The Has-Been and the Hot Mess - Isabel Jordan Page 0,63

a four…not so much.

He lowered his gaze to her chest, and then slowly lifted it back to her eyes. “I doubt they’re paying you to think, sunshine.” Sliding the empty bottles even closer to her, he repeated, “Another bottle.”

He’d said it very slowly, deliberately, in a manner most people reserved for slow-witted children and foreigners. The only part of her that wasn’t at all impressed with the guy’s fallen-angel face—which just happened to be her Sicilian temper—kicked in at that point.

Harper straightened and snagged the bottles off the table, preparing to verbally flay him, but just when she’d figured out exactly how many four-letter words she could hurl at him in one sentence, a premonition hit her hard.

People often asked her what premonitions felt like. Imagine someone punching a hole through your forehead and making a fist around your brain, she always told them. This premonition was no different.

Harper staggered forward and planted one palm on the table to steady herself as images assailed her: a young, blonde woman in an alley pinned to a dumpster by a man twice her size.

A vampire, she knew instinctively. Cold chills always shot down her spine when she saw them.

Harper sucked in a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate on details other than the victim, just like Sentry taught her so many years ago. Instead, she tried to picture the dumpster, the buildings around it, street signs…anything that might tell her where this girl was so she could call the police and get her some help.

And then she saw a logo printed on the side of the dumpster as big as life. Kitty Kat Palace.

Holy shit, the vamp and his victim were here.

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You Complicate Me

The road to happily ever after has never been more hilarious...or complicated...

Chapter 1

In retrospect, the Valium probably would’ve been enough to soothe Grace Montgomery’s nerves on the flight from Los Angeles to Indianapolis. The wine was most likely overkill.

As was the tequila.

It had all started innocently enough. “Take one pill an hour before the flight,” her doctor had told her, “and one an hour into the flight. You’ll be completely relaxed. Valium is magic, I swear.”

“The kind of magic that keeps planes from falling from the sky in a ball of fiery death?” Grace had asked.

Her doctor’s answering smirk should’ve been a warning. “The kind of magic that makes you not care on the way down.”

And she hadn’t. Cared, that is. The magic Valium had done its job.

Until take-off, at least.

As soon as the plane started rolling down the runway, as soon as she felt the rumbling of the engine in her belly, she started panicking. The man sitting next to her in seat C2, no doubt having noticed the white-knuckled grip she had on their adjoining armrest, had suggested a glass of wine, which she’d requested from the flight attendant as soon as she’d been allowed. But even though she gulped it down in two swallows, the wine was absolutely no match for her anxiety, because she soon started hyperventilating.

C2 had pressed an air-sickness bag into one of her hands, and a mini bottle of tequila into the other. After breathing deeply into the bag for a few moments, she’d unscrewed the tequila and downed it, too. One swallow that time.

Grace was nothing if not a quick learner.

It was then she’d made what she thought was a tragic error. She’d asked for a second bottle of tequila, which she used to wash down her second Valium. The calm that had quickly washed over her was amazing. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so relaxed.

And warm. She was suddenly really, really, warm. So it only made sense that she’d strip off her sweater, right?

Sadly, while she was shedding layers, she elbowed the guy next to her in the eye.

“Jesus Christ,” he’d muttered, holding a hand over one eye.

That was when she got her first good look at C2.

Maybe it was the Valium, or maybe it was the alcohol, but holy hell, he was beautiful.

His inky hair was long overdue for a trim and fell in messy disarray—the kind of messy disarray that hot men achieved naturally and women paid big bucks to a salon to fake—to just above the collar of his white button-down shirt. With his knife-edged cheekbones, strong jaw, and olive complexion, he looked like he could be Hugh Jackman’s younger brother.

Grace had watched Wolverine four times, and not because the storyline was stellar