, I love you!” And with that, he took her lips while still chuckling. She started to smile under his lips and he opened one eye to stare at her, then straightened quickly. He muttered, “Why do I feel like I’ve lost my audience?” But she wasn’t paying attention.

  “Alex, we really should send Alicia a wedding announcement, don’t you think?” She chuckled as she said it.

  Alex started to grin. “Poetic justice? I’d like to see her face as she opened it up to read it. Now, that would be a picture!” He turned serious and pulled Diana closer in his arms, murmuring softly, “But why are we talking about her when we have better things to think about?” He bent his head and they didn’t talk again for a very long time.

  About the Author

  Thea Harrison started writing when she was nineteen. In the 1980s and 1990s, she wrote for Harlequin Mills & Boon under the name Amanda Carpenter. The Amanda Carpenter romances have been published in over ten languages, and sold over a million and a half copies worldwide, and are now being reprinted digitally by Samhain Publishing for their Retro Romance line.

  For more information, please visit her at: www.theaharrison.com. You can also find her on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/theaharrison and on Twitter at: @TheaHarrison.

  Look for these titles by Amanda Carpenter

  Writing as Thea Harrison

  Now Available:

  Novellas of the Elder Races

  True Colors

  Natural Evil

  Devil’s Gate

  Hunter’s Season

  Coming Soon:

  The Wall

  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

  Meeting your soulmate? Great. Preventing your possible murder? Even better.

  True Colors

  © 2011 Thea Harrison

  Alice Clark, a Wyr and schoolteacher, has had two friends murdered in as many days, and she’s just found the body of a third. She arrives at the scene only minutes before Gideon Riehl, a wolf Wyr and current detective in the Wyr Division of Violent Crime—and, as Alice oh-so-inconveniently recognizes at first sight, her mate.

  But the sudden connection Riehl and Alice feel is complicated when the murders are linked to a serial killer who last struck seven years ago, killing seven people in seven days. They have just one night before the killer strikes again. And every sign points to Alice as the next victim.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for True Colors

  Don’t move. Stay perfectly still.

  The enormous monster plunged through the apartment with the lethal speed of a stealth bomber. A Molotov cocktail of pheromones and Power spewed through the blood-tainted air, the classic signs of a strong male Wyr in a rage. Alice clung to her perch, her heart knocking so hard she thought it was going to burst out of her chest. Had the murderer returned?

  The
n the monster slowed. Alice heard him utter vicious curses under his breath as he came upon Haley’s still-warm body. Alice took the New York subway daily to work. She thought she had heard it all but she learned a few things as she listened to him. Did he curse because he saw the murdered woman for the first time, or because he realized he had made some kind of mistake?

  Alice had only just arrived at Haley’s apartment herself. She had found the door open and rushed inside to discover that her friend’s body had been laid out on her bed. Haley’s torso had been cut open, organs strewn across the flowered bedspread like a child’s abandoned toys.

  Alice had gone numb at the sight, the normal cool gentle logic of her mind seizing in shock. Then she had heard someone running up the stairs. She had barely gotten to her hiding place before the monster appeared. If he was the murderer and he had returned to clean up some clue he had left behind, neither Alice nor the police would know what it was now.

  He prowled through Haley’s home in complete silence. Alice couldn’t even hear the soft pad of footsteps. Her awareness of him was excruciating, as though someone had stroked the flat of a razor blade along her bare skin with the smiling promise of a cut. His presence was a violation of Haley’s private space. He paused not two feet away from Alice, so close she could see the pocket of his worn leather jacket out of the corner of her eye and hear the almost imperceptible sound of his steady breathing.

  She wanted to scream and strike at him. She wanted to run away and dial 911. The shadowed apartment hallway was a million miles long, the open front door too far away for her to make a run for it and hope she wouldn’t be noticed. She didn’t dare move, did not dare even shift her gaze for fear a glancing light might reflect off her eyes and give her position away. She hardly dared to breathe. The only thing she could do is taste the air and know that, if nothing else, she could recognize this man again by his scent. Underneath the scent of violence, he smelled warm and clean. If they were in any other kind of situation, she would have found his scent sexy. She fought the sudden urge to vomit.

  Wait. If she could scent him, then what kind of trail had she left behind? Could he scent her as well? Would he be able to recognize her again, too? Oh gods.

  After a most unusual inheritance, Victoria Clay is bound for Glory! Glory Town, Oklahoma, that is.

  High-Riding Heroes

  © 2012 Joey Light

  To her shock, Victoria Clay was willed one half of Glory Town, a restored Oklahoma village where tourists gather to experience the excitement of the Wild West. Captivated by the spirit and splendor of the tourist town, Victoria is determined to embrace her new life in the “Old” West.

  Wes Cooper resembles the gunslingers that wow the tourists every day—but Wes is the real thing. Hired to teach the men how to shoot and rope and ride, he isn’t going to leave Glory Town until his job is done. Too bad Victoria resents his every decision.

  Sparks fly between Victoria and Wes as they battle for control of Glory Town…and the sharp desire that burns between them.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for High-Riding Heroes:

  Late. Late. Some things never change. Adjusting the bonnet on her head with one hand and running, the long, full skirt of her period costume fisted up in her other hand, Victoria rounded the corner of Main Street. And collided with a solid wave of cowboy.

  His hands shot out to grab her arms and right her. Still clamping the bonnet tightly over her curly hair, she looked up. And up. She blamed her sudden shortness of breath on the run. Certainly, it wasn’t due to the tall man who stood smiling indulgently as he cupped her elbows to keep her steady until she found her feet.

  “Whoa there,” he laughed. “Excuse me,” she said impatiently, not unaware of the muscled forearms her hands rested on. Or the humor that sparkled in his beautiful dark eyes.

  “Someone chasing you?” he teased. He idly wondered if he had wandered into the middle of one of the skits being put on for the tourists. He’d never seen such curls. A thick, brown mass of them surrounded her face and cascaded down to her shoulders. Green eyes. Emeralds that refracted the sunlight. A freckle or two had popped out on her nose.

  “Not exactly. I mean, not yet. They will be. I’m on next. I have to catch the stage and get robbed,” she added breathlessly.

  As quickly as she had tossed herself into his arms, she was sprinting out of them again. He was instantly sorry. He would have liked to hold on to her just a moment longer. He watched as she ran across the dusty road.

  So she was one of the reenactors. This job might be gravy yet, he said to himself as he turned to watch her scramble to the front of the saloon. His last view of her before she disappeared into the stomach of the coach was dust flying from her boots and a nicely rounded bottom covered in yards of swaying skirts designed with tiny rosebuds. Whew!

  He’d heard men mention the term bowled over from time to time. Knocked off his pins. Shot into orbit. Had his breath knocked from him. Knocked him dead. Stolen his heart. Changed his life. Foolishness. All of it foolishness. Until now. Now he understood the term. One look. One collision and he felt, well, he didn’t know what the words would be. Affected? Extremely interested? Curiosity aroused? Attracted? Intrigued? Fascinated?

  In one brief encounter he had met a lady with zest. With a love of being alive shining from her eyes. Gusto. He shook his head. Ridiculous.

  Wes folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the porch post. He had been on his way to a meeting with the owner of Glory Town, but now he decided to watch. He’d been to Glory Town plenty of times but he hadn’t seen this woman before. He would have remembered.

  The voice coming over the well-hidden loudspeaker asked that the street be cleared to set the mood for the stage holdup. It was explained as the creaking, rocking stage was driven out of town by the dusty driver that it would come around the back of town and pull in from the other end with the bandits close on its heels. The tourists were challenged to use their imaginations and picture the event happening miles from any help.

  “Please stay on the sidewalks, folks. We don’t want anyone getting hurt here at Glory Town, except the bad guys.”

  Wes looked around. The smart pop of cap pistols darted the air as boys and girls adorned in blue and red cowboy hats chased each other up and down the boardwalk. People from all walks of life lined up on the sidewalk to enjoy this latest display of frontier living. Babies watched from strollers beneath sun shades, and old people rested on benches or merely sat on the edge of the sidewalk.

  Old buildings sandpapered smooth by the wind, faded by the unrelenting sun, leaned lazily while others stood stoically against the colorful backdrop of Oklahoma sky. Light blues, dull grays, and red dust that came with the breeze and rolled constantly, coating every flat surface. Hitch-rail brown, wrought-iron black and green. Lots of green. Tall buffalo grass swayed on the hill beyond. The deep, dark dusky green of the tree line below punched toward the cloudless sky towering above the sprinkles of bright yellow, purple, and pink wildflowers skipping along the edge of the pond that glistened from the hollow.

  At the first sound of commotion from the other end of town, Wes turned his gaze, along with the crowd, to watch. The air was filled with actual and fabricated tension.

  The stage careened around the corner and sped down the street to pitch and roll to a stop in the middle of town. It was surrounded by five desperadoes, handkerchiefs pulled up over their noses, pistols firing in the air. The stage driver slumped over in the seat after a brave attempt to reach for his shotgun. Dead. Ordered to disembark, the frightened passengers climbed down. The cowboy riding shotgun watched, helplessly, as the two men and lone woman proceeded to slide rings and watches and empty wallets into a cloth sack.

  The man on top of the stage was ordered to throw down the strongbox.

  And as he did, he reached for the same shotgun that did in the driver. He was gunned down immediately.

  The bandits’ horses skittered and danced a circle. A passenger ma
de a grab for one of the holdup men and was booted in the face to land in the dust. The tourists let out a groan in unison. Wes smiled. It was like watching some bad spaghetti Western. Suddenly he itched to get on with his job. And then he saw her.

  The woman dressed in 1870s garb who had blindsided him only a few moments ago lifted her skirt knee-high and wrapped her fingers around a derringer held tight to that smooth skin by a gaudy lilac and lace garter. A sound of appreciation worked its way through the crowd. He smiled and thought she must have legs up to her shoulders.

  To the cheers of the crowd and the support of the kids and their cap guns, she planted herself in front of the thieves and fired at them. The little gun popped, and two of the big men grabbed their chests and folded, flinging themselves off their horses and dramatically to the ground. The remaining banditos, including the one with the strongbox over his saddle, hightailed it out of town in a cloud of dust and a thunder of hooves.

  Just then, from behind the jailhouse, came a mounted rider, hat pushed low on his head, droopy mustache and dark eyes revealing his determination to capture the outlaws. He fired the shotgun and reloaded on the run. The hero took up chase and the crowd roared and clapped their support. Dust whirled to settle down once again. Tourists stepped off the boardwalk and began their explorations once more, smiling and enthusiastic.

  Wes pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Shaking his head, he chuckled low. Three bandits ran from a lone woman with an empty derringer before the lone rider began his chase? No way.

  Looking back out on the street, Wes watched as the reenactors loaded some of the kids into the stage and set out for a ride.