During her fifteen years of working in private security, she was stationed at the United States Consulate in Toronto as well as many hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area. Needless to say, she saw a lot of interesting things and people from which she draws her characters and situations in her speculative fiction writing.
She met Martin Nantus through the online fanfiction community in 1993 and moved to the United States in 2000 in order to marry. A firm believer in the healing properties of peppermint and chai tea, she continues to write short stories, poetry and novels while searching for the perfect cuppa.
To learn more, please visit www.sherylnantus.com.
Look for these titles by Sheryl Nantus
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Wild Cards and Iron Horses
Blaze of Glory
Their love rides on a spring and a prayer…
Wild Cards and Iron Horses
© 2010 Sheryl Nantus
During the recent Civil War, a soldier risked his life to save Jonathan Handleston—and lost. With the help of an advanced metal brace on his crippled hand, Jon now travels from one poker tournament to the next, determined to earn enough money to repay the man’s debt.
Prosperity Ridge is supposed to be the last stop on his quest, but his brace is broken and he needs an engineer to repair the delicate mechanisms. The only one available is Samantha Weatherly, a beautiful anomaly in a world ruled by men.
Sam is no fool. Jon is no different from any other gambler—except for his amazing prosthetic. Despite a demanding project to win a critical contract to develop an iron horse, she succumbs to the lure of working on the delicate mechanisms. And working with the handsome Englishman.
Like a spring being coiled, Samantha and Jon are inexorably drawn together. Sam begins to realize honor wears many faces, and she becomes the light at the end of Jon’s journey to redemption. The only monkey wrench is Victor, a rival gambler who will stop at nothing to make sure Jon misses the tournament. Even destroy Jon’s and Sam’s lives.
Warning: Contains crazed card games, gears and springs galore and a wild ride that’ll have you panting at the end of the book.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Wild Cards and Iron Horses:
Sam looked down at the brown paper parcel, shaking her head as if waking from a dream. “Oh, yes. Your brace is repaired.” She went to the half-wrapped bundle and began pulling the paper off. “I intended to come over to Mrs. McGuire’s and meet you there.” The words rushed out like an oil leak. “Of course, then we would have had to come back here and do the fitting. I don’t think Mrs. McGuire would let me go up to your room and allow us to complete our dealings there.” She felt the tingling down her spine, settling in her stomach with a butterfly’s flutter.
Jon got up from the stool, now steady on his feet. Taking his jacket off, he draped it over the stool and began the now-familiar routine of disrobing in front of Samantha, who diverted her eyes, as was proper. A few minutes later, he walked over to the table. Jon leaned over it, his upper body totally bare.
She pulled the last piece of parchment off the metal brace with fumbling fingers. “Do you need my help to adjust…?” The words trailed off as she studied his bare chest, the light furring of dark hair a stark contrast to his fair skin. The trail led down to his bellybutton then lower, dipping into the darkness below his belt buckle. “The brace is very comfortable,” Sam murmured.
Jon leaned into the brace, flipping the clamps that attached it to his upper and lower arm muscles. The strap went across his chest, the well-worn leather pulled tight with the buckle pressing against the red indentation on his skin.
She watched, fully transfixed as he slipped the belt tail through a holder, laying it flush with his chest. The leather edge flapped against his skin, eventually snuggling safe into place.
He turned to look at her, grinning. “‘Comfortable’? Did you try it on?”
She let out a light hiccup, intently studying a knothole in the tabletop to avoid his gaze. “I felt it was important to see if the device worked as required, specifically the fingers. So I needed to wear it to be sure.” Sam looked up, just slightly, staring at his muscles twitching and shifting in the metal brace.
“Ah.” Jon flexed his fingers, watching the little finger curl and uncurl on command. “As good as new.” He tilted his head to one side, still smiling. “How did you like wearing it?”
“An amazing invention.” The words tumbled out, her internal voice shouting for her to calm down and stop babbling like a young girl on her first social outing. “I would have loved to have seen its construction. I would recommend, however, that you contact the manufacturer and ask if they could provide you with some emergency replacement pieces for the future. Improvisation can only go so far, and while I enjoyed working on you…on it and would do so again in a minute, I think…” She was breathless, her last words coming out in a whisper. Her eyes dropped down to study the knothole again. Surely she had made enough of a fool of herself that he would have nothing else to do with her now.
Jon put his shirt on, shrugging the fabric over his broad shoulders and the brace. “An excellent repair job. And I’ll follow up on your recommendations. They’re preparing to make it available to more people.” He flinched, fumbling with a button. “A sad reality of armed conflicts is that innovation tends to follow in order to deal with the results of such.” Jon glanced over at her father and Gil, the two eagerly finishing off the last of the tarts. His voice dropped, almost to an intimate whisper. “Have you considered getting an artificial arm for your father?”
Sam took a step back, folding her arms in front of her. This was an old argument with a new opponent. “Father’s too proud for that, at least right now. Besides, it would be too much money.” She shrugged, meeting his gaze head-on. There was no use in mincing her words. “As you may have noticed, out here things are much more expensive than they are on the coast. While we can produce our own food and items to a degree, we still need to import much more than we can make ourselves. Including such luxuries as artificial limbs and the means to fit and maintain them. And everyone wants to make a profit.”
“I have noticed that.” Jon nodded. “I do think you should think about it. The science, the people I have seen in England, they would make his life much more comfortable.” He curled his fingers into a fist, the metal bands pulling the slender digits inward. “But I would understand if he chose not to, for his own reasons and not financial ones. I often wonder about my own decision.”
“Well, I, for one, am glad you decided to keep your hand.” Sam took the crippled right hand and pressed it between her own two warm palms.
Looking up, she saw a matching smile. The deep blue eyes locked with her own for what could have been a minute, an hour…
“This pastry is delicious,” her father roared from the other table. “I’d forgotten how good. We need to order from them more often.”
The shock startled Sam out of her reverie and she moved back a few inches, releasing Jon’s hand. He let out a low sigh at her withdrawal, sending her pulse racing.
“Yes, the bill. The bill.” She went to the other desk and picked up a piece of paper. “We have an itemized bill here for you, Mr. Handleston.” Sam cleared her throat, making one last attempt to be as professional as possible. “I think you’ll find our rates are quite reasonable…” She paused, seeing his wide smile, the softness in his face bringing unbidden tears to her eyes.
“What you’ve done for me is priceless, Miss Weatherly. And I thought I told you to call me ‘Jon’.” He took the page from her, scanning down the columns. “Everything seems reasonable, more than.” His good hand pushed into one of the waistcoat pockets. “Unfortunately, I don’t have enough on me at the present to pay.” Jon put up a hand. “But I do have an account at the bank, my dear lady. I don’t carry around large wads of cash, no matter my profession.”
“Good idea.” Her father glanced over, a trace of raspberry jam on the edge of his mouth. “Why don�
��t you accompany him to the bank, my dear, and simply deposit it to our own account? That’ll save an extra trip for everyone.” He nodded to Jon. “I trust you to escort my daughter, sir. At least to the bank,” her father added with a hint of laughter in his eyes.
“And I shall.” Jon bowed slightly, returning the wide smile with interest.
Sam rolled her eyes. When it came to affairs of the heart, her father was about as subtle as a runaway steam engine. After walking into the back room, she emerged with a delicately made shawl, a cream-colored piece of whimsy that somehow fit with her work shirt and her dark blue jeans. The shocked looks when she re-emerged banished all doubt she had about buying the shawl only a few weeks earlier in an impulsive moment.
“Shall I pick up something for later on?” She let out a laugh, seeing the mess the two men/boys had made on the worktable.
One raspberry tart had been cleanly dissected, the fruit scooped out with fingers and spread across most of the daily newspaper, while the chocolate creampuffs had exploded over both faces.
“Uh…maybe not for me.” Her father wiped the edge of his mouth with a finger and licked it clean. Gil let out a moan, clutching his stomach. “And I think Gil here needs a bit of a lay down.”
Sam nodded. “There’s some baking soda in the cupboard if you need to mix something up.” Turning to Jon, she gestured towards the door. “The bank should be open for another hour or two, but we should hurry.”
“Take your time coming home,” her father called after them. “Maybe stop for a cup of tea or something. No rush.”
Sam scowled at him as she closed the door behind them. She was surprised Jon hadn’t already headed for the hills, with this sort of suggesting going on.
You can’t keep a good Secret for long.
A Bloody Good Secret
© 2011 Sierra Dean
Secret McQueen, Book 2
After cheating death twice in one night, confessing her true nature to her werewolf soul mates and being asked to kill one of her closest friends, Secret took a much-needed vacation. By running away.
Now she’s back in town—dragged kicking and screaming—determined to clear Holden Chancery’s name. Right after she finds out what he’s accused of. It shouldn’t be hard—Holden has a habit of using their new and scintillating psychic bond to break into her thoughts and dreams at some very, shall we say, awkward moments.
Just a few things stand in her way: a secretive Tribunal leader, a group of would-be vampire slayers and two werewolf boyfriends who refuse to let her operate in her customary lone-wolf style. Even less amusing are the terrifying creatures that someone is using in an attempt to gain control of the council. Even for this out-of-the-ordinary bounty hunter, it’s a challenge with potentially deadly teeth.
Warning: Contains an ever-plucky heroine with no shortage of weapons, super-hot mind games, an ever-complicated love triangle and one hell of a creepy amusement park.
Enjoy the following excerpt for A Bloody Good Secret:
Lucas’s kiss was gentle, inquiring and exploratory. He hugged me tighter, keeping me close to his body, and lifted my feet off the floor entirely. The last time he’d done this I had tangled myself around him, but tonight I was still too hyperaware of having made love to Desmond and the strange overlap that had shown up with Holden. I wasn’t ready to go through it again. I also wasn’t quite ready to be the kind of girl who could have sex with two different men in one night. At least on the physical plane.
Call me old-fashioned, but having two boyfriends was already hard enough for me to wrap my head around.
He continued to kiss me, and I let him, enjoying each delicate kiss we shared. The way his tongue tasted like cinnamon hearts when he licked my lower lip was a small treat I had forgotten, and it made me long to make each kiss more lingering. But the beard was weirding me out a little, and I couldn’t ignore every other part of the evening.
I was also acutely aware this bedroom was smaller than the one he had in the city, and we were a hell of a lot closer to the bed. I didn’t want to tempt fate too much, and the longer I let him kiss me like this, the more likely I was to say fuck it and, well, fuck it.
“Put me down.”
He ignored me, holding me closer and kissing my earlobe.
“Lucas, please.”
He stopped, pulled his head back and looked at me with those searing light-blue eyes. They didn’t hold the same kind of pain Desmond’s always seemed to, but Lucas’s were now less innocent than they had once been. I didn’t want to think about the last time I’d looked into his eyes. He lowered me back to the ground, but he didn’t let me go. He put one hand on either side of my face and kissed my forehead.
“I’m glad you’re back.”
“About that.” I looked up at him and tried to ask the question that had followed us in from outside. I still wasn’t sure how to word it. “Jackson?” It was the best I could do.
“You don’t want to know about that, Secret.” Lucas let his arms drop and stepped away from me. The disappearance of his body heat left me chilled in my soaking-wet shirt. Or maybe something else was leaving me cold.
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know. Do you know what Jackson did to me?”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t the answer I was expecting. “You do?”
“Of course. Your boss, your vampire boss…the blond one?”
“Sig?” Why was that name coming up everywhere I went tonight?
“He came to me, and we had a little chat about a mutual friend of ours.” He shot me a meaningful look. “It seems he was very grateful to me for saving your life.”
“Oh?” This was an interesting turn.
“Yes.” Lucas sat on the edge of the bed, but I chose to remain standing closer to the door. “He asked me if it would be of any interest to me to help bring you home again.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He raised a hand, and I let my question hang unanswered. “I’d tried to find you, I even went to see your friend Mercedes, but she wouldn’t give me anything. Then Sig came to me and told me that with a little help he was certain he could bring you back. He said all I needed to do was let him use one of my wolves, someone you didn’t know well. He said he had someone close to you who would take care of the rest.”
My mind began to spin. Of course, I’d been totally naive. Any fool could see the whole kidnapping was a setup, but I had assumed Sig had worked alone to facilitate it. Sometimes lone wolves worked with vampires for the money, and I’d assumed Jackson had been one of them. But he was part of the pack, and Lucas had asked him to kidnap me. That meant the shape-shifting witch was on someone’s team too.
Someone who knew a thing or two about how hard transfiguration magic was. Someone who had told me the very night I vanished how she thought it was time for me to go home. My hand flew to the necklace dangling from my throat. Ward against evil, my ass. My grandmere had led them right to me.
I slumped to the floor, and in an instant Lucas was crouched in front of me. He tried to help me up, but I pushed him harder than I meant to, and he stumbled backwards onto the floor.
“I spent an entire day locked in the trunk of a car.” I glared at him. “I smashed that kid in the face and got my own split open in the process.”
His eyes went wide with sudden rage. “Did he—?”
“No. God, do you think that scrawny thing could have beaten me up? It was an accident, and I healed. But that’s not the point, Lucas. You helped the head of the vampire Tribunal kidnap me. And you know who was helping him on my end? My own goddamn grandmother.” Out of frustration, I began unbuttoning my shirt, unable to stand the feel of the wet cloth on my skin anymore. I stood and threw the shirt on top of his on the floor.
“I’d like to go home,” I said bluntly. “Your driver left, and I’d like to leave.”
“Secret—”
“I have a rogue vampire to find. Apparently it’s so important that everyone I trusted snuck around be
hind my back and dragged me home against my will. So I should probably get it done.” I was standing in my bra, dripping wet, but I managed to make my point serious enough he didn’t question it.
“I’ll have Dominick bring you a car.” He moved past me to open the door.
“Lucas?”
He hesitated as the door swung open.
“I did miss you. I really did. And I wanted to come home. But you should have let me do it my way. I needed time.”
“I know. But, Secret, we needed you here. We’re your friends.”
“Yeah. With friends like you, who the hell needs enemies?”
I slammed the door behind me.
He finds love on the eve of a war he doesn’t plan on surviving.
Gridlock
© 2011 Nathalie Gray
A Cybershock Story
Dante knows the price of rebellion. The Grid created him in its likeness, turning him into a killing machine—tested, modified and enhanced to be a “better citizen”. Years may have passed since he escaped that freak show, but the scars are still fresh.
Without the mandatory implant, Steel scrapes by, living free of the Grid’s control. When a job goes bad, everyone around her dies, their minds crushed by the notorious Cardinal. But he doesn’t kill her. He takes her to a secret lair filled with fascinating, forbidden pre-Grid knowledge. Who is this man—ruthless murderer or eccentric loner?
Bad-mannered as she is, Dante can’t bring himself to silence the abrasive, cigarette-addicted Steel. Something about her calls to him, though trusting her could be a mistake. Should she betray him, it would wipe out years of patient waiting. Waiting while the Grid hunts him for the priceless information he carries within his living data vault. Waiting while his dish of revenge turns ice cold.
For Dante intends to go back. And this time, he intends to be the only one left standing.
Heroes Without, Monsters Within Page 24