Dead to the Max (Max Starr Series, Book 1, a paranormal romance/mystery)

by Jasmine Haynes

  “Wanted him to be guilty, didn’t you?” Witt was too damn intuitive about Traynor—and her—for her own good.

  She shrugged her shoulders in answer. Witt let her go for now, but she knew he’d come back to the topic of Bud Traynor eventually. Witt never forgot a thing. He reminded her so much of Cameron.

  She went back to the thing that had bothered her yesterday after Witt had rushed to her rescue. “So tell me, if you thought it was Carla, why’d you end up at Hackett’s?”

  Witt shifted on the chair. Uneasy. An atypical reaction for him. “You need something more comfortable here. This thing sucks.”

  “Nowhere to put it.”

  “Then you need a new place.”

  She looked around the room. She certainly couldn’t call it an apartment. “Maybe I do.” She supposed it would have to be somewhere that took pets. She couldn’t leave Buzzard alone to starve all over again. “And I do realize you didn’t answer my question.”

  Witt rubbed a hand across his chin. “Never thought I’d be able to pull the wool over your eyes.”

  “Then answer.”

  He pulled at the neck of his T-shirt as if it suddenly felt too tight. “This is a little complicated.”

  She crossed her legs, leaned back on one elbow. “I’ve finished cleaning so we have all day.”

  He squirmed some more on the chair. Buzzard got so disturbed, he jumped down.

  “Well...I sort of...heard a voice.” The words came out all in a rush at the end.

  “A voice?” Her heart kick-started.

  “Well, not really a voice. Just a feeling.”

  “About me?”

  “That you were in trouble.”

  “But how’d you know where to go?”

  He scratched his temple and avoided her eyes. “Just sorta seemed...to know.” He paused a moment. “There was this scent of peppermints, kind of led the way.”

  Cameron. She knew it, every nerve-ending suddenly on alert. Floating tether-free in the nether regions, Cameron had breathed a message to Witt and left a trail of peppermints.

  He’d broken their invisible umbilical cord, but he hadn’t left her alone.

  So. She was psychic, not crazy after all. What did that make Witt?

  “Gosh, Detective, I think you might be psychic, too.”

  He flushed. His blond eyebrows looked painted on. He cleared his throat. “Normally, that kind of assessment would insult my male sensibilities. At this point, however, it’s preferable to insanity.”

  “Was it a man’s voice?” She didn’t tell him it had been Cameron.

  “Well, ah...”

  “Come on. Admit it, it was a man’s voice.”

  He dodged the bullet with a fluid change of subject. “Promise me one thing, Max. This will be the last time I gotta rescue you.”

  She stood, crossed to his chair, her knees not quite touching his, then braced her hands on her hips. “I rescued myself before you even got there.”

  She realized her mistake the second he put his hands on her flanks and pulled her closer, his fingers brushing the curve of her butt.

  Oh goodness, this was way too nice. She promptly forgot what they’d been talking about.

  He didn’t seem to be having the same trouble. “All right, I’ll rephrase. Tell me this is the last murder you’ll get involved with.”

  She couldn’t think with him touching her this way. She wanted nothing more than to climb on his lap and straddle him. Instead, she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed away. He didn’t lose his grip on her.

  What had she been about to say? Oh yeah. “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether I start having those psychic dreams again.” She hummed the “Twilight Zone” opener. “In fact, I feel one coming on now.”

  If she didn’t get his hands off her right this minute, there’d be a lot more “coming” going on, too.

  She didn’t think either of them was quite ready for that.

  Epilogue

  Sunday nights had always been her favorite at the Round Up. The roar of voices was lower, the music seemed softer, the age of the crowd slightly older, less punky. And the men were delicious.

  But this Sunday night, Max climbed into her bed alone, her body and mind clamoring for attention, her heart begging for the strength of resistance. The resistance had nothing to do with Detective Witt Long, of course, but more to do with erasing the lingering sexual tension Wendy had left behind.

  Yeah right.

  Okay, maybe it was a bit of both.

  He’d left without touching her in any other way, but the feel of his hands on her remained.

  She tumbled into a restless sleep only to wake deep in the night, her skin covered with sweat, her legs wrapped tightly in her sheets, and her heart racing like a locomotive.

  The nightmare still pounded at her. The afterglow of orgasm and the seduction of sexual power. The stench of blood and the taste of the cotton rag shoved in her mouth. The sound of vicious laughter. The warmth of the woman’s urine as she lost control of her bladder.

  The terror when she knew she was going to die.

  The nightmare had the malevolent stamp of Wendy’s father all over it. She felt the seeds of a new obsession growing: the eventual demise of Bud Traynor.

  Max rolled over and hugged Buzzard to her belly.

  Tell me about the dream, baby. Tell me all about it.

  A soft, soothing voice caressed her ear, a whisper of breath stroked her nape, and the comforting scent of peppermint enveloped her.

  “Bastard,” she murmured affectionately, the slightest of smiles curving her lips.

  Oh thank you God, Cameron was back.

  ###

  Thank you for reading. Please consider leaving a review for this book.

  Enjoy the following excerpts and meet the author!

  Evil to the Max, Book 2

  Somebody’s Lover

  Twisted by Love

  About the Author

  Don’t miss the next exciting installment in the Max Starr series!

  Evil to the Max, Book 2

  When Max Starr tells Detective Witt Long she’s had a second vision of murder, Witt knows he’s in for another crazy adventure. The police aren’t going to solve Tiffany Lloyd’s murder without Max divulging what she saw in the vision, but that will only move her straight to the top of the suspect list. For the second time in less than a month. So Max goes on the hunt for the murderer herself, dragging a reluctant Witt along with her. But the deeper she ventures into the dead woman’s life, the more she sees that nothing is as it seems and everyone has something to hide. As she stirs up a hornet’s nest, Max soon begins to fear she might be the next victim.

  Even scarier, Witt makes it clear he wants her. Badly. Just how long can she resist him? When it comes to Witt and her very sexy visions about him, she suspects that resistance is futile.

  Copyright 2010 Jasmine Haynes

  Cover design by Rae Monet Inc

  Excerpt

  The music vibrated in her chest and puckered her nipples against the tight tank sweater she wore. She couldn’t hear herself think, didn’t want to. A gaggle of girls on the hairy edge of the legal drinking age passed in front of her. They pointed, giggled, and whispered. Like teenyboppers.

  For a moment, she envied their innocence.

  When she looked again, her quarry made his move. She turned, fingering the heart-shaped locket around her neck, and watched his approach in the mirror behind the bar.

  “Wanna dance?”

  His voice thrummed through her. Deep. Heavy with sexual innuendo. He smelled of soap, fresh laundry, and aroused male. Dark hair a month past the need for a cut, a week’s growth of beard covering his chin, and eyes the color of hot fudge. Mmmm. She licked her lips. She adored hot fudge sundaes.

  Garth Brooks faded into a Brad Paisley ballad. Slow. Just what she’d been waiting for. She slid off the stool and held her hand out to him. Weaving through the tables with hi
m close behind her, his touch seared her wrist. Promising.

  The floor was packed with dancers doing the Drifter. They joined in, her back to his front, not a breath of space between their bodies. He was already hard. She was already wet. Looking over her shoulder, she slid her hips across his erection. His nostrils flared.

  Undulating dancers brushed against her. Laughter, voices, and pounding music insulated them in the center of the dance floor. She followed his moves, let the rhythm of her breath match the pulse of the music. Fast. Hot. He caressed her without touching. They dipped, surged, and rolled with the beat. Then his hand wandered beneath her short black skirt, across her thigh, then slipped along her center.

  She’d left her panties at home. “Do it now,” she whispered, and placed a hand on his zipper.

  “Jesus,” he murmured on an exhale. “Christ. This isn’t such a good idea.”

  “You have to.” She seduced with a flexing of her butt muscles.

  His finger trailed moisture along her thigh as he withdrew. His arm tightened beneath her breasts. “Not here.”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her from the dance floor. Dragging her down a short hallway ripe with the scent of sweat, he pushed open a door. Men. Lots of them. Bright lights. Stained white urinals. Shocked stares.

  He pulled her into the second stall, closed the door, and backed her up against the cool metal. So good against her hot flesh. He sat on the toilet, shoved his hands roughly beneath her skirt, then rubbed his thumb against her clitoris. Looking down at him, she bit her lip.

  Outside the stall, speech returned. Murmurs. A quick burst of embarrassed laughter. She fed on every sound.

  He raised her skirt and put his tongue to her. She hooked a leg over his shoulder to give him better access, braced herself against the locked door, then moaned out loud.

  Someone cheered.

  He went down on her in earnest.

  She came in a blinding flash. Crying out, she shuddered against his mouth, locking him to her with her hands in his hair.

  A chant rose outside the stall, “Fuck her, fuck her, fuck her.”

  He stood, turned her against the door, spread her legs, and took her from behind. She came again on the second thrust and didn’t stop until he’d unloaded deep inside her.

  The riot started when she opened the stall door.

  * * * * *

  Max Starr stopped in front of his desk and planted her hands on her hips. “I think I know where another dead body is.”

  Detective DeWitt Quentin Long laid his head on his folded arms and cried like a baby.

  The clatter of computer keys stopped abruptly. A phone no one bothered to answer rang shrilly. Four pairs of male eyes bored into her back. Noisy hall traffic faded out.

  “If you have to do that, can we go somewhere private?” she whispered. Max started to sweat in her black slacks and blazer. The embarrassment almost made her forget the horror of her vision.

  Not.

  She’d never forget the image of the couple in that restroom stall, the sound of men ranting outside, and then...the woman’s pain, so thick Max could feel it tighten across her own chest and crush the bones of her face. She took a shuddery breath.

  Witt didn’t look up. His broad shoulders shook.

  The stuffy detective pen smelled like dirty socks, and the overhead lighting turned Witt’s blond hair a ghastly shade of yellow. Three of the suits had risen from their chairs, moving closer to eavesdrop. So close, she smelled their coffee breath blowing down her neck.

  “Hey, this is getting ridiculous,” Max hissed.

  Witt was a big guy, no pushover despite the blue eyes and Dudley Do-Right dimple in his chin. She’d expected more of him. Hell, she could have told him she’d had another psychic vision and that her husband’s ghost had sent her running to him. She spared him, figuring Witt was still getting over the time Cameron had given him a little ghostly nudge.

  “Hey, Long, this the pain-in-the-a...neck you keep talking about?”

  Max turned to glare at Coffee Breath. At five-foot-six and in three-inch spiked heels, she towered over the man by at least an inch. His glasses were smudged, his brown suit rumpled, and the sleeve of his sport coat spotty with...something. She’d bet her next paycheck the eau-de-dirty-socks came from his shoes.

  Witt raised his head. Finally.

  The creep was laughing. So damn hard he cried. Tears streamed down his face.

  She narrowed her eyes. “I’m serious.”

  She hadn’t known he could laugh. But then she’d only known him a little over two weeks. Still, when a man practically saves your life, you figure you know him. Though not in the biblical sense.

  He wiped his eyes, chuckled once more, then got himself under control. “Scranton, you got reports to type or something?” He awarded Coffee Breath a bored flick of his hand and pulled out the chair next to his desk for Max.

  Max continued to stand. “We have to go, Witt.” She lowered her voice. “There really is a body.”

  He raised a blond brow. “Guess you weren’t joking the other day when you said you felt a...dream coming on?”

  She noticed he couldn’t quite call it a vision. “I was, but...maybe I was having a premonition.”

  His tears started afresh. “Certifiable,” he choked out.

  “Me?” she muttered, affronted.

  He shook his head. “Me.” Then he wiped the newest stream from his eyes with the sleeve of his charcoal shirt. “Where?”

  “Where what?”

  “Where’s the body?” he stage-whispered back.

  If you enjoyed the excerpt, here’s where you can buy Evil to the Max!

  Look for all the Max Starr mysteries:

  Dead to the Max, Book 1

  Evil to the Max, Book 2

  Desperate to the Max, Book 3

  Power to the Max, Book 4

  Vengeance to the Max, Book 5

  Max Starr in Print on Demand:

  Dead to the Max POD

  Evil to the Max POD

  Desperate to the Max POD

  Power to the Max POD

  Vengeance to the Max POD

  Jasmine’s heartbreaking series about family tragedy and family healing…

  Somebody’s Lover

  The Jackson Brothers, Book 1

  Copyright 2012 Jasmine Haynes

  Cover design by Rae Monet Inc

  Previously published in 2006

  Three years ago, Lou Jackson, eldest son, died in a work accident. And nothing has been the same since for the Jacksons. They lost their heart and soul the day Lou died, even as matriarch Evelyn tries to keep them together. But things are changing and the family will either find their way back to each other. Or they’ll be torn asunder.

  Widowed three years and the mother of two, Taylor Jackson is starting to feel that life as a woman is passing her by. Always somebody’s daughter-in-law, somebody’s mother, or somebody’s sister-in-law, Taylor longs to be somebody’s secret lover.

  Taylor was his brother’s wife, and now his brother’s widow, untouchable yet irresistible to Jace Jackson. When he discovers her secret fantasies, Jace swears he’ll be the one to make them reality.

  But can his family ever accept another man in Taylor’s life, let alone the black sheep of the family? Or will their grief and pain destroy any chance Jace has of being more to Taylor than her secret lover?

  Excerpt

  The woman looked like Taylor, his brother Lou’s wife. But this woman’s lips were painted a deep shade of red, where Taylor always wore pink. The tight spandex top hugged her full breasts, and her leather skirt revealed endless, captivating legs encased in shimmering nylon. Taylor didn’t own a leather skirt, and to her, spandex was for jogging. Fuck-me high heels rested on the bottom rail of the bar stool. Taylor abhorred high heels.

  The look-alike flipped her auburn hair over her shoulders, the locks sparkling with golden highlights in the flash of the strobe on the dance floor.

  Jace Jackson coole
d himself off with a slug of beer, his one and only bottle for the night.

  Then she laughed. He shouldn’t have been able to hear it over the voices, the semi-drunken laughter, or the beat of another country western ballad, but he felt it in his gut, the way he always felt Taylor’s laugh, hard as he tried to ignore it.

  Holy hell.

  The woman didn’t just look Taylor. It was Taylor.

  Jace slammed his beer down on the table, ignored his drinking buddies’ raised eyebrows, and rose to his feet when the guy Taylor was flirting with put his hand on her knee.

  ***

  Taylor Jackson knew she’d made a huge mistake the minute the man put his hand on her knee. She couldn’t remember his name, Buddy or Bubba or Bucky or something, although Bubba seemed to suit him best

  It didn’t seem right to be planning to seduce a man whose name she couldn’t remember. Not that Bubba needed much in the way of a come-on from her.

  She hadn’t dated since Lou died. In fact, she hadn’t been out on a date since she met Lou back in college. Not that she’d call what she was doing now dating.

  Planning a seduction had been the easy part. Dressing for it even easier. The hour between dropping off the kids at her mother-in-law’s house and finishing her final primp in her bathroom mirror had been like playing dress-up with her mom’s makeup when she was a little girl. Of course, when her mother caught her, she’d blistered her butt. Taylor had started feeling jumpy on the drive over, out of Willoughby to the outskirts of Bentonville, the next town over, and home of Saddle-n-Spurs, a rowdy country western joint.

  She’d chosen the bar because she wouldn’t be recognized. No one she knew would come to a place like this. It wasn’t a PTA/soccer-mom kind of place.

  Jumpy or not, Taylor had climbed out of her minivan and headed inside. Her head had begun to pound with the din before she’d even taken a seat at the bar. She’d ordered wine to calm her full-fledged nerves and probably would have bolted before the bartender poured it if Bubba hadn’t taken the stool beside her and paid for her drink.