Spoonful of Christmas

by Darlene Panzera

  He pulled away at last and pressed parted lips to her forehead.

  An Excerpt from

  CHASING MORGAN

  Book Four: The Hunted Series

  by Jennifer Ryan

  Morgan Standish can see things other ­people can’t. She can see the past and future. These hidden gifts have prevented her from getting close to anyone—­except FBI agent Tyler Reed. Morgan is connected to him in a way even she can’t explain. She’s solved several cases for him in the past, but will her gifts be enough to bring down a serial killer whose ultimate goal is to kill her? Find out in Book Four of The Hunted Series.

  Morgan’s fingers flew across the laptop keyboard propped on her knees. She took a deep breath, cleared her mind, and looked out past her pink-­painted toes resting on the railing and across her yard to the densely wooded area at the edge of her property. Her mind’s eye found her guest winding his way through the trees. She still had time before Jack stepped out of the woods separating her land from his. She couldn’t wait to meet him.

  Images, knowings, they just came to her. She’d accepted that part of herself a long time ago. As she got older, she’d learned to use her gift to seek out answers.

  She finished her buy-­and-­sell orders and switched from her day trading page to check her psychic website and read the questions submitted by customers. She answered several quickly, letting the others settle in her mind until the answers came to her.

  One stood out. The innocuous question about getting a job held an eerie vibe.

  The familiar strange pulsation came over her. The world disappeared, as though a door had slammed on reality. The images came to her like hammer blows, one right after the other, and she took the onslaught, knowing something important needed to be seen and understood.

  An older woman lying in a bed, hooked up to a machine feeding her medication. Frail and ill, she had translucent skin and dark circles marring her tortured eyes. Her pain washed over Morgan like a tsunami.

  The woman yelled at someone, her face contorted into something mean and hateful. An unhappy woman—­one who’d spent her whole life blaming others and trying to make them as miserable as she was.

  A pristine white pillow floating down, inciting panic, amplified to terror when it covered the woman’s face, her frail body swallowed by the sheets.

  Morgan had an overwhelming feeling of suffocation.

  The woman tried desperately to suck in a breath, but couldn’t. Unable to move her lethargic limbs, she lay petrified and helpless under his unyielding hands. Lights flashed on her closed eyelids.

  Death came calling.

  A man stood next to the bed, holding the pillow like a shield. His mouth opened on a contorted, evil, hysterical laugh that rang in her ears and made her skin crawl. She squeezed her eyes closed to blot out his malevolent image and thoughts.

  Murderer!

  The word rang in her head as the terrifying emotions overtook her.

  Morgan threw up a wall in her mind, blocking the cascade of disturbing pictures and feelings. She took several deep breaths and concentrated on the white roses growing in profusion just below the porch railing. Their sweet fragrance filled the air. With every breath, she centered herself and found her inner calm, pushing out the anger and rage left over from the vision. Her body felt like a lead weight, lightening as her energy came back. The drowsiness faded with each new breath. She’d be fine in a few minutes.

  The man on horseback emerged from the trees, coming toward her home. Her guest had arrived.

  Focused on the computer screen, she slowly and meticulously typed her answer to the man who had asked about a job and inadvertently opened himself up to telling her who he really was at heart.

  She replied simply:

  You’ll get the job, but you can’t hide from what you did.

  You need help. Turn yourself in to the police.

  An Excerpt from

  THROWING HEAT

  A Diamonds and Dugouts Novel

  by Jennifer Seasons

  Nightclub manager Leslie Cutter has never been one to back down from a bet. So when Peter Kowalskin, pitcher for the Denver Rush baseball team, bets her that she can’t keep her hands off of him, she’s not about to let the arrogant, gorgeous playboy win. But as things heat up, this combustible pair will have to decide just how much they’re willing to wager on one another . . . and on a future that just might last forever.

  “Is there something you want?” he demanded with a raised eyebrow, amused at being able to throw her words right back at her.

  “You wish,” Leslie retorted and tossed him a dismissive glance. Only he caught the gleam of interest in her eyes and knew her for the liar that she was.

  Peter took a step toward her, closing the gap by a good foot until only an arm’s reach separated them. He leaned forward and caged her in by placing a hand on each armrest of her chair. Her eyes widened the tiniest bit, but she held her ground.

  “I wish many, many things.”

  “Really?” she questioned and shifted slightly away from him in her chair. “Such as what?”

  Peter couldn’t help noticing that her breathing had gone shallow. How about that? “I wish to win the World Series this season.” It would be a hell of a way to go out.

  Her gaze landed on his mouth and flicked away. “Boring.”

  Humor sparked inside him at that, and he chuckled. “You want exciting?”

  She shrugged. “Why not? Amuse me.”

  That worked for him. Hell yeah. If she didn’t watch herself, he was going to excite the pants right off of her.

  Just excitement, arousal, and sexual pleasure. That was what he was looking for this time around. And it was going to be fun leading her up to it.

  But if he wanted her there, then he had to start.

  Pushing until he’d tipped her chair back and only the balls of her feet were on the desk, her painted toes curling for a grip, Peter lowered his head until his mouth was against her ear. She smelled like coconut again, and his gut went tight.

  “I wish I had you bent over this desk right here with your hot bare ass in the air.”

  She made a small sound in her throat and replied, “Less boring.”

  Peter grinned. Christ, the woman was tough. “Do you remember what I did to you that night in Miami? The thing that made you come hard, twice—­one on top of the other?” He sure as hell did. It had involved his tongue, his fingers, and Leslie on all fours with her face buried in a pillow, moaning his name like she was begging for deliverance.

  She tried to cover it, but he heard her quick intake of breath. “It wasn’t that memorable.”

  Bullshit.

  He slid a hand from the armrest and squeezed the top of her right leg, his thumb rubbing lazily back and forth on the skin of her inner thigh. Her muscles tensed, but she didn’t pull away.

  “Need a reminder?”

  An Excerpt from

  PRIVATE RESEARCH

  An Erotic Novella

  by Sabrina Darby

  The last person Mina Cavallari expects to encounter in the depths of the National Archives while doing research on a thesis is Sebastian Graham, an outrageously sexy financial whiz. Sebastian is conducting a little research of his own into the history of what he thinks is just another London underworld myth, the fabled Harridan House. When he discovers that the private sex club still exists, he convinces Mina to join him on an odyssey into the intricacies of desire, pleasure, and, most surprisingly of all, love.

  It was the most innocuous of sentences: “A cappuccino, please.” Three words—­without a verb to ground them, even. Yet, at the sound, my hand stilled mid-­motion, my own paper coffee cup paused halfway between table and mouth. I looked over to the counter of the cafe. It was mid-­afternoon, quieter than it had been when I’d come in earlier for a quick lunch, and only three ­people were in line behind the tall, slim-­hipped, blond-­haired man whose curve of shoulder and loose-­limbed stance struck a chord in me as clearly as his vo
ice.

  Of course it couldn’t be. In two years, surely, I had forgotten the exact tenor of his voice, was now confusing some other deep, posh English accent with his. Yet I watched the man, waited for him to turn around, as if there were any significant chance that in a city of eight million ­people, during the middle of the business day, I’d run into the one English acquaintance I had. At the National Archives, no less.

  At the first glimpse of his profile, I sucked in my breath sharply, nearly dropping my coffee. Then he turned fully, looking around, likely for the counter with napkins and sugar. I watched his gaze pass over me and then snap back in recognition. I was both pleased and terrified. I’d come to London to put the past behind me, not to face down my demons. I’d been doing rather well these last months, but maybe this was part of some cosmic plan. As my time in England wound down, in order to move forward with my life, I had to come face to face with Sebastian Graham again.

  “Mina!” He had an impressive way of making his voice heard across a room without shouting, and as he walked toward me, I put my cup down and stood, all too aware that while he looked like a fashionable professional about town, I still looked like a grad student––no makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing jeans, sneakers, and a sweater.

  “This is a pleasant surprise. Research for your dissertation? Anne Gracechurch, right?”

  I nodded, bemused that he remembered a detail from what had surely been a throwaway conversation two years earlier. But of course I really shouldn’t have been. Seb was brilliant, and brilliance wasn’t the sort of thing that just faded away.

  Neither, apparently, was his ability to make my pulse beat a bit faster or to tie up my tongue for a few seconds before I found my stride. He wasn’t traditionally handsome, at least not in an American way. Too lean, too angular, hair receding a bit at the temples, and I was fairly certain he was now just shy of thirty. But I’d found him attractive from the first moment I’d met him.

  I still did.

  “That’s right. What are you doing here? I mean, at the Archives.”

  “Ah.” He shifted and smiled at me, and there was something about that smile that felt wicked and secretive. “A small genealogical project. Mind if I join you?”

  I shook my head and sat back down. He pulled out his chair and sat, too, folding his long legs one over the other. Why was that sexy to me?

  I focused on his face. He was pale. Much paler than he’d been in New Jersey, like he now spent most of his time indoors. Which should have been a turn-­off. Yet, despite everything, I sat there imagining him in the kitchen of my apartment wearing nothing but boxer shorts. Apparently my memory was as good as his.

  And I still remembered the crushing humiliation and disappointment of that last time we’d talked.

  Be Impulsive!

  Look for Other

  Avon Impulse Authors

  www.AvonImpulse.com

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Excerpt from The Cupcake Diaries: Sweet On You copyright © 2013 by Darlene Panzera.

  Excerpt from The Cupcake Diaries: Recipe for Love copyright © 2013 by Darlene Panzera.

  Excerpt from The Cupcake Diaries: Taste of Romance copyright © 2013 by Darlene Panzera.

  Excerpt from Rescued by a Stranger copyright © 2013 by Lizbeth Selvig.

  Excerpt from Chasing Morgan copyright © 2013 by Jennifer Ryan.

  Excerpt from Throwing Heat copyright © 2013 by Candice Wakoff.

  Excerpt from Private Research copyright © 2013 by Sabrina Darby.

  THE CUPCAKE DIARIES: SPOONFUL OF CHRISTMAS. Copyright © 2013 by Darlene Panzera. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062305121

  Print Edition ISBN: 9780062305145

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