Simple Twist of Fate: Fated, Book 3 Read online

  “Look at me,” he demanded.

  Love can drive you over the edge. It can also let you fly.

  Crazy Little Thing Called Love

  © 2009 Crystal Jordan

  In the Heat of the Night, Book 4

  Pixie Parthon worked hard to make her music production company a success. Anyone who gets in her way gets the business end of her Fae magic. Her savvy business sense kept her family afloat for years, but now that her musician brother is mated and off on a world tour she’s feeling left in the dust.

  Maybe it was a faint wish for a little love magic for herself, but she didn’t expect one night of cutting loose to leave her marked for life. A little love bite is one thing. Give up her hard-won independence to a pushy alpha werewolf? She’ll pass.

  Malcon is just as shocked as Pixie, but for a different reason. From the moment he saw her, his desire went far beyond getting into her pants. When she agreed—begged—to be bitten, he believed she also sensed their destiny to be mates.

  Now it’s too late. Nothing will convince Pixie that he has no intention of clipping her wings—not even a month’s worth of orgasms on call. Crazy as it sounds, love is all he wants from her. Even if it means letting her go…

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Crazy Little Thing Called Love:

  Three weeks later, Malcon was still on the campaign and gaining ground, I had to admit. I was nowhere near giving in, but every moment I spent with him made me like him more, want him more, crave him more. My heart jumped when I saw him each evening, and it saddened me to leave him every morning. I counted the hours to when I got to see him again like some teenager with her first crush.

  It scared the shit out of me.

  I should call the deal off, tell him no, and move on with my life. I knew it. I’d even tried to make myself say it more than once. So far, I was pathetically unsuccessful. I didn’t want to stop seeing him, and that complicated the shit out of everything. That was exactly what he wanted. The problem was, things were going smoothly. Nothing had been tested and crumbled under pressure, so it was all shiny and pretty and new. I wasn’t running from coast to coast like I had so often. Wolf pack politics and business were good. We were good. When the brown stuff hit the fan and splattered the way it inevitably did, he would try to fence me in the way every other male had. So, while I was letting myself enjoy the moment, it was with the slight dread in the pit of my stomach of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I refocused on the quarterly reports in front of me. I had a boatload of meetings tomorrow, so I had to get a bigger boatload of paperwork done tonight. I should be relieved by a break from Malcon, but I wasn’t.

  An hour later, my cell phone vibrated across the surface of my desk and made me jolt. My heart raced, and I pressed my palm to my chest. I pushed the button on my cell phone that transferred the call to the Bluetooth in my ear. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Pixie.”

  A smile automatically curved my lips at the sound of his voice. “Hey, you. What’s up?”

  “Not much.” I could hear an answering smile form on his handsome face. “How late are you working tonight?”

  “Late.” I looked at the stacks of paperwork that covered every available surface in my office. I sighed. “Very late.”

  He hummed sympathetically. “That’s too bad.”

  “What are you doing?” I leaned back in my chair and kicked my heels up onto the desk, crossing my ankles.

  He chuckled. “Working very late. We’re taking a break for another forty-five minutes, but then I have to put in a conference call to Tokyo.”

  “Ouch. That’s what, a seventeen-hour difference?”

  “About that, yeah.” There was a short pause. “So, I was thinking we should have dinner together.”

  “If we’re both working madly on opposite sides of the city, how do you—” A knock sounded on the outer office door. “Hold on a sec.”

  My eyebrows arched. Was it him again? My sex clenched at the mere thought of what we’d done together the last time we were in my office. I hopped up to open the door. A courier stood there with a plastic bag from my favorite Italian place in one hand and a vase with a dozen purple roses in the other. I blinked for a moment, then flipped the lock and opened the door. “Hi.”

  “Pixie Parthon?” The kid offered a bashful smile.

  I nodded. “That’s me.”

  “Sign here, please.”

  I scrawled my name on the digital pad he held out to me, and then collected my booty. Locking the door behind the courier, I couldn’t stop the stupid smile that spread as I smelled the roses.

  Malcon’s voice sounded softly in my ear. “Did you get it?”

  “Yes.” A little laugh spilled out, and I carried the heavy crystal vase and food to my office. Clearing off one of the piles of paper from my credenza, I set the roses in the middle where I could see them from my desk. I couldn’t resist taking another lungful of their spicy sweet scent. “Malcon, the flowers are beautiful. Thank you.”

  His voice deepened the way it did when he was pleased. “So, like I said, I think we should have dinner together.”

  “You had Moretti’s delivered to you too?” The stupid grin widened with delight. This was without a doubt the most creative non-date I’d ever had. Okay, so it was the only one, but still. It was nice of him to think of this.

  I heard him shift the receiver against his ear. “They make the best veal parmigiana.”

  Plopping myself into my chair, I opened the bag and all the various containers inside. There was even a little bottle of Pellegrino. My stomach gave a rumble as I ripped open the packet of plastic silverware. “Mmm, I love their three-cheese ziti. How did you know?”

  “The manager told me your favorites.”

  “Ha! Rosa is the best.” I forked a bite of it into my mouth and moaned. “Oh man. This is so good.”

  His low growl filtered through the phone, and I moaned a little louder on the next bite to torment him. He laughed. “Minx. I’m glad you like it.”

  “I do.” I sipped the fizzing water. “I was going to skip dinner, so this is fabulous. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” I heard him chew a bite slowly and swallow. “So…how was your day?”

  “Good. Busy.” Settling back in my chair, I spent the rest of his break chatting with him about how our work had gone.

  It was…nice. I really, really liked it. Almost as much as I liked him. I groaned when I hung up the phone, dropping my forehead to my desk. God, I was in so much trouble with this man.

  Simple Twist of Fate

  Karen Erickson

  Sometimes you run in to love. Sometimes it runs into you.

  Fated, Book 3

  Love at first sight? It’s so not happening for Morgan. Never mind that her two best friends, who are both up to their eyeballs in happily ever after, are playing matchmaker. She wants out of her worst blind date ever—and her “out” abruptly finds her when she’s knocked out cold walking into a door.

  One look into the eyes of the beautiful woman with the gash on her head, and paramedic Evan Marshall is a goner. Professional ethics say hands off the patient. Once her stitches are out, though, he can’t resist the impulse to ask her out. As their first date flares into a white-hot affair, he feels it in his bones—she’s the one.

  Evan’s everything Morgan could ever want in a man, but things are happening way too fast. She made that mistake once before and, certain this relationship is careening down the same road to heartbreak, she slams on the brakes.

  To her surprise, Evan lets her go. And by the time she realizes she just let her one chance at happily ever after slip away, it could be too late…

  Warning: Fated love strikes again. Featuring toe-curling sex, a sweet-talking man and a woman who can’t help but give in to her secret desires. Will true love reign supreme? Most definitely…

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t is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Simple Twist of Fate

  Copyright © 2011 by Karen Erickson

  ISBN: 978-1-60928-514-2

  Edited by Bethany Morgan

  Cover by Angela Waters

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: August 2011

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  About the Author

  Look for these titles by Karen Erickson

  Also Available from Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

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