Final Surrender (30 page)

Epilogue

The night had been spent with Angela in horrible pain, but for once it was for a joyous reason. In just a few more minutes, they were going to get to meet baby Wyatt Campbell Waters for the first time.

She had gone into labor the day before, a couple weeks before her due date, and now they were all suited up in the delivery room. Angela had gotten her epidural around an hour before, so she was nervous but comfortable.

“Are you ready, Mrs. Waters?” one of the nurses asked her, after the OB made sure everything was set for the delivery.

Angela smiled at her new name. She and Clay had gotten married as soon as she left the hospital, standing on their thinking spot. It had been four months and she still smiled every single time someone called her Mrs. Waters.

“I’ve never been so ready for anything in my life.”

Clay took her hand and kissed her fingers, and moments later she was pushing.

The proud daddy filmed every moment and Angela made funny faces at him in between contractions.

“Ready, Daddy?” she asked Clay as she pulled her legs back again in anticipation of the coming push.

“Ready, Ang,” he declared with a beautiful grin she thought she’d never see again.

In the past months they had become a team. An equal partnership made with love and trust. They still argued, he was overprotective, but they made it work.

“Come on, Ang, you can do it,” Clay cheered. “One more and he’ll be here.”

With a rush of pressure, the doctor lifted baby Wyatt up to the world and he let out the sweetest cry.

Angela and Clay cried along with him. “He’s perfect,” they exclaimed together and then laughed with delight.

A few minutes later, after he was cleaned up and wrapped in a receiving blanket with a little hat on his head, a nurse laid him in Angela’s arms.

They both looked down at him in awe.

Clay turned the video camera around to see Angela and Wyatt and said, “That’s your mama, Wyatt, and you are so lucky to have her.”

Angela grinned and wiped tears from her face. “And that goofball over there is your dad!”

She touched his nose and his little mouth and moved his hat up so she could see his eyes better as he opened and closed them.

Clay watched her pause and then got closer when she said, “Clay, look at his forehead.”

One of the nurses walked up. You could see a faint birthmark on his soft forehead.

The nurse smiled and said, “They say that birthmark’s called an angel’s kiss. That a baby born with it has been kissed by an angel and will be protected for the rest of their life.”

“Melena,” whispered Angela. “Oh, Clay…”

He reached down and brushed the back of their son’s hand, his little fist opening to grasp his Daddy’s finger so tight.

“We’ll never be the same, will we?”

“Not if we’re lucky,” Angela admitted on a sigh as she stared at her family. “Not if we’re lucky.”

About the Author

Jennifer Kacey is an award-winning writer, mother, and business owner living with her family in Texas. She sings in the shower, plays piano in her dreams, and has to have a different color of nail polish every week. The best advice she’s ever been given? Find the real you and never settle for anything less.

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A man with a past is her only hope for the future.

Non-Stop Till Tokyo

© 2014 KJ Charles

Kerry Ekdahl’s mixed heritage and linguistics skills could have made her a corporate star. Instead, she’s a hostess in a high-end Tokyo bar, catering to businessmen who want conversation, translation and flirtation. Easy money, no stress. Life is good—until she’s framed for the murder of a yakuza boss.

Trapped in rural Japan with the gangsters closing in, Kerry doesn’t stand a chance. Then help arrives in the menacing form of Chanko, a Samoan-American ex-sumo wrestler with a bad attitude, a lot of secrets, and a mission she doesn’t understand.

Kerry doesn’t get involved with dangerous men. Then again, she’s never had one on her side before. And the big, taciturn fighter seems determined to save her life, even if they rub each other the wrong way.

Then her friends are threatened, and Kerry has no choice but to return to Tokyo and face the yakuza. Where she learns, too late, that the muscle man who’s got her back could be poised to stab it.

Warning: Contains graphic violence, swearing, and implied sexual abuse.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Non-Stop Till Tokyo:

Jun threw me out of the car at Ameyokochō.

The traffic had been so dreadful on the way to the station, and I had been so trapped in my own frantically circling thoughts, that he had apologised three times before I realised what he was apologising for.

“You want me to get out?” I stared at him. He stared through the windshield. “But we’re not at the station.”

“I’m sorry.” He used a polite form,
shitsurei shimasu
—literally “I am being rude”. He wasn’t being rude. He was abandoning me to what could be my death.

“Jun-san, you can’t. I haven’t changed.”

“Change in the station. Get out now, please. I’m very sorry.”

“But Mama-san said—”

He leaned over me and popped the door handle. There were horns blaring all around us as we blocked the congested street.

“Go through Ameyokochō, into the station. Change there. Leave your hair on till you get there,” he added as I grabbed at the telltale blonde locks around my face. “Hurry. Good luck.”

He unclicked my seatbelt and pushed at my arm. I wanted to cry. I wanted to tell him what a chickenshit, gutless bastard he was. “Thanks for the lift,” I hissed, swinging my legs out and grabbing the big bag and my handbag from the back seat.

“Dumb tart,” he said levelly, and slammed the door behind me.

“
Kuso shite shine!
” I screamed at the car as it drove off.
Go shit and die!
A couple of shopkeepers gave me looks of disdain at my filthy language, mixed with unconcealed assessment. My manners and my appearance marked me out as deserving both.

I was at the back of Ameyokochō, one of the most crowded marketplaces in Tokyo, full of tiny alleys and stalls. I hated Jun for leaving me, but I couldn’t blame him. If they were coming for me, they would have taken him too. At least there was no way anyone could find me in the press of people here.

The people. Ameyokochō was one solid block of early-rising or non-sleeping humanity, young men setting up stalls and some of Japan’s endless supply of old people haggling for the early bargains. A million elderly women were arguing over the price of piles of silver mackerel and orange roe; bright red-and-white octopus chunks; salmon eyes the size of golf balls, four to a box; squid fresh, floppy and purple, or dried and looking like parchment with tentacles; great red Hokkaido spider crabs; piles of dried goods and oversized fruit and clothes of all kinds, leather and denim and plastic, and phone cases and knock-off watches; and the clangs and clatter of a pachinko parlour somewhere close, and everybody shrieking for attention or space, and…

And I had twenty-six minutes to get through it and catch the train that would save my life. If they weren’t at the station already.

I pushed and shoved, the panic starting to choke me. Tokyo is too crowded for people to worry much about shoving; people who are scrupulously polite about personal space at home can ignore full-length body contact with six strangers on the subway. I started off begging people to excuse me—
sumimasen
,
sumimasen
,
shitsurei shimasu
—but after a couple of minutes, stuck behind a man carrying a half tuna the size of a calf, the panic was taking over. If I missed the train they would find me. I could disappear if I got the train, but in Tokyo I was a danger to everyone around me.

“
Yokero!
” I shouted.
Get out of the way!

The colloquial rough speech, coming from a non-Japanese, startled a few people into moving. I pushed past, shoved my way around a gaggle of old ladies, found my path blocked between a barrow laden with cheap green alien toys and a gang of men scooping ramen noodles into their mouths.

“Hey, sexy girl. Come and say hello.”

“Please, excuse me,” I panted, trying to wriggle through. One of them grasped my arm. “Get off. Let me past.”

“That’s not friendly.” He scowled, red-faced, and I realised he was drunk. “
Shomben-geisha
should be friendly.”

That meant “piss geisha”. He was calling me a whore with big ideas of herself, and he was big, and he wasn’t letting go.

I took a deep breath and shrieked in his face, “
Shita ni! Shita ni!
”

That was a trick I’d picked up from a guy named Taka.
Shita ni
is what the retainers of great lords would shout to peasants on the road—
Bow down!
Everyone in Japan has seen enough samurai movies to know the phrase, and the effect is about the same as bellowing, “All rise for Her Majesty!” on a British train. It startles people off balance, and the split second of slack-jawed astonishment was all I needed to wrench my arm free and shove my way past. I ran as best I could, elbows out for balance, cursing my ludicrous five-inch heels and clutching my heavy bag.

My hair and dress were far too obvious; if they had men here, they’d see me go in the front. Luckily, like many Tokyo stations, Ueno doubles as a huge shopping mall. I went in through the trendiest, sluttiest boutique I could see instead, one with stairs down to a lower storey that opened into the station. I looked around wildly as I emerged into the concourse—no use, it was crammed with people, with suits, with wild crests of hair and dye jobs in every colour—said a prayer to anyone who might be listening, and darted for the nearest ladies toilet.

The only obstacles I encountered were a group of schoolgirls, off on a trip in their old-fashioned navy uniforms and round sailor hats, huddled round a vending machine in the pigeon-toed stance of prepubescent Japanese girls, who stared at my lurid outfit with awe and envy; and a pair of tiny
obāsan
, the old ladies who everyone calls “aunties”. They muttered audibly to one another as I brushed past them, clearly assuming I couldn’t understand.

I tottered into a cubicle, locked it and leaned against the door, feeling the sweat sliding down my backbone under the clingy fabric of my dress. Or, rather, Kelly’s dress. That bitch.

No time for that. No time to catch my breath, no time to let my heart rate slow. I had seventeen minutes left—it had taken nine minutes to get through Ameyokochō and it had felt like as many hours. They would be circling out there. Looking for me.

Looking for the gaijin slut in the bright pink dress.

I pulled off the shoulder-length blonde wig and ran my fingers through my own black crop, fluffing it out. It was unwashed and wet with sweat, but it would do. I peeled Kelly’s fuchsia Lycra off my body and dropped it on the floor with a vindictive stamp. That
bitch
.

Next, the bag, a big cotton sack. I pulled open the drawstring neck and tugged out my favourite leather bag, with a vaguely briefcase look to it. I kicked the sack behind the toilet and popped the clasps on the bag, praying Noriko had packed everything I needed. Fifteen and a half minutes left.

Oh, thank you, Nori-chan: on the top of the bag were makeup remover wipes. I had to use about six to get the night’s caked war paint off my face, scrubbing as hard as I dared without making my skin red. I needed to wash but I couldn’t risk going to the sinks, in case anyone saw me partway through my transformation. Instead I let the chemical wipes do their magic on the bright pink lipstick, the thick mascara, the pale foundation, the blue eye shadow, dropping the multicoloured stained tissues into the toilet bowl one by one, until finally my compact mirror revealed a clean, unobtrusive, sufficiently Asian face.

Except for the eyes.

My eyebrows were too pale; only last week I’d had them bleached and dyed a dark blonde to go with the rest of the gaijin look. A quick swipe of black mascara dealt with that, although it also made them look heavy and hairy. No matter. They were looking for a hostess, not an office lady who didn’t pluck.

There was nothing to be done about my eyes themselves except to wear dark glasses; the Japanese don’t go in for sunglasses much, and it was more likely to attract a second glance than I wanted, but it was that or stare up with my bright baby blues at the face of somebody who would kill me if he identified me.

Oh God, oh God, they were going to kill me. How the hell had this happened?

Nine minutes and counting.

Her past is back to haunt her—and this time, it’s got a gun.

Forsaken

© 2014 Sarah Ballance

When Gage Lawton finds his brother shot to death on his back porch, every shred of evidence points to one person: Gage’s ex-lover, Riley Beckett. The only gun in town that fires a bullet of that caliber belongs to her.

Certain the shooting is payback for his part in the loss of her parents, he abandons his promise to stay out of her life and confronts her, his rage backed up with a revolver. Yet when she steps through the door, all thoughts of revenge burn to ashes.

A year after Riley unwillingly walked away from Gage, she enters her home to find him sitting in the dark, gun pointed at her head. One look into those achingly familiar blue eyes reminds her how wrong she was to let him go. But now there’s more standing between them than their heated past.

A twist of fate—and a hail of sniper bullets—puts them in the cross hairs of a killer, leaving Riley with just two slim options: trust her greatest betrayer, or face a murderer alone.

Warning: Prepare to get caught in a crossfire of profanity, danger, and desire. Intense violence may trigger the desire to wear body armor…and take it off. Very, very slowly.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Forsaken:

Something was wrong. Was the dark playing tricks on her? Riley Beckett froze, arm outstretched, hand poised to toss her keys on the table just inside her front door. But she didn’t let go. Instead of dropping them in their usual spot, she feathered pieces of the makeshift weapon between her knuckles. Heart pounding, she pressed the keys in a silent, white-knuckle grip and prayed her concerns were her imagination, that the paranoia of coming home alone to a dark house was getting the better of her.

One, two steps in. Wood planks echoed underfoot. She fought to breathe air that grew thinner with every tense second.

Three steps.

Then it hit her. The scent.
His
scent. And with it a flush of memories. The burn of hot grass on her bare skin. Rough hands, a tender touch. Love so sweet she ached for it, her dreams raging, and her body drenched with need.

“Gage?” Her voice broke on the single syllable. Riley’s grip on the keys tightened, her blood raging hot and cold all at once.

A creak sounded from the corner chair. Her eyes refused to adjust in the darkness, but not even the faint light kept the blond streaks in his russet hair from giving him away. Like rays of sunshine, she used to tease, and her words never failed to draw a scowl across his rugged face.

“Riley.”

God help her, her name on his lips sounded as it always had. Coarse. Dangerous. Forbidden. Even before… The memory surged, hot and vivid, leaving a metallic taste in her mouth. White heat assaulted her from every corner of the room.

The keys fell to the floor with a dull clink.

“An eye for an eye, is it?” His voice sounded unpracticed, as if he hadn’t spoken in a long while.

She couldn’t see his face, but she knew his expression. Flat and humorless. Broken. She remembered the day he stopped smiling. Every part of her wanted to flee, but she stood frozen to the spot.

“What do you mean?” Riley wondered if the words, whispered and weak, had the strength to make it across the room. Hadn’t she always known she’d shatter the next time she saw him? Hadn’t she dreamed of seeing him anyway?

“You have to ask?” Gage laughed, cold and hollow. “Billy’s dead. Hell of a thing to come home to. My brother blown to bits on my back porch.”

“Oh God.” She swayed. The room filled with a distant buzzing. She took one unsteady step to the side and stumbled.

When she found his gaze, it was over the business end of a revolver.

He leveled the gun in her direction. Everything else in her world trembled, but his aim held rock steady. Unyielding.

His eyes burned blue and bright. “What I want to know,
sweetheart
, is why you did it.”

He worked his finger over the trigger, and a veil of blackness threatened her last discerning thought.

He hadn’t even pulled the trigger, yet Riley hit the hardwood in a crumpled heap. That was a first.

Without taking his attention from her, Gage Lawton climbed out of the chair, cursing when he realized his foot was asleep. He tucked the .38 in the waistband of his pants and limped through the pins-and-needles sensation wreaking havoc in his left boot.

Hell of a time to feel ticklish
, he thought, staring at Riley’s wild mane of dark waves sprawled over the floorboards. Not the stark contrast he’d seen over a crisp white pillowcase. His mind played flashbacks. Memories of dragging his lips over her heaving, sweat-slicked skin threatened his plans…and his resolve.

The flood of emotions shouldn’t have surprised him. He was as stoic as a block of granite when it came to everything—and everyone—except Riley Beckett. He never could put the feeling into words, but just being around her made him feel free, like standing in the middle of the prairie with the sun, and the breeze, and the vastness…and the promise of something he didn’t dare believe.

And he didn’t. Gage knew good things didn’t happen to him. But she’d captured a piece of his soul with her laughing eyes and damning innocence.

The purest woman he’d ever known and he’d destroyed her.

Twice
.

He eyed the glass of whiskey he’d poured to keep himself company while he waited. He hadn’t touched it yet. The amber liquid represented a line Gage couldn’t cross, but he’d given himself too much credit where Riley was concerned. The moment her sky blue eyes found his, she’d broken him all over again.

With a weary sigh, he knelt at her side, irony forcing him to suppress the urge to laugh. How many times had she brought him to his knees? He thought of his kid brother sprawled on his porch and promised himself this would be the last time. Rage and guilt made for strange bedfellows, but he knew one thing: if Riley Beckett
had
pulled that damned trigger, she had cleared his heart of the latter.

An eye for an eye
.