Some friends and I got together to build a co-op to help promote our self-published titles. The goal here is to brand our books in a way that readers will be able to know that they can depend on professional quality stories, no matter that they are self published. May is launch month for us… and the first release if from Charlene Teglia…so check this out and Walk On The Wild Side with me and my friends!
From the jungles of South America to a big city high-rise, where there’s trouble, you’ll find…MEN OF ACTION.
Shoot to Thrill
Gabriel Everest had a simple plan; infiltrate, attack, exfiltrate. Unfortunately, he encountered a major complication in Dr. Miranda Gray. Blowing the target would have to wait until he could rescue the hostage, but saving the girl and getting away without alerting the opposition is harder than it sounds when she’s determined to take direct action of her own.
Third Time’s the Charm
Loving a cop isn’t easy. Faced with an emotional distance their physical attraction couldn’t bridge, Lynn Taylor walked away. Twice. But Nick Logan isn’t ready to let her go. When an elevator mishap leaves them trapped together in the dark, can two lovers find a way to make the third time the charm?
10,000 words
Originally published in The Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance and Passion: Erotic Romance for Women, these stories have been revised and expanded for this ebook edition.
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Also available for iBooks
Excerpt …
Gabe was used to the truism that no plan survives contact with the enemy. But no plan surviving contact with a hostage, that was new.
“Houston, we have a problem,” he transmitted. He uploaded the digital photo he’d snapped of the slender dark-eyed, light-haired woman who wasn’t supposed to be there and waited for identification.
It didn’t take long for the satellite uplink to give him what he needed. Name, Dr. Miranda Gray. Missing from an international volunteer relief organization for a month. The doctor specialized in nasty viruses. If she’d been grabbed for her expertise that would explain her presence at his target, a suspected bioterrorism site held by a radical terrorist group deep in Central America.
He didn’t have to wonder if she’d cooperated. The way she’d rendered her guard unconscious said it all. Dr. Gray had an interesting bedside manner. The guard outweighed her by probably eighty pounds and had the advantage of both reach and height on her. Her knowledge of anatomy more than compensated.
“You’re not supposed to take on the bad guys,” Gabe muttered, more to himself than to the woman he had under surveillance. “That’s my job.” More specifically, his current job was to destroy the target. The doctor’s presence threw a very large monkey wrench into the works. He’d have to extract her first, get them both a safe distance away before triggering detonation, and do it all without alerting unfriendlies to his presence.
Gabe was running through possible approaches when the doctor’s actions demanded his full attention. What was she doing? Moving at high speed, almost frantic but with hands that stayed rock steady, measuring out and mixing something that appeared to be charcoal and…
“Tell me that isn’t what I think it is.” Was she insane? If that was black powder, stirring it wrong could blow her sky high. He hoped to God she wouldn’t sneeze.
Conclusion; Dr. Gray knew exactly what her captors had in mind, and was hell-bent on stopping them. Getting out alive didn’t appear to be part of her plan, either. Then again, the very careful way she mixed the ingredients told him she wasn’t suicidal. Just desperate and determined.
Gabe abandoned planning and went into motion.
***
Miranda focused on the task at hand with fierce concentration. It was just lab work. She was used to that. She had to be precise and careful, follow protocol. The rules were the rules, whether you were dealing with vaccine samples or blood work. Or mixing gunpowder a step ahead of the goons who had everything they needed now and didn’t need her anymore.
She’d been safe as long as they needed her. She wasn’t safe now. As the days slipped past, she’d given up the slim hope she’d clung to that some embassy official or reporter or hell, former coworker, was campaigning for her rescue.
She’d probably been given up for dead. She might be dead before the night ended, but it’d be on her terms.
Her terms did not include surviving just so she could live with the guilt of countless deaths on her conscience. Deaths she could prevent if she was fast enough, strong enough, brave enough.Careful enough.
Monks had killed themselves mixing gunpowder when it was done by hand like this. If she blew herself up before she finished her task, it’d be for nothing. So she was going to be very, very careful.
A noise behind her made her body freeze while her heart accelerated and her mind raced ahead. Somebody was suspicious, coming to check on her, maybe coming to get some entertainment out of her before killing her. Rage instead of fear nearly choked her. She wasn’t done, the bastards weren’t going to win, not when she was so close. Fire was all she needed. The powder would make sure all the samples were destroyed before the fire could be put out, but she could start the fire now and hope for the best if it was all she had time for.
“Please don’t drop that,” an American male voice said behind her. There was a trace of the south in it, a hint of Texas. “Don’t be afraid. I didn’t mean to scare you. My name is Gabriel Everest and I’m here to rescue you.”
He didn’t move again and Miranda realized he was waiting for her to make the next move. Probably he could smell the acrid gunpowder over the must and metal and antiseptic odors that permeated the lab and didn’t want to startle her into doing something they’d both regret.
“I’m not finished,” she said without turning around. Having him behind her made her want to draw her shoulders in as if she could make herself a smaller target, but stopping might mean not finishing. She was going to finish this.
“That’s okay,” Gabriel said, keeping his voice calm and level, soothing. “It’s okay to just let it go, gently, and step back. I’m here. I’ll help you.”
“You can help me start the fire,” Miranda said and finished her job. Then she began to pour the powder around the lab, concentrating on the samples stored away in their sealed cases. She didn’t look at Gabriel. He wasn’t trying to stop her, so he wasn’t important right now. Looking would mean taking her eyes off the task, breaking focus. You didn’t break focus in the middle of an operation. People died if you did that. People would die if she didn’t burn it all.
“Dr. Gray. Miranda,” Gabriel said. “Can I call you Miranda?”
“If I’m alive an hour from now, you can call me anything you want to,” Miranda said absently. But her full name sunk in. He knew who she was. None of them knew; they just called her la doctora. And sometimes la perra. “You really are here to rescue me.”
“And to make sure the biologicals here don’t get used as weapons.”
“That would be smart,” Miranda said. “The fire has to get all of it.” She turned to look at him for the first time, and was glad she’d waited. The impact of him rocked her back on her heels. Not just the visuals, but the way he filled the room with his presence. An air of command and an undercurrent of something waiting to be unleashed.
Since the total effect of the man overwhelmed her, Miranda broke it down into separate pieces. She noted the square jaw, the watchful gray eyes, the dark hair worn in a crew cut that looked regulation. Broad shoulders. Fatigues designed to help camouflage him in this jungle setting and did nothing to disguise the powerful body they covered. Hands that looked very capable gripped a weapon she couldn’t begin to identify, but it looked lethal and probably had a loud bang.
They sent GI Joe to rescue Dr. Barbie, Miranda thought. She hoped he had his Jeep handy. Or some kind of getaway machine.
And there’s already a review from Carol Brown: “I loved this set of two erotic romance novellas. I had read the version in the Passion anthology (it was my favorite in that book), but had not read the one in the Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance and was happy that the story I had read was expanded and loved the special ops story. The premise of the two stories are familiar, but Charlene Teglia’s execution make them well worth the read.” Thanks, Carol!