by Minard, Tori
It didn’t work very well. I wanted to tell the pilot to turn the chopper around. I wanted to drag Nova to L.A. with me, whether she wanted to go or not.
I love you, Gage.
If she loved me, she’d want to come with me. Right? But even if that were true, it would put her in a terrible position. I wasn’t going to do that to her. I cared too deeply for her.
Did I love her? I wasn’t sure what love was supposed to feel like. I’d never told a woman I loved her, except for my mom of course. And that hadn’t even happened for years. I’d certainly never said it to a lover.
I’d never given myself a chance to get close enough to a woman to imagine myself in love. So I had no basis for comparison. I was flying blind here.
She was so angry with me for not telling her everything. Should I have confided in her? Was that the loving thing to do? I really wasn’t sure. I just wanted to protect her, keep him from developing an interest in her.
Cindy and I settled into a prickly silence as the chopper swooped over mountainsides covered in evergreen trees so dark they almost looked black. Less than an hour later, we’d landed in Eugene and boarded the private jet awaiting us. We had almost all the comforts of home, except for Nova.
I blinked and rubbed my forehead at that thought. Was Nova home for me now?
“Would you like a drink?” Cindy said, making right for the bar. She grabbed a bottle of Scotch and held it up for me.
“No, thank you.” I’d promised Nova I would quit and I meant it. Maybe we couldn’t be together, but that didn’t mean I would break my word.
“Really? You sure? You always like a drink when you fly,” she said, pouring one for herself.
“I’m sure.”
“I’ll bet you’re glad to get out of that redneck pit,” Cindy said as she sat down.
“It wasn’t a pit,” I said.
“Looked like one to me. I don’t think that store had been updated since the sixties.”
“They have an espresso machine,” I said dryly. “It’s been updated.”
She laughed. “That’s a good one.”
“I thought Marcia made a good latte. Not that I normally drink that girly shit.”
“I’m surprised she even knew what a latte is,” she said in a catty tone. “And that Nova. I’m glad you’re just friends, Gage. She wouldn’t make a good partner for you.”
I raised my eyebrows, struggling to control a surge of irritation. “Who’s talking about a partner?”
“You just seemed awfully close to her.” She pursed her lips as she applied a fresh layer of gloss.
Was she going to harp on this all the way back to Cali? “You get close when someone saves your life. That’s all it is.”
Liar.
None of this was any of Cindy’s business. She was my assistant, not my mom or my sister and not my girlfriend. I couldn’t even figure out why she cared, and I wasn’t going to discuss it with her.
I shifted my position and the drawing in my shirt crackled. My life before Nova had been nothing but business and empty partying. There had been no home, no real family. Mom didn’t count, as far as I was concerned. She was the one who’d made The Deal and she’d long since lost any sense of home for me. I’d been alone.
Then I’d fallen in that river. Nova hadn’t just pulled me out of some cold water and warmed me up, she’d pulled me out of a long, downward spiral of stupid behavior. She’d made me see there were better people in the world than the ones I normally called friends, and I wanted more of that.
I wanted more of her.
Before I could invite her back into my life, though, I had to be worthy of her. I had to make my life a safe place for her. I had to conquer the dark shit that had hung over me for so long I couldn’t remember what it was like to function without it.
When I’d found my way out of The Deal, then I could maybe have Nova back. If she’d take me.
The End
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About the author
Tori Minard has published fourteen romance and erotic romance novels and three novellas, in addition to a handful of short stories, both under her own name and as Tessa Tremaine. Her series include The Amaki, Legends Of A Dark Empire, Avery’s Crossing, Fortunata: The Jhidris Conspiracy, and Tales Of The Demon Kin.
Tori wrote her first story in elementary school, with a lamentable lack of punctuation. In high school, she spent more time writing fiction than doing homework. Her early stories featured demonic dogs, dolls possessed by evil spirits—no, she’d never heard of Chucky—and politically incorrect post-apocalyptic romance.
She discovered science fiction in the sixth grade, with her dad’s recommendation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s Core, the first book in his Pellucidar series. Prior to that, her reading had included ghost stories, animal stories and adventure tales. Around the same time, she was discovering the joys of erotica by sneaking her mom’s books and reading all the naughty bits. Her mom claims to have skipped those parts.
After a long detour for such grown-up pursuits as working boring full-time jobs (State of Alaska, U.S. Postal Service), getting married and having a child, she returned to her first love—storytelling. She was born and raised in Alaska, and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, son, and micro-dog
Discover other titles by Tori Minard
Tales Of The Demon Kin:
Novellas:
Malefica
Fury Enchained
The Devil You Know
Taken By Storm
Novels:
Lucifer's Castle
Mastered By Love
Taken By Desire
Short Stories:
Stainless Steel Vampire, story number one in the Skye Donovan series
Love Potion Number Ninety, Skye Donovan story number two
If I Should Die; a Legends Of The Dark Empire story
Price of a Rose, a sexy fairy tale (novelette)
Lemon Drop, a sweet erotic toy possessed by a sex spirit
Amaki Novels:
The Heart Moon
Dragon Moon
Blood Moon
Avery’s Crossing Novels:
Rush
Bad Company
Bedeviled (coming soon)
Fortunata Novels:
Dirty Magic
Legends Of A Dark Empire Novels:
Temple Of The Heart
Darkness Awakened
Darkness Forbidden
Darkness Beloved
Darkness Embraced
Connect with Tori online
To learn more about Tori, visit her blog at http://www.toriminard.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/ToriMinard
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/toriminard.paranormalromance
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/toriminard/
Read on for an excerpt from Bedeviled, Gage and Nova Book 2
Chapter 1
Nova:
There's something really final about seeing a person you love leave you via helicopter. Why is that? I honestly don't know. Maybe it's because it seems more epic, somehow, to lift off directly into the air instead of just getting into a car and driving.
This realization came to me as I watched the man I loved do that very thing. He ran under the spinning blades of the chopper, brown hair nearly flattened by the wind the aircraft created, climbed inside, shut the door. I squinted against the glare of bright winter sun on white snow, but I couldn't see him anymore. There was a shadow on the window and everything inside was hidden.
Helicopters are loud. They stir up loose snow and throw it in your face and they make the winter's bitter cold unbearable.
I'd come up t
o the little Cascade mountain village of Subalpine to get away from my cheating ex-boyfriend and faithless roommate. I'd come for quietude and privacy and time to think. But instead, I'd found a man floating in the icy river that flowed near the cabin where I was living.
That man had turned out to be a famous actor, Gage Dalton. I saved his life, but not because he was famous. I hadn't even recognized him. I'd saved him because someone had to do it. And then, snowed in together for over a week, we'd quickly become intimate.
Should I have run after Gage's helicopter before it could take off? Should I have begged him to stay?
Pride can be a foolish thing. I didn't run after him and I didn't beg. I stood in the snow and watched him get into that chopper and shut the door against me. As the chopper lifted into the air, I turned my back and walked away.
If he'd wanted me, he would have stayed. That was what I told myself as the cold winter air battered me, blown by the chopper's blades. He would have found a way around the pressures in his life, if he'd really wanted to. Instead, he left me.
Falling in love with a big-time actor is not smart. It's not something I would have advised myself to do. In fact, in the eight days we'd spent together, snowed in and trapped in that mountain cabin, I'd told myself over and over to keep myself emotionally distant from him. It hadn't worked.
He thought his life was too dangerous for me and he refused to explain why.
Marcia and her daughter Misty watched me with sympathy I didn't want as I climbed the short flight of stairs to the front porch of their old-fashioned General Store. I gave them a stiff smile and went inside. Marcia's husband, Joe, would be back soon and could drive me back to my cabin. Until then, I had to find some way to pass the time.
I could only hope Marcia and her daughter wouldn't pester me with too many questions.
***
Gage:
It was a mindfuck coming back to L.A. from Nova's little Oregon village. Nothing looked the same. I hadn't been gone very long at all, yet everything had changed, especially inside of me. Somehow, being nearly drowned, then nearly dying of hypothermia, and afterward suffering with a brutal case of stomach flu all while being trapped in a cabin with a stranger had transformed me.
I wasn't sure exactly what I'd transformed into; I only knew I'd changed.
SoCal was too bright, too warm, too crowded, too full of fucking exhaust fumes and strip malls and people who knew who I was. My driver picked me up at the airport in a car with heavily tinted windows. Hiding from the public is part of the price you pay for fame.
"Welcome home, Mr. Dalton," the driver said.
"Thanks." I stared out the window as he pulled away from the curb.
Welcoming me was part of his job. He didn't mean it. He didn't not mean it, either. It was just something he said, the way the hostess in a restaurant wishes you a nice day when you leave.
Still, I felt the heavy irony even if he didn't. The eight days I'd spent snowed in with Nova Pennyman had changed me so much that L.A. didn't feel like home anymore. A suspicion kept sneaking into my head that my home was now with her, wherever she happened to be.
Unfortunately for both of us, I was not worthy of a relationship with her. Not with anyone, really, but especially not with a girl like Nova Pennyman. She was far better than I would ever deserve.
When I got to my condo, I fell on my bed and stared at the ceiling.
The place felt empty. Dead. It was the best I could afford, and that was a lot of luxury condo, but my very breath seemed to echo off the hand-applied Venetian plaster I'd spent a goddamn fortune on. I didn't give a fuck about Venetian plaster. That was the choice of the designer I'd hired to decorate the place, because you know an A-list star needs an A-list home.
This wasn't a real home; it was a showcase.
No smell of woodsmoke. No battered old comfortable furniture. No soft sounds of Nova moving around, working in the kitchen or sitting with her sketchbook or even hunched in the bathroom puking. Fuck. I missed her. I even missed the sound of her being sick.
That was fucked up.
How could I miss someone so much when I barely knew her? We'd only been together a few days. Just a little over a week. Yet I felt connected to her in a way I'd never felt with anyone else.
If it were safe, I'd get on the next plane and go back to her. But I couldn't.
Leaving her was my way of being noble. Because I had a weight on my shoulders that I couldn't seem to shift, and I didn't want it to crush her. She meant too much to me.
My mom made a deal with the devil when I was ten — my soul in return for fame and fortune as an actor. Sounds crazy, I know. But it's true. I was there and saw the whole thing.
That fucking Deal had both shaped and ruined my whole life. I had indeed become a highly successful actor at a ridiculously young age, and my career was still shooting upward. I had an obscene amount of money. I'd won an Academy Award for playing the role of a heroin-addicted rock star who self-destructs at the height of his fame and success.
All good things, right? Except I hadn't earned them. I'd been given my success, with my soul in hock. Supposedly, he was going to come for me at the height of my fame. I would die then, kind of like the heroin addict I'd played.
I didn't want to die. But I was more concerned about the people around me, people like Nova. Because my mom claimed that the devil had informed her he'd come after people close to me, if for some reason he couldn't get me after all.
Despite my best efforts, I'd fallen hard for Nova Pennyman. I couldn't stand it if something terrible happened to her and I'd do anything to protect her from my problems. Even if it made me miserable to do it.
Now that I was back in L.A., I was thinking I shouldn't have left her. I should have stayed with her and fought. I could've called in my security team to deal with the media bullshit. I'd run because...well, because it was a habit and because I didn't want Nova to get hurt because of The Deal.
That shit was going to stop. I would deal with The Deal, as soon as humanly possible. Like right now.
My life had been mostly going with the flow, letting my fate be determined first by my mother --when I was still just a kid -- and then by that infernal situation she'd created. I'd let it, and the devil, own me. In fifteen years, I'd made no real attempts to fight, assuming it would be impossible.
No more.
I owed it to Nova to figure this shit out, make it right.
But how do you fight the devil?
Rolling off the bed, I padded over to my desk and my laptop. Powered up the thing. There had to be some kind of information on the Internet, something about supernatural agreements or deals. Right? Everything else was on the Web, so why not deals with the devil?
While I waited for the computer to boot up, I took out the drawing Nova had given me just before I'd left her and set it next to me on the desk top. She'd done it in pencil, making me sit still for a long time while I stared out the window at the falling snow. At the time, I'd thought it was the most boring thing I'd ever done, and now I was glad I'd put up with it.
I had this drawing. The only piece of Nova I'd thought to take with me. We had no photos, no record of any kind of our time together. I'd never been a sentimental guy, but that fucking hurt. I wanted a picture of her to help me remember her.
Hours later I was hungry and tired of scrolling through page after page about Faust and blues guitarists who'd supposedly met the devil at some lonely crossroads. I wasn't learning anything new here.
See, that's long-standing folk tradition -- if you want to learn some particular skill, especially in music, you go to the crossroads to call up Old Nick and strike a deal. My mom didn't go for that traditional stuff, though. She was all about convenience. If you're gonna call up the devil, just go ahead and invite him into your living room. I mean, why go out when you can get delivery?
The thing that repeatedly struck me as I read was that my mom had made the deal but she'd used my soul as the bargaining chip. I didn't t
hink she had the authority to do that. It would be like trying to use someone else's house as collateral when taking out a loan. But if that was true, why had the devil accepted the deal? You'd think Old Nick would have a pretty good grasp of these matters.
Clearly, this problem was going to take more research than I could do over the Interwebz.